A down-to-earth, practical guide for interview and participant observation and analysis. In-depth interviews and close observation are essential to the work of social scientists, but inserting one’s researcher-self into the lives of others can be daunting, especially early on. Esteemed sociologist Annette Lareau is here to help. Lareau’s clear, insightful, and personal guide is not your average methods text. It promises to reduce researcher anxiety while illuminating the best methods for first-rate research practice. As the title of this book suggests, Lareau considers listening to be the core element of interviewing and observation. A researcher must listen to people as she collects data, listen to feedback as she describes what she is learning, listen to the findings of others as they delve into the existing literature on topics, and listen to herself in order to sift and prioritize some aspects of the study over others. By listening in these different ways, researchers will discover connections, reconsider assumptions, catch mistakes, develop and assess new ideas, weigh priorities, ponder new directions, and undertake numerous adjustments—all of which will make their contributions clearer and more valuable. Accessibly written and full of practical, easy-to-follow guidance, this book will help both novice and experienced researchers to do their very best work. Qualitative research is an inherently uncertain project, but with Lareau’s help, you can alleviate anxiety and focus on success.

A notable contribution to our understanding of ourselves. This book explores the realm of human behavior in social situations and the way that we appear to others. Dr. Goffman uses the metaphor of theatrical performance as a framework. Each person in everyday social intercourse presents himself and his activity to others, attempts to guide and control the impressions they form of him, and employs certain techniques in order to sustain his performance, just as an actor presents a character to an audience. The discussions of these social techniques offered here are based upon detailed research and observation of social customs in many regions.

High school and the difficult terrain of sexuality and gender identity are brilliantly explored in this smart, incisive ethnography. Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in a racially diverse working-class high school, "Dude, You're a Fag" sheds new light on masculinity both as a field of meaning and as a set of social practices. C. J. Pascoe's unorthodox approach analyzes masculinity as not only a gendered process but also a sexual one. She demonstrates how the 'specter of the fag' becomes a disciplinary mechanism for regulating heterosexual as well as homosexual boys and how the 'fag discourse' is as much tied to gender as it is to sexuality.

Charles C. Ragin’s The Comparative Method proposes a synthetic strategy, based on an application of Boolean algebra, that combines the strengths of both qualitative and quantitative sociology. Elegantly accessible and germane to the work of all the social sciences, and now updated with a new introduction, this book will continue to garner interest, debate, and praise.

Today's marketplace is fueled by knowledge. Yet organizing systematically to leverage knowledge remains a challenge. Leading companies have discovered that technology is not enough, and that cultivating communities of practice is the keystone of an effective knowledge strategy. Communities of practice come together around common interests and expertise - whether they consist of first-line managers or customer service representatives, neurosurgeons or software programmers, city managers or home-improvement amateurs. They create, share, and apply knowledge within and across the boundaries of teams, business units, and even entire companies - providing a concrete path toward creating a true knowledge organization.In "Cultivating Communities of Practice", Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, and William M. Snyder argue that while communities form naturally, organizations need to become more proactive and systematic about developing and integrating them into their strategy. This book provides practical models and methods for stewarding these communities to reach their full potential - without squelching the inner drive that makes them so valuable. Through in-depth cases from firms such as DaimlerChrysler, McKinsey & Company, Shell, and the World Bank, the authors demonstrate how communities of practice can be leveraged to drive overall company strategy, generate new business opportunities, tie personal development to corporate goals, transfer best practices, and recruit and retain top talent. They define the unique features of these communities and outline principles for nurturing their essential elements.They provide guidelines to support communities of practice through their major stages of development, address the potential downsides of communities, and discuss the specific challenges of distributed communities. And they show how to recognize the value created by communities of practice and how to build a corporate knowledge strategy around them. Essential reading for any leader in today's knowledge economy, this is the definitive guide to developing communities of practice for the benefit-and long-term success-of organizations and the individuals who work in them. Etienne Wenger is a renowned expert and consultant on knowledge management and communities of practice in San Juan, California. Richard McDermott is a leading expert of organization and community development in Boulder, Colorado. William M. Snyder is a founding partner of Social Capital Group, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies, Second Edition reflects the latest advances in the field while continuing to provide students with a road map to the complex interdisciplinary terrain of science and technology studies. Distinctive in its attention to both the underlying philosophical and sociological aspects of science and technology Explores core topics such as realism and social construction, discourse and rhetoric, objectivity, and the public understanding of science Includes numerous empirical studies and illustrative examples to elucidate the topics discussed Now includes new material on political economies of scientific and technological knowledge, and democratizing technical decisions Other features of the new edition include improved readability, updated references, chapter reorganization, and more material on medicine and technology

