Advanced Research Methodology in Social Sciences

Ce document pédagogique s’adresse aux étudiantes et étudiants qui entament, pour la première fois, des recherches aux cycles supérieurs, avant tout à la maîtrise (master). Les étudiantEs  du premier cycle (baccalauréat et certificat) devraient aussi y trouver des conseils et astuces pertinents.

Ce document pédagogique répond à une inquiétude à laquelle je suis souvent confronté comme enseignant ou comme directeur de recherche. Dans les premiers moments de leurs recherches documentaires, les étudiantEs viennent me consulter. Souvent elles-ils en sont à leurs premiers pas en recherche. Elles-ils me déclarent, souvent un peu embêtéEs ou parfois catégoriques, qu’il n’existe pas beaucoup d’information disponible portant sur « leur » problème de recherche (ou objet de recherche).

Research is a word which can’t be defined or explained in a certain way, however, the word research have a wide variety of meanings to different people. Research is process of enquiry which is systematic and methodical whereby it increases ones knowledge. Investigation or research may be defined as the art of scientific investigation, or the
movement from the known to the unknown. Research may be defined as an academic activity in defining, redefining problems, formulating hypothesis, organizing, collecting and evaluating data making recommendations and reaching conclusions. Research is a very important factor in academics because it helps to find solutions to problem and are mostly based on exciting theory to link the findings with your specific study.

El presente proyecto partió del supuesto de que es necesario y posible que el Instituto Politécnico Nacional oriente parte de sus recursos a la integración ordenada y consistente de los avances del desarrollo tecnológico del sistema educativo nacional, y de sus homólogos en el extranjero, para instaurar y operar sistemas de vanguardia en la impartición de sus programas académicos de posgrado, específicamente a través de modalidades eficientes de Educación a Distancia en su Maestría en Administración Pública.  Los avances en la tecnología de las telecomunicaciones y la informática permiten un  cambio sustancial en la capacidad de llevar contenidos educativos a la gran mayoría de la población, con inversiones y costos viables.  El estudio comprueba que habrá una significativa demanda de especializaciones, Maestrías y doctorados en ciencias administrativas con especialidad en administración pública, mismo que permitió conocer con detalle el comportamiento de la educación de posgrado de la MAP en cuanto a demanda insatisfecha en este nivel educativo, así como la necesidad de profesionales y requerimientos de actualización técnica y profesional;  en el ámbito de los sectores social y de servicios.

This article explores the four sources of (scientific) knowledge: perception, inference, reference and comparison. In Western literature on the nature, criterion, scope and kinds of knowledge the importance of comparing, said to be the core of cognition, has been somewhat neglected, which is remarkable because no research (and certainly no country research) can be conducted without drawing comparisons, without taking two, or more than two, objects, individuals or entities and examining in what respect(s) they are similar and in what respect(s) they are different. Whoever decides to engage in comparative country research has to decide on (a) the kind of objects to investigate, (b) the respect in which to conduct the investigation, and (c) the research method to follow. In brief, important decisions have to be made, decisions that will determine the structure and accessibility of the research outcome. After reference to the problem vividly described by the old, Indian parable of the ‘the blind men and the elephant’, a clue is taken from Nietzsche’s perspectivism.

This journal was the first of its kind at Vidyasagar University when I joined in the first week of December 1985. We thought of a social science journal and pledged to fight against overspecialisation. Dr.Tarun Kumar Banerjee(Political Science) was the main thinker and worker towards its publication. Dr.Ambarish Mukherjee(Political Science), Dr.Samkar Bhowmick(Economics) and I from Anthropology formed the nucleus of this effort. Our other aim was to focus on the district of erstwhile Medinipur, its society, economy and politics. Interestingly, all the three of us were not the 'son of the soil' but were dedicated to the ideals of Vidyasagar University as championed by the founder of our university Professor Anil Kumar Gayen, a Cambridge Ph.D and of course a true 'son of the soil' about whom we came to know much later and unknowingly we propagated the cause of the founder's mission.https://www.academia.edu/2581992/A_forgotten_founder_of_a_university_._Frontier_Vol._45_No._9_2012_pp._11-13
This journal did not continue and interdisciplinary research at Vidyasagar University in the social sciences did not flourish except in some individual remarkable research.

