Tag: methodology

  • Are you interested in blogging about social science methodology?

    The International Journal of Social Research Methodology has a new blog and we’re seeking contributions. We’re hoping it can be a vibrant space in which emerging methodological debates can unfold, tentative ideas voiced for the first time and professional discussions held in a public forum. This recent post on complexity and health inequalities gives a […]

  • one month left : the @ijsrm seminar competition

    The Board of the International Journal of Social Research Methodology (IJSRM) is pleased to announce the launch of our new Seminar Competition. Our aim is to support the development of critical and innovative approaches to on-going and emerging methodological debates across a range of approaches, both qualitative and quantitative, and including mixed and comparative methods, as these […]

  • Subtraction stories and social change

    The closest thing I have to an historiographical principle is to always be suspicious of what Charles Taylor calls ‘subtraction stories’. While he uses the concept to refer to congratulatory stories of rational emancipation in which human beings have gradually dispensed with myths and illusions that served to limit them, it can equally be applied to […]

  • What sociologists actually do and what social theorists think they should do

    There’s a great post on Daniel Little’s blog which uses a critique of analytical sociology and critical realism to explore a premise which he argues they both share: ontology dictates methodology. As he frames the issue: Both groups have strong (and conflicting) ideas about social ontology, and both think that these ideas are important to the conduct […]

  • Five Recommendations for Social Scientists in responding to big data

    I just came across this great post by Helen Margetts on the LSE Impact Blog from a few months ago. It’s worth reading the post in full but what really caught my imagination were the five recommendations she makes at the end. I don’t think the methods training I received was bad but in retrospect I think it was […]

  • What is progress in social theory?

    At last year’s International Association for Critical Realism conference, I saw perhaps the most impressive conference presentation I’d witnessed in my five or six years of going to conferences regularly. Jamie Morgan demolished the notion of ‘norm circles’ offered by Dave Elder-Vass and he did so in a way which made a whole host of important meta-theoretical […]