Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining the behavior of the participants in a given social situation and understanding the group members' own interpretation of such behavior.
Erving Goffman was a Canadian-born American sociologist, social psychologist, and writer, considered by some "the most influential American sociologist of the twentieth century".
A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional or fictional. Narratives can be presented through a sequence of written or spoken words, through still or moving images, or through any combination of these. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, which is derived from the adjective gnarus. The formal and literary process of constructing a narrative—narration—is one of the four traditional rhetorical modes of discourse, along with argumentation, description, and exposition. This is a somewhat distinct usage from narration in the narrower sense of a commentary used to convey a story. Many additional narrative techniques, particularly literary ones, are used to build and enhance any given story.
Qualitative research is a type of research that aims to gather and analyse non-numerical (descriptive) data in order to gain an understanding of individuals' social reality, including understanding their attitudes, beliefs, and motivation. This type of research typically involves in-depth interviews, focus groups, or observations in order to collect data that is rich in detail and context. Qualitative research is often used to explore complex phenomena or to gain insight into people's experiences and perspectives on a particular topic. It is particularly useful when researchers want to understand the meaning that people attach to their experiences or when they want to uncover the underlying reasons for people's behavior. Qualitative methods include ethnography, grounded theory, discourse analysis, and interpretative phenomenological analysis. Qualitative research methods have been used in sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, communication studies, social work, folklore, educational research, information science and software engineering research.
Dorothy Edith Smith was a British-born Canadian ethnographer, feminist studies scholar, sociologist, and writer with research interests in a variety of disciplines. These include women's studies, feminist theory, psychology, and educational studies. Smith was also involved in certain subfields of sociology, such as the sociology of knowledge, family studies, and methodology. She founded the sociological sub-disciplines of feminist standpoint theory and institutional ethnography.
Autoethnography is a form of ethnographic research in which a researcher connects personal experiences to wider cultural, political, and social meanings and understandings. It is considered a form of qualitative and/or arts-based research.
Narrative inquiry or narrative analysis emerged as a discipline from within the broader field of qualitative research in the early 20th century, as evidence exists that this method was used in psychology and sociology. Narrative inquiry uses field texts, such as stories, autobiography, journals, field notes, letters, conversations, interviews, family stories, photos, and life experience, as the units of analysis to research and understand the way people create meaning in their lives as narratives.
The life course approach, also known as the life course perspective or life course theory, refers to an approach developed in the 1960s for analyzing people's lives within structural, social, and cultural contexts. It views one's life as a socially sequenced timeline and recognizes the importance of factors such as generational succession and age in shaping behavior and career. Development does not end at childhood, but instead extends through multiple life stages to influence life trajectory.
Institutional ethnography (IE) is an alternative approach of studying and understanding the social. IE has been described as an alternative philosophical paradigm, sociology, or (qualitative) research method. IE explores the social relations that structure people's everyday lives, specifically by looking at the ways that people interact with one another in the context of social institutions and understanding how those interactions are institutionalized. IE is best understood as an ethnography of interactions which have been institutionalized, rather than an ethnography of specific companies, organizations or employment sectors, which would be considered industrial sociology or the sociology of work. For the institutional ethnographer, ordinary daily activity becomes the site for an investigation of social organization. IE was first developed by Dorothy E. Smith as a Marxist feminist sociology "for women, for people"; and is now used by researchers in social sciences, education, nursing, human services and policy research as a method for mapping the translocal relations that coordinate people's activities within institutions.
As populations age, caring for people with dementia has become more common. Elderly caregiving may consist of formal care and informal care. Formal care involves the services of community and medical partners, while informal care involves the support of family, friends, and local communities. In most mild-to-medium cases of dementia, the caregiver is a spouse or an adult child. Over a period of time, more professional care in the form of nursing and other supportive care may be required medically, whether at home or in a long-term care facility. There is evidence to show that case management can improve care for individuals with dementia and the experience of their caregivers. Furthermore, case management may reduce overall costs and institutional care in the medium term. Millions of people living in the United States take care of a friend or family member with Alzheimer’s disease or a related dementia.
