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Spring 2013
Sociology 524
University of Southern California
seminar time: Thurs. 9:30-12:20
Paul Lichterman
office: 302 HSH
phone: 213-821-2331; 740-3533
office hours: Tues. 12:00-1:50
or by appt.
Advanced Qualitative Research Methods
Course Topic
This is the second seminar in a two-semester sequence intended to teach professional-level
qualitative research skills. We treat more intensively those topics introduced last semester, and
introduce other skills and criteria for evaluating qualitative research projects in social science.
Course Description
The course teaches forms of analysis and standards of evaluation for participant-observation and
interview research in social science. We will go more deeply into analytic skills and techniques
introduced in Sociology 520, and talk at some length about professional, moral, political and
other issues embedded in qualitative research, especially as they emerge during the writing and
publication process. You will continue working on research projects begun during the fall
semester. Most if not all of you will develop comparison groups either beyond or inside your site,
to strengthen your emerging arguments. You will complete a final paper with a research appendix
that discusses your professional and moral/political stance toward your audiences and the people
you studied.
Work in the spring seminar includes: writing field notes on your site(s) regularly; carrying out
interview research; writing analytic memos; discussing your own and other students' field notes
and transcripts intensively, and writing comments on others' notes and transcripts. We will revisit the book-length studies from last semester, with different concerns in mind.
Required Reading
Common readings: These will be relatively light, as you continue delving into your research sites
and developing comparison cases. All will come either from journal articles or book chapters
available as photocopies, or from the required books we used the first semester. The required
books were and are:
Japonica Brown-Saracino, A Neighborhood that Never Changes: Gentrification, Social
Preservation and the Search for Authenticity.
Paul Lichterman, Elusive Togetherness: Church Groups Trying to Bridge America’s Divisions.
Michael Burawoy et al., Ethnography Unbound.
Anselm Strauss and Juliet Corbin, Basics of Qualitative Research (2nd edition, 1998) (available
in photocopy form).
Individual project readings: This semester it is especially important to find readings specific
to your evolving research question. I will make suggestions if I know your subject area, but
you need to take initiative and discover readings that advance your project. I may urge you to
consider certain readings in relation to your project, and will expect you to do so unless you have
a good reason not to. Deciding which readings or which literatures are the most relevant is, as
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you’ll recall, a crucial part of the process and rarely if ever obvious. It depends on what your
case is a “case of,” and what larger social context you think is the best for your write-up of your
project.
Class discussions of individual research projects
This semester, you will all discuss your ongoing projects with the seminar at least twice—at
greater length and depth than last semester. The timing and number of project discussions
depends on the size of our seminar and the progress you are making. You will write comments
on other presenters’ field notes and memos and give your comments to the presenter. We will do
this according to a schedule we work out in seminar. Regular attendance and participation is
absolutely crucial for your own projects and your developing research acumen.
Most weeks, we will discuss either one or two projects. Earlier in the semester, project
discussions will be roughly 30-45 minutes. Later in the semester, project discussions ought to be
about 45 minutes to one hour.
For your first discussion you will offer field notes and/or interview transcript excerpts and a short
analytic memo. For your second discussion, later in the semester, you will offer a longer analytic
memo with only excerpts from field notes or interview transcripts that you use to support the
points in your memo; it will look more like a small section of a paper. The balance of writing
will change this semester as you develop interpretations and arguments. We will discuss this
more in seminar.
The best comments are ones that you think will advance a colleague's project, even if they may
seem critical or hard for your colleague to hear. Your comments might:
•ask questions or offer hunches about your colleague's observations
•offer an alternative to her/his interpretation of some event
•suggest new types of individuals or groups to observe at the field site in question
•suggest an alternative argument, or literature with which to “dialogue”
Summary of requirements and grading
a) continued participant-observation in the field, for the equivalent of roughly once a week, 1 1/2
(or more) hours each time, for the majority of the semester, depending on the balance of
ethnographic and interview evidence that your project needs (and the starting date of your
participant-observation in the field). You will need time and flexibility enough to find a
comparison site, or else work at developing a distinction between kinds of people or situations at
the site you have been studying. If you have a (geographically separate) comparison site, you
probably will spend much less time with it than with your primary site. The last several weeks
you might draw back as you interview more, or consolidate an argument by writing memos.
b) Interview research, to the extent your own project’s needs dictate. We will discuss this in
seminar. Everyone will need to do at least two interviews, in order to practice skills specific to
interviewing.
