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Reinventing Evidence in Social Inquiry

Decoding Facts and Variables

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  • © 2012

Overview

Authors:
  1. Richard Biernacki
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Part of the book series: Cultural Sociology (CULTSOC)

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Table of contents (5 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Inside the Rituals of Social Science

    • Richard Biernacki
    Pages 1-26

  3. “The Entire Story”

    • Richard Biernacki
    Pages 27-56

  4. “Methodological Canons in My Field”

    • Richard Biernacki
    Pages 57-95

  5. “A Quantifiable Indicator of a Fabricated Meaning Element”

    • Richard Biernacki
    Pages 97-126

  6. Wary Reasoning

    • Richard Biernacki
    Pages 127-155

  7. Back Matter

    Pages 157-199
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Keywords

About this book

Revisiting the dominant scientific method, 'coding,' with which investigators from sociology to literary criticism have sampled texts and catalogued their cultural messages, the author demonstrates that the celebrated hard outputs rest on misleading samples and on unfeasible classifying of the texts' meanings.

Reviews

"Reinventing Evidence in Social Inquiry throws serious grit into the knowledge-making machinery of much modern sociology. It is an invitation to sociologists to stop and pause, to take a closer look at some of their methodological routines, and to re-assess the confidence with which they view their findings. Biernacki's criticisms are meticulously assembled, and they cannot be ignored." - Steven Shapin, Franklin L. Ford Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University

"This is an exemplary work of serious criticism that should spark fruitful debate about the use of formal methods in cultural analysis." - Rogers Brubaker, professor of Sociology and Foundation Chair, UCLA

"Reinventing Evidence is an immensely serious book that should be read by anyone involved in the business of sociology." - European Journal of Sociology

About the author

Richard Biernacki is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego, USA.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Reinventing Evidence in Social Inquiry

  • Book Subtitle: Decoding Facts and Variables

  • Authors: Richard Biernacki

  • Series Title: Cultural Sociology

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137007285

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave Social Sciences Collection, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Richard Biernacki 2012

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-00726-1Published: 08 August 2012

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-1-137-00727-8Published: 08 August 2012

  • eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-00728-5Published: 08 August 2012

  • Series ISSN: 2946-3572

  • Series E-ISSN: 2946-3580

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: IX, 199

  • Number of Illustrations: 7 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Sociology, general

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