Observation Methods
1st Edition
Published on 6. March 2013
Book
Hardback
1632 pages
978-1-4462-0811-3 (ISBN)
Description
Observation - as a deliberate, organized and systematic form of 'looking' or 'watching' - is integral to all scientific inquiry. It is a process that is guided by rational principles and assumptions, and motivated by an interest in obtaining data on occurrences, events, processes, reactions, forms of conduct and relationships.
This collection, drawing together key contributions on observation methods in social research, provides comprehensive coverage of the historical development of observational methods and techniques and offers analytic reflection on the various issues involved in the scientific practice of observation. The volumes demonstrate the rich diversity of observational methods, techniques and associated innovations, as well as providing examples of results obtained by studies now considered to be social science classics. The volumes contain important material concerned with the development and refinement of observational methods, as well as the theoretical and philosophical understandings and assumptions integral to observation as a process. Sources that explore the practical matters involved in the stages of preparing for, engaging in, and analysing observations also feature, along with material from classic studies using observational methods. Finally, in addition to critiques of methods of observation, there are sources responding to recent developments within observational methods which utilise the possibilities afforded by contemporary digital and information technology in creative ways.
This collection, drawing together key contributions on observation methods in social research, provides comprehensive coverage of the historical development of observational methods and techniques and offers analytic reflection on the various issues involved in the scientific practice of observation. The volumes demonstrate the rich diversity of observational methods, techniques and associated innovations, as well as providing examples of results obtained by studies now considered to be social science classics. The volumes contain important material concerned with the development and refinement of observational methods, as well as the theoretical and philosophical understandings and assumptions integral to observation as a process. Sources that explore the practical matters involved in the stages of preparing for, engaging in, and analysing observations also feature, along with material from classic studies using observational methods. Finally, in addition to critiques of methods of observation, there are sources responding to recent developments within observational methods which utilise the possibilities afforded by contemporary digital and information technology in creative ways.
More details
Series
Edition
Four-Volume Set
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Weight
3488 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4462-0811-3 (9781446208113)
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
Barry Smart is Professor of Sociology at the University of Portsmouth and has longstanding research interests in the fields of social theory, political economy, and philosophy. His research interests include critical social research ethics; higher education; and collaborative work on veganism, ethics, lifestyle and environment.
Kay Peggs is Professor of Sociology at Kingston University (UK), Fellow of the Oxford University Centre for Animal Ethics, and Visiting Fellow in Sociology at the University of Portsmouth (UK). Previously she has worked at the universities of Warwick, Surrey, Portsmouth and Winchester. Her publications include: Identity and Repartnering after Separation (Palgrave, 2007) with Richard Lampard, Animals and Sociology (Palgrave, 2012) and numerous essays and articles in journals such as Sociology, The British Journal of Sociology, and The Sociological Review. She is co-editor of Observation Methods (Sage, 2013) and is assistant editor of the Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics. Forthcoming publications include Experiments, Animal Bodies and Human Values (Routledge) and the co-authored book (Not) Consuming Animals: Ethics, Environment and Lifestyle Choices (Routledge), which is based on the research project she led on veganism, ethics and lifestyle.
Joseph Burridge is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Portsmouth. Joseph has considerable editorial experience having co-edited a special issue of the journal Social Semiotics (Vol 18, Issue 3, 2008), which was re-published as an edited book Analysing Media Discourse (Routledge, 2011). He also organised and edited a special issue of the journal Food and Foodways (Vol 20, Issue 1, 2012). Joseph teaches research methods across the Portsmouth curriculum, as well as offering a final year module in his area of specialist interest: the sociology of food. While Joseph's main research interests lie in the areas of food and culture, he is also interested in the sociology of culture more generally, along with rhetoric, argumentation, discursive methods, and media representations.