Bu tezin amacı, toplumsal olanı açıklama arzusundaki sosyobiyoloji disiplininin
genelde sosyal bilimlerle, özelde ise sosyolojiyle ilişkisini ele almak ve diğer canlı
türleri üzerinde yapılan biyolojik çalışmaların insan eylemlerini ve toplumsal
kurumları anlamak için yeterli ve uygun bir yöntemsel çerçeve sunup sunmadığını
araştırmaktır.
Edward Wilson sosyal eylemleri doğal seçilim baskısı ve türünü devam ettirme
mücadelesi olarak görüp biyolojiye indirgemektedir. Bu sebeple içgüdüsel
davranışlarla ilgilenerek türler ve kültürlerarası farklılıkları değil yalnızca
benzerlikleri gösterme eğilimindedir. Wilson toplumsal eylem üzerindeki kültür ve
çevre etkisinin sınırlı olacağını ve bu sınırlı etkinin de her koşulda türün biyolojik
kapasitesine ve özelliklerine bağlı kalacağını iddia etmiştir.
Her doğa bilimi disiplini gibi sosyobiyoloji de nesneler arası ilişkileri inceler ve
insanın ve diğer canlıların dışarıdan birer nesne olarak gözlemlenebilecek boyutlarını
ele alır. Natüralist (doğalcı) bir yaklaşıma sahiptir. Bir hayvan türünü ele alırken
kullandığı yöntem ile insanı incelerken başvurduğu yöntem arasında hiçbir fark
yoktur. Dolayısıyla insan türüne olan yaklaşımı da büyük oranda indirgemecidir. Doğa
bilimleri olgular arasındaki nedensellikleri bularak neden sonuç ilişkisini açıklamaya
çalışan bir yönteme sahiptir. Bu yöntemde nedensellik ilkeleri takip edilir ve
nesnelerde tek düzenlilik olduğu varsayılır. Yorumlayıcı yöntem savunucuları doğa
bilimlerinden farklı olarak sosyal bilimlerde aynı metodun kullanılamayacağını çünkü
elimizde tek düzenlilik ilkesini bozacak olan insan, toplum, kültür ve tarih gibi kendi
öznelliğine sahip bir araştırma nesnesinin olduğunu, araştırma nesnesinin bizzat kendi
çevresini anlamlandıran öznelerden oluştuğunu, kendi tekilliğine sahip olduğunu ve
deneye açık olmadıklarını söyleyerek doğa bilimlerine itiraz ederler.
Bu itirazdan hareketle çalışmamızda sosyobiyolojinin kökenini açıklamaya gayret
ettiği toplumsal eylem, olgu ve kurumları, örnekler üzerinden kendi yöntemleri
aracılığıyla nasıl incelediği ele alınmış, sosyobiyoloji ile sosyal bilimler arasındaki
yöntemsel farklar ortaya konulmuş ve bilhassa yorumlayıcı sosyolojinin metodolojik
olarak bunları açıklamaya daha elverişli olduğu sonucuna ulaşılmıştır.

Simandan D (2005) "Pragmatic Scepticism and the Possibilities of Knowledge" Timisoara, Editura Universitatii de Vest/West University Press, 256 pp.

This book distiled my own way of understanding the relation between epistemology, ontology, and politics, and the best name I found for labelling that way is pragmatic scepticism. Throughout the book, I stay away from the temptation to give a dictionary-like definition of this philosophy. I do not even like to think of it as a philosophy. Instead, I see pragmatic scepticism as a way of being and as a way of relating. A way of being human, i.e. enmeshed in language and limited by our senses; and a way of relating, i.e. crafted by the happy and sad encounters with theories, things, and lifeís happenings. The book is structured in three parts, which together give a sense of the potentials of pragmatic scepticism: as a way of thinking about the world, as a way of approaching theoretical dilemmas, as a way of mapping one's inner contradictions. The first part of the book introduces pragmatic scepticism in relation to the general questions underwriting the philosophy of knowledge and the study of science. The second part is more specific in that it deploys the pragmatic sceptical attitude to the central metatheoretical questions of the discipline of geography. The last part of the book groups under the heading "philosophies of struggle" two more applied essays on the political economy and the political epistemology of conflicts over knowledge in the globalised landscape of higher education in general and geography in particular.

