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Intermediate Qualitative Methods (SPS-MECHE-QM-25)

SPS-MECHE-QM-25

Purpose

This course addresses key questions, theoretical approaches and readings in sociology as a core social science discipline. Sociology is a very disparate discipline but this course approaches it by focusing on key theoretical approaches and questions that cut through much of good sociological research. The focus of the course is on asking theoretical questions, developing theoretical arguments, and thinking sociologically.
The course consists of a ten week seminar and – for those taking it as their compulsory field seminar – a final exam.
The seminar and the readings are structured under five themes: Core principles and sociological theory building, Social structure and agency, Social integration and social cohesion, Differentiation and inequality, and Social change and continuity.
By the end of the course, the participants are expected to have developed an understanding of sociological thinking and some key sociological fields and central works therein.
 

Description

Part II – the seminar’s core – we drill down and explore the contours and debates over a selection of key qualitative methods. These include sessions on field work and multi-sited approaches; interpretive interview methods (relational, life history, ethnographic); discourse textual methods (genealogical, critical, post-structural); and advanced process methods (Bayesian process tracing, practice tracing, following methods).
We conclude – Part III – by zooming back out from particular methods. One session thus explores the debate over research transparency and its implications for all qualitative methods. Our last meeting then zooms out to the level of practice, with researchers debating their operationalization of a qualitative method/topic in a half-day workshop.

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