Kay Peggs is Professor of Sociology at Kingston University (UK), Fellow of the Oxford University Centre for Animal Ethics, and Visiting Fellow in Sociology at the University of Portsmouth (UK). Previously she has worked at the universities of Warwick, Surrey, Portsmouth and Winchester. Her publications include: Identity and Repartnering after Separation (Palgrave, 2007) with Richard Lampard, Animals and Sociology (Palgrave, 2012) and numerous essays and articles in journals such as Sociology, The British Journal of Sociology, and The Sociological Review. She is co-editor of Observation Methods (Sage, 2013) and is assistant editor of the Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics. Forthcoming publications include Experiments, Animal Bodies and Human Values (Routledge) and the co-authored book (Not) Consuming Animals: Ethics, Environment and Lifestyle Choices (Routledge), which is based on the research project she led on veganism, ethics and lifestyle.
Joseph Burridge is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Portsmouth. Joseph has considerable editorial experience having co-edited a special issue of the journal Social Semiotics (Vol 18, Issue 3, 2008), which was re-published as an edited book Analysing Media Discourse (Routledge, 2011). He also organised and edited a special issue of the journal Food and Foodways (Vol 20, Issue 1, 2012). Joseph teaches research methods across the Portsmouth curriculum, as well as offering a final year module in his area of specialist interest: the sociology of food. While Joseph's main research interests lie in the areas of food and culture, he is also interested in the sociology of culture more generally, along with rhetoric, argumentation, discursive methods, and media representations.
Content
VOLUME ONE:
PART ONE: OBSERVATION: PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE AND ART
The Bucket and the Searchlight - Karl Popper
Two Theories of Knowledge
Revolutions as Changes of World View - Thomas Kuhn
Techniques of the Observer - Jonathan Crary
Interpretation - William Thompson
Observer Effects
Seeing and Knowing - Michel Foucault
Rules for the Observation of Social Facts - Emile Durkheim
Weber's Verstehen and the History of Qualitative Research - Jennifer Platt
The Missing Link
The Definitions of Sociology and of Social Action - Max Weber
Social Relationships between Contemporaries and Indirect Social Observation - Alfred Sch tz
Some Basic Problems of Interpretive Sociology - Alfred Sch tz
Unexpected Interactions - Matthias Gross
Georg Simmel and the Observation of Nature
Scopic Regimes of Modernity - Martin Jay
Foucault's Art of Seeing - John Rajchman
PART TWO: REFLECTIONS ON THE PRACTICE OF OBSERVATION
Excerpt from The Observation of Savage Peoples - Joseph-Marie baron de Gerando
Roles in Sociological Field Observation - Raymond Gold
Performing Ethnography and Ethnography of Performance - Paul Atkinson
Accounts, Interviews and Observations - Robert Dingwall
Observational Fieldwork - Robert Emerson
Everett C Hughes and the Development of Fieldwork in Sociology - Jean-Michel Chapoulie
The Chicago School and First-Hand Data - Jennifer Platt
Mass Observation - Penny Summerfield
Social Research or Social Movement?
VOLUME TWO:
A Problem of Sociological Praxis - Michal Bodemann
The Case for Interventive Observation in Fieldwork
Benefits of 'Observer Effects' - Torin Monahan and Jill Fisher
Lessons from the Field
Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography? - Judith Stacey
On Tricky Ground - Linda Tuhiwai Smith
Researching the Native in the Age of Uncertainty
Ethnographic Showcases, 1870-1930 - Raymond Corbey
Why Look at Animals - John Berger
PART ONE: ETHICS, RISK AND OBSERVATION
Ethical Challenges in Participant Observation - Jun Li
A Reflection on Ethnographic Fieldwork
The Risk of 'Going Observationalist' - Robert Labaree
Negotiating the Hidden Dilemmas of Being an Insider Participant Observer
