Beyond Nation-State Paradigms: Globalization,Sociology, and the Challenge of Transnational Studies

Globalization has made it increasingly necessary to break with nation-state centered analysis in macrosociologies. Social structure is becoming transnationalized, and an epistemological shift is required in concurrence with this ontological change. A new interdisciplinary transnational studies should be predicated on a paradigmatic shift in the focus of social inquiry from the nation-state as the basic unit of analysis to the global system as the appropriate unit. Sociology's fundamental contribution to a transnational studies should be the study oftransnational social structure. This article does not establish a new transnational paradigm. Rather, it surveys and critiques nation-state-centrism in extant paradigms, provides a rationale for a new transnational approach, and proposes a research curriculum of a new transnational studies that may contribute to paradigmatic reconceptualization.     

The sample size debate: response to Norman Blaikie

In his detailed response to our paper on sample size in qualitative research, Norman Blaikie raises important issues concerning conceptual definitions and taxonomy. In particular, he points out the problems associated with a loose, generic application of adjectives such as ‘qualitative’ or ‘inductive’. We endorse this concern, though we suggest that in some specific contexts a broad categorization may be more appropriate than a more nuanced distinction – provided that it is clear in which sense the terms are employed. However, other concepts, such as saturation, do not lend themselves to generic use, and require a more detailed conceptualization. Blaikie’s analysis also makes it clear that meaningful discussion of sample size in qualitative research cannot occur with reference to an undifferentiated conception of the nature of qualitative research; clear distinctions need to be made within this approach in terms of methodology, ontological and epistemological assumptions and broader research paradigms.     

War outside, ceasefire inside: An analysis of the performance appraisal system of a public hospital in a zone of conflict

Our study examines the use of the performance appraisal system at Hebron Public Hospital (Palestine) during the second intifada, started in 2000. The aim of the article is to shed light on the reasons behind the use of performance appraisal systems in organizations operating in zones of conflicts, an area relatively neglected by HR scholars. To create the theoretical fundament we draw on mainstream literature on performance appraisal, contextualizing it to the Middle-Eastern context. From the literature analysis, we identify five guiding logics for the implementation and use of performance appraisal systems (Appendix A). We use a multi-method approach, qualitative and quantitative, to analyze the longitudinal performance evaluation data over the period 2000-2002 for about 250 individuals. These data are complemented with interviews and observations in the field.Our analysis shows that the trends evidenced in the quantitative analysis are similar to trends evident in Western contexts. However, these trends were not the consequence of the same five Western logics found in the literature. The qualitative study allows us to identify two additional logics for making sense of the performance appraisal system at Hebron Public Hospital: the need to find peace within the organization (organizational peacefulness logic); and the need to maintain order through the acceptance of the status quo (dominance logic). These results allow us to draw conclusions for theory and practice of HR management and to identify useful criteria for doing research in areas of conflicts.     

Measuring and Modeling Cohabitation: New Perspectives From Qualitative Data

Almost all our knowledge about cohabitation in the United States rests on analysis of nationally representative, large‐scale surveys. We move beyond this work by drawing on 115 in‐depth interviews with a sample of young men and women with recent cohabitation experience. These data allow us to address two issues of central interest to family studies. First, we use our qualitative data to assess the measurement of cohabitation in surveys and the census. We find that current measurement strategies are probably underestimating cohabitation, and we may need to find new ways to measure cohabitation. Second, we employ qualitative findings to address issues relating to how we empirically model union formation. We find that the movement into cohabitation is not akin to marriage. It is often not a deliberate decision. Couples do not appear to be deciding between cohabitation and marriage; rather, their decision seems to center around whether to remain single or cohabit. These results have important implications for our analysis and understanding of cohabitation.     

Indigenous data,indigenous methodologies and indigenous data sovereignty

The field of Indigenous methodologies has grown strongly since Tuhiwai Smith’s 1999 groundbreaking book Decolonizing Indigenous Methodologies. For the most part however, there has been a marked absence of quantitative methodologies with the methods aligned with Indigenous methodologies predominantly qualitative. This article proposes that the absence of an Indigenous presence from Indigenous data production has resulted in an overwhelming statistical narrative of deficit for dispossessed Indigenous peoples around the globe. Using the theoretical concept of Indigenous Lifeworlds this article builds on the core premises of Walter and Andersen’s 2013 book Indigenous quantitative methodologies. Arguing for a fundamental disturbance of the Western logics of statistical data the article details recent developments in the field including the emergence of the Indigenous Data Sovereignty movement. The article also explores Indigenous quantitative methodologies in practice using the case study of a Tribal Epidemiology Centre in New Mexico.     

