Justifying Sociological Knowledge: From Realism to Interpretation

Reed, Isaac Ariail

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9558.2008.00321.x

Cited by 58 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 86 publications

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“…Such mechanisms could be conceived of as ideologies, social norms, legal rules or processes. While identifying causal mechanisms constitutes the core of critical-realist explanations, the acknowledged difficulty of identifying them in substantive research has not escaped criticism (Demetriou 2009;Reed 2008;Reiss 2007). …”

Section: The Ontological Depth Of Housing Quality: a Critical-realistmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Critical-Realist View of Housing Quality within the Post-Communist EU States: Progressing towards a Middle-Range Explanation

Soaita

Dewilde

2017

Housing, Theory and Society

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Employing a long-term perspective, we explore whether ideologically rooted quality outcomes of housing provision under communism have persisted during the post-communist construction of housing markets. Drawing on theories of path-dependent change, we hypothesize that patterns of housing quality still reflect past lines of division, namely the Soviet housing model, and the classical and reformist models of the Eastern Bloc. Using a critical-realist approach to housing quality, we relate households' experiences to key underlying structures; this ontological depth is then operationalized by means of micro-and macroindicators used as input for hierarchical cluster analyses. Findings support our main hypothesis, yet there is more diversity in households' experiences than initially assumed. Our study advances a valuable middle-range epistemological frame for understanding the complex social reality of housing and helps shatter the growing view that communist housing systems were all too similar.

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Section: The Ontological Depth Of Housing Quality: a Critical-realistmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Critical-Realist View of Housing Quality within the Post-Communist EU States: Progressing towards a Middle-Range Explanation

Soaita

Dewilde

2017

Housing, Theory and Society

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“…That these different modes of conducting research often produce incommensurable findings is widely recognized and debated in the social sciences (Reed, ; Biernacki, ). Metatheoretical reflection and critique can clarify where studies using quantitative and automated text mining and analysis tools will necessarily diverge from, and potentially have advantages and disadvantages relative to, studies that rely on purely interpretive methods, such as the neo‐Durkheimian school of hermeneutic cultural sociology (Reed, ; Reed & Alexander, ) or the work of contemporary ethnographers (Pugh, ) and constructionist theorists (Zerubavel, ).…”

Section: Metatheory: Constructionist and Naturalist Realismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theoretical Foundations for Digital Text Analysis

Ignatow

2015

J Theory Soc Behav

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Much of social life now takes place online, and records of online social interactions are available for social science research in the form of massive digital text archives. But cultural social science has contributed little to the development of machineassisted text analysis methods. As a result few text analysis methods have been developed that link digital text data to theories about culture and discourse. This paper attempts to lay the groundwork for development of such methods by proposing metatheoretical and theoretical foundations suitable for machineassisted semantic text analysis. Metatheoretically I draw on the work of ElderVass (2012), Kaidesoja (2013) and others to argue that digital text analysis methods ought to be (and in practice implicitly are) based on a realist constructionist ontology that treats discourses as ontologically real emergent social entities that have causal relationships with non-discursive social and cognitive processes. Theoretically I follow Feldman (2006) and many others in arguing that language is fundamentally shaped by processes of embodied cognition. Researchers developing digital text analysis techniques must theoretically account for such processes if they wish to produce algorithms that can interpret texts in ways that supplement, and not only amplify, human interpretation. I critically survey contemporary text analysis methods that implicitly share these metatheoretical and theoretical positions and discuss some ways these can be further developed with newly available software.

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“…Scholars Walsham (1993) and Reed (2008) define interprettivism as description, which posits that interpretive methods of research start from the position that our knowledge of reality, including the domain of human action, is a social construction by human actors and that this applies equally to researchers (Thorne et al, 1997;Wing, 2003). Phenomena are not based on objective truth, but are socially constructed (Lee, 1992;Silverman, 2000Silverman, , 2001Moriarty, 2011).…”

Section: Rationale For Interpretivism In Healthcare Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resolving the qualitative-quantitative debate in healthcare research

Turyahikayo¹

2014

Med. Pract. Rev.

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This article was set out to examine the allegations labeled against qualitative research by quantitative researchers. The allegations were that: it is subjective, difficult to replicate in healthcare, and this amounts to little more than anecdote, personal impression or conjecture. In attempting to resolve the allegations, this article relied on extensive literature review and examined evidence that has been put forth in support of qualitative research approach in healthcare. The article also examined the benefits and pathologies of quantitative and qualitative approaches. It is revealed that although each of the two approaches has its own strengths and weaknesses, none can ably offer practical solutions to challenges of validity and reliability in healthcare research. To mitigate such challenges, the paper rests on the use of mixed methods/triangulation so as to neutralize pathologies inherent in each approach. It is recommended that the use of triangulation should be founded on the strong basis of pragmatism. Method integration should be done skillfully and cautiously, because validity and reliability of its findings may not be guaranteed due to its susceptibility to the ontological and epistemological positions of the researcher. The paper concludes that any attempt to resolve this debate creates even more discussions and finds this third paradigm inadequate in some research circumstances. This implies that the debate is far from over.

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Justifying Sociological Knowledge: From Realism to Interpretation

Cited by 58 publications

References 86 publications

A Critical-Realist View of Housing Quality within the Post-Communist EU States: Progressing towards a Middle-Range Explanation

A Critical-Realist View of Housing Quality within the Post-Communist EU States: Progressing towards a Middle-Range Explanation

Theoretical Foundations for Digital Text Analysis

Resolving the qualitative-quantitative debate in healthcare research

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