Tsilipakos2017
| Tsilipakos2017 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Tsilipakos2017 |
| Author(s) | Leonidas Tsilipakos |
| Title | Sociological islands: An appraisal of connection-making practices in research reporting |
| Editor(s) | |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, Ethnomethodology, Methodology, Research reporting |
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| Year | 2017 |
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| Journal | Ethnographic Studies |
| Volume | 14 |
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| Pages | |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.823104 |
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Abstract
Historically, writings on the methodology of the social sciences have been predominantly normative and abstract rather than descriptive and concrete, being concerned to spell out general ways of proceeding which are thought to be appropriate to the social sciences, however the latter’s constitutive affnities to the natural sciences or humanities might have been conceived, rather than focusing on the detailed description of research prac- tices by social scientists. Although this tendency is understandable given the distance between what social sciences like sociology promise to accomplish and what they actually have to show for it, there is much that studies of the latter kind can offer both as an end in themselves as well as in connection to normative methodological work.
Conceived as ways of exhibiting rather than evaluating members’ methods for
the orderly production of sociological work, ethnomethodological studies, such as the one conducted by Anderson and Sharrock (1982), have pioneered descriptions of socio- logical practices and continue to do so as Greiffenhagen et al.’s observational study (2015) does in its detailing methodological troubles social scientists encounter in the course of conducting research. Moreover, current ethnomethodological work can situate itself within a feld of (at least partly) likeminded studies which Greiffenhagen et al. identify as operating under a ‘growing interest in practices and techniques of knowledge making in social and cultural life more broadly’ and as exhibiting a ‘dissatisfaction with programmatic doctrinal statements of the aims of the social sciences wedded to meta- refection, critique and inter- and intra-disciplinary jostling and one-upmanship. Rather than using idealised conceptions of social science as decontextualised standards to judge what social scientists do, the focus has been on understanding the scale, range and diver- sity of the social sciences practical entanglements in social and cultural life…’ (2015: 461). (...)
In the present article I will provide an example of what a study based on thi
concrete-normative combination can offer. Specifcally, I will scrutinise sociological re 2 search featured in a highly esteemed general sociology journal and focus on ways in which the reported research is embedded in a network of connections both to other aca demic work as well to the social world at large. I will present a case to the effect tha connection-making practices are problematic, typically comprising as they do gesture toward implied or token connections or contrasts rather than well-supported and care fully articulated ones, thus resulting in studies which, although presented as if they wer part of a continuous expanse of land, are in fact insular. The actual insularity of socio logical research is not only detrimental to the research itself, but is also largely responsible for perpetuating disciplinary dysfunction and incoherence.
Notes
