Jaber F. Gubrium – författare

In recent years, scholars and researchers have moved away from quantitative methods of research and toward qualitative methods, which emphasize questions of meaning and interpretation. Gubrium and Holstein offer a new theoretical view which reintegrates the traditional emphasis on the "how" and "what" of social life with a contemporary understanding of the "why". The authors demonstrate how their approach may be put into practice in research on family, aging,deviance and social problems, and organizations and institutions.

Taking issue with contemporary trivializations of the self, the book traces a course of development from the early pragmatists who formulated what they called the "empirical self" to contemporary constuctioniast views of the storied self. Presenting an institutional context for the increasing complexity and ubiquity of narrative identity, the authors illustrate the "everyday technology of self construction" and discuss the resulting moral climate.

The story of the self is big story. For at least a century, the concept of the empirical self has been an important, if not our most central, social structure. The early pragmatists William James, Charles Horton Cooley, and George Herbert Mead, among others, turned away from the transcendental self of philosophical reflection to formulate a concept that extended to every individual's consideration who and what they were. The democratized the self and set the stagefor social psychological commentary for decades to come. Now, according to some postmodern voices, the self does not amount to much anymore on the brink of the 21st century. its narrative has fizzled. The self is a mere shadow of what is was, now communicated in evanescent images of identity. The Self We Live By resurrects the big story by taking issue with this account. Holstein and Gubrium have crafted an accessible, comprehensive discussion which traces a different course of developmetn, from the early pragmatists to contemporary constructionist considerations. Glimpses of renewal are located in a new kind of ending, one centered in an institutional landscape of diverse naratives of the self. Not only is there a new story of the self, but we're told that the self,itself, is narratively constructed. Yet, as varied and plentiful as narrative identity has become, it's disciplined by its social practices, which the authors discuss and illustrate in terms of the "everyday technology of self construction." The empirical self, its turns out, has become more complex and variedthan its formulators could have ever imagined it to be. The book is written at a level suitable for advanced undergraduates and graduate students in psychology, sociology, and related social sciences.

This book, the first in the series Social Worlds from the Inside Out, introduces undergraduates to the study of the family (one of the largest courses taken on sociological institutions) through a series of original chapters commissioned for this volume. The book presents the social world of the family "from the inside out" through the lived experiences of its participants, thereby supplementing core texts for this course with multi-faceted descriptions of real-life experiences.

The traditional lines of demarcation between service providers and service users are shifting. Professionals in managed service organizations are working to incorporate the voices of service users into their missions and the way they function, and service users, with growing access to knowledge, have taken on the semblances of professional expertise. Additionally, the human services environment has been transformed by administrative imperatives. The drive toward greater efficiency and accountability has weakened the bond between users and providers. Reimagining the Human Service Relationship is informed by the premise that the helping relationship should be seen as developing in the interactive space between those who provide human services and those who receive them. The contributors to this volume redefine the contours, roles, institutional divisions, means, and aims of providing and receiving services in a range of settings, including child welfare, addiction treatment, social enterprise, doctoring, mental health, and palliative care.Though they advocate an experience-near approach, they remain sensitive to the ambiguities and competing rationalities of the service relationship. Taken together, these chapters reimagine the service relationship by making visible the working relevancies of service delivery.

Human service professionals deal with a wide range of problems, from child abuse, parenting issues, and elderly care, to addictions, mental illness, sexual assault, unemployment, and criminality. These must be constructed as problems for professionals to appropriately respond to them. Human service provision starts from there. But in the everyday experience of service providers and users alike, there is a parallel world of ordinary troubles that remains professionally undefined but real, even when troubles are turned into problems. This book brings into view the relationship between these worlds as it bears on the process of clientization—the transformation of people and troubles into clients and problems. Rather than taking the process for granted as many critics do, the book examines the instability of the process on several fronts and highlights its surprising local complexity. Foregrounding everyday life, the leading idea is that the transformation of troubles into problems is not straightforward and that problems are continually subject to alternative understandings. This poses new what, how, and where questions. What are ordinary troubles and how do they relate to the construction, maintenance, or undoing of serviceable problems? Where is social policy and how does that figure in the front-line work of service provision? The questions point to the challenges of clientization at the discretionary border of troubles and problems in everyday service relationships. With chapters written by an international group of human service researchers, this book is an important contribution to the literature dealing with the construction of personal problems and will be useful to students and academics in sociology, human services, social work and policy, criminal justice, and health care.

