Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803976666 ISBN 13: 9780803976665

Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd, 1997

Synopsis

Building on the success of David Silverman's Interpreting Qualitative Data, this book assembles a well-known international team of researchers who share a commitment to rigorous, analytically derived but nonpolarized, qualitative research. Each contribution reflects on the analysis of each of the kinds of data discussed in Interpreting Qualitative Data - observations, texts, talk and interviews - with the contributors using particular examples of data-analysis to advance analytic arguments. Common themes include: the centrality of the relationship between analytic perspectives and methodological issues; the need to broaden our conception of qualitative research beyond issues of subjective `meaning' and towards issues of language, representation and social organization; and the desire to search for ways of building links between social science traditions and a commitment to a dialogue between social science and the community.

About this title

Review

`[This book] kept being borrowed while I was reading it.... My graduate students walked off with it. Even our new professor of psychology wanted to have a look.... The book is a collection of wonderfully assembled reminders that the ordinary is the baseline from which social research must proceed.... This is something the whole field of qualitative research has needed for some time: an approach outwith the restrictions of both "correctness" and "authenticity" and, instead, predicated on a resolute ordinariness or empiricity' - Discourse & Society

`This is a superb set of cutting-edge works by a group of leading international social science researchers. The authors push the boundaries of the interpretive qualitative, situated approach to observations, textual studies, interviews, discourse analysis, validity, social problems analysis and the aesthetics of inquiry. It promises to become a most valuable and useful resource and text for scholar and student alike. We owe David Silverman and his colleagues a great debt' - Norman K Denzin, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

About the Author

David Silverman is Visiting Professor in the Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, Emeritus Professor in the Sociology Department, Goldsmiths’ College and Adjunct Professor in the School of Education, Queensland University of Technology. He has lived in London for most of his life, where he attended Christ's College Finchley and did a BSc (Economics) at the London School of Economics in the 1960s. Afterwards, he went to the USA for graduate work, obtaining an MA in the Sociology Department, University of California, Los Angeles. He returned to LSE to write a PhD on organization theory. This was published as The Theory of Organizations in 1970.

Apart from brief spells teaching at UCLA, his main teaching career was at Goldsmiths College. His three major research projects were on decision making in the Personnel Department of the Greater London Council (Organizational Work, written with Jill Jones, 1975), paediatric outpatient clinics (Communication and Medical Practice, 1987) and HIV-test counselling (Discourses of Counselling, 1997). 

He pioneered a taught MA in Qualitative Research at Goldsmiths in 1985 and supervised around 30 successful PhD students. Since becoming Emeritus Professor in 1999, he has continued publishing methodology books. David regularly runs qualitative research workshops for five universities in Sydney and Brisbane. He has also run workshops for research students in Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, France, Sri Lanka and Tanzania. Since 2000, he has done voluntary work with people with dementia. resident in an old people’s home

Besides all this, David's other interests include classical music, literary fiction, bridge, county cricket and spending time with his grandchildren.

Edition details

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0803976666
• ISBN 13: 9780803976665
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272
• Editor: Silverman David