In recent years scholars and researchers in all disciplines have moved away from traditional quantitative methods of research to more qualitative methods which emphasize questions of meaning and interpretation. Considering research methodologies as a set of idioms, The New Language of Qualitative Method examines alternate vocabularies for conveying social reality. It offers a new theoretical view which reintegrates the traditional emphasis on the whats of social life with a contemporary understanding of the hows and whys. The text considers the basic presumptions, objectives, and research questions of four major research traditions: naturalism, ethnomethodology, emotionalism, and postmodernism. Using illustrations from classic texts, it shows how each idiom supplies a unique perspective on empirical reality. The text then examines the risks and rewards of each approach, offering a vision of a renewed language of inquiry that accommodates both traditional and contemporary concerns. Striving for balance, the authors not only contend with issues from alternate perspectives, but provide a basis for rapprochement between research traditions that have often remained isolated from each other. They also demonstrate how each approach may be used for research on family, aging, deviance and social problems, and organizations and institutions. Written in an accessible and engaging style, The New Language of Qualitative Method< can be adopted in courses across the social sciences, and may also be used by a broad spectrum of qualitative researchers.

The New Language of Qualitative Method

Politics & Social Sciences

Holstein, James A.

Gubrium, Jaber F.

Social Sciences

Oxford University Press

The Self We Live By: Narrative Identity in a Postmodern World

The self is a big story. In the early part of the century, pragmatists like William James, Charles Horton Cooley, and George Herbert Mead turned away from the transcendental self of philosophical reflection to formulate the new concept of an empirical selfthe notion that who and what we are is established in everyday interaction. The self was now a social structure, as Mead put it, even if it was located within the individual. The story has changed dramatically since then. Today, according to some postmodern critics, the self has been cast adrift on a sea of disparate images. Its just one swirling presentation among others, bandied about the frenzy of a media-driven society. At the turn of the 21st century, the self has lost its traditional groundings and fizzled empirically. The self's very existence is seriously being questioned. The Self We Live By resurrects the big story by taking issue with this account. Holstein and Gubrium have crafted a comprehensive discussion that traces a different course of development, from the early pragmatists to contemporary constructionist considerations, rescuing the self from the scrap-heap of postmodern imagery. Glimpses of renewal are located in a new kind of ending, centered in an institutional landscape of diverse narratives, articulated in relation to an expanding horizon of identities. Not only is there a new story of the self, but were told that the self, itself, is narratively constructed. Yet as varied and plentiful as narrative identity has become, its disciplined by its social practices, which the authors discuss and illustrate in terms of the everyday technology of self construction. The empirical self, it turns out, has become more complex and varied than its formulators could have imagined.

Philosophy

The self is a big story. In the early part of the century, pragmatists like William James, Charles Horton Cooley, and George Herbert Mead turned away from the transcendental self of philosophical reflection to formulate the new concept of an empirical selfthe notion that who and what we are is established in everyday interaction. The self was now a social structure, as Mead put it, even if it was located within the individual. The story has changed dramatically since then. Today, according to some postmodern critics, the self has been cast adrift on a sea of disparate images. Its just one swirling representation among others, bandied about the frenzy of a media-driven society. At the turn of the 21st century, the self has lost its traditional groundings and fizzled empirically. The self's very existence is seriously being questioned. The Self We Live By resurrects the big story by taking issue with this account. Holstein and Gubrium have crafted a comprehensive discussion that traces a different course of development, from the early pragmatists to contemporary constructionist considerations, rescuing the self from the scrap-heap of postmodern imagery. Glimpses of renewal are located in a new kind of ending, centered in an institutional landscape of diverse narratives, articulated in relation to an expanding horizon of identities. Not only is there a new story of the self, but were told that the self, itself, is narratively constructed. Yet as varied and plentiful as narrative identity has become, its disciplined by its social practices, which the authors discuss and illustrate in terms of the everyday technology of self construction. The empirical self, it turns out, has become more complex and varied than its formulators could have imagined.

Court-Ordered Insanity: Interpretive Practice and Involuntary Commitment (Social Problems & Social Issues)

In preparation for his new study, Dr. Holstein observed several hundred commitment hearings in five widely separated jurisdictions. He then undertook a description of the interpretive practice under which the courts determined whether or not "candidate patients" should be committed against their will to institutions for the mentally ill. He has approached these hearings as a conversational analyst, examining the interaction among judges, lawyers, psychiatrists, and the patients themselves. He argues that decisions to commit are products of those conversations, that the ways in which patients are identified and responded to as concrete instances of "deviance" or "social problems" are constituted through such dialogue. (The book appends some useful transcripts of the actual hearings to illustrate its points.) Holstein's book is also concerned with social organization and culture. He shows how legal interpretation at these hearings takes place within socially organized circumstances, and consequently is responsive to diverse contextual factors, fraught with collective representations and cultural images that serve as further interpretive resources for participants. Court-Ordered Insanity addresses some serious questions: How do competence and incompetence emerge through the hearings? How do considerations about the patient's social status figure into the discussions? How do the actors' assumptions about mental illness shape what occurs? Thanks in part to the clarity and force of Holstein's presentation, the reader comes to recognize that much of the earlier sociological work on mental illness may have focused on the wrong issues.