Neil Fligstein challenges prevailing theories of the corporation and proposes a radically new view in which the firm is driven not so much by market forces as by the state and its policies toward business. Fligstein traces the evolution, over the past century, of corporate strategy from an initial emphasis on direct control to one of manufacturing, then sales and marketing, and finally today’s focus on finance.

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.

This book gathers the author’s interviews with twenty leading sociologists from various fields at nine different prestigious universities in the USA, including their viewpoints, anecdotes and experiences in the world of sociology. Each chapter presents an interview with one sociologist, covering their views on contemporary sociology, their early university experiences, teaching experiences, experiences with publishing, and their reflections on life as a sociologist. Through the dialogues, readers can learn about sociology as well as sociologists’ lives in a unique and insightful way – just as the author did – and embark on a journey of discovering sociology. The book helps readers find their own answers to the two main questions explored: “What is sociology?” and “What is a sociologist’s life like?”

Million-dollar birthday parties, megayachts on the French Riviera, and $40,000 bottles of champagne. In today’s New Gilded Age, the world’s moneyed classes have taken conspicuous consumption to new extremes. In Very Important People, sociologist, author, and former fashion model Ashley Mears takes readers inside the exclusive global nightclub and party circuit—from New York City and the Hamptons to Miami and Saint-Tropez—to reveal the intricate economy of beauty, status, and money that lies behind these spectacular displays of wealth and leisure. Mears spent eighteen months in this world of “models and bottles” to write this captivating, sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking narrative. She describes how clubs and restaurants pay promoters to recruit beautiful young women to their venues in order to attract men and get them to spend huge sums in the ritual of bottle service. These “girls” enhance the status of the men and enrich club owners, exchanging their bodily capital for as little as free drinks and a chance to party with men who are rich or aspire to be. Though they are priceless assets in the party circuit, these women are regarded as worthless as long-term relationship prospects, and their bodies are constantly assessed against men’s money. A story of extreme gender inequality in a seductive world, Very Important People unveils troubling realities behind moneyed leisure in an age of record economic disparity.

How do institutions influence and shape cognition and action in individuals and organizations, and how are they in turn shaped by them? Various social science disciplines have offered a range of theories and perspectives to provide answers to this question. Within organization studies in recent years, several scholars have developed the institutional logics perspective. An institutional logic is the set of material practices and symbolic systems including assumptions, values, and beliefs by which individuals and organizations provide meaning to their daily activity, organize time and space, and reproduce their lives and experiences. This approach affords significant insights, methodologies, and research tools, to analyze the multiple combinations of factors that may determine cognition, behaviour, and rationalities. In tracing the development of the institutional logics perspective from earlier institutional theory, the book analyzes seminal research, illustrating how and why influential works on institutional theory motivated a distinct new approach to scholarship on institutional logics. The book shows how the institutional logics perspective transforms institutional theory. It presents novel theory, further elaborates the institutional logics perspective, and forges new linkages to key literatures on practice, identity, and social and cognitive psychology. It develops the microfoundations of institutional logics and institutional entrepreneurship, proposing a set of mechanisms that go beyond meta-theory, integrating this work with macro theory on institutional logics into a cross-levels model of cultural heterogeneity. By incorporating current psychological understanding of human behaviour and linking it to sociological perspectives, it aims to provide an encompassing framework for institutional analysis, and to be an essential and accessible reference for scholars and advanced students of organizational behaviour, organization and management theory, business strategy, and cultural sociology.

Dismantling Desegregation explains the consequences of resegregation and offers direction for a more constructive route toward an equitable future. By citing case studies of ten school districts across the country, Orfield and Eaton uncover the demise of what many feel have been the only legally enforceable routes of access and opportunity for millions of school children in America.