From two experts in the field comes an accessible, how-to guide that will help researchers think more productively about the relation between theory and data at every stage of their work. In Data Analysis in Qualitative Research, Iddo Tavory and Stefan Timmermans provide a how-to guide filled with tricks of the trade for researchers who hope to take excellent qualitative data and transform it into powerful scholarship. In their previous book, Abductive Analysis: Theorizing Qualitative Research, Timmermans and Tavory offered a toolkit for innovative theorizing in the social sciences. In this companion, they go one step further to show how to uncover the surprising revelations that lie waiting in qualitative data—in sociology and beyond. In this book, they lay out a series of tools designed to help both novice and expert scholars see and understand their data in surprising ways. Timmermans and Tavory show researchers how to “stack the deck” of qualitative research in favor of locating surprising findings that may lead to theoretical breakthroughs, whether by engaging with theory, discussing research strategies, or walking the reader through the process of coding data. From beginning to end of a research project, Data Analysis in Qualitative Research helps social scientists pinpoint the most promising paths to take in their approach.

http://www.sociologypress.com/books/interest/time_for_dying.htm This book is a sequel to “Awareness for Dying” and focuses on the temporal aspects of dying in hospitals. Dying takes varying amounts of time, from sudden to excessive lingering. The social psychological events that take place during dying as a temporal process given professional codes and training and hospital prescribed work are explored and woven into a theory of status passage. CONTENT Chapter 1 Dying trajectories Chapter 2 Sudden Death: A case of suicide Chapter 3 Initial definitions of the dying trajectory Chapter 4 Lingering trajectories: Institutional dying Chapter 5 Lingering trajectories: At home and in hospitals Chapter 6 The expected quick trajectory Chapter 7 The unexpected quick trajectory Chapter 8 Last weeks an days Chapter 9 Finding the dying trajectory Chapter 10 After death in the hospital Chapter 11 Time, structural processes and status passage Chapter 12 Improving the care of the dying Appendix

http://www.sociologypress.com/books/interest/awareness_of_dying.htm This is the first grounded theory book, now pub­lished in four languages. Its resounding suc­cess led to the seminal codification of classic grounded theory method­ology, in "Discovery of Grounded Theory”. At the time of the study, American physi­cians were quite reluctant to disclose impending death to their patients. The book addresses the social psychological problems of dying in hospitals when the patient knows and does not know, with varying degrees between, that he/she is dying. It focuses on the effects of interaction and tactics used by nurses in care of the dying patient within different awareness contests. CONTENT Part 1 Introduction 1 The problem of awareness of dying 2 Expectations of death: A problem in social definition Part II Types of Awareness Contexts 3 Closed awareness 4 Suspicion awareness: The contest for control 5 The ritual drama of mutual pretence 6 The ambiguities of open awareness 7 Discounting awareness Part III Problems of Awareness 8 Direct disclosure of terminality 9 The unaware family 10 The aware family 11 “Nothing more to do”: The problem of no recovery 12 “Nothing more to do”: The problem of comfort 13 Awareness and the nurse’s composure Part IV Conclusions 14 The practical use of awareness theory 15 Awareness and the study of social interaction Appendix Methods of Collection and Analysis

The Body Multiple is an extraordinary ethnography of an ordinary disease. Drawing on fieldwork in a Dutch university hospital, Annemarie Mol looks at the day-to-day diagnosis and treatment of atherosclerosis. A patient information leaflet might describe atherosclerosis as the gradual obstruction of the arteries, but in hospital practice this one medical condition appears to be many other things as well. From one moment, place, apparatus, specialty, or treatment to the next, a slightly different "atherosclerosis" is being discussed, measured, observed, or stripped away. Mol demonstrates that this multiplicity does not imply fragmentation. Instead, the disease is made to cohere through a range of tactics including transporting forms and files, making images, holding case conferences, and conducting doctor-patient conversations. The Body Multiple juxtaposes two distinct texts. Alongside Mol's analysis of her ethnographic material - interviews with doctors and patients; observations of medical examinations, consultations, and operations - runs a parallel text in which she reflects on the relevant literature. Mol draws on medical anthropology, sociology, feminist theory, philosophy, and science and technology studies to reframe such issues as the disease-illness distinction, subject-object relations, boundaries, difference, situatedness, and ontology. In dialogue with one another, Mol's two texts meditate on the multiplicity of reality-in-practice. Presenting philosophical reflections on the body and medical practice through vivid storytelling, The Body Multiple will be important to those in medical anthropology, philosophy, and the social study of science, technology, and medicine.

This text explains the act of prognosis in its varying forms - doctors telling patients if their cancer is curable, when their pain will stop, if they will live to see their child graduate from college - from the perspective of doctors. Nicholas Christakis examines why physicians are reluctant to predict the future, what uses doctors make of prognosis, the symbolism it contains, and the practical and emotional difficulties it involves. Drawing on his experiences both as a doctor and as a sociologist, the author conducted interviews with physicians; he searched medical textbooks and medical school curricula for discussions of prognosis; and he developed quantitative data showing that physicians are systematically optimistic in their predictions. With its combination of approaches and methods, this book is a study of a murky area of medical practice that, despite its importance, is only partially understood and rarely discussed. Christakis argues that physicians and the medical profession as a whole have the duty to prognosticate, and shirking the difficult questions - as most doctors tend to do - advances neither medical knowledge nor the care seriously ill patients receive. The book aims to be a clarion call for a renewed effort to understand and improve the art and science of prognostication.