Informed Consent, Anticipatory Regulation and Ethnographic Practice - Elizabeth Murphy and Robert Dingwall
The Art and Politics of Covert Research - David Calvey
Doing 'Situated Ethics in the Field
Covert Participant Observation - Richard Hilbert
On Its Nature and Practice
Between Overt and Covert Research - Peter Lugosi
Concealment and Disclosure in an Ethnographic Study of a Commercial Hospitality
Ethical Covert Research - Paul Spicker
Lone Researchers at Sea - Helen Sampson and Michelle Thomas
Gender Risk and Responsibility
When Is Disguise Justified? Alternatives to Covert Participation Observation - Martin Bulmer
A Comment on Disguised Observation in Sociology - Kai Erikson
New Jersey: Transaction - Laud Humphreys
Controversies Surrounding Laud Humphreys' Tearoom Trade - Michael Lenza
An Unsettling Example of Politics and Power in Methodological Critiques
Working in Hostile Environments - Nigel Fielding
Dangerous Fieldwork Re-Examined - Pamela Nilan
The Question of Researcher Subject Position
Doing Participant Observation in a Psychiatric Hospital - Christine Oeye, Anne Karen Bjelland and Aina Skorpen
Research Ethics Resumed
The Researcher as Hooligan - Geoff Pearson
Where 'Participant' Observation Means Breaking the Law
Ethnographic Intimacy - Maria Perez-y-Perez and Tony Stanley
Thinking through the Ethics of Social Research in Sex Worlds
VOLUME THREE
PART ONE : PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION
The Con Man as a Model Organism - Michael Pettit
The Methodological Roots of Erving Goffman's Dramaturgical Self
A Note on Participant Observation - Colin Bell
A Contribution to the Theory of Participant Observation - Jiri Kolaja
Problems of Inference and Proof in Participant Observation - Howard Becker
Part of the Action or 'Going Native'? Learning to Cope with the 'Politics of Integration' - Duncan Fuller
The Participant Observer and 'Over-Rapport' - S. M. Miller
Role Boundaries and Paying Back - Jacqueline Wade
'Switching Hats' in Participant Observation
Deep Play - Clifford Geertz
Notes on the Balinese Cockfight
Participant Observation as a Tool for Understanding the Field of Safety and Security - Frederic Diaz
Participant Observation in Prison - James Jacobs
A Spy, a Shill, a Go-Between or a Sociologist - Susan Murray
Unveiling the 'Observer' in Participant Observer
PART TWO: INTERPRETATION AND PRESENTATION OF OBSERVATIONAL DATA
On Writing Fieldnotes - Nicholas Wolfinger
Collection Strategies and Background Expectancies
Thick Description - Clifford Geertz
Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture
Thinking through Fieldwork - Judith Okely
On the Analysis of Observational Data - M. Bloor
A Discussion of the Worth and Uses of Inductive Techniques and Respondent Validation
The Presentation of Everyday Life - Kenneth Stoddart
Some Textual Strategies for 'Adequate Ethnography'
Representation, Legitimation and Auto-Ethnography - Nicholas Holt
An Auto-Ethnographic Writing Story
PART THREE: OBSERVATIONAL SCREENS: PHOTOGRAPHY, CCTV AND INTERNET
Looking Emotionally - Monica Moreno Figueroa
Photography, Racism and Intimacy in Research
Using CCTV to Study Visitors in the New Art Gallery, Walsall, U.K. - Ela Beaumont
Ethnographic Approaches to the Internet and Computer-Mediated Communication - Angela Garcia et al
Ethnography, the Internet, Youth Culture - Brian Wilson
Strategies for Examining Social Resistance and 'Online-Offline' Relationships
VOLUME FOUR:
PART ONE: OBSERVING WORKPLACES AND WORKERS
Social Access in the Workplace - Simon Carmel
Are Ethnographers Gossips
The Sweat-Shop in Summer - Annie Marion Maclean
On Doctor Watching - Sandra Danziger
Fieldwork in Medical Settings
Two Weeks in Department Stores - Annie Marion Maclean
An Observational Study of Shoplifting - Abigail Buckle and David Farrington
Glimpses at the Mind of a Waitress - Amy Tanner
Extracts from Living the Kitchen Life and Appendix: Ethnography in the Kitchen - Gary Alan Fine
PART TWO: STUDYING UP: OBSERVING THE UNOBSERVED