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c) two short memos, each meant to give you further practice with one aspect of qualitative
research. Due dates are noted below; we will discuss these more in seminar.
d) two or more samples of writing from your project, once earlier and once later in the semester;
written comments on selected other students’ field notes distributed to the class.
e) a final paper (roughly 25-28 pp.) which makes a social-scientific argument based on your field
notes and draws on 6 or more scholarly works (articles or books) relevant to your project. We
will discuss the character of this final paper in seminar.
f) The paper described just above includes a roughly 4 page appendix in which you will reflect on
the stance you chose, implicitly or explicitly, as a writer in relation to your audiences, the people
you studied, the world at large. Readings and discussions in our seminar will help you a great
deal with thinking about the appendix and they need to inform the appendix you write if it is
going to receive full credit. If you care to write a longer appendix, that is fine.
g) engaged participation in discussion. It really is important to talk about other people’s
projects and it really is good for your own ethnographic imagination. You can’t expect to get an
‘A’ in the seminar if you do not enter the discussions of other people’s projects. For several of
our sessions, we will have seminar participants introduce questions or critiques to get our
discussion started.
Evaluating:
final paper with appendix, based on your research
=60% of grade
Two sets of field notes/memos distributed to class;
written comments on other students’
notes or transcripts; active participation in seminar
=20%
two exercises
=20%
(#1=10, #2=10)
Course schedule – SUBJECT TO REVISION, depending on how your projects are going
and what needs are emerging in seminar
(p) designates photocopied reading
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Week 1, January 17
Reconvene: overview of this semester’s goals, catch up on projects; course arrangements
Week 2, January 24
Different kinds of interpretation
(p) Erving Goffman, selections from “The Nature of Deference and Demeanor,” in
Interaction Ritual (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1967), 56-81; 85-90.
(p) Paul Willis, selection from Learning to Labor (New York: Columbia Univ. Press,
1977), 11-35.
(p) Nina Eliasoph, “’Everyday Racism’ in a culture of political avoidance: civil society,
speech, and taboo.” Social Problems 46(4): 479-502.
We begin with a quick review of our sessions on interpretation last semester and then go
deeper: Readings this week illustrate three different frameworks for interpreting. For a
common thread, we could ask how each would interpret conversation that may sound
racist. How do we distinguish interpretation from critique? How do we accommodate the
frequent observation that the same words and phrases mean different things in different
settings? We will introduce the idea that different conceptions of culture lead to different
modes of interpretation. We can contrast all of these with Brown-Saracino’s Chicagoschool interactionism.
Week 3, January 31
Re-introduction to qualitative interviewing
Please review these readings from last semester:
(p) "Listen before you leap: toward methodological sophistication," pp. 93112 in C. Briggs, Learning How to Ask.
(p) selection on interviewing, pp. 112-126 in Hammersley, Ethnography:
Principles in Practice.
other selections depending on our needs in the seminar
We will re-introduce briefly the differences between interview and participantobservation data and discuss how we integrate interview data into our projects. We
should use a couple of your projects to practice making the decisions entailed here.
Recommended:
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James Spradley, The Ethnographic Interview.
Week 4, February 7
Writing interview instruments
Reading TBA.
We will discuss one or two studies as illustrations of interview methodology.
Distinguishing between two modes of interviewing, as we did fall semester, we will talk
at greater length about practical and combined uses of each mode. We will discuss
several of your projects, preparing you to develop appropriate interview instruments.
Recommended:
Arlie Hochschild, The Time Bind.
Barbara Myerhoff, Number Our Days.
Week 5, February 14
Interviewing workshop
**Bring your Exercise 1 (on interview questions) to seminar—you may revise further after
seminar
No new reading unless the seminar decides to choose one.
Our emphasis this week is on crafting good questions in light of our previous readings
and discussions. Using your exercises as examples, we will work on different kinds of
interview questions. Since we also did this last semester, we should revisit some of the
plans you made and questions you crafted, and see what you need to add or revise now.
Week 6, February 21
Varieties of theoretical imagination
(p) Susan Eckstein, “Community as Gift-Giving: Collectivistic Roots of Volunteerism.”
American Sociological Review 66: 829-851.
Last semester we worked with the extended case method as our primary guide to a strong
theoretical imagination; we discussed the production of “grounded theory” as an
alternative way to give a study theoretical imagination. Now it is time to talk more about
nuances of each and how these play out in practical terms—on paper. To do this, first,
we will discuss the uses of research literature in Eckstein’s piece, an example of a
“deviant case.” Let’s read also with an eye for the role of comparisons in her study. We
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can use the study as a spring-board to discussing the roles of short-range and long-range
comparisons in your projects.
Depending on time and seminar interest, I may do a demonstration that compares two
strategies of using theory in ethnographic work.
Receive Exercise 2 today; please note the lagged due-date.
Week 7, February 28
Analyzing interview materials
(p) Basics of Qualitative Research, pp. 40-42, 57-71, 93-99, 101-121, 201-215.