ON BALANCE AND SYNERGY: FAMILY THERAPY AND QUALITATIVE RESEARCH REVISITED

Our respondents have provided though-provoking counterpoints to our original paper (Moon, Dillon, & Sprenkle, 1990). Our response is one of synthesis. First, we describe a continuum of social science inquiry paradigms as a framework for exploring the assumptions underlying our respective positions. Second, we address the key issues raised by our respondents. Third, we encourage balance in our research efforts and continuing dialogue. Finally we restate our basic thesis-that qualitative research methodology has the potential to advance the science and practice of family therapy.     

Voyaging on the seas of spirit: an ongoing journey towards understanding disability and humanity

In an important article in Disability & Society Hughes argued that ontology is becoming a ‘live issue’ in disability studies. Different sources, including non‐western and aboriginal conceptions of disability and cosmology and the literature on philosophy, religion, palliative and healthcare, suggest that we are missing a critical aspect of humanity in our discussions – the spirit. Drawing upon collectively defined or interpreted experiences of disability identified in non‐Western and aboriginal communities we identify gaps in our ontological discussions which result from taken for granted assumptions that there is only individual experience. When we incorporate spirit in our thinking we become open to emerging ways of understanding disability and humanity. Spirit is a critical, although often intangible, aspect of being alive. Drawing on these sources, ontological discussions around disability leads us to explore how experiences of disability teach us about the multiple dimensions of being human.     

Institutional Ethnography and Experience as Data

Experience, as concept, is contested among feminists as to its epistemological status, thus its usefulness in knowledge claims. Institutional ethnography (Smith 1987) is a feminist methodology that nonetheless relies fundamentally on people's experience. Not as Truth, nor the object of inquiry, but as thepoint d'appui for sociological inquiry. This article offers a demonstration of institutional enthnography using observational and interview data that show experience as methodologically central to a trustworthy analysis. A moment in the work lives of nursing assistants in a long-term care setting is captured by a participant observer. The analysis produces two lines of argument. One is methodological; it is argued that nursing assistants' experiences are an entry into the social relations of the setting that, when mapped and disclosed, make those experiences understandable in terms of the ruling arrangements permeating both the organization and their own experiences. The other argument is substantive; the inquiry uncovers how a quality improvement' strategy in a long term care hospital in Canada is reorganizing caregivers' values and practices toward a market orientation in which care appears to be compromised. Use of experience as data in this approach holds the analysis accountable to everyday/everynight actualities in a lived world.     

Computer software and qualitative analysis: Trends,issues and resources

Developments during the 1990s in the use of computer software for qualitative data analysis are surveyed. Salient trends are identified as are wider issues associated with software use. Also listed are some of the resources now available to potential and actual users of computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS).     

Employee Participation in the Management of Working Life: An Historical Analysis Focusing on Danish and Scandinavian Conditions

It is argued that the historical development of employee participation in the management of working life is a complex process in which three different institutional logics have been at play throughout the twentieth century in industrialized societies: professional communities, collective bargaining, and co-management. Even though the logics were constructed at different times in history, none of them is necessarily obsolete. But their importance in the total picture of the regulation of working life has changed. The logics are robust as institutions in the sense that they have tried, each in their own way, to adapt to the challenges of working life—that is, to new technology and globalization. As the concrete historical development differs from country to country, requiring a contextual delimitation, I have chosen to focus primarily on conditions in Denmark and secondarily on conditions in the Scandinavian countries: Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. In a concluding perspective a number of traits characterizing international development are pointed at, traits that may become important for the three institutional logics. They concern changes in employment relations and in the nature of tasks.     

Mixed-Methods-Sampling als Mittel zur Abgrenzung eines unscharfen und heterogenen Forschungsfeldes

Problems in defining the research field and in generalizing emerge in both quantitative and qualitative research. With the analysis of “fears of the future in dystopian feature films”, a multi-stage sampling strategy is presented to point out these difficulties as well as to illustrate one possible way of dealing with them. Particularly, in heterogeneous, rapidly changing and diffuse fields of research conducting mixed-method-studies can compensate for the weaknesses of quantitative and qualitative research logics. Therefore, further research should address issues of field delineation, sampling and generalization in greater detail.     

A generalised model of judgment aggregation

The new field of judgment aggregation aims to merge many individual sets of judgments on logically interconnected propositions into a single collective set of judgments on these propositions. Judgment aggregation has commonly been studied using classical propositional logic, with a limited expressive power and a problematic representation of conditional statements (“if P then Q ”) as material conditionals. In this methodological paper, I present a simple unified model of judgment aggregation in general logics. I show how many realistic decision problems can be represented in it. This includes decision problems expressed in languages of standard propositional logic, predicate logic (e.g. preference aggregation problems), modal or conditional logics, and some multi-valued or fuzzy logics. I provide a list of simple tools for working with general logics, and I prove impossibility results that generalise earlier theorems.     

