Documentary & Archival Research

Jason Hughes is Professor and Head of the School of Media, Communication and Sociology at the University of Leicester. His first book, Learning to Smoke (2003, Chicago Press), which synthesised aspects of the work of Howard Becker with that of Foucault and Elias, won the 2006 Norbert Elias prize. He has also coauthored with Ruth Simpson and Natasha Slutskaya Gender, Class and Occupation: Working Class Men Doing Dirty Work (Palgrave, 2016), and, together with Eric Dunning, Norbert Elias and Modern Sociology: Knowledge, Interdependence, Power, Process (Bloomsbury, 2013). Other works include the edited volumes Visual Methods (SAGE, 2012) and Internet Research Methods (SAGE, 2012), and coedited volumes Contemporary Approaches to Ethnographic Research (SAGE, 2018), Documentary and Archival Research (SAGE, 2016), Moral Panics in the Contemporary World (Bloomsbury, 2013), and Communities of Practice: Critical Perspectives (Routledge, 2007). His current research, funded by Cancer Research UK, is investigating the "careers" of adolescent e-cigarette users. John Goodwin is a Professor of Sociology and Sociological Practice at the University of Leicester. As a sociologist, John has a broad range of research interests including education to work transitions, sociological research methods, and the history of sociology. He is a recognized expert on the life and sociology of Pearl Jephcott, and he also has a significant interest in the works of Norbert Elias, C. Wright Mills, and Stanley Milgram. In terms of his sociological practice, John has expertise in qualitative secondary analysis, restudies, biographical methods, and the use of unconventional data sources in sociological research.

VOLUME ONE: Human Documents - Perspectives and Approaches Basic Themes: Use, Production and Content - Lindsay Prior An Appraisal of Thomas and Znaniecki's The Polish Peasant in Europe and America - Herbert Blumer Comment on Herbert Blumer's Appraisal - Florian Znaniecki Nomothetic and Idiographic uses - G. Allport The Use of Personal Documents in Historical Sociology - Hyman Marianpolski and Dana Hughes To the Letter: Thomas and Znaniecki's the Polish Peasant and Writing a Life, Sociologically - Liz Stanley For a Humanistic Way in Social Science - Ken Plummer Evidence and Proof in Documentary Research: Part I - Some Specific Problems of Documentary Research - J. Platt Evidence and Proof in Documentary Research: Part II - Some Shared Problems of Documentary Research - J. Platt Biographical Turn in the Social Sciences? A British-European View - Tom Wengraf, Prue Chamberlayne and Joanna Bornat Foucault and Critique: Kant, Humanism, and the Human Sciences - M. Olssen Critical Humanism in a Post-Modern World - Ken Plummer Assumptions of the Method - Norman Denzin Autobiography and Biography - Brian Roberts Auto/Biography and Sociology - Brian Roberts The Social Science of Biographical Life-Writing: Some Methodological and Ethical Issues - Ann Oakley Is There a Feminist Auto/Biography? - L. Stanley Repositioning Documents in Social Research - Lindsay Prior Historians and Oral History - P. Thompson Constructing Credible Images: Documentary Studies, Social Research and Visual Studies - Jon Wagner VOLUME TWO: Analysing Human Documents Assessing Documentary Sources - John Scott Analysing Documentary Realities - Paul Atkinson and Amanda Coffey Doing Historical and Documentary Research - Ben Gidley Content, Meaning and Reference - Lindsay Prior An Introduction to Content Analysis - B. Berg and H. Lune The Interpretation of Documents and Material Culture - Ian Hodder Using Visual Methods and Documents - Jennifer Mason The Interpretation of Pictures and the Documentary Method - Ralf Bohnsack Comments on Elias's "Scenes from the Life of a Knight" - Eric Dunning How to Look at Family Photographs: Practices, Objects, Subjects and Places - G. Rose Videography: Analysing Video Data as a "Focused" Ethnographic and Hermeneutical