Aging and Everyday Life presents a balanced and realistic view of the aging experience. The research in this book reveals that much, if not most, of the triumphs and trials experienced in later years are not unlike those confronted at other points in life. Just like younger people, the elderly experience both change and stability, shedding old roles and entering new ones. The process takes place in varied spheres of life: the worlds of home and family, work, and friendship. This thoughtful, engaging text brings together twenty-eight essays by leading researchers in social gerontology to explore the everyday aspects of aging. Readers will come away viewing the elderly as people whose lives are as complex and diverse, and therefore as nuanced as any.

Aging and Everyday Life presents a balanced and realistic view of the aging experience. The research in this book reveals that much, if not most, of the triumphs and trials experienced in later years are not unlike those confronted at other points in life. Just like younger people, the elderly experience both change and stability, shedding old roles and entering new ones. The process takes place in varied spheres of life: the worlds of home and family, work, and friendship. This thoughtful, engaging text brings together twenty-eight essays by leading researchers in social gerontology to explore the everyday aspects of aging. Readers will come away viewing the elderly as people whose lives are as complex and diverse, and therefore as nuanced as any.

Written and edited by social gerontologists, and focusing on everyday experiences, these essays draw from original case studies to look at the diverse ways of growing and being older. Collects ten original essays on the aging experience, written by prominent social gerontologists.Highlights diverse ways of growing and being older.Offers detailed portraits of a broad range of experiences, including those of the homeless, the retirement community, sexual nonconformists, and the disabled.Addresses stereotypes of the aging process and provides diverse examples of individual experiences.

Written and edited by social gerontologists, and focusing on everyday experiences, these essays draw from original case studies to look at the diverse ways of growing and being older. Collects ten original essays on the aging experience, written by prominent social gerontologists.Highlights diverse ways of growing and being older.Offers detailed portraits of a broad range of experiences, including those of the homeless, the retirement community, sexual nonconformists, and the disabled.Addresses stereotypes of the aging process and provides diverse examples of individual experiences.

Interview roles are less clear than they once were, and in some cases, the roles are even exchanged to promote new opportunities for understanding the shape and evolution of selves and experience.

Postmodern Interviewing offers readers an exploration of the postmodern interview, a conversation with diverse purposes in which the communicative format is constructed as much within the interview conversation as it stems from predesignated research interests. It provides cutting-edge discussions of emerging horizons, featuring reflexivity, poetics, and power, along with discussions of new ways of gathering experiential knowledge. Employing concepts from anthropology, family studies, history, and sociology, the contributors present the ambitious new directions in which the interview has gone, such as:

How the interview process is refracted through the lens of language, knowledge, culture, and difference How the dividing line between fact and fiction is blurred to promote richer understanding How standardized representation has given way to representational invention

By exploring these exciting developments, readers will be exposed to the engaging opportunities for understanding the shape and evolution of selves and social worlds that are made possible through changes in the interview process.

This volume is comprised of chapters from the Handbook of Interview Research (Gubrium and Holstein, SAGE, 2001). The companion volume, Inside Interviewing (SAGE, 2003), is also comprised of chapters from the Handbook.

Interview books typically stress the need for establishing rapport with respondents and asking questions that don't influence the responses. Until now, no text has seriously explored who the subjects are behind interview participants.

Inside Interviewing showcases the fluctuating and diverse moral worlds put into place during interview research when gender, race, culture, age, and other subject positions are brought narratively to the foreground. It explores the communicative contexts of respondents' thoughts, feelings, and actions, and how meaning is not merely elicited by apt questioning nor transported through clear respondent replies, but actively and socially assembled in the interview encounter, along with changing understandings of what it means to be a particular subject.

Topics explored include:

The varied roles that interview participants play, alerting readers to the theoretical dimensions of subjectivity, and how this awareness can affect the interview process The interpretive challenges researchers face in analyzing data collected from interview respondents and their representational positions concerning the subject matter in question Methods for describing lives that incorporate the representational sensibilities of both interviewees and interview researchers

Inside Interviewing explores the representational complexities that emerge when research participation is scrutinized, as well as the technical concerns and analytic options that derive from new lenses for viewing the interview process. These new lenses provide readers with theoretically informed direction for figuring how interview participants relate to each other, how to elicit interview data, and how to select alternative ways of representing interview material.