David Allen Karp is a Professor of Sociology at Boston College where he has taught since 1971. He received his B.A. degree from Harvard University in 1966 and his Ph.D. in Sociology from New York University in 1971. He has written or co-authored nine books and more than fifty journal articles and book chapters. His work appears in such periodicals as Symbolic Interaction, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Journal of Qualitative Health Research, the Gerontologist, and the International Journal of Aging and Human Development. His work has largely clustered in three areas: urban life and culture, aging, and the study of mental health and illness.
Martha S. Feldman is an organization theorist best known for her work on organizational routines and, particularly, routine dynamics. Other areas of research she has contributed to include inclusive management and qualitative research methods. Feldman is the Johnson Chair for Civic Governance and Public Management in the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine She has published four books as well as numerous book chapters and journal articles.
Carol Aneshensel was an American sociologist. She specialized in the sociology of mental health, focusing especially on how social inequalities lead to corresponding disparities in mental health. She was professor and vice chair for the Department of Community Health Sciences in the School of Public Health at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), before becoming professor emeritus.
David Ian Hanauer is Professor of Applied Linguistics/English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the Lead Assessment Coordinator for the SEA-PHAGES program at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the editor of the Scientific Study of Literature journal, the official publication of IGEL. Hanauer is an applied linguist specializing in assessment and literacy practices in the sciences and poetic inquiry. He has authored or co-authored over 75 journal articles and book chapters as well as 8 books. Hanauer’s research agenda is typified by the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, as well as arts-based approaches, and scientific measurement of concepts traditionally considered abstract, such as voice in written text, project ownership and poeticity.
Between 5% and 10% of homeless peoplein the United States own pets. Studies of homeless pet owners in urban settings show a sense of identity and community connection between pets and their owners. This topic is part of the Animals and Society branch of study in the field of Sociology, and is also an issue with the values and responsibility of pet ownership.
Pavel (Vasil'evich) Romanov was a Russian sociologist, Doctor of Social Sciences, the professor of the HSE department of socio-economic systems and social politics; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Social Policy Studies; the director of the Center for Social Policy and Gender Studies. He was one of the most authoritative Russian researchers whose topics include Sociology of organizations, social politics, sociology of professions and Ethnographic method in Sociology.
Patrice Buzzanell is a distinguished professor and former department chair for the Department of Communication at the University of South Florida and at the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University. Buzzanell focuses on organizational communication from a feminist viewpoint. A majority of the research Dr. Buzzanell has completed is geared towards how everyday interactions, identities, and social structures can be affected by the intersections of gender. She researches how these dynamics can impact overall practices, decisions, and results in the workplace, and more specifically, in the STEM fieldwork environments.
Norman Kent Denzin was an American professor of sociology. He was an emeritus professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he was research professor of communications, College of Communications scholar, professor of sociology, professor of cinema studies, professor in the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory. Denzin's academic interests included interpretive theory, performance studies, qualitative research methodology, and the study of media, culture and society.
Haim Hazan is Professor of sociology and social anthropology at Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on old age as a social phenomenon. He is also an active partner at the Herzog Institute for the Study of Aging and Old Age. He is the author of more than 15 books. Hazan is the editor of the magazine Israeli Sociology and has been the director of the Institute for Social Research at the Horowitz Institute and the Herczeg Institute on Aging at Tel Aviv University.
Kathleen Marian Charmaz was the developer of constructivist grounded theory, a major research method in qualitative research internationally and across many disciplines and professions. She was professor emerita of sociology at Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California, and former director of its Faculty Writing Program. Charmaz’s background was in occupational therapy and sociology. Charmaz’s areas of expertise included grounded theory, symbolic interactionism, chronicity, death and dying, qualitative health research, scholarly writing, sociological theory, social psychology, research methods, health and medicine, aging, sociology of emotions, and the body.