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

Routledge

This book analyzes how hearing participants construct and organize arguments that are legally, psychiatrically, and practically accountable. It argues that commitment decisions orient to the "tenability" of situations that patients pose as alternatives to hospitalization.

Constructionist Controversies reviews the substantial con- tributions to social problems theory that have been made by social constructionist theorists and examines debates about the future of this perspective. Intended for the student, the volume provides a succinct formulation of all the major issues of social constructionism by contributors who are well recognized within the field for the strength with which they articulate their own widely varied viewpoints.

Constructionist Controversies: Issues in Social Problems Theory (Social Problems and Social Issues)

Miller, Gale

Interviewing has become the window on the world of experience for both researchers and professionals. But as familiar as interviewing is now, its seemingly straightforward methodology raises more questions than ever. What is the interviewer′s image of those who are being interviewed? Who is the interviewer in the eyes of the respondent? From where do interviewers obtain questions and respondents get the answers that they communicate in interviews? How do the institutional auspices of interviewing shape interview data? Drawing upon leading experts from a wide range of disciplines to address these and related questions, The Handbook of Interviewing offers a comprehensive examination of the interview at the cutting edge of information technology in the context of a challenging postmodern environment. Encyclopedic in its breadth, the Handbook provides extensive discussions of the conceptual and methodological issues surrounding interview practice in relation to forms of interviewing, new technology, diverse data gathering and analytic strategies, and the various ways interviewing relates to distinctive respondents. The Handbook is also a story that spins a particular tale that moves from the commonly recognized individual interview as an instrument for gathering data to reflections on the interview as an integral part of the information we gather about individuals and society.

Handbook of Interview Research: Context and Method

Sage Publications, Inc.

Interview books typically stress the need for establishing rapport with respondents and asking questions that don't influence the responses. Until now, no text has seriously explored who the subjects are behind interview participants. 
Inside Interviewing showcases the fluctuating and diverse moral worlds put into place during interview research when gender, race, culture, age, and other subject positions are brought narratively to the foreground. It explores the communicative contexts of respondents' thoughts, feelings, and actions, and how meaning is not merely elicited by apt questioning nor transported through clear respondent replies, but actively and socially assembled in the interview encounter, along with changing understandings of what it means to be a particular subject. 
Topics explored include:
<ul>
<li>The varied roles that interview participants play, alerting readers to the theoretical dimensions of subjectivity, and how this awareness can affect the interview process </li>
<li>The interpretive challenges researchers face in analyzing data collected from interview respondents and their representational positions concerning the subject matter in question </li>
<li>Methods for describing lives that incorporate the representational sensibilities of both interviewees and interview researchers</li>
</ul>
Inside Interviewing explores the representational complexities that emerge when research participation is scrutinized, as well as the technical concerns and analytic options that derive from new lenses for viewing the interview process. These new lenses provide readers with theoretically informed direction for figuring how interview participants relate to each other, how to elicit interview data, and how to select alternative ways of representing interview material.
This volume is comprised of chapters from the Handbook of Interview Research (Gubrium and Holstein, SAGE, 2001). The companion volume, Postmodern Interviewing (SAGE, 2003), is also comprised of chapters from the Handbook.

Inside Interviewing: New Lenses, New Concerns

Business & Money

Job Hunting & Careers

This volume studies in particular the Work Incentive (WIN) programme, examining how staff-client interactions are conducted in terms of conflicts, disputes, hearings, meetings and legal procedures.

Dispute Domains and Welfare Claims : Conflict and Law in Public Bureaucracies

Politics & Government

Jai Pr

This series is designed to foster debates on the sociology of social problems by presenting a forum where sociologists of this discipline can present and argue opposed positions on epistemological, moral and political issues that are central to the field.

Perspectives on social problems (Perspectives on Social Problems, 9)

HOLSTEIN

Emerald Publishing Limited

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Holstein, James A.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Holstein, James A.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Holstein, James A.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The New Language of Qualitative Method

The Self We Live By: Narrative Identity in a Postmodern World

The Self We Live By: Narrative Identity in a Postmodern World

Court-Ordered Insanity: Interpretive Practice and Involuntary Commitment (Social Problems & Social Issues)

Court-Ordered Insanity: Interpretive Practice and Involuntary Commitment (Social Problems & Social Issues)

Constructionist Controversies: Issues in Social Problems Theory (Social Problems and Social Issues)

Handbook of Interview Research: Context and Method

Inside Interviewing: New Lenses, New Concerns

Dispute Domains and Welfare Claims : Conflict and Law in Public Bureaucracies

Perspectives on social problems (Perspectives on Social Problems, 9)