This volume is comprised of chapters from the Handbook of Interview Research (Gubrium and Holstein, SAGE, 2001). The companion volume, Postmodern Interviewing (SAGE, 2003), is also comprised of chapters from the Handbook.

`This comprehensive collection of almost 40 chapters - each written by a leading expert in the field - is the essential reference for anyone undertaking or studying qualitative research. It covers a diversity of methods and a variety of perspectives and is a very practical and informative guide for newcomers and experienced researchers alike' - John Scott, University of Essex

`The best ways in which to understand the issues and processes informing qualitative research is to learn from the accounts of its leading practitioners. Here they come together in what is a distinctive and wide-ranging collection that will appeal to postgraduates and social researchers in general' - Tim May, University of Salford

`This excellent guide engages in a dialogue with a wide range of expert qualitative researchers, each of whom considers their own practice in an illuminating and challenging way. Overall, the book constitutes an authoritative survey of current methods of qualitative research data collection and analysis' - Nigel Gilbert, University of Surrey

Learning to do good qualitative research occurs most fortuitously by seeing what researchers actually do in particular projects and by incorporating their procedures and strategies into one's own research practice. This is one of the most powerful and pragmatic ways of bringing to bear the range of qualitative methodological perspectives available. The chapters in this important new volume are written by leading, internationally distinguished qualitative researchers who recount and reflect on their own research experiences as well as others, past and present, from whom they have learned. It demonstrates the benefits of using particular methods from the viewpoint of real-life experience.

From the outside, good research seems to be produced through practitioners learning and following standard theoretical, empirical and procedural formats. But from the inside we learn that qualitative research (like other forms of scientific endeavour) is also a biographical engagement, rendering its scholarly and practical contributions in its own terms. Standards take on practical meaning as the distinct activities of qualitative research resonate throughout the enterprise, complicating its accountability to itself and to others. In an authoritative yet accessible manner, Qualitative Research Practice reveals the special features of this engagement, teaching us that qualitative research is as much a craft and practice as it is a way of knowing.

Presenting a comprehensive examination of contemporary and traditional varieties of qualitative research practice, Qualitative Research Practice will be an invaluable resource for advanced students and researchers in any discipline. It is an essential and definitive guide to the major forms of qualitative methods in use today, written by leaders in the relevant fields of research practice.

In a unique comparative ethnography of two family therapy programs, Gubrium deftly shows how differing organizational perceptions make visible the social construction of domestic disorder. Contrasting images of home life--one viewing domestic order as a system of authority, the other as a configuration of emotional bonds--serve to highlight different senses of the family as being out of control and to recommend alternate forms of intervention. The idea that the reality of home life and domestic troubles are embedded in organizational activities and institutional images is an important commentary on the understanding of domestic life and the postmodern family. Out of Control provides stimulating reading for professionals and students in clinical psychology, family therapy, family studies, sociology, and qualitative methods.

In a unique comparative ethnography of two family therapy programs, Gubrium deftly shows how differing organizational perceptions make visible the social construction of domestic disorder. Contrasting images of home life--one viewing domestic order as a system of authority, the other as a configuration of emotional bonds--serve to highlight different senses of the family as being out of control and to recommend alternate forms of intervention. The idea that the reality of home life and domestic troubles are embedded in organizational activities and institutional images is an important commentary on the understanding of domestic life and the postmodern family. Out of Control provides stimulating reading for professionals and students in clinical psychology, family therapy, family studies, sociology, and qualitative methods.

"The book provides an academic basis for discussion and development of active interviewing methods. . . . The ideas raised. . . will be interesting and valuable to those involved in developing new methodologies in qualitative research and interviewing."

--Helen Masey in Social Research Association News

The interpretive turn in social science has taken the interview and turned it upside down. Once thought to be the pipeline through which information was transmitted from a passive subject to an omniscient researcher, the new "active interview" considers the interviewer and interviewee as equal partners in constructing meaning around an interview event. This changes everything - from the way of conceiving a sample to the ways in which the interview may be conducted and the results analyzed. In this brief volume, James A. Holstein and Jaber F. Gubrium outline the differences between the active interview and the traditional interview and give novice researchers clear guidance on conducting an interview that is the rich product of both parties.

Students and professionals who use qualitative methods in the fields of sociology, anthropology, communication, psychology, education, social work, gerontology, and management will find The Active Interview to be a helpful and cogent guidebook.

This text documents how the work of everyday life in a nursing home is accomplished. After several months as a participant-observer, taking part in activities from menial work to acting as gerontologist at staff meetings, the author produced this study of the social organization of care.