Low levels of coordination, poor communication and low pay among staff at BBUC has limited organizational commitment at the College which has contributed to lack of ownership among the BBUC staff. This study was aimed at improving Commitment and ownership at BBUC.
It specifically aimed at; how to promote individual commitment and ownership at BBUC, what it takes to build commitment and ownership among staff and what activities should be done to enhance commitment and ownership.
In order to collect information for this study, a descriptive design was used using survey questionnaires, focus group discussions and interviews. Stratified sampling technique was used to determine the sampled population where 59 respondents were drawn.
This study generated a number of findings which included;
• Low levels of staff motivation resulting from poor reward systems like poor remunerations, lack of recognition of best performing employees, poor communication and unclear organizational policies.
• Inadequate continuous renewal of staff commitments through deliberate systematic events like workshops, performance reviews, fellowships and retreats.
• Insufficient team building activities like sports, fellowships and outings.
• Insufficient staff development and welfare programs are a big concern to most staff. The University lacks a clear development plan for her staffing in terms of their welfare, career development and economic well being. This creates Job insecurity, fear and uncertainty to University employees.
• Institutional capacity in terms of having operational systems like staff recruitment processes, grievance handling procedures,
• Inadequate resource base makes it difficult for BBUC to finance planned university programs and activities.
• Lack of a well coordinated communication system among within BBUC. If the system is there, it is not known and if it is known then it is not followed.
This research recommends;
An orientation and re-orientation of all staff into the philosophy of the University ie Vision, mission, core values, strategic plan and statement of faith of the University to ensure staff ownership and commitment to the purposes of the organization
An employee-ownership plan or Human Resource Development Plan covering the aspects of Job competency requirements and staff capacity needs assessment, prioritizing training and development needs, setting training and development objectives, identification of training and development programs, development of training plan, selection of training methods, selection of training providers, costing the human resource development plan, identifying funding for training, evaluation of the human Resource Development Plan, and criteria for selection of officers/staff for training and development.
Improving on the working environment of the organization by focusing on recruitment of competent and highly qualified staff, enhancing public relations and human resource management function, developing a resource mobilization strategy, establishing linkages with other university’s that have succeeded and replicate the good practices, conduct attitude tests to identify gaps and creation of avenues of communication for staff like symposiums.

The paper reports on both methodological and substantive findings. It presents a method for generating simplified representations for regional urban populations, their geographical sub-populations and communities. the method generates greatly simplified high-resolution socio-economic profiles of populated geographical areas from complex large census data sets.

Pre-publication proof copy.

Feldwork is the foundation of robust ethnographic inquiry in physical settings, but the practical methods have never fit well in digital contexts. Often, online ethnographers must radically adjust or rethink activities of fieldwork, to the point where they may hardly resemble "fieldwork" anymore.This essay discusses the persistent challenges of transferring fieldwork methods intended for physically situated contexts to digitally-mediated social contexts. I offer provocations for considering the premises rather than the procedures of field-work. These may not be seen on the surface level of method but operate at a level below method, or in everyday inquiry as practice. Reverse engineering classic fieldwork tools can help reveal the reasons they were invented in the first place. Then, one can search for tools that fulfill these premises but utilize different practical techniques.

Consultation is an important feature of research and, increasingly, researchers are required to work in partnership with stakeholders to increase the impact of their work. Our aim is to demonstrate what can be learned from the scholarship on, and practice of, member checking to facilitate productive knowledge exchange. Using dialogical analysis we explore three member check interactions from three different qualitative psychology projects focusing our analysis on difficult moments between researchers and participants conceptualised here as ‘sore spots’. We identify two major genres in these sequences: participant ambivalence and participant challenge. We then consider passages that allow us to explore a more theoretical understanding of these two genres in terms of the metaphor of portraits and mirrors. Overall, we outline how implicit epistemologies and theories of subjectivity (uncomplicated, blank, and complex) may be linked to the way in which stakeholders approach research. We also provide a map with regard to the theories within which member checks can be undertaken, associated research practices in terms of a range of researcher responses to stakeholder ambivalence and challenge, and implications of these moments for knowledge exchange for qualitative research but also for psychological science as a whole. We conclude that sore spots in knowledge exchange process can be productive opportunities of transformational validity.

