The Vienna School of Interpretive Social Research
Structure, Materiality, Reflexivity
1st Edition
Will be published approx. on 16. October 2026
Book
Hardback
340 pages
978-1-041-02265-7 (ISBN)
Description
This volume provides a sustained study and review of a distinct school of thought in Vienna which has long shaped a specific form of interpretive social research, setting it apart from other approaches.
Labelled the "Vienna School of Interpretive Social Research" in 2020, the book explores the movement's key characteristics, which are anchored in structure, materiality, and reflexivity. It examines how these elements form an integrated yet permeable body of knowledge and situates this approach in relation to other interpretive traditions. The contributors demonstrate how the Vienna School occupies a unique space on the map of qualitative methodologies and methods, both in terms of epistemological stance and local environment of thinking, with one of its defining characteristics being that it dissolved some of the established fault lines throughout European and Anglo-American discourses. In this spirit, the school fosters permeable boundaries to other approaches and communities conducive to enriching understandings of the social world without giving up or diluting its own distinct approach.
As such, this volume presents an integrative contribution to ongoing debates that transparently addresses and discusses contradictions and opportunities for conversation across qualitative approaches in postmodern, critical, and symbolic interactionist traditions, offering generative ways forward. It will therefore appeal to scholars of sociology with an interest in the sociology of knowledge, communication, and social theory.
Labelled the "Vienna School of Interpretive Social Research" in 2020, the book explores the movement's key characteristics, which are anchored in structure, materiality, and reflexivity. It examines how these elements form an integrated yet permeable body of knowledge and situates this approach in relation to other interpretive traditions. The contributors demonstrate how the Vienna School occupies a unique space on the map of qualitative methodologies and methods, both in terms of epistemological stance and local environment of thinking, with one of its defining characteristics being that it dissolved some of the established fault lines throughout European and Anglo-American discourses. In this spirit, the school fosters permeable boundaries to other approaches and communities conducive to enriching understandings of the social world without giving up or diluting its own distinct approach.
As such, this volume presents an integrative contribution to ongoing debates that transparently addresses and discusses contradictions and opportunities for conversation across qualitative approaches in postmodern, critical, and symbolic interactionist traditions, offering generative ways forward. It will therefore appeal to scholars of sociology with an interest in the sociology of knowledge, communication, and social theory.
Reviews / Votes
'A very timely volume from some of the leading scholars in the field. It will be an invaluable resource for those who work directly with interpretive methodologies from the Vienna School but also for anyone whose interests encompass approaches such as storytelling in interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, and the inclusion of material analyses.'Mark Learmoth, Emeritus Professor at Nottingham Trent University, UK.
'The Vienna School of Interpretive Social Research - with its hermeneutical treatment of artefacts, materiality, and multimodality - builds a solid and important conceptual and methodological basis for institutionalist theory. Grounded in the phenomenological tradition of Schuetz, Berger, and Luckmann, it assembles not only methodological cornerstones but also critical dialogues with adjacent paradigms. What distinguishes this assembled articulation of the Vienna School of Interpretive Social Research for neo-institutional scholars, in particular, is the paths it charts for future advancements of institutionalism's multiple variants, with import to the debates around translation theory, inhabited institutions and actorhood, sensemaking, institutional logics and any analysis that moves beyond text-centric accounts of institutions.'
Gili S. Drori, Professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Academic and Postgraduate
Illustrations
5 s/w Tabellen, 3 s/w Zeichnungen, 8 s/w Photographien bzw. Rasterbilder, 11 s/w Abbildungen
5 Tables, black and white; 3 Line drawings, black and white; 8 Halftones, black and white; 11 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-041-02265-7 (9781041022657)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Katharina Miko-Schefzig is Associate Professor and Head of the Competence Center for Empirical Research Methods at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria.
Dennis C. Jancsary is Professor and Chair in Organization Studies at the University of Liverpool Management School, UK, and Senior Research Fellow at the Research Institute for Urban Management and Governance at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU), Austria.
Jo Reichertz is a sociologist, communicative constructivist, and Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, University Duisburg-Essen, Germany.
Dennis C. Jancsary is Professor and Chair in Organization Studies at the University of Liverpool Management School, UK, and Senior Research Fellow at the Research Institute for Urban Management and Governance at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU), Austria.
Jo Reichertz is a sociologist, communicative constructivist, and Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, University Duisburg-Essen, Germany.
Content
1. Introduction. Why Proclaim Another School After the Era of Schools and Their Monolithic Ideas has Ended? Part 1: On the Development of the Vienna School of Interpretive Social Research 2. Cornerstones of the Vienna School of Interpretive Social Research 3. The Vienna School of Interpretive Social Research and its Social Context 4. Interpretive Social Research: Methodological foundations Part 2: Methodological Concretizations of the Vienna School of Interpretive Social Research 5. Hermeneutic Interpretation in the Vienna School 6. System Analysis: A Text-interpretive Approach to Understanding Social Dynamics in Complex Fields 7. Artefact Analysis 8. Refining the Concept of Visual Knowledge: Insights from the Sociology of Knowledge in the Vienna School 9. Observing Fledging Researchers' Participation in a Viennese Coffee House 10. Research with Vignettes: Situations and their Materiality Part 3: Illustrative Examples from Empirical Research 11. Digging deeper: Making a case for the Hermeneutic Approach in Research and Practice 12. Materializing Management Knowledge: Illustrating the Analysis of Visual and Multimodal Artefacts 13. Observations on Choir Singing. A Dialogue Between Lifeworld Analytical Ethnography and Focused Ethnography with Reference to the Vienna School of Interpretive Social Research 14. Multi-Person Interviews in the Field of Work Research: Potentials, Varieties and Applications of a Process-Oriented Method 15. Using Vignettes as Tools for Exploring Intersectional Discrimination: Methodology and Analytical Insights Part 4: Connections to International Discourses 16. The Multiperspectivity of Social Structure. Interpretive Insights from the Vienna School 17. Self-Corrective Research Process and Reflexivity-How to Ensure Research Quality 18. How do Artefact Analyses fit Into Social Research on Materialisation Processes? An Attempt at Systematic Classification 19. On the Power of Artifacts 20. Situation and Context: The Subject and its Situational Embeddedness Part 5: Reflections from the Outside 21. Artefacts and Ethnography 22. Interpreting as Ventriloquizing: Reflections from a CCO Perspective 23. Elusive Materials: Artifacts, Technology, and the Making of Sense 24. Reflections on the Vienna School from the Perspective of Situational Analysis 25. Discourses, Materiality, and Affect as Epistemological References in Interpretative Subjectivation Research 26. Reflections from Applied Statistics