(same material we used from Strauss and Corbin last semester)
By now most of you will have interview transcripts. We should review coding skills
quickly and discuss their application to interview transcripts, keeping in mind the
differences between interview and ethnographic evidence. I will ask one or two of you to
bring a transcript along with the interview instrument you were using, and a brief
explanation of what you wanted to learn from the interview. We will consider interview
evidence also as grounds for defining comparison cases (inside or beyond your first field
site).
Week 8, March 7
OPEN topic: The seminar can offer suggestions on what theme, skill, or problem we should take
up this week.
**Exercise 2 due TODAY at the latest (on theoretical imagination in your project)
Week 9, March 14
Between researcher, the researched, and wider audiences: official morality and politics of the
profession
(p) ASA Code of Ethics, selections from 1989 and 1997 versions
This week we begin discussing different relations that researchers construct with the
researched as they write up and circulate their research. These are ethical, political
and moral issues of a different sort from those we most often discuss under the rubric of
“research ethics” and they often are more difficult. The American Sociological
Association’s Code of Ethics has begun to address these broader moral and political issues
in participant observation. What do you think of ASA’s earlier and later statement of
professional principles?
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Most if not all forms of social research raise these moral and political issues at least
implicitly. They become explicit with ethnographic and interview research more often
than other methods. As with most of our readings, the main issues exist beyond the
sociology profession itself and should interest any social researcher.
Spring break- no seminar March 21
Week 10, March 28
Between researcher, the researched, and wider audiences: critical-reflexive sociology
(p) Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology,
pp. 36-59 (253-260 recommended).
Recommended:
Alvin Gouldner, “The Sociologist as Partisan: Sociology and the Welfare State.”
American Sociologist 3: 103–16 (1968).
Edward Shils, “The Calling of Sociology,” in Parsons et al., Theories of Society,
pp. 1405-1448.
Bourdieu’s reflexive, or critical, sociology offers another set of answers to moral and
political questions we confront unavoidably. What does Bourdieu’s stance imply about
the ways we pose research questions, write up and circulate our research?
Week 11, April 4
Between researcher, the researched and wider audiences: Reflexivity from where?
Two views on positionality.
(p) Kiang, Peter Nien-chu. 2008. “Crouching Activists, Hidden Scholars: Reflections on
Research and Development with Students and Communities in Asian American
Studies.” Pp. 299-318 in Chs. Hale, ed., Engaging Contradictions: Theory,
Politics, and Methods of Activist Scholarship. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
(p) Robertson, Jennifer. 2002. “Reflexivity Redux: A Pithy Polemic on ‘Positionality.’”
Anthropological Quarterly 75:785-792.
Increasingly over the past two decades, social scientists have answered political and
moral questions of qualitative research in terms of the researcher’s social position. What
are different ways to think about positionality, its sources, its relation to data and
audiences?
Week 12, April 11
Between researcher, the researched and wider audiences: “public sociology”
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(p) Michael Burawoy, “For Public Sociology,” American Sociological Review 70: 4-28
(February 2005).
Burawoy’s public sociology constitutes another set of answers to the questions of how
we should present ourselves as scholars and writers to the people we study and the people
who read our work. His arguments are worth researchers’ consideration whether or not
we are sociologists. Again, let us focus most on what this political/moral standpoint
means concretely for how we write up and circulate research.
Week 13, April 18
Professional writing genres: the realist tale and its uses for theoretically driven qualitative
research
(p) S. Van Maanen, “Realist Tales,” from Tales of the Field
(p) K. Stoddart, “Writing Sociologically: A Note on Teaching the Construction of a
Qualitative Report.” Teaching Sociology 19 (1991).
In social science, much ethnographic and interview-based writing takes the form of a
realist tale. This week’s reading introduces that genre of social research writing. Being
aware of the genre and its limits can help you make choices as a writer and avoid—or
purposely invite—some trouble.
Week 14, April 25
Leaving the field
Charles Kurzman, “Afterword: Sharing One’s Writings with One’s Subjects,”
in Burawoy et al., Ethnography Unbound, pp. 265-268.
Ann Ferguson, “Afterword: Wrapping It Up,” in Burawoy et al., Ethnography
Unbound, pp. 127-132.
We will discuss two experiences of “leaving the field” and generate some practical
ideas and tips on what to say, when, and how, if you are departing from your field
sites for good.
Week 15, May 2
Your questions
By this time you will have developed questions, about comparison cases, or how to
turn your paper into an empirical paper (Sociology) or a test-run for a dissertation, or any
number of other things. This is the day to ask. We will conclude our presentations.
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FINAL PAPER and APPENDIX DUE MAY 9, 4PM (final deadline)