Sociology and science: the making of a social scientific method

Criticism against quantitative methods has grown in the context of Bbigdata^, charging an empirical, quantitative agenda with expanding to displace qualitative and theoretical approaches indispensable to the future of sociological research. Underscoring the strong convergences between the historical development of empiricism in the scientific method and the apparent turn to quantitative empiricism in sociology, this article uses content and hierarchical clustering analyses on the textual representations of journal articles from 1950 to 2010 to open dialogue on the epistemological issues of contemporary sociological research. In doing so, I push towards the conceptualization of a social scientific method, inspired by the scientific method from the philosophy of science and borne out of growing constructions of a systematically empirical representation among sociology articles. I articulate how this social scientific method is defined by three dimensions – empiricism, and theoretical and discursive compartmentalization –, and how, contrary to popular expectations, knowledge production consequently becomes independent of choice of research method, bound up instead in social constructions that divide its epistemological occurrence into two levels: (i) the way in which social reality is broken down into data, collected and analyzed, and (ii) the way in which this data is framed and made to recursively influence future sociological knowledge production. In this way, empiricism both mediates and is mediated by knowledge production not through the direct manipulation of method or theory use, but by redefining the ways in which methods are being labeled and knowledge framed, remembered, and interpreted

A social ecological approach for ethnography: Flexibilizing roles and remembering social embeddedness

The different ways in which ethnography is conducted, or its topologies, effectively, are bound up in conceptualizations of roles that a researcher might play in any given field or setting. Whether one turns to the fourfold classic articulations – complete-participant, participant-as-observer, observer-as-participant, complete observer – by Gold (1958) or more recent innovations with relabeled roles – such as complete-member-researcher, active-member-researcher, and peripheral-member-researcher (Adler and Adler 1994) –, the recourse to roles is deeply impressed into the canonical praxis of ethnography

Re-examining Adorno on the Regression of Consciousness and Democracy: Towards Social Transformation

Scholars have charged Adorno of hypocritically abandoning efforts to articulate possibilities of social transformation, a propensity he emphasizes is central to social critique and sociocritical sociology. Keeping consistent with his fundamentally negative position, this essay reexamines democracy by scoping his work and reorganizing its philosophical and sociological contexts to open dialogue on the characteristics of democracy that Adorno would not reject. Throughout, I negatively reflect upon the nature of this democracy and criticize it towards the goal of fleshing out the paths of social transformation possible and available for its realization – through the things it could not be. Adopting this coupling as a point of departure, I analyze the regression of consciousness in Adorno’s thought, as the root of ego-weakness – the destroyer of maturity and that which underpins every shackle he sees as subjugating the masses – and bring this into dialogue with the insights informed by Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, and action theory. To examine the practical implications of social transformation, this essay will also demonstrate how they play out in contemporary contexts, drawing parallels with evidence from contemporary social movements, on account of their conception as a means of social transformation and of Adorno’s own engagement with this conception

Over-Complexifying Social Reality: A Critical Exploration of Systematicity and Rigidification in Ethnographic Practice and Writing

Qualitative methodological development has produced canonical tendencies that over-complexify and fix a fluid and lived social world. Meanwhile, critical theory has produced critiques on methodology but without enough attention to the qualitative tradition. I bridge these gaps by using an Adornoian position to interrogate the concepts of systematicity, rigidification, complexification, and their problems in ethnographic research and qualitative methodology. I conduct an urban ethnography and autoethnography of the metropolitan blasé as a public attitude of indifference to articulate an alternative, quotidian approach to ethnography that better captures social embeddedness, meaning-creation, and how contexts should drive data collection, analysis, and method-selection

Thinking about Cross-Cultural Differences in Qualitative Interviewing: Practices for More Responsive and Trusting Encounters

Existing methodological efforts subsume the interview into broad epistemological abstractions, neglecting actual mechanics of the interview as practice, and dismiss linguistic and cultural asymmetry in the interview as a matter of (in)adequate resources. Reflecting on 24 semi-structured interviews exploring social media use among Hong Kong youth, this article develops a culturally sensitive approach that democratically exposes the way cultural norms surface in communication, using strategies which (a) transform the dialogical mechanics of an interview—reflecting back and encouraging; (b) transform the positionality of the researcher—building intersubjectivity and emotional rapport; (c) transform the context of the interview—making shifts in space, language, and presentation. In doing so, a culturally sensitive approach generates practical recommendations for (a) humanizing the researcher to dismantle power imbalances and social distances and (b) naturalizing the interview into a more conversational form, both of which combine to expose the cultural logics that govern action and interpretation whilst constructing results into intimate narratives of people’s life-worlds

Reconceptualizing social movements and power: towards a social ecological approach