Up the Anthropologist - Laura Nader
Perspectives Gained from Studying up
Ethnography in/of the World System - George Marcus
The Emergence of Multisited Ethnography
Studying up Revisited - Hugh Gusterson
After Method? Ethnography in the Knowledge Economy - David Mills and Richard Ratcliffe
Fast Capitalism - Douglas Holmes and George Marcus
Para-Ethnography and the Rise of the Symbolic Analyst
Anthropology Goes to Wall Street - Karen Ho
Researching Police Deviance - Maurice Punch
A Personal Encounter with the Limitations and Liabilities of Fieldwork
Potential Sources of Observer Bias in Police Observational Data - Richard Spano
Observing the Observers - Thomas Kemple and Laura Huey
Researching Surveillance and Counter-Surveillance on 'Skid Row'
Whistle-Blower Disclosures and Management Retaliation - Joyce Rothschild and Terence Miethe
The Battle to Control Information about Organizational Corruption
PART ONE: OBSERVATION: PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE AND ART
The Bucket and the Searchlight - Karl Popper
Two Theories of Knowledge
Revolutions as Changes of World View - Thomas Kuhn
Techniques of the Observer - Jonathan Crary
Interpretation - William Thompson
Observer Effects
Seeing and Knowing - Michel Foucault
Rules for the Observation of Social Facts - Emile Durkheim
Weber's Verstehen and the History of Qualitative Research - Jennifer Platt
The Missing Link
The Definitions of Sociology and of Social Action - Max Weber
Social Relationships between Contemporaries and Indirect Social Observation - Alfred Sch tz
Some Basic Problems of Interpretive Sociology - Alfred Sch tz
Unexpected Interactions - Matthias Gross
Georg Simmel and the Observation of Nature
Scopic Regimes of Modernity - Martin Jay
Foucault's Art of Seeing - John Rajchman
PART TWO: REFLECTIONS ON THE PRACTICE OF OBSERVATION
Excerpt from The Observation of Savage Peoples - Joseph-Marie baron de Gerando
Roles in Sociological Field Observation - Raymond Gold
Performing Ethnography and Ethnography of Performance - Paul Atkinson
Accounts, Interviews and Observations - Robert Dingwall
Observational Fieldwork - Robert Emerson
Everett C Hughes and the Development of Fieldwork in Sociology - Jean-Michel Chapoulie
The Chicago School and First-Hand Data - Jennifer Platt
Mass Observation - Penny Summerfield
Social Research or Social Movement?
VOLUME TWO:
A Problem of Sociological Praxis - Michal Bodemann
The Case for Interventive Observation in Fieldwork
Benefits of 'Observer Effects' - Torin Monahan and Jill Fisher
Lessons from the Field
Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography? - Judith Stacey
On Tricky Ground - Linda Tuhiwai Smith
Researching the Native in the Age of Uncertainty
Ethnographic Showcases, 1870-1930 - Raymond Corbey
Why Look at Animals - John Berger
PART ONE: ETHICS, RISK AND OBSERVATION
Ethical Challenges in Participant Observation - Jun Li
A Reflection on Ethnographic Fieldwork
The Risk of 'Going Observationalist' - Robert Labaree
Negotiating the Hidden Dilemmas of Being an Insider Participant Observer
Informed Consent, Anticipatory Regulation and Ethnographic Practice - Elizabeth Murphy and Robert Dingwall
The Art and Politics of Covert Research - David Calvey
Doing 'Situated Ethics in the Field
Covert Participant Observation - Richard Hilbert
On Its Nature and Practice
Between Overt and Covert Research - Peter Lugosi
Concealment and Disclosure in an Ethnographic Study of a Commercial Hospitality
Ethical Covert Research - Paul Spicker
Lone Researchers at Sea - Helen Sampson and Michelle Thomas
Gender Risk and Responsibility
When Is Disguise Justified? Alternatives to Covert Participation Observation - Martin Bulmer
A Comment on Disguised Observation in Sociology - Kai Erikson
New Jersey: Transaction - Laud Humphreys
Controversies Surrounding Laud Humphreys' Tearoom Trade - Michael Lenza
An Unsettling Example of Politics and Power in Methodological Critiques
Working in Hostile Environments - Nigel Fielding
