"It is much better," observed C. Wright Mills in an essay on
intellectual craftsmanship, "to have one account by a working
student of how he is going about his work than a dozen
aecodifications of procedure' by specialists who often as not have
never done much work of consequence." This observation underscores
the premise of this book: that there is a need for students to
communicate the procedures and strategies of field research they
have found consequential in their own studies to the less
instructed or less experienced. The contributors to this book are
well known researchers and share their field-developed techniques
of research craftsmanship. The pathways to data they describe wind
in a common direction, toward a concern with research happenings in
situations: in agencies, associations, institutions, campaigns,
demonstrations, and goal-directed social movements.
The selections included in "Pathways to Data" are neither
biographies of research projects nor subjective evaluations of
personal experiences. Rather, the writers emphasize techniques,
operations, and know-how. "Pathways to Data"'s chapters are
collateral cousins to the collection of research biographies found
in "Sociologists at Work," another classic in the field. But the
lineage, or progression of thought, traces back to the Webbs'
"Methods of Social Study," and is most closely related to the
Glaser and Strauss volume, "The Discovery of Grounded Theory."
The contributors to this book reflect a common concern with
organization in the "down home" sense of social bonds opening and
closing, of self-involvement, and most importantly social
structure. Process is stressed above system, becoming over being.
Seen programatically, field methods deliver data to concepts, and
techniques are grounded in the heuristic value such data display.
Theory is grounded in concepts validated by the effectiveness with
which they give meaning to the data. The production of social
knowledge is symmetrical, reciprocal, but analytically divisible.
The student of society will consequently find an assortment of
knowledges that makes large portions of our society more
understandable.
"Robert W. Habenstein" is emeritus professor of sociology at
the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Missouri-Columbia.
He is the author of "History of American Funeral Directing, The
Family in Various Cultures," and "Ethnic Families in America:
Patterns and Variations" (Fourth Edition).
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