ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
SOCIAL THEORY
Volume 74
SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH
First published 1981
This edition first published in 2015
by Routledge
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1981 G. Payne, R. Dingwall, J. Payne, M. Carter
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-415-72731-0 (Set)
eISBN: 978-1-315-76997-4 (Set)
ISBN: 978-1-138-78379-9 (Volume 74)
eISBN: 978-1-315-76329-3 (Volume 74)
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First published 1981
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
39 Store Street, London WC1E 7 DD,
9 Park Street, Boston, Mass. 02108, USA, and
Broadway House, Newtown Road,
Henley-on-Thames, Oxon RG9 1EN
Set in Times by
Saildean Ltd
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and printed in Great Britain by
Biddles Ltd
Guildford, Surrey
G. Payne, R Dingwall, J. Payne, M. Carter 1981
No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission from the
publisher, except for the quotation of brief
passages in criticism
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Sociology and social research.
1. Sociological research Great Britain
I. Payne, Geoff
301.072041 HM48 80-41512
ISBN 0-7100-0626-8
To our parents
Contents
This book has its origins in the period when all four authors were working in various parts of Aberdeen University. Informal conversation about how research is actually done, and the way in which the organisation of academic life helps to determine the intellectual production of the discipline, developed into a more serious look at recent British sociology. During the writing, we each followed separate careers in very different settings and, as a result, the completion of the book took much longer than expected. This underlines our basic view that what one produces as a sociologist depends on the wider social conditions of ones life.
In looking at contemporary British sociology, three themes seem to be paramount. First, the discipline has retreated from doing research to thinking about sociology. It has become predominantly a theoretical discipline, mainly at home in the library or the study. When it is not concerned with the abstracted realms of generality, it is considering its own navel, lamenting the impossibility of all kinds of empirical research, and demonstrating the intellectual inferiority of all rival schools of thought. Why is this so?
Second, the craft of sociological research is not only being neglected, but is being taught in a totally false way. The neat, precise instructions of the methodology textbooks have little resemblance to our personal experiences of doing research. Despite much talk about the crisis of positivistic science, there is still little attempt in Britain to analyse research sociologically.
And third, linking both of these problems, is the position of the sociology profession in the early 1980s. Its rapid post-war development, the relative youth of its practitioners, the current unpopularity of the discipline, among politicians, sixth formers, and other academics alike, are not matters of mere coincidence. Sociology consists of people, and what people do: these sociologists are enmeshed in complex social processes with other groups and institutions. They exist in a unique historical setting. If we are to understand what we preach as sociology, we must look at the conditions under which sociology is produced and practised.
In the first three chapters, we look at the intellectual origins and recent growth of sociology in this country. With certain exceptions, we concentrate on indigenous, post-war events and ideas, because sociology in this country has combined a radical break with its own roots with a comparative insularity in its outlook. In the third chapter, the emphasis is on ideas: it deals in the wider context of epistemology and a supposed positivist sociology. The previous two chapters are more concerned with the social conditions which produced these ideas.
is concerned with Grand Theory, the kind of research which can be done from a chair. The following chapters examine the success or failure of ethnography, ethnomethodology, and applied policy research, in each case trying to identify how and why that particular version of sociology came to occupy its present position.
The final section concentrates on sociology as a research activity. Four of the chapters are about what actually happened when sociologists attempted to do research; the political and organisational pressures; the interpersonal, ethical and psychological experiences; and the normality of difficulties. We recount several research case studies which involved different methodologies, in an attempt to tell it as it is. deals with the difficulties encountered by ethnographers.
This is followed by a critical discussion of the Social Science Research Councils role in sociological research, and we conclude in with some suggestions for the future organisation of British sociology and research.
Although this volume was planned as a collective enterprise, its completion has spanned several thousand miles and two continents. It seems appropriate to record that, although the authors subscribe jointly to the contents, Geoff Payne wrote the initial draft of part of were written by the first three authors together.
We would like to thank many friends and colleagues for their assistance, not invariably in ways that they would recognise. In Aberdeen, these included Robert Moore, Fred Twine, Gordon Horobin, Alan Davis, Phil Strong, David May and Mick Bloor. In Oxford, parts of the content were influenced by Max Atkinson and Doreen McBarnet, while among colleagues at Plymouth, David Dunkerley and Adrian Lee listened sympathetically and made helpful suggestions. Pam Watson read and commented on several chapters and the overall structure. We have also benefited greatly from conversations over several years with Eliot Freidson, Anselm Strauss, Julius Roth, J. A. Barnes, Meg Stacey and many others. None of them can be held responsible for any shortcomings in what we have written. Particular thanks are due to Suzanne Tolan in Plymouth, and Angela Palmer and Ginny Rosamond in Oxford for their help in preparing the manuscripts, and to Peter Hopkins of Routledge & Kegan Paul for his patience.