Dangerous Fieldwork Re-Examined - Pamela Nilan
The Question of Researcher Subject Position
Doing Participant Observation in a Psychiatric Hospital - Christine Oeye, Anne Karen Bjelland and Aina Skorpen
Research Ethics Resumed
The Researcher as Hooligan - Geoff Pearson
Where 'Participant' Observation Means Breaking the Law
Ethnographic Intimacy - Maria Perez-y-Perez and Tony Stanley
Thinking through the Ethics of Social Research in Sex Worlds
VOLUME THREE
PART ONE : PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION
The Con Man as a Model Organism - Michael Pettit
The Methodological Roots of Erving Goffman's Dramaturgical Self
A Note on Participant Observation - Colin Bell
A Contribution to the Theory of Participant Observation - Jiri Kolaja
Problems of Inference and Proof in Participant Observation - Howard Becker
Part of the Action or 'Going Native'? Learning to Cope with the 'Politics of Integration' - Duncan Fuller
The Participant Observer and 'Over-Rapport' - S. M. Miller
Role Boundaries and Paying Back - Jacqueline Wade
'Switching Hats' in Participant Observation
Deep Play - Clifford Geertz
Notes on the Balinese Cockfight
Participant Observation as a Tool for Understanding the Field of Safety and Security - Frederic Diaz
Participant Observation in Prison - James Jacobs
A Spy, a Shill, a Go-Between or a Sociologist - Susan Murray
Unveiling the 'Observer' in Participant Observer
PART TWO: INTERPRETATION AND PRESENTATION OF OBSERVATIONAL DATA
On Writing Fieldnotes - Nicholas Wolfinger
Collection Strategies and Background Expectancies
Thick Description - Clifford Geertz
Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture
Thinking through Fieldwork - Judith Okely
On the Analysis of Observational Data - M. Bloor
A Discussion of the Worth and Uses of Inductive Techniques and Respondent Validation
The Presentation of Everyday Life - Kenneth Stoddart
Some Textual Strategies for 'Adequate Ethnography'
Representation, Legitimation and Auto-Ethnography - Nicholas Holt
An Auto-Ethnographic Writing Story
PART THREE: OBSERVATIONAL SCREENS: PHOTOGRAPHY, CCTV AND INTERNET
Looking Emotionally - Monica Moreno Figueroa
Photography, Racism and Intimacy in Research
Using CCTV to Study Visitors in the New Art Gallery, Walsall, U.K. - Ela Beaumont
Ethnographic Approaches to the Internet and Computer-Mediated Communication - Angela Garcia et al
Ethnography, the Internet, Youth Culture - Brian Wilson
Strategies for Examining Social Resistance and 'Online-Offline' Relationships
VOLUME FOUR:
PART ONE: OBSERVING WORKPLACES AND WORKERS
Social Access in the Workplace - Simon Carmel
Are Ethnographers Gossips
The Sweat-Shop in Summer - Annie Marion Maclean
On Doctor Watching - Sandra Danziger
Fieldwork in Medical Settings
Two Weeks in Department Stores - Annie Marion Maclean
An Observational Study of Shoplifting - Abigail Buckle and David Farrington
Glimpses at the Mind of a Waitress - Amy Tanner
Extracts from Living the Kitchen Life and Appendix: Ethnography in the Kitchen - Gary Alan Fine
PART TWO: STUDYING UP: OBSERVING THE UNOBSERVED
Up the Anthropologist - Laura Nader
Perspectives Gained from Studying up
Ethnography in/of the World System - George Marcus
The Emergence of Multisited Ethnography
Studying up Revisited - Hugh Gusterson
After Method? Ethnography in the Knowledge Economy - David Mills and Richard Ratcliffe
Fast Capitalism - Douglas Holmes and George Marcus
Para-Ethnography and the Rise of the Symbolic Analyst
Anthropology Goes to Wall Street - Karen Ho
Researching Police Deviance - Maurice Punch
A Personal Encounter with the Limitations and Liabilities of Fieldwork
Potential Sources of Observer Bias in Police Observational Data - Richard Spano
Observing the Observers - Thomas Kemple and Laura Huey
Researching Surveillance and Counter-Surveillance on 'Skid Row'
Whistle-Blower Disclosures and Management Retaliation - Joyce Rothschild and Terence Miethe
The Battle to Control Information about Organizational Corruption