Keywords: member check; knowledge exchange; research impact; dialogical analysis; participant validation

I argue that what-makes-it-possible questions are a distinct and important kind of sociological research question. What is social phenomenon P made possible or enabled by? Results won't be about P's causes and causal relationships, but about its enablers and enabling relationships. I examine the character of what-makes-it-possible questions and claims, how they can be empirically investigated, and what they're good for. If I'm right, they provide a unique perspective on social phenomena, they show how the social world doesn't come ready-made, and they open up new avenues for research.

Research into mobility is an exciting challenge for the social sciences that raises novel social, cultural, spatial and ethical questions. At the heart of these empirical and theoretical complexities lies the question of methodology: how can we best capture and understand a planet in flux? Methodologies of Mobility speaks beyond disciplinary boundaries to the methodological challenges and possibilities of engaging with a world on the move. With scholars continuing to face different forms and scales of mobility, this volume strategically traces innovative ways of designing, applying and reflecting on both established and cutting-edge methodologies of mobility.

In this article, I discuss the fact that doing “anthropology at home” involves the same core anthropological methodology as undertaking research abroad. This implies that while doing anthropology at home may have some advantages concerning field practicalities but is equally challenging. There are certain ethical and methodological essentials involved in every anthropological research undertaking. Through my personal experiences of conducting ethnography in Pakistan, I explain that doing anthropology at home does not make exceptions for the researcher in terms of these ethical and methodological aspects.

Emerging digital data sources provide opportunities for explaining social processes, but also challenge knowledge production practices within social sciences. this article contributes to the ‘end of theory’ discussions, which have intensified in the social sciences since the widening practice of big data and computational methods. Adopting a systematic literature review of 120 empirical articles through a combined quantitative and qualitative approach, this article strives to contribute to the ongoing discussions on the epistemological shifts in social media big data (smBD) studies. This study offers an insight into the development of analytical methods and research practices in smBD studies during their rapid growth period in 2012 –2016. The study findings only partially revealed the ‘end of theory’ claim: the problem setting of the studies is rather weakly related to theory, often neither hypothesis nor research questions are formulated on the basis of previous theories or research. However, this relatively weak relatedness to theory has not led to the descriptive type of inference, but rather exploratory, or predictive ways of reasoning. instead of enabling predictions in social science research, smBD raises issues of understanding the causes and effects in predictions for evaluating the social mechanisms of global disruptions. Developing ‘human research machines’ that exploit the cognitive resources of individuals should not be the aim of smBD production. the outcome should be to recognise that the cognitive abilities of researchers, access to data, and developing novel methods are necessary for evaluating the global impact of social behaviour.

Les approches inductives et les approches critiques sont des termes génériques commodes qui n’ont cependant pas de signification univoque en sciences sociales. Les rapprocher présente donc un risque de confusion. Cet article théorique a pour but de problématiser leurs rapports en apportant une clarification terminologique et une remise en cause de leur prétendue opposition. La thèse défendue soutient qu’aucune antinomie constitutive ne prévient un rapprochement entre les approches inductives et critiques, mais que cette compatibilité ne va pas de soi pour autant. Les deux approches n’interviennent pas sur les mêmes éléments du processus de recherche et la posture épistémologique retenue leur confère également des inclinaisons variables. Dans cet article, le courant critique de la recherche qualitative est désigné comme un territoire propice à la synergie des approches inductives et critiques, car il permet notamment d’élargir le cadre courant des discussions méthodologiques en sciences sociales.

****L'article est accessible gratuitement sur la plateforme Érudit****

Este artículo cuestiona las implicaciones metodológicas que supone respetar el principio de autonomía en las investigaciones sociales. Se parte de principios éticos y consideraciones teóricas y legales, atendiendo a códigos deontológicos de asociaciones profesionales referentes en el campo y a la normativa española sobre protección de datos personales. Se prosigue mostrando cómo se adaptó la teoría expuesta a la idiosincrasia metodológica de una investigación sobre educación cívica con menores de edad. Se resalta la necesidad de reflexionar sobre protocolos de actuación ética durante el diseño metodológico de las investigaciones, teniendo en cuenta consideraciones ético-epistemológicas y contextuales, como la posición relativa de los sujetos de estudio en el marco de las relaciones de poder existentes donde se desarrolla la acción.

