Qual. Sociologists - please recommend readings

[giacomo]

Why don't we do this, too?

[Ladril]

Why don't we do this, too?

A bit too wordy - but hey, you're into qual, aren't you? - this book is quite good:

http://www.amazon.co...z/dp/0029281601

Edited April 26, 2012 by Ladril

[jacib]

I'll answer this the same way I answer the quant one and give a bunch of good books and articles that I think are really useful for thinking about methodologies, rather than just book on "how to interview", "what is grounded theory", "getting access to your field site", "document analysis", etc.

Three books that gave me a lot to think about methodologically thinking about ethnography: Heatwave by Eric Kleinenberg (my professor pointed out, for example, that any disseration can have a chapter on how the media deals with what you're studying; just a great example of how you can construct a thesis chapter by chapter around a central topic without it being stupid), Tally's Cornerby Elliot Liebow (he talks to like what, 6 people?), and Slim's Table by Mitch Duneier, where everything is kind of boring until the last few chapters and you realize he wrote a boring book to prove that "ghetto people" are really just "normal people" and that much of what has been written is selection bias--aka people are boring and normal, even in "the ghetto". Brilliant.

I find multisite ethnographies to be fascinating in theory, but I don't think I've read a really, really good one yet; Liisa Malkki's Purity and Exile is the best I've read and gets referenced a lot in both anthropology and political science (warning: I forget exactly what I didn't like about it, but I think part of it is she just doesn't talk to women). If anyone can recommend a good multisite ethnography, I'd be really interested.

More historical: not a book you could write for your dissertation but still the best book I've read this year: The Art of Not Being Governed by James C. Scott. Alternative: his Seeing like a State. I want to be him when I grow up. Again historical and something you could acutally do for your dissertation: Gorski's Disciplinary Revolution (or just check out his AJS and ASR articles--he basically just mixes Weber and Foucault in a big way). I love Jose Casanova's Public Religions in the Modern World, rich in theory and historical empirics even without doing archival research--you could probably pull this off for your dissertation. For a cool historical book ("social history" not "historical sociology" for whatever disciplinary boundaries are worth) The Cheese and the Worms is probably the best summer read. It's based on inquisition records and uses the story of this one guy to really help understand an entire system.

Interview heavy work: Diane Vaughan's Challenger book people who do organizations seem to really like, but it's long. Her little Uncoupling is more fun, shorter, also about organizational breakdown, and might be a better summer read.

Intense qualitative articles I've read recently include: Alice Goffman's "On the Run" (most intense ethnography I've heard of), Dimaggio and Powell's "The Iron Cage Revisited" (no empirics at all, just theory, but not in a bad way; important for organizations). I really liked "The Red, Black, and Gray Markets of Religion in China" by Fenggang Yang--even though I disagree with it, it opened a lot of ways of thinking about how regulation and organization interact.

Neatest little methodological thing I've encountered ("eventful history"): William Sewell's article "Inventing Revolution at the Bastille". It's really good, how we can look at how an event is understood as it goes on. Worth reading for anyone even vaguely interested in historical sociology.

A good work to get you thinking about just what counts as data, where you can get data is Jack Katz's The Seductions of Crime (first two chapters are by far the most memorable; I think the last chapter or two are good too. I don't remember any other chapters). He uses a lot of different kinds data. First chapter seems to be stories plucked from almost anywhere, second chapter is primarily based on questionaires his students filled out.

For weird methodologies, check out Garfinkle and other "ethnomethodology" stuff.

Really innovative "legal ethnography" read Joan Winifred Sullivan's The Impossiblity of Religious Freedom, where she uses the transcript of one minor, minor courtcase to make a compelling argument about the whole concept of "religious freedom".

Lily Tsai's book is supposed to be neat methodologically, I think it's "mixed methods"; I haven't read it yet so I can't say for sure, but it's near the top of my list. Other cool "mixed methods" work: (these involve numbers, but I promise no scary math) Saskia Sassen's Cities in a World Economy, Bourdieu's work. The problem with Bourdieu is that he thinks he's a good writer so he gets very self-indulgent. I found Distinction to be incredibly boring. Bachelor's Ball is actually pretty fun, though. I'd be willing to say it's good summer reading. He looks at the same subject at three different points in his career using three, let's say, epistomologies and the articles are gathered into a single book. Part One is young Bourdieu, very empirical both qualitative and quantitative, just solid, solid work, Part Two is almost unreadable, and Part Three is my favorite part (once you get past how he writes).

[RefurbedScientist]

Nice post Jacib.

[giacomo]

jacib's posts are all golden, as are yours, SG.

[Ladril]

Another excellent book on the topic:

http://www.amazon.com/The-SAGE-Handbook-Qualitative-Research/dp/0761927573

[MyNamesNotRick]

I just picked this up:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/085702888X/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00

And anything Elijah Anderson is always a good look.

[MashaMashaMasha]

Thought I'd share this summer reading list from Jeff Goodwin - not focused on qual/quant per se, but interesting for folks working on Collective Behavior/Social Movements:

Matthew Baggetta, Indiana University

Leading Teams, Setting the Stage for Great Performances (review)

Jennifer Earl, University of Arizona

Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 (review)

Karen Gargamelli, Common Law, Inc.

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded (review)

David Pettinicchio, University of Washington

What WE Have Done: An Oral History of the Disability Rights Movement(review)

Fabio Rojas, Indiana University

Challenging Operations: Medical Reform and Resistance in Surgery(review)