A recent paper in this journal by Hardcastle et al. in 2005 argued that Anthony Giddens’s Structuration Theory (ST) might usefully inform sociological nursing research. In response, a critique of ST based upon the Realist Social Theory of Margaret Archer is presented. Archer maintains that ST is fatally flawed and, in consequence, it has little to offer nursing research. Following an analysis of the concepts epiphenomenalism and elisionism, it is suggested that emergentist Realist Social Theory captures or describes a more (...) coherent explanatory vision of social reality than other perspectives and nurse researchers are advised to consider its potential. (shrink)

Phenomenological sociology was founded at the beginning of 1930s by Alfred Schutz. His mundane phenomenology sought to combine impulses drawn from Husserl's transcendental phenomenology and Weber's action theory. It was made famous at the turn of 1960s and 1970s by Garfinkel's ethnomethodology and Berger & Luckmann's social constructionism. This paper deals with the notable accomplishments of Schutz and his followers and then proceeds to a shared shortcoming, which is that the phenomenological approach is unable to understand meaning in any other (...) way but as actors's knowledge. Therefore, phenomenological sociologists are forced to describe the actor's interpretations of meaning as transparent to the actor him/herself, even if they sometimes make heroic attempts to escape the limitations of the phenomenological conception. The limitation is apparent in Husserl's and Schutz's definition of meaning as a “reflective intentional act”, Garfinkel's use of the term “accounting” to refer to a signifying effect, and the way Berger and Luckmann describe their social theory as “sociology of knowledge”. Today, similar confusions are present in Michael Polanyi's “tacit knowledge”and in Giddens' structuration theory. (shrink)

This paper explores themethodological consequences of AmericanPragmatism for the social sciences. It alsocriticises some rival perspectives onmethodology of social research, in particularfalsificationist, realist and someanti-naturalist views. It is argued thatAmerican Pragmatism shows striking affinitieswith the genealogical method of history and thereflexive turn in cultural anthropology. It isalso argued that Pragmatism forces us to thinkdifferently about the relationship betweentheory and empirical research.

Research in an emergent field requires the researcher to consider appropriate methodologies. This paper describes research that attempts to discover how new technologies can influence local democratic engagement. It describes an interpretive research project informed by critical social theory that uses an explanatory mixed methods approach, combining two sequential data collection methods. The study incorporates a survey instrument and qualitative interviewing, analysed using Grounded Theory Methodology. The paper will describe the context for the research, the choice of a mixed methods (...) approach and relate this to an epistemology and ontology. The paper does not discuss the research findings but focuses on the research process and methodology and provides reflection on the outcomes and the challenges of the chosen approach. It demonstrates that mixed methods research is appropriate in a narrow and emergent field of study and that it offers methodological flexibility whilst promoting rigour and grounded results. (shrink)