大數據（Big Data）近年來快速發展，其應用領域橫跨商業、經濟、管理 與城市治理等多重面向。除了實際應用大數據於相關實用領域外，大數據業 已逐漸開始影響社會科學領域的傳統社會科學研究方法及概念。因此，本文 從研究者投身社會科學領域研究的經驗出發。希冀能梳理出大數據對社會科 學研究可能帶來的影響與挑戰。 本文研究認為，大數據應用於社會科學研究至少帶來三個層次意涵的轉 變：（一）樣本的意涵、（二）統計的意涵以及（三）研究目的意涵。研究者 期待能透過本文的研究與探討，讓更多社會科學研究者，能瞭解在大數據的 時代下自身所處的位置，以避免淹沒在巨量資料與大數據的洪流中。

Thesis written to satisfy the requirements for the Master of Arts degree at the Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto (2012).

This piece uses "tripping," broadly conceived, as a conceptual metaphor for methodology and research processes within the humanities and social sciences. It uses drug theory and theories of qualitative methods to read Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas as an allegory of methodological questions and processes. As such, it is also an original product of applied narrative methods, and an argument for the use of creative writing approaches in the humanities.

Este curso responde a la creciente necesidad de que los alumnos del posgrado en Geografía conozcan a profundidad las características y aplicabilidad de las distintas opciones de diseños cualitativos y mixtos en sus trabajos de investigación. El curso ofrece una amplia bibliografía que abarca las discusiones más recientes sobre las implicaciones metodológicas y éticas de la investigación cualitativa; en particular, se exploran problemas específicos de los geógrafos en sus diseños y trabajo de campo, tales como la escala de estudio y el uso de la cartografía y la imagen en la investigación geográfica. En este curso los alumnos conocerán las cualidades y limitaciones de los distintos tipos de diseños de investigación, incluyendo 1) la base epistemológica que le da sustento lógico y coherencia 2) la aplicabilidad de las técnicas de muestreo y recolección de datos cualitativos, y 3) las formas de manejar e interpretar adecuadamente dichos datos en el marco de las distintas preguntas de investigación e hipótesis que los estudiantes formulan en sus tesis.

In the social sciences, the debate concerning whether to use quantitative or qualitative methodologies for research purposes is one of the most controversial – and the most confusing.  Meanwhile, in political science and international relations (IR) no task is more important and difficult than finding a way to understand the future impact of present-day decisions and policies.  This paper presents an exploration of available methodologies for understanding political futures with the aim of finding a research tool (or tools) that can include empirical evidence in a rigorous analysis.  A future-orientated methodology ought to provide the researcher with a means to explore potential outcomes in a way that avoids unfounded conjecture, while presenting conclusions that are informative and present a basis for further research and debate.  Even if there should turn out to be no such thing as a ‘perfect’ methodology for examining the future, the goal is to eliminate methodologies that do not serve the purpose, while establishing the relative merits of the remaining approach(es), which include scenario construction as a leading possibility.

What do we actually do when we research education policy and governance? Why do we tame the messy hinterland of research into smooth accounts and what do we lose in the process? In this volume, distinguished scholars in education policy and governance research discuss how the practice of methods is messy, subjective, and provisional. They approach methodology as riddled with tensions, doubts, troubles, and mundane decisions. Scholarship in this book shifts from recording the methodological hinterland to putting it to productive use as resources for thinking about the researched world and about research itself. This methodological openness helps to examine how research reproduces scholars' metaphysics, how research is a deeply embodied process encompassing all senses, how scholars' concerns interfere in the worlds they study, but also how these equally interfere with researchers. By challenging smooth methodological accounts which conceal the complex and provisional nature of research, this book offers new approaches in education policy and governance research that are more generative, insightful, and sincere. Offering new ways of thinking about research methodologies, the book will be of great interest to researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of education research and education theory, as well as social scientists interested in research methodologies more broadly.

