Description: Social scientists have always recognised a divergence between approaches which emphasise the constraining power of social structure and those which interpret society through the cumulative effects of actions of individuals. In recent years there has been renewed interest in the latter through the micro-sociology of everyday life. Social scientists are now taking stock of the implications of micro-sociological research for the analysis of structure and the macro-level theory of society. In Actions and Structure the value of micro-sociological research for the analysis of social order is assessed. Individual chapters evaluate new research approaches from discourse and conversational analysis, mathematical, interactionist and phenomenol
Brief description:
Nigel Fielding, BA (Sussex) MA (Kent) PhD (LSE), is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Surrey, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and a member of the Community of Experts of the European Science Foundation, and served on the Mixed Methods Research Association's presidential task force on the future of mixed methods.
His interests in research methodology include mixed methods, socio-spatial methods, qualitative software, interview methods, field observation, and digitally-mediated fieldwork. Nigel has authored/edited 27 books, many in research methodology, including The SAGE Handbook of Online Research Methods, Sage, 2018 (second edition), with Grant Blank and Ray Lee.
Review Quotes: `This collection takes on issues of the first importance for sociology. The opening ′theory′ chapters attempt to refine our understanding of the ontological configurations involved in perceiving structure and agency as a duality. Then comes the great novelty of the work in that the remaining papers address the issue of how knowledge of this duality should inform empirical research.... at the micro level there is knowledgeability in abundance here and Fielding and SAGE are to be congratulated for getting it out.′ - Sociology