Innovation and Reduction in Contemporary Qualitative Methods: The Case of Conceptual Coupling, Activity-Type Pairs and Auto-Ethnography

During the course of this paper we mobilise an ideal typical framework that identifies three waves of reduction within contemporary qualitative inquiry as they relate to key aspects of the sociological tradition. The paper begins with a consideration of one of sociology\'s key questions; namely how is social organisation possible? The paper aims to demonstrate how this question moves from view as increased specialisation and differentiation in qualitative methodology within sociology and related disciplines results in a fragmentation and decontextualisation of social practices from social orders. Indeed, the extent to which qualitative methods have been detached from sociological principles is considered in relation to the emergence of a reductionist tendency. The paper argues that the first wave is typified by conceptual couplings such as \'discourse and the subject\', \'narrative and experience\', \'space and place\' and the second by \'activity type couplings\' such as \'walking and talking\' and \'making and telling\' and then, finally, the third wave exemplified through auto-ethnography and digital lifelogging. We argue each of these three waves represent a series of steps in qualitative reduction that, whilst representing innovation, need to reconnect with questions of action, order and social organisation as a complex whole as opposed to disparate parts.Social Order, Discourse, Narrative, Mobile Methods, Auto-Ethnography, Reflexivity, Innovation, Qualitative Methods

Membership categorisation, category-relevant spaces, and perception-in-action: the case of disputes between cyclists and drivers

This article is concerned with disputes between cyclists and drivers. The analysis describes members' categorisational practices that provide for the seeing of an ‘incorrect’ use of the road and for the production and relevancy of the context of the disputes (the traffic system). The analysis describes members' in situ and in vivo accomplishments of (spatial) rights and obligations in and through relational categorisations of road users and objects, their actions, and visually available resources, in relation to the ‘proper use of the road’ and the gestalt contexture of the common place traffic scene. The article revisits the suggestion of Hester and Francis that the organisation of categorisations in talk may provide technical access to the ways in which members organize the visual perception of the commonplace scene. The article closes by proposing a revised “observers' maxim” that takes in to account the highly indexical nature of observation and categorisation in and as the context in which observations are made

Woolworths and Wales: A Multi-Dimensional Analysis of the Loss of a Local Brand

In this paper we present a multi-dimensional analysis of the closure of Woolworths in Wales and the way in which the loss of this familiar high-street brand can be accounted for at a number of levels and within different social arenas. Primarily, the paper demonstrates how Woolworths is positioned as a symbol a previous era of consumption centred upon community and place based notions of nostalgia and community. What is striking in the analysis is the similarities in the way in which Woolworths is mobilised as a symbol by the general public and elites; albeit with varying outcomes and affects. In presenting the analysis the paper demonstrates a processual framing as providing a fruitful approach to the combination of different approaches and fields of inquiry (sociology, geography, and political science) without diminishing their distinct contributions.Recession, 'Credit Crunch', Community, Economy, the High-Street, Welsh Assembly Government, Woolworths, Consumption

Interactionism and digital society

During this article we consider the extent to which interactionist ideas can inform the analysis of current socio-technical trends and practices that surround the emerging contours of digital society. We make reference to four field domains of inquiry that are relevant to this task and highlight how established interactionist insights can be carried forward and inform future studies in this developing area

Mobilities at work: care, repair, movement and a fourfold typology

In this article, we make a conceptual and typological contribution to studies of work and mobility and mobile work. We do so by describing the physical, pedestrian mobilities of a team of care workers as they look out for homeless clients in the UK city of Cardiff. Conceptually, and in conclusion, we engage with Goffman’s essay, published in Asylums, on the ‘vicissitudes of the tinkering trades’ and consider the ways in which mobility further and differently complicates already difficult care work. By way of this one empirical case – drawn from a sustained ethnographic engagement with the team – we develop a fourfold typology. We intend this typology as something to be tried out, put to use and shared across different work settings. We offer it as a means of illustrating the ways in which mobility and work and the work of movement might relate to one another. And also how work, and care work in particular, and movement are differently figured in relation to the environment. We also intend the typology as a means of developing a conceptual distinction between (work) practices that take place on the move and mobile (work) practices proper

Pedestrian circulations: Urban ethnography, the mobilities paradigm and outreach work

This article considers the intersection of urban ethnography, Interactionism and the mobilities paradigm. In its course, we develop a discussion of mobilities as a social order, replete with constraints, conditions and contradictions, in dialogue with Goffman’s understanding of interaction order and, more specifically, his remarks on territories and social relations. We draw on ethnographic work undertaken with a team of ‘outreach’ professionals tasked to care for the street homeless in the UK city of Cardiff. The team enact their duty of care through a repeated patrolling of the city centre, in the course of which they aim to encounter clients and engage them in the provision of immediate services and in planning for support that might meet their needs in the longer term. Outreach workers are street-level bureaucrats then, in a literal sense; they work out of doors and on the move, and lack the sureties of office space – their clients, for their part, lack the sureties of fixed abode. In this context, outreach workers must move through and make use of everyday city space, as they find it; they must also find their clients – searching them out repeatedly, wherever they might turn out to be. The article describes searching and patrol as distinctive mobility practices, and combines this description with reflections on ways to move beyond the sedentary tendency in Goffman’s (and others’) work. We close by recommending the everyday as locus of inquiry for considerations of the future city and, indeed, for directions of future travel for a mobilities-oriented street-level ethnographic inquiry

Categorisation practices, instructed actions, and teamwork as occasioned phenomena: structuring the ‘carry off’ in mountain rescue work

This article describes human-assisted mobilities during a mountain rescue training exercise. The organisation of a ‘carry off’ – evacuating a casualty on a stretcher – is shown to be accomplished through relevant categories-in-action and, in particular ‘locatively-generated’ categories; categories that are dynamically accomplished via members’ shifting positions relative to the stretcher. These categories are shown to be central in the organisation of key action phases including the issuing of instructions to lift or lower the stretcher, the organisation of a ‘hand-over-hand’ manoeuvring of the stretcher, and the verbalisation of the upcoming terrain whilst walking together with the stretcher. The article demonstrates how these practices, rather than relying on teamwork, are the work in and through which ‘team’ is accomplished, displayed, and discovered by its members. Keywords: mobilities, categorisation practices, membership, teamwork, landscap

Doing it tidy: the open exploratory spirit and methodological engagement in recent Cardiff ethnographies

In this section I describe and explore a number of core principles of the ethnographic work that has practiced and developed the ‘open exploratory spirit’ described elsewhere in this text, and espoused in the teaching of fieldwork methods at Cardiff. There are, I suggest, various strands of work that have been influenced by the earlier seminal ethnographies of Atkinson and Delamont, and their methodological writings and teaching that, although certainly distinct, bear out a family resemblance in terms of their commitment to thoroughly sociological analysis and critical engagement with methodological development and innovation in various substantive projects. Here, I discuss the various methodological contributions made by Cardiff ethnographies and the lessons that such studies have for others looking to do ethnography ‘tidy’