Observation Methods

Barry Smart is Professor of Sociology at the University of Portsmouth and has longstanding research interests in the fields of social theory, political economy, and philosophy. His research interests include critical social research ethics; higher education; and collaborative work on veganism, ethics, lifestyle and environment. Kay Peggs is Professor of Sociology at Kingston University (UK), Fellow of the Oxford University Centre for Animal Ethics, and Visiting Fellow in Sociology at the University of Portsmouth (UK). Previously she has worked at the universities of Warwick, Surrey, Portsmouth and Winchester. Her publications include: Identity and Repartnering after Separation (Palgrave, 2007) with Richard Lampard, Animals and Sociology (Palgrave, 2012) and numerous essays and articles in journals such as Sociology, The British Journal of Sociology, and The Sociological Review. She is co-editor of Observation Methods (Sage, 2013) and is assistant editor of the Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics. Forthcoming publications include Experiments, Animal Bodies and Human Values (Routledge) and the co-authored book (Not) Consuming Animals: Ethics, Environment and Lifestyle Choices (Routledge), which is based on the research project she led on veganism, ethics and lifestyle. Joseph Burridge is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Portsmouth. Joseph has considerable editorial experience having co-edited a special issue of the journal Social Semiotics (Vol 18, Issue 3, 2008), which was re-published as an edited book Analysing Media Discourse (Routledge, 2011). He also organised and edited a special issue of the journal Food and Foodways (Vol 20, Issue 1, 2012). Joseph teaches research methods across the Portsmouth curriculum, as well as offering a final year module in his area of specialist interest: the sociology of food. While Joseph's main research interests lie in the areas of food and culture, he is also interested in the sociology of culture more generally, along with rhetoric, argumentation, discursive methods, and media representations.

VOLUME ONE: PART ONE: OBSERVATION: PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE AND ART The Bucket and the Searchlight - Karl Popper Two Theories of Knowledge Revolutions as Changes of World View - Thomas Kuhn Techniques of the Observer - Jonathan Crary Interpretation - William Thompson Observer Effects Seeing and Knowing - Michel Foucault Rules for the Observation of Social Facts - Emile Durkheim Weber's Verstehen and the History of Qualitative Research - Jennifer Platt The Missing Link The Definitions of Sociology and of Social Action - Max Weber Social Relationships between Contemporaries and Indirect Social Observation - Alfred Sch tz Some Basic Problems of Interpretive Sociology - Alfred Sch tz Unexpected Interactions - Matthias Gross Georg Simmel and the Observation of Nature Scopic Regimes of Modernity - Martin Jay Foucault's Art of Seeing - John Rajchman PART TWO: REFLECTIONS ON THE PRACTICE OF OBSERVATION Excerpt from The Observation of Savage Peoples - Joseph-Marie baron de Gerando Roles in Sociological Field Observation - Raymond Gold Performing Ethnography and Ethnography of Performance - Paul Atkinson Accounts, Interviews and Observations - Robert Dingwall Observational Fieldwork - Robert Emerson Everett C Hughes and the Development of Fieldwork in Sociology - Jean-Michel Chapoulie The Chicago School and First-Hand Data - Jennifer Platt Mass Observation - Penny Summerfield Social Research or Social Movement? VOLUME TWO: A Problem of Sociological Praxis - Michal Bodemann The Case for Interventive Observation in Fieldwork Benefits of 'Observer Effects' - Torin Monahan and Jill Fisher Lessons from the Field Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography? - Judith Stacey On Tricky Ground - Linda Tuhiwai Smith Researching the Native in the Age of Uncertainty Ethnographic Showcases, 1870-1930 - Raymond Corbey Why Look at Animals - John Berger PART ONE: ETHICS, RISK AND OBSERVATION Ethical Challenges in Participant Observation - Jun Li A Reflection on Ethnographic Fieldwork The Risk of 'Going Observationalist' - Robert Labaree Negotiating the Hidden Dilemmas of Being an Insider Participant Observer Informed Consent, Anticipatory Regulation and Ethnographic Practice - Elizabeth Murphy and Robert Dingwall The Art and Politics of Covert Research - David Calvey Doing 'Situated Ethics in the Field Covert Participant Observation - Richard Hilbert On Its Nature and Practice Between Overt and Covert Research - Peter Lugosi Concealment and Disclosure in an Ethnographic Study of a Commercial Hospitality Ethical Covert Research - Paul Spicker Lone Researchers at Sea - Helen Sampson and Michelle Thomas Gender Risk and Responsibility When Is Disguise Justified? Alternatives to Covert Participation Observation - Martin Bulmer A Comment on Disguised Observation in Sociology - Kai Erikson New Jersey: Transaction - Laud Humphreys Controversies Surrounding Laud Humphreys' Tearoom Trade - Michael Lenza An Unsettling Example of Politics and Power in Methodological Critiques Working in Hostile Environments - Nigel Fielding Dangerous Fieldwork Re-Examined - Pamela Nilan The Question of Researcher Subject Position Doing Participant Observation in a Psychiatric Hospital - Christine Oeye, Anne Karen Bjelland and Aina Skorpen Research Ethics Resumed The Researcher as Hooligan - Geoff Pearson Where 'Participant' Observation Means Breaking the Law Ethnographic Intimacy - Maria Perez-y-Perez and Tony Stanley Thinking through the Ethics of Social Research in Sex Worlds VOLUME THREE PART ONE : PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION The Con Man as a Model Organism - Michael Pettit The Methodological Roots of Erving Goffman's Dramaturgical Self A Note on Participant Observation - Colin Bell A Contribution to the Theory of Participant Observation - Jiri Kolaja Problems of Inference and Proof in Participant Observation - Howard Becker Part of the Action or 'Going Native'? Learning to Cope with the 'Politics of Integration' - Duncan Fuller The Participant Observer and 'Over-Rapport' - S. M. Miller Role Boundaries and Paying Back - Jacqueline Wade 'Switching Hats' in Participant Observation Deep Play - Clifford Geertz Notes on the Balinese Cockfight Participant Observation as a Tool for Understanding the Field of Safety and Security - Frederic Diaz Participant Observation in Prison - James Jacobs A Spy, a Shill, a Go-Between or a Sociologist - Susan Murray Unveiling the 'Observer' in Participant Observer PART TWO: INTERPRETATION AND PRESENTATION OF OBSERVATIONAL DATA On Writing Fieldnotes - Nicholas Wolfinger Collection Strategies and Background Expectancies Thick Description - Clifford Geertz Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture Thinking through Fieldwork - Judith Okely On the Analysis of Observational Data - M. Bloor A Discussion of the Worth and Uses of Inductive Techniques and Respondent Validation The Presentation of Everyday Life - Kenneth Stoddart Some Textual Strategies for 'Adequate Ethnography' Representation, Legitimation and Auto-Ethnography - Nicholas Holt An Auto-Ethnographic Writing Story PART THREE: OBSERVATIONAL SCREENS: PHOTOGRAPHY, CCTV AND INTERNET Looking Emotionally - Monica Moreno Figueroa Photography, Racism and Intimacy in Research Using CCTV to Study Visitors in the New Art Gallery, Walsall, U.K. - Ela Beaumont Ethnographic Approaches to the Internet and Computer-Mediated Communication - Angela Garcia et al Ethnography, the Internet, Youth Culture - Brian Wilson Strategies for Examining Social Resistance and 'Online-Offline' Relationships VOLUME FOUR: PART ONE: OBSERVING WORKPLACES AND WORKERS Social Access in the Workplace - Simon Carmel Are Ethnographers Gossips The Sweat-Shop in Summer - Annie Marion Maclean On Doctor Watching - Sandra Danziger Fieldwork in Medical Settings Two Weeks in Department Stores - Annie Marion Maclean An Observational Study of Shoplifting - Abigail Buckle and David Farrington Glimpses at the Mind of a Waitress - Amy Tanner Extracts from Living the Kitchen Life and Appendix: Ethnography in the Kitchen - Gary Alan Fine PART TWO: STUDYING UP: OBSERVING THE UNOBSERVED Up the Anthropologist - Laura Nader Perspectives Gained from Studying up Ethnography in/of the World System - George Marcus The Emergence of Multisited Ethnography Studying up Revisited - Hugh Gusterson After Method? Ethnography in the Knowledge Economy - David Mills and Richard Ratcliffe Fast Capitalism - Douglas Holmes and George Marcus Para-Ethnography and the Rise of the Symbolic Analyst Anthropology Goes to Wall Street - Karen Ho Researching Police Deviance - Maurice Punch A Personal Encounter with the Limitations and Liabilities of Fieldwork Potential Sources of Observer Bias in Police Observational Data - Richard Spano Observing the Observers - Thomas Kemple and Laura Huey Researching Surveillance and Counter-Surveillance on 'Skid Row' Whistle-Blower Disclosures and Management Retaliation - Joyce Rothschild and Terence Miethe The Battle to Control Information about Organizational Corruption