Originally published by Sage Publications in 1979, the authors observed life at a residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed children and reported on staffings, activities, and individual treatment sessions. This important book points out the great need for improvement in the quality of care and services given to these special children and their families.

Through a series of case studies, this book provides an understanding of the practice of ethnographic fieldwork in a variety of contexts, from everyday settings to formal institutions. Demonstrating that ethnography is best viewed as a series of site-specific challenges, it showcases ethnographic fieldwork as ongoing analytic engagement with concrete social worlds. From engagements with boxing and nightlife to preschooling and migratory encampments, portrayed is a process that is anything but a set of pre-packaged challenges and hurdles of simple-minded procedural tropes such as entrée, rapport, and departure. Instead, ethnography emerges as what it has been from its beginnings: a rough-and-ready analytic matter of seeking understanding in unrecognized and diverse fields of interaction. Crafting Ethnographic Fieldwork will appeal to scholars and students across the social sciences with interests in the practice of participant observation and related questions of research methodology.

Through a series of case studies, this book provides an understanding of the practice of ethnographic fieldwork in a variety of contexts, from everyday settings to formal institutions. Demonstrating that ethnography is best viewed as a series of site-specific challenges, it showcases ethnographic fieldwork as ongoing analytic engagement with concrete social worlds. From engagements with boxing and nightlife to preschooling and migratory encampments, portrayed is a process that is anything but a set of pre-packaged challenges and hurdles of simple-minded procedural tropes such as entrée, rapport, and departure. Instead, ethnography emerges as what it has been from its beginnings: a rough-and-ready analytic matter of seeking understanding in unrecognized and diverse fields of interaction. Crafting Ethnographic Fieldwork will appeal to scholars and students across the social sciences with interests in the practice of participant observation and related questions of research methodology.

Challenging the sanitized view of participants in standardized surveys, Interviews as Activated Storytelling contends that interviewing is a meaning-making process producing useful but context-sensitive knowledge. Through a series of case studies, the book illustrates that participants are not simply there for asking and answering, but inquire and respond in terms of attendant interests and social worlds. Interview interaction and interpretation must take these into account against standardization. In two parts, chapters explore how conditions of the interview process (contexts) and conceptions of interview participants (subjectivities) narratively inform and shape—activate—interviewing and its results. Together with the previously published book Crafting Ethnographic Fieldwork: Sites, Selves, and Social Worlds, insights into the full range of procedural issues in qualitative research are offered.

Challenging the sanitized view of participants in standardized surveys, Interviews as Activated Storytelling contends that interviewing is a meaning-making process producing useful but context-sensitive knowledge. Through a series of case studies, the book illustrates that participants are not simply there for asking and answering, but inquire and respond in terms of attendant interests and social worlds. Interview interaction and interpretation must take these into account against standardization. In two parts, chapters explore how conditions of the interview process (contexts) and conceptions of interview participants (subjectivities) narratively inform and shape—activate—interviewing and its results. Together with the previously published book Crafting Ethnographic Fieldwork: Sites, Selves, and Social Worlds, insights into the full range of procedural issues in qualitative research are offered.

Human service professionals deal with a wide range of problems, from child abuse, parenting issues, and elderly care, to addictions, mental illness, sexual assault, unemployment, and criminality. These must be constructed as problems for professionals to appropriately respond to them. Human service provision starts from there. But in the everyday experience of service providers and users alike, there is a parallel world of ordinary troubles that remains professionally undefined but real, even when troubles are turned into problems. This book brings into view the relationship between these worlds as it bears on the process of clientization—the transformation of people and troubles into clients and problems. Rather than taking the process for granted as many critics do, the book examines the instability of the process on several fronts and highlights its surprising local complexity. Foregrounding everyday life, the leading idea is that the transformation of troubles into problems is not straightforward and that problems are continually subject to alternative understandings. This poses new what, how, and where questions. What are ordinary troubles and how do they relate to the construction, maintenance, or undoing of serviceable problems? Where is social policy and how does that figure in the front-line work of service provision? The questions point to the challenges of clientization at the discretionary border of troubles and problems in everyday service relationships. With chapters written by an international group of human service researchers, this book is an important contribution to the literature dealing with the construction of personal problems and will be useful to students and academics in sociology, human services, social work and policy, criminal justice, and health care.

