Qualitative/Interpretive Sociology
The University of Colorado at Boulder
Few departments of sociology currently house adequate concentrations of qualitative scholars to offer graduate training in the theories and methods of this area, leaving many faculty members actively seeking a place to send their best undergraduates and a university from which to hire people schooled in the core of this sub-field. At the University of Colorado, we have one of the largest concentrations of qualitative sociologists, and offer one of the strongest bases for this type of training. Courses are offered in a two-year rotation. Students are encouraged, but not required, to take the entire sequence in order. The course rotation includes the following:
Year #1 (e.g.,2009-10)
Fall: Qualitative Methods (SOCY 6121)
Spring: Social Psychology (SOCY 7131)Year #2 (e.g., 2010-11)
Fall: Qualitative Analysis (SOCY 7121)
Spring: Writing Qualitative Research (SOCY 7171)
Qualitative Methods (SOCY 6121)
This seminar reviews the definitions, histories, and debates surrounding the practice of ethnographic research as it has evolved in English-speaking contexts. It provides hands-on training in the practical application of ethnographic methods. Students learn to study contextualized social interaction in a holistic, interpretive, and ethically responsible manner. Each student also develops a solid portfolio of fieldwork and interview notes. Basic analytical methods and ethnographic writing strategies are introduced.
Qualitative Analysis (SOCY 7121)
This course guides students through the process of writing and revising an article for publication. The seminar begins by assisting students with inductively conceptualizing empirical data into a thematic empirical focus. Students then develop the theoretical implications of these data into a conclusion. Throughout the process, students become familiar with four genres of ethnography: classical ethnography, mainstream ethnography, postmodern ethnography, and pop ethnography, and these are deconstructed to understand their varying audience, voice, rhetoric, and claims.
Social Psychology (SOCY 7131)
Examines how the self and the social world interpenetrate, as well as how individuals influence one another. Includes both experimental and symbolic interactionist approaches, but concentrates on the latter. Discussions focus on questions of the nature of the person, the formation of conduct in everyday life, and the ways that people create and change the meaning of objects and actions.
Writing Qualitative Research (SOCY 7171)
Students develop a piece of writing over the course of the semester (typically an article for publication or a thesis chapter). By working in writing teams of 3 to 4 members, students provide ongoing support and feedback to other members of the group and hold one another accountable as writers. Each week, members of each team comment on one members' manuscript. In addition to tackling writing basics, the seminar also examines the contexts in which academic writing gets done, work habits, and the self. Students read exemplary writing to get a sense of what works, what doesn't, and why, and to think about diverse styles of representation.
In addition, the following courses from the Gender Concentration supplement the Qualitative/Interpretive Curriculum:
Feminist Epistemology and Methods (SOCY 7026)
This seminar considers the development of feminist methodology in the social sciences and the contemporary discourse on methods, subjectivity, and feminist approaches to qualitative sociology. Readings draw on post colonial and gender research orientations to interrogate the research process from the perspective of fieldwork, participant observation, the compilation of respondent narratives, and the role of the researcher in the research setting. Discussions examine the relationship of the researcher to the research site and the research population. Topics of study include feminist research ethics, the role of empathy and emotion in the research process, the role of the researcher as "insider/outsider," and the structural and power dynamics of ethnographic inquiry. Also considers how the self as researcher and the researcher's social location and positionality inform the research question, the gathering of data, and the interpretation of findings.
Feminist Theory (SOCY 7036)
Introduces contemporary feminist theories, focusing on how interdisciplinary feminist scholars reconceive analytic paradigms in the social sciences. Pays specific attention to the intersections of feminist theory and qualitative research traditions, particularly as these are affected by redefinitions of ideals of objectivity. Examines how knowledge is constructed and deployed in practical case studies; how feminist perspectives challenge and inform methodology; and how feminist analysis reconfigures traditional disciplinary categories through its attention to gender and sex as they are inflected by other identity formations such as class, race, nation, culture, sexual orientation, and age.