Exercise - Hubert Knoblauch and Bernt Schnettler What Is Discourse Analysis? - B. Paltridge Theoretical Background - Linda Wood and Rolf Kroger Exploring Conversations about and with Documents - Tim Rapley The Epistolarium: On Theorizing Letters and Correspondences - Liz Stanley Analyzing Biographies and Narratives - G. Gibbs Pearls, Pith, and Provocation: Ethical Issues in the Documentary Data Analysis of Internet Posts and Archives - Judith Sixsmith and Craig Murray Sociology and, of and in Web 2.0: Some Initial Considerations - D. Beer and R. Burrows Towards a Sociological Understanding of Social Media: Theorizing Twitter - Dhiraj Murthy VOLUME THREE: Human Documents in Social Research Methods of Field Research 2: Interviews as Conversation - R. Burgess "DEAR RESEARCHER": The Use of Correspondence as a Method within Feminist Qualitative Research - Gayle Letherby and Dawn Zdrodowski Documents in Action I: Documents in Organisational Settings - Lindsay Prior Documents in Action II: Making Things Visible - Lindsay Prior The Journal Project: Research at the Boundaries between Social Sciences and the Arts - Judith Davidson "Thanks for the Memory": Memory Books as a Methodological Resource in Biographical Research - Rachel Thomson and Janet Holland Imagining The Sociological Imagination: The Biographical Context of a Sociological Classic - John Brewer Introduction - M. Keen Filling the Silences? Mass-Observations's Wartime Diaries, Interpretive Work and Indexicality - Andrea Salter Autoethnography and Therapy Writing on the Move - Jeannie Wright Narratives of the Night: The Use of Audio Diaries in Researching Sleep - J. Hislop, S. Arber, R. Meadows and S. Venn Making Use of Audio Diaries in Research with Young People: Examining Narrative, Participation and Audience - N. Worth The Photograph in Theory - E. Chaplin Picture This: Researching Child Workers - Angela Bolton, Christopher Pole and Phillip Mizen Mourning the Family Album - Tahneer Oksman Good Young Nostalgia: Camera Phones and Technologies of Self among Israeli Youths - Ori Schwarz Digital Biography: Capturing Lives Online - Paul Longley Arthur Celebrity Bio Blogs: Hagiography, Pathography, and Perez Hilton - Elizabeth Podnieks 'My Vagina Makes Funny Noises': Analyzing Online Forums to Assess the Real Sexual Health Concerns of Young People - A. Cohn and J. Richters VOLUME FOUR: Archival Research Behind the Scenes: Records and Archives - G. McCulloch Secondary Analysis of Archived Data - Louise Corti and Paul Thompson Secondary Analysis of Qualitative Data - Clive Seale The Ordinariness of the Archive - Thomas Osborne Archive - Mike Featherstone The Archive, Disciplinarity, and Governing: Cultural Studies and the Writing of History - Craig Robertson Ethical Problems in Archival Research: Beyond Accessibility - Pamela Innes Archival Research as a Social Process - N. Lerner Keeping the Conversation Going: The Archive Thrives on Interviews and Oral History - B. Lucas and M. Strain Museums, the Sociological Imagination and the Imaginary Museum - Gordon Fyfe Ilya Neustadt, Norbert Elias, and the Leicester Department: Personal Correspondence and the History of Sociology in Britain - John Goodwin and Jason Hughes On Behaviour at the Table - Norbert Elias On the Relationship between Literature and Sociology in the Work of Norbert Elias - Helmut Kuzmics Extracts from Human Documents of the Industrial Revolution in Britain - E. Pike Writing to the Archive: Mass-Observation as Autobiography - Dorothy Sheridan Using the Mass-Observation Archive as a Source for Women's Studies - Dorothy Sheridan Research Methodology in Mass Observation Past and Present: "Scientifically, about as Valuable as a Chimpanzee's Tea Party at the Zoo? - Annebella Pollen Working-Class Identities in the 1960s: Revisiting the Affluent Worker Study - Mike Savage Data and Archives: The Internet as Site and Subject - Fiona Gill and Catriona Elder Recent Developments in Archiving Social Research - Louise Corti