'This book is jam-packed with a wide range of material related to qualitative research…. [T]his is a quality text and has much to offer the reader, especially the novice researcher' - Nurse Researcher

`This comprehensive collection of almost 40 chapters - each written by a leading expert in the field - is the essential reference for anyone undertaking or studying qualitative research. It covers a diversity of methods and a variety of perspectives and is a very practical and informative guide for newcomers and experienced researchers alike' - John Scott, University of Essex

`The best ways in which to understand the issues and processes informing qualitative research is to learn from the accounts of its leading practitioners. Here they come together in what is a distinctive and wide-ranging collection that will appeal to postgraduates and social researchers in general' - Tim May, University of Salford

`This excellent guide engages in a dialogue with a wide range of expert qualitative researchers, each of whom considers their own practice in an illuminating and challenging way. Overall, the book constitutes an authoritative survey of current methods of qualitative research data collection and analysis' - Nigel Gilbert, University of Surrey

This concise paperback edition of the best selling handbook, Qualitative Research Practice, is particularly aimed at the student reader. The chapters are written by leading, internationally distinguished qualitative researchers who recount and reflect on their own research experiences as well as others, past and present, from whom they have learned. It demonstrates the benefits of using particular methods from the viewpoint of real-life experience. This is also a good philosophy for students to adopt in planing research work: to begin from a practical conception of the research process and to treat a book like this as an opportunity to learn a valuable craft.

From the outside, good research seems to be produced through practitioners learning and following standard theoretical, empirical and procedural formats. But from the inside we learn that qualitative research (like other forms of scientific endeavour) is also a biographical engagement, rendering its scholarly and practical contributions in its own terms. Standards take on practical meaning as the distinct activities of qualitative research resonate throughout the enterprise, complicating its accountability to itself and to others. In an authoritative yet accessible manner, Qualitative Research Practice reveals the special features of this engagement, teaching us that qualitative research is as much a craft and practice as it is a way of knowing.

Presenting a comprehensive examination of contemporary and traditional varieties of qualitative research practice, Qualitative Research Practice will be an invaluable resource for advanced students and researchers in any discipline. It is an essential and definitive guide to the major forms of qualitative methods in use today, written by leaders in the relevant fields of research practice.

Analyzing Narrative Reality offers a comprehensive framework for analyzing the construction and use of stories in society. This centers on the interplay of narrative work and narrative environments, viewed as reflexively related. Topics dealing with narrative work include activation, linkage, composition, performance, collaboration, and control. Those dealing with narrative environments include close relationships, local culture, status, jobs, organizations, and intertextuality. Both the texts and everyday contexts of the storying process are considered, with accompanying guidelines for analysis and illustrations from empirical material. Methodological procedures feature interviewing, ethnographic fieldwork, and conversational and textual analysis. The conclusion raises the issue of narrative adequacy, addressing the questions of what is a good story and who is a good storyteller. Analyzing Narrative Reality is truly multidisciplinary and should appeal to researchers working across the social and behavioral sciences and humanities, as well as to narratively focused researchers in nursing, education, allied and public health, social work, law, counseling, and management/organization studies.

Narrative research has become increasingly popular in the social sciences. While no part of the process is easy, researchers often struggle to make sense of data that can seem chaotic and without a discernable pattern. This book shows how to analyze stories, storytelling, and stories in society, bringing together a variety of approaches to both texts and narrative practice under one cover.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Human service work is performed in many places – hospitals, shelters, households, prisons, schools, clinics – and is characterised by a complex mixture of organising principles, relations and rules. Using ethnographic methods, researchers can investigate these site-specific complexities, providing multi-dimensional and compelling analyses. Bringing together both theoretical and practical material, this book shows researchers how ethnography can be carried out within human service settings. It provides an invaluable guide on how to apply ethnographic creativeness and offers a more humanistic and context-sensitive approach in the field of health and social care to generating valid knowledge about today’s service work.

Constructionism has become one of the most popular research approaches in the social sciences. But until now, little attention has been given to the conceptual and methodological underpinnings of the constructionist stance, and the remarkable diversity within the field. This cutting-edge handbook brings together a dazzling array of scholars to review the foundations of constructionist research, how it is put into practice in multiple disciplines, and where it may be headed in the future. The volume critically examines the analytic frameworks, strategies of inquiry, and methodological choices that together form the mosaic of contemporary constructionism, making it an authoritative reference for anyone interested in conducting research in a constructionist vein.