First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book proposes a fresh approach to sociological analysis and, in particular, to the analysis of scientific culture. It moves away from previous studies, which have tended to focus on scientists' actions and beliefs to show that analysis of scientific discourse can be productive and revealing. The book demonstrates that scientists produce varying accounts of their actions and beliefs in different social situations. Rather than attempting to extract one coherent interpretation from these diverse accounts, the study identifies two basic scientific (...) repertoires and shows how scientists use them to create their discourse. This provides a point of departure for more complex analytical topics. Discourse analysis is applied to show how different degrees of 'consensus' can be ascribed to the same group of scientists at a given moment in time through the application of standard interpretive techniques. Finally, discourse analysis is used to explore scientists' humour, a neglected topic that is shown to provide important insights into the normally hidden interpretive regularities which underlie the cultural diversity of science. (shrink)

This unusually innovative book treats reflexivity, not as a philosophical conundrum, but as a practical issue that arises in the course of scholarly research and argument. In order to demonstrate the concrete and consequential nature of reflexivity, Malcolm Ashmore concentrates on an area in which reflexive "problems" are acute: the sociology of scientific knowledge. At the forefront of recent radical changes in our understanding of science, this increasingly influential mode of analysis specializes in rigorous deconstructions of the research practices and (...) textual products of the scientific enterprise. Through a series of detailed examinations of the practices and products of the sociology of scientific knowledge, Ashmore turns its own claims and findings back onto itself and opens up a whole new era of exploration beyond the common fear of reflexive self-destruction. (shrink)

A major contribution to the social scientific understanding of how people make sense of their lives, Ideological Dilemmas presents an illuminating new approach to the study of everyday thinking. Contradictory strands abound within both ideology and common sense. In contrast to many modern theorists, the authors see these dilemmas of ideology as enabling, rather than inhibiting: thinking about them helps people to think meaningfully about themselves and the world. The dilemmas within ideology and their effects on thinking are explored through (...) the analysis of what people say in specific key situations: education, medical care, race and gender. The authors identify common ideological themes running through the common-sense discourses they analyse. They highlight the tensions between themes of equality and authority, freedom and necessity, individuality and collectivity. Time and again, the contradictions between these ideological themes crop up as respondents argue and puzzle over their social worlds. Written with refreshing clarity, the discussion cuts across the boundary which often separates sociology from social psychology. Sociologists are reminded that the reproduction of ideology involves individual processes of thinking; social psychologists are urged to recognize the ideological nature of thought. (shrink)

In this book Bruno Latour brings together these different approaches to provide a lively and challenging analysis of science, demonstrating how social context..