The Qualitative Sociology faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder includes:
Patricia A. Adler (Ph.D. University of California, San Diego, 1984) is Professor of Sociology. Dr. Adler is a leading qualitative sociologist who edited the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography for eight years and whose work has been widely included in collections of ethnographic methods published over the last 20 years. Her major research projects have focused on the hedonism and materialism of upper-level drug traffickers, the socialization and role conflict of Division I college athletes, the identity dynamics and peer culture of preadolescents, and the occupational culture and lifestyle of Hawaiian resort workers. Her current project involves self-injury (cutting, burning, branding). Her qualitative specialty is depth participant observation and unstructured life-history interviewing, with particular emphasis on inductive theoretical analysis. Professor Adler regularly teaches the seminars on Qualitative Research and Qualitative Analysis.
Jennifer Bair (Ph.D. Duke University, 2002) is assistant professor of sociology. Her research interests lie at the intersection of political economy, economic sociology, and development studies, with a regional focus on Latin America and the Caribbean. She is particularly interested in understanding the relationship between gender and the globalization of production in comparative perspective. For over a decade, she has been conducting fieldwork in Mexico and the Caribbean basin, and is currently completing a manuscript based on this research entitled “Sewing Up Development?: From Boom to Bust in Post-NAFTA Mexico and Beyond.” She is editor of Frontiers of Commodity Chains Research (Stanford University Press, 2008) and co-editor of Free Trade and Uneven Development: The North American Apparel Industry after NAFTA (Temple University Press, 2002). In addition to several book chapters, her publications include articles in the journals World Development, Global Networks, Economy and Society, Globalizations, and Environment and Planning A, and Comercio Exterior.
Leslie Irvine (Ph.D. State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1997) is Associate Professor of Sociology. Primarily a social psychologist, Irvine's research areas include the self, gender, the emotions, and human-animal interaction. Her work has appeared in Qualitative Sociology, Social Problems , and Symbolic Interaction , as well as in edited volumes. Her first book, Codependent Forevermore: The Invention of Self in a Twelve Step Group (1999, University of Chicago Press), examines the discourse of “recovery” and how people adapt it to the problems in their lives. Her recent work examines the roles of animals in society. She is the author of If You Tame Me: Understanding Our Connections with Animals (2004, Temple University Press) and Filling the Ark: Animal Welfare in Disasters (2009, Temple University Press). Professor Irvine's methodological specialties are ethnographic fieldwork and interviewing. At the graduate level, she teaches Social Psychology and Theory.
Janet Liebman Jacobs (Ph.D. University of Colorado, 1985) is Professor of Sociology. Her research areas include gender, religion, and social psychology. She is a recognized scholar in the areas of women and religion and culture, ethnicity, and identity. Her current work is focused on cultural memory and the representation of gender. She is author of three books, Divine Disenchantment: Deconverting from New Religious Movements , Victimized Daughters: Incest and the Development of the Female Self , and Hidden Heritage: The Legacy of the Crypto-Jews. Each of these works is based on ethnographic study that employs the methodologies of participant observation, in-depth interview, and the recording of life history narratives.
Joyce McCarl Nielsen (Ph.D. 1972; University of Washington, Seattle) is Professor of Sociology. She addresses feminist epistemology and issues of research methods in her book, Feminist Research Methods: Exemplary Readings in the Social Sciences . Her qualitative empirical work includes paper on student-faculty sexual affairs, cultural themes in gender norm violations, gendered metaphors, and comparisons of quantitative and qualitative analyses.
Sanyu A Mojola (Ph.D. University of Chicago, 2008) is Assistant Professor of Sociology. Her research examines social structural processes underlying health disparities among youth transitioning from adolescence to adulthood. Her current work uses mixed methods to examine gender disparities in HIV rates among African youth through exploring intimate relationships, the role of consumption, education and employment. Her methodological specialty is combining qualitative methods (such as focus group and individual interviews, field notes and participant observation) with quantitative methods (survey analysis) to answer research questions.
