Documentary & Archival Research

This collection successfully discusses the different ways documentation comes into being and how and why they become objects of social research. It emphasizes the interdisciplinary scale of the field as well as both its qualitative and its quantitative scope.

This research tradition has arisen from a specific set of historical, disciplinary and institutional conditions. The very emergence of 'documentation' is predicated upon a set of long-term processes in which humans have developed the capacity to use symbols and store knowledge such that it can be exchanged and inter-generationally transmitted.Consisting of an impressive list of contributors, the four volumes discuss the history, development and current debates alive in the field, such as the biographical turn in social science, the theoretical underpinnings to using human documents in social research and the epistemological, substantive and practical concerns with the process of analyzing data from human documentary sources.Comprehensive, illuminating and dynamic, this collection will have appeal across all social science disciplines, especially sociology, social psychology, criminology, politics and international relations, management and business studies, human geography, media and communication studies

Volume One: Human Documents: Perspectives and Approaches
Volume Two: Analyzing Human Documents
Volume Three: Human Documents in Social Research
Volume Four: Archival Research and Data Re-Use