Contrary to its typical presentation in scientific publications as a certain and linear process, in reality the experimental method, not least the design aspect of it, requires a great deal of trial-and-error and ad hoc decision-making on the part of the researchers. This uncertain and contingent aspect of research, although little known outside of the circle of experts, has important implications for our understanding of the nature of science and scientific findings. This paper offers a backstage perspective to experiment design, where the uncertain and contingent nature of experimental research is at its starkest. It draws on insights from the sociological perspective of ethnomethodology through the auto-ethnographic first-hand experience of one of the author's own social psychology experiment (Ting, 2018). Based on detailed lab notes and planning documents on how and why design changes were made, the analysis focuses on the evolution of the experiment design, particularly the researcher's in situ practical reasoning for how to make the experiment work. From this we show how ethno-methods shape experiment results and highlight the inseparability of social science experimentation from in situ practical reasoning Keywords: behavioral experiment, lab ethnography, ethnomethodology, social life of methods 2

Cuadro de síntesis con algunas recomendaciones para construir un proyecto de investigación en ciencias sociales. Tomado del libro: Disertación elemental. Algunas cuestiones sobre la investigación social. Bogotá: Universidad Santo Tomás, 2016, pp. 148-152.

Family Solidarity and Rural Economy: A Qualitative Study on Family Solidarity Connected to Hazelnut Production in the Central Blacksea Region (in Turkey)
Abstract

This paper examines and interprets some aspects of solidarity, shown through rendering labour services to maintain agricultural production, among family members who are organized as separate households. This examination is carried out in the context of rural-urban and urban-rural migration, and of hazelnut production in the Central Black Sea region of Turkey. Based on empirical data, the paper states that rural households manage to derive a considerable amount of unpaid labour from their urban based close kin in order to perform harvest and threshing, and reciprocate with various forms of payment. The parties engaged in this reciprocal relation view their practice as emanating from the kinship ties they have and hence as part of the performance of the mutual duties that these ties require them to do. The paper argues that the resources allocated to maintain this relation can be as large as the cost of wage labour. Yet this practice of solidarity proves to be effective in reducing the cost of production, which is essential for economic survival, and maintaining the continued interest of the urban based kinsmen in land ownership in the villages. The paper concludes that this continued interest lays the ground for a new countryside which can no longer be defined and described in terms of differences in land ownership.
Key words: rural economy, peasantry, family solidarity, solidarity strategies, ceremonial fund, ceremonial spending.

This chapter (here as a proof copy)  explores the methodological tensions encountered between the policy guidelines and practical realities of longitudinal, qualitative research work in the field of social work in two Canadian cities. The policy context is that of the Tri-Council policy statement on Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (TCPSS, 2014).

Perhaps the most fruitful distinction with which the sociological imagination works is between the ‘personal troubles of milieu’ and ‘the public issues of social structure’. This distinction is an essential tool of the sociological imagination and a feature of all classic work in social science. (C. Wright Mills 1970, 14)

To view education with a sociological imagination, using Wright Mills’s term, is to identify and attend to its relationships with both the personal and public. Sociology in intellectual and political work sheds light on the personal troubles and public issues of the times as well as the interrelationships between the two. In respect of the sociology of education, sociological theories and methodologies have been employed foremost to highlight and address inconsistencies in educational opportunity that are determined both at the level of the individual and in terms of social inequalities (Weis, Jenkins & Stich 2009). With equivalent potential, but to a lesser extent in practice, the sociology of education contributes to the understanding and progression of the wider social world and how social equity in general terms might be achieved. Classical social science has made heavy use of abstract thought and theoretical speculation to construct knowledge of the social world and resolve its concerns, but evidence from observable reality also contributes to sociological understanding. As the discipline of sociology has developed there has been an accompanying and proliferating development in empirical methodologies. The methodological developments are informed by developments in other disciplines (most notably anthropology and psychology) and fields of study (for example, health and business). In the main, such methodologies are identified as either qualitative (like the methodological approaches described in this book), quantitative (largely measurable survey research) or mixed method approaches. All three are used in the sociology of education, and while the methods themselves are not necessarily sociological, different strands of sociological thought have greater affinity with some methodologies more than others (see Hammersley 1984).

Inspired by the potentials of web-based collaboration, in 2014, a group of social scientists, students and information specialists started tinkering with software and methodology for open online collaborative research. The results of their research led to a gathering of academics at the #ethnography Conference Amsterdam 2014, where new material was collected, shared and collaboratively interpreted. Following the conference, they continued to develop software and methodology. In this contribution, we report on the aims, methodology, inspiring examples, caveats and results from testing several prototypes of open online research software. We conclude that open online collaborative interpretation is both feasible and desirable. Dialogue and reflexivity, we hold, are able to transcend separated perspectives and stimulate agreement on a set of distinct interpretations; they simultaneously respect the multiplicity of understandings of social phenomena whilst bringing order into this divers...