Qualitative Sociology as Everyday Life

This insightful volume examines how: sociological understanding helps with the experience of everyday life; the observation of everyday life affects research agendas and vice versa; and how the qualitative approach helps the understanding of experiences in a broad sense rather than as random and isolated events.

How can a person draw on her or his sociological knowledge in everyday life? This insightful new volume collects essays from some of the most renowned sociologists working today. They examine the ways that sociological understanding helps them with their daily experiences. Each contributor works in the qualitative tradition, and the essays cast light on how their observations of everyday life can affect research agendas and vice versa. These essays reflect the desire to understand experiences in a broader context rather than as random and isolated events and how the qualitative approach can achieve that end. Within this collection, editors Barry Glassner and Rosanna Hertz have brought together some of the most distinguished luminaries in the discipline. Many have chosen topics about which they haven′t written before, and the essays place the authors sometimes in the roles of insiders, sometimes in the roles of outsiders—occasionally both. Organized around the notion of place—public places, family spaces, interior spaces, and workplaces—the essays touch on the major subdisciplines within sociology. Personal, engaging, and always thought-provoking, Qualitative Sociology as Everyday Life will be of great interest to sociologists and their students, and to qualitative researchers across disciplines.