Critical realism in empirical research: employing techniques from grounded theory methodology

Whilst critical realism (CR) is becoming recognised as a significant meta-theory for the social sciences, there is little guidance on how to produce research which is consistent with its ontological and epistemological assumptions. This article contributes to an emerging discussion about how CR can be applied, drawing on an example of a qualitative study that has sought to understand and explain the causes of unmet need amongst a group of rural labourers in Tunisia . Using this study as an illustration, I show how techniques from grounded theory methodology can be usefully harnessed in the data collection, coding and analysis stages of a research project that adopts a CR philosophical and methodological framework. I illustrate how an ‘abductive’ variant of grounded theory allowed drawing on pre-existing theoretical knowledge throughout the research stages; whilst open and axial coding techniques could be harnessed for identifying and postulating CR causal mechanisms. This article should be of interest to students and researchers involved with grounded theory and applied critical realism.     

Social Workers’ Perspectives Regarding the DSM: Implications for Social Work Education

There is a decades-old debate in social work regarding the appropriateness of the use of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) by clinicians in this profession. Despite often contentious perspectives, there has been very little study regarding clinical social workers’ experiences, attitudes, and beliefs about the use of the DSM in their work. In this qualitative inquiry, 20 clinical social workers who had recently completed master’s of social work coursework and were working with children were interviewed using grounded theory methods. Results of the inquiry are presented and implications for social work education are discussed.     

Processing Culture: Cognition,Ontology, and the News Media1

This article discusses how people cognitively engage with the contemporary, mainstream, U.S. news in ways that yield ontological services. It treats the news as both a system of signs and a cultural object, and assesses how people mentally intercept, negotiate, and use the news in ways that foster a sense of control and order over an unstable and unpredictable social world (i.e., “ontological security”) ( Giddens, 1991 ). Based on interview data, it argues that through criticisms, consumption orientations, lay theorizing, and “ignorant othering,” all orbiting and drawing from the contemporary, mainstream, U.S. news, people cognitively sift through and simplify a broader frenzied social environment. In so doing, they are able to mentally establish at minimum a sense of rudimentary understanding and at most a sense of trusted certainty of what is real and true of the world outside their immediate social circles.     

Métier de sociologue,approche inductive et objet d'analyse. Brèves remarques à partir de Bourdieu

This article seeks to reveal the role played by the inductive approach in sociology. Grounded Theory assumes its full importance in formulating sociological explanations. However, the theory does pose a problem, in that the “method” is not based on clearly defined operations, which remain implicit. This article attempts to show that the object of analysis—what is being analyzed—makes perceptible the operations implicitly conceived by the analyst, based on Grounded Theory. With qualitative analysis software, such as Atlas.ti, it is possible to shed light on these operations. The article is illustrated by the theory of Pierre Bourdieu and the epistemological considerations he developed as a result of his qualitative inquiry, La Misère du monde. Cet article cherche à montrer le rôle que joue l'approche inductive en sociologie. La Grounded Theory revêt son importance pour formuler l'explication sociologique. Celle‐ci pose toutefois problème. En effet, la «méthode» ne repose pas sur des opérations clairement définies et celles‐ci restent implicites. Dans cet article, on cherche à montrer que l'objet d'analyse—ce sur quoi porte l'analyse—rend perceptibles les opérations que l'analyste conçoit implicitement en s'appuyant sur la Grounded Theory. Les logiciels d'analyse qualitative, comme Atlas.ti, permettent d'autre part de les mettre en évidence. L'article est illustré par la théorie de Pierre Bourdieu et les considérations épistémologiques qu'a développées cet auteur à la suite de son enquête qualitative sur la Misère du monde.     

Intersectionality and Social Work: Omissions of Race,Class, and Sexuality in Graduate School Education

In 2008 EPAS Standards on Engaging Diversity and Difference in Practice (2.1.4) added intersectionality (a theory developed by feminist of color) as one aspect to understand diversity, difference, and power in social work curriculum. We consider how intersectionality is omitted in graduate student learning even when class assignments center discussions and theorizations on power. This qualitative study explores student narratives and corresponding metaphorical drawings on power within an assignment charting their role as social workers. The research emerges from data where authors noted omissions of race, class, and sexuality in discussions on professional power. This inquiry is guided by critical feminisms. Constant comparative methods were used in this study and two themes emerged: policing resources and a pretense of harmlessness.     

Visions and politics in the making of Stockholm's House of Culture: Institutional complexity within extraordinary projects

The aim of the article is to analyse and comprehend the interplay of institutional logics in the realisation of Stockholm's House of Culture, Kulturhuset, hereby beginning to answer the question of what role cultural logics play in cultural development projects. Based on an in-depth case study of the process leading up to the creation of Kulturhuset, the article explores the interplay of a politico-bureaucratic logic and a cultural–professional logic governing the evolution of the project. Following a Scandinavian tradition of interpretative studies of complex development projects, the making of Kulturhuset is framed as an extraordinary project involving a complicated development process. The process dynamics are explored and analysed through the lens of institutional complexity. The article's main contribution lies in its highlighting the interplay of – and nuancing the relation between – institutional logics. It also serves as a reminder of the power of bureaucratic ordering in urban development projects.