Publications

It has become somewhat of a truism that qualitative research, and particularly fieldwork, cannot be taught but is best learnt in practice, out there, in the field. This can likely be traced to the early days of the Chicago School where students were sent out to study a tract of the census, or neighbourhood, at…

In this article we aim to utilise and apply ethnomethodological and interactionist principles to the analysis of members’ situated accounts of regenerated urban space. With reference to previous empirical studies we apply membership categorization analysis and the concept of mundane reason to data gathered from situated street level interviews carried out as part of a…

This article considers welfare and the city and the ways in which pedestrian practices combine in the management and production of urban need and vulnerability as manifest in the experience and supervision of urban homelessness. The article com-bines writings on urban maintenance and repair with recent anthropological work on wayfaring (in which cities seldom figure)….

This article considers Goffmans conceptualization of interaction order at the margins of society in encounters between urban welfare workers and their clients. Observations from these encounters demonstrate practices relating to the situated management of stigma and identity, and the accomplishment of role within these service encounters. A reading of Goffmans theoretical contribution lies in revealing…

During the course of this article we examine data gathered from two research meetings in which coding issues and data organization are being discussed in relation to the use of the software package Atlas.ti. The meetings were concerned with the organization and coding of semi-structured interviews carried out by three different groups as part of…

In this paper we present a multi-dimensional analysis of the closure of Woolworths in Wales and the way in which the loss of this familiar high-street brand can be accounted for at a number of levels and within different social arenas. Primarily, the paper demonstrates how Woolworths is positioned as a symbol of a previous…

In this short paper we take issue with some recent developments in the design and application of qualitative research which, to our mind, are indicative of a reductionist tendency. As discussed previously (Atkinson, Delamont, and Housley, 2009 Housley and Smith, Forthcoming), ‘qualitative methods’ are increasingly deployed across disciplinary boundaries and are to be found in…

Issue 13 of WISERD’s Qualitative Researcher contains: Revisiting innovation in qualitative research – Amanda Coffey Stripping out the social: Innovation and reduction in contemporary qualitative methods – William Housley and Robin James Smith Visual methods: Innovation, decoration or distractions? – Max Travers Computer assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS): A personal view – Kate Ness…

This paper was presented at the NCRM Oxford Methods Festival (2010) and considers some analytical problems observed within recent innovations in qualitative research; specifically, the use of GPS technology and the various ways in which such spatial data may be represented. The paper is intended as a reminder of the critique of the social sciences…

During the course of this paper we mobilise an ideal typical framework that identifies three waves of reduction within contemporary qualitative inquiry as they relate to key aspects of the sociological tradition. The paper begins with a consideration of one of sociology’s key questions; namely how is social organisation possible? The paper aims to demonstrate…