Hillary Potter (Ph.D. University of Colorado, 2004), is Assistant Professor of Sociology. Her research areas include feminist criminology and Black feminist criminology; the intersections of race, gender, class, and crime; racialized perceptions of crime; race and intimate partner violence; and feminist and qualitative research methods. She is the author of Battle Cries Battle Cries: Black Women and Intimate Partner Abuse (New York University Press) and the editor of Racing the Storm: Racial Implications and Lessons Learned from Hurricane Katrina (Lexington Books). Her research has appeared in journals such as Feminist Criminology and Criminology and Public Policy, and in edited volumes and encyclopedias.
Isaac Reed (Ph.D. Yale University, 2007) is Assistant Professor of Sociology. His research areas include social theory, cultural sociology, historical sociology, and sex/gender. His work has appeared in Cultural Sociology, Sociological Theory, edited volumes, and in various dictionaries and encyclopedias of sociology. Professor Reed is the co-editor of Culture, Society, and Democracy: The Interpretive Approach ( 2007, Paradigm Publishers), and of Meaning and Method: The Cultural Approach to Sociology (2009, Paradigm Publishers). His theoretical work considers the epistemological basis for truth claims in sociology and develops a model of "interpretive explanation" based in the hermeneutic analysis of social meaning and performance. His empirical work focuses on the role of the symbolic—and in particular the symbolization of sex and gender—in the transformation of colonial America. At the graduate level, Professor Reed teaches theory and cultural and historical sociology.
Sara Steen (Ph.D. University of Washington, 1998) is Assistant Professor of Sociology. Her substantive areas of interest include inequalities in the criminal justice system, popular discourse about sentencing reform, and the medicalization of deviance. She is currently conducting qualitative research on the strategies different states are relying on to reduce their prison populations. Specifically, she is examining how public officials are justifying moving from being “tough on crime” to being “smart on crime.” Steen combines quantitative and qualitative data and methodologies in approaching her research questions. Her qualitative work has included courtroom observations, the collection and content analysis of information from court documents (including probation reports and prosecutorial case files), content analysis of newspaper articles, and interviews with decision-makers in the juvenile and criminal justice systems.
Christina Sue (Ph.D. UCLA, 2007) is Assistant Professor of Sociology. Professor Sue's research areas include race, ethnicity, and immigration (specifically identity formation, comparative race relations, national ideologies, multiracialism, and intermarriage). She has conducted qualitative research both in the United States and in Mexico. Her work has been published in the American Journal of Sociology, the Annual Review of Sociology , and Ethnic and Racial Studies. Her current research focuses on how national ideologies in Mexico influence understandings of racism, attitudes on inter-color relationships, and skin color dynamics. She is beginning a new project that focuses on how immigration policies affect the decision-making process of Mexican migrants. Professor Sue uses ethnography, interviewing, and focus group methodologies in her research.
Kathleen Tierney (Ph.D. Ohio State University, 1979) is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Natural Hazards Research Center. Her main areas of specialization are disasters, hazards, and risk, and collective behavior and social movements. Her qualitative research expertise includes quick-response field research following disasters; in-depth interviewing; qualitative evaluation research; and focus group methods. Her current work focuses on the organizational and community response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Professor Tierney regularly teaches the seminar on Qualitative Methods.
Amy Wilkins (Ph.D. University of Massachusetts, 2004) is Assistant Professor of Sociology. Her substantive areas of interest focus on identities and inequalities. Her research has appeared in Gender & Society, Signs, and Social Psychology Quarterly, and her book, Goths, Wannabes, and Christians: Gender, Race, Class, and Sexuality in Youth Cultures was published in 2008 by the University of Chicago Press. Her methodological specialties are ethnographic fieldwork and interviewing. Professor Wilkins teaches the Qualitative Writing seminar.