Existing social movement theories subsume protests into abstract conceptualizations of society, and current ethnographic studies of protests overburden description. Through a case study of London protests, this article transcends these limitations by articulating a social ecological approach consisting of critical ethnography and autoethnography that unearth the organizational strategies and symbolic representations exchanged among police, protesters, and third-party observers, while mapping the physical and symbolic characteristics of space bearing on these interactions. This approach points to a conceptualization of power at work as transient, typological structures: (a) rooted in collective agency; (b) both mediating and mediated by symbolic representations; (c) whose sensibilities are determined by symbolic interpretations; and (d) thrown into binary opposition between protester power and police power, who mutually represent meanings to resist and be resisted by

Low mental health treatment participation and Confucianist familial norms among East Asian immigrants: a critical review

This article applies the stress process model to navigate and evaluate the familial norms embodied in the East Asian culture, grounded on Confucianist principles, in terms of its impact on East Asian immigrants’ mental health and low rates of participation in mental health services. Explicating the cultural principles at work in East Asian familial norms, the interplay between demands for preserving the “face” of the family and the stigmatization of mental health complicates acculturation by imposing restrictions on social behaviours conducive to networking. The institution of family, which operates as coping resource through social support, also intriguingly acts as the locus of these Confucianist principles and norms, becoming a site where mastery is challenged by notions of maturity that mandate emotional suppression. Depression, social anxiety, and externalizing problems arise in the absence or failure of these coping resources, which percolate into issues of abuse. Implicated is the need for health care reform to encourage treatment among East Asian immigrants by navigating unhealthy behaviors and familial expectations anchored in culture. To this end, this review articulates a more efficient, adaptive, complex system (global patterns) through self-organization inspired by complexity theory and achieved by introducing reflexivity in health education (local interactions)

Does Knowledge Reuse Make a Creative Person More Creative?

Conference Theme: I.T. and Value CreationIn a business world that everything changes fast, continuous innovation become a key strategy for survival. Knowledge management, which deals with the effective transfer and reuse of knowledge and best practices within a firm, has been theorized as one of the facilitators of organizational innovation. Yet, no organizational innovation can be achieved without the creative performance of their individual employees. This paper examines the effect of the most common type of organizational knowledge management system, that is, an intranet-based knowledge repository, on the level of creative performance of an individual. A controlled experiment was conducted on more than a hundred individuals to investigate the quantitative and qualitative levels of creativity outcomes on an open-ended business task. Their levels of baseline creativity skills were also measured in order to inspect its interaction with knowledge reuse. The results suggest that knowledge reuse resulting from this repository type of knowledge management system actually inhibits the creative performance of individuals, especially on the qualitative dimension. Furthermore, this inhibiting effect is significantly stronger on an individual with higher baseline creativity skills, making a creative person performs less creatively than an otherwise unimaginative person.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Understanding Consumer Trust in Online Purchase Processes: An Experimental Investigation

Consumer dropouts during the purchase process represent a critical challenge in e-commerce. While many individuals use retailer websites mainly for product searches and information gathering, a significant number of online shoppers often abandon their shopping carts somewhere in their purchase process. Hence, it is essential to investigate the customer's exit from a website along a general purchase process longitudinally. Prior research has shown the lack of trust to be a critical obstacle inhibiting online transactions. However, few (if any) studies have examined the relationships between trust and consumer dropouts. This study investigates such relationships by a multi-stage online purchase process derived from a generic consumer decision process. We examine the trust-related considerations pertinent to each stage of the purchase process, with particular focus on prominent trust antecedents. Based on our analysis of the relationships between trust and consumer dropouts, we develop hypotheses specific to each purchase stage and empirically test them using the responses of 178 subjects who voluntarily participated in a controlled experiment. Overall, our results suggest that the customer dropout rate increases as the purchase process progresses, and that trust is more significant to the dropout decision in later stages of the purchase process.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Educational strategies to enhance reflexivity among clinicians and health professional students: a scoping study

Reflexivity involves the ability to understand how one's social locations and experiences of advantage or disadvantage have shaped the way one understands the world. The capacity for reflexivity is crucial because it informs clinical decisions, which can lead to improvements in service delivery and patient outcomes. In this article, we present a scoping study that explored educational strategies designed to enhance reflexivity among clinicians and/or health profession students. We reviewed articles and grey literature that address the question: What is known about strategies for enhancing reflexivity among clinicians and students in health professional training programs? We searched multiple databases using keywords including: reflexivity, reflective, allied health professionals, pedagogy, learning, and education. The search strategy was iterative and involved three reviews. Each abstract was independently reviewed by two team members. Sixty-eight texts met the inclusion criteria. There was great diversity among the educational strategies and among health professions. Commonalities across strategies were identified related to reflective writing, experiential learning, classroom-based activities, continuing education, and online learning. We also summarize the 19 texts that evaluated educational strategies to enhance reflexivity. Further research and education is urgently needed for more equitable and socially-just health care