Reinventing Evidence in Social Inquiry

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   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

   PDF

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.

• coding
• criticism
• ritual
• sociology

"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

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

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