Jennifer Mason – författare

The Issue of how assets are distributed after death is of increasing significance for larger numbers of people. In this original and path-breaking study, the authors examine the principle means through which people plan to dispose of their assets after death: by the use of wills. By offering an empirical study of 800 English wills, the book identifies significant patterns of bequeathing among a cross-section of the population, and not just among those sections of society who enjoy substantial wealth. This leads us to focus upon what wills tell us about the family and kin relationships, and upon how people transmit their assets across generations: to their families and to institutions and organizations.

Negotiating Family Responsibilities provides a major new insight into contemporary family life, particularly kin relationships outside the nuclear family. While many people believe that the real meaning of 'family' has shrunk to the nuclear family household, there is considerable evidence to suggest that relationships with the wider kin group remain an important part of most people's lives.Based on the findings of a major study of kinship, and including lively verbatim accounts of conversations with family members concepts of responsibility and obligation within family life are examined and the authors expand theories on the nature of assistance within families and argue that it is negotiated over time rather than given automatically.

How is it possible to feel an affinity with a place? What is happening when someone feels almost literally transported to another time by a smell or a texture or a song? Why do striking family resemblances sometimes feel uncanny? In each of these cases a potent connection is being made, involving forces, flows, energies and atmospherics that conventional sociological approaches can find hard to grasp, but that are important nonetheless. In this innovative book Jennifer Mason argues that these are affinities – potent charges and charismatically lively connections in personal life, that rise up and matter in some way and that enchant or toxify the everyday. She suggests that exploring affinities opens up new possibilities for conceptualizing the experience of living in the world through what she calls the 'socio-atmospherics of everyday life'. This book invites the reader to embrace possibilities and themes that may seem outside the usual range, and to engage in a more open, attentive, inventive and poetic sociological sensibility.

How is it possible to feel an affinity with a place? What is happening when someone feels almost literally transported to another time by a smell or a texture or a song? Why do striking family resemblances sometimes feel uncanny? In each of these cases a potent connection is being made, involving forces, flows, energies and atmospherics that conventional sociological approaches can find hard to grasp, but that are important nonetheless. In this innovative book Jennifer Mason argues that these are affinities – potent charges and charismatically lively connections in personal life, that rise up and matter in some way and that enchant or toxify the everyday. She suggests that exploring affinities opens up new possibilities for conceptualizing the experience of living in the world through what she calls the 'socio-atmospherics of everyday life'. This book invites the reader to embrace possibilities and themes that may seem outside the usual range, and to engage in a more open, attentive, inventive and poetic sociological sensibility.

In Civilized Creatures, Jennifer Mason challenges some of our most enduring ideas about how encounters with nonhuman nature shaped American literature and culture. Mason argues that in the second half of the nineteenth century the most powerful influence on Americans' understanding of their affinities with animals was not increasing separation from the pastoral and the wilderness; instead, it was the population's feelings about the ostensibly civilized animals they encountered in their daily lives. Americans of diverse backgrounds, Mason shows, found it attractive as well as politic to imagine themselves as most closely connected to those creatures who shared humans' aptitude for civilized life. And to the minds of many in this period, national prosperity depended less on periodic exposure to untamed, wild nature than it did on the proper care and keeping of such animals within suburban and urban environments. Combining literary analysis with cultural histories of equestrianism, petkeeping, and the animal welfare movement, Civilized Creatures offers new readings of works by Susan Warner, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Charles W. Chesnutt.In each case, Mason demonstrates that understanding contemporary relationships between humans and animals is essential for understanding the debates about gender, race, and cultural power enacted in these texts.

Learn to build business solutions with SharePoint 2013Now in its third edition, this perennial bestseller features a complete overhaul for the latest version of SharePoint. A must-have for building business solutions in SharePoint, real-world scenarios address critical information management problems and detailed descriptions explain how to efficiently and successfully handle these challenges. Plus, best practices for configuration and customization round out the coverage of getting started with SharePoint 2013 so that you can confidently make this platform work for your business today. Examines product functionality alongside realistic scenarios to provide you with contextual relevanceAddresses managing permissions, reporting in SharePoint, and working with access servicesOffers updated content on working with lists, libraries, workflow, content types, and web partsReviews social features, forms management, business connectivity services, and moreBeginning SharePoint 2013 is an ideal introduction to the latest iteration of this popular content management provider.

Negotiating Family Responsibilities provides a major new insight into contemporary family life, particularly kin relationships outside the nuclear family. While many people believe that the real meaning of 'family' has shrunk to the nuclear family household, there is considerable evidence to suggest that relationships with the wider kin group remain an important part of most people's lives. Based on the findings of a major study of kinship, and including lively verbatim accounts of conversations with family members concepts of responsibility and obligation within family life are examined and the authors expand theories on the nature of assistance within families and argue that it is negotiated over time rather than given automatically.

The third edition of this best-selling text guides students and researchers through the process of doing qualitative research, clearly explaining how different theoretical approaches inform what you do in practice. The text bridges the gap between ‘cookbook’ and more abstract approaches to qualitative research, by posing ‘difficult questions' that researchers should be asking themselves . The book invites researchers to engage in a creative and critical practice in how they draw insights, interpret a range of types of data and craft knowledge from qualitative research. Fully revised and updated, with three new chapters, this edition:

·         Covers the full research process, with new material on analysing and interpreting data and research ethics

·         Engages with exciting new developments in the field through challenging qualitative researchers to be creative with how they research and with what they find.

·         Examines the potential of qualitatively-led approaches to mixed methods, and their implications for research design, research practice and the production of convincing arguments.

A theoretically engaged, grounded approach to qualitative researching, this remains the ideal text to guide students to become thoughtful, creative and effective qualitative researchers.

The third edition of this best-selling text guides students and researchers through the process of doing qualitative research, clearly explaining how different theoretical approaches inform what you do in practice. The text bridges the gap between ‘cookbook’ and more abstract approaches to qualitative research, by posing ‘difficult questions' that researchers should be asking themselves . The book invites researchers to engage in a creative and critical practice in how they draw insights, interpret a range of types of data and craft knowledge from qualitative research. Fully revised and updated, with three new chapters, this edition:

·         Covers the full research process, with new material on analysing and interpreting data and research ethics

·         Engages with exciting new developments in the field through challenging qualitative researchers to be creative with how they research and with what they find.

·         Examines the potential of qualitatively-led approaches to mixed methods, and their implications for research design, research practice and the production of convincing arguments.

A theoretically engaged, grounded approach to qualitative researching, this remains the ideal text to guide students to become thoughtful, creative and effective qualitative researchers.

Jennifer Mason and Angela Dale's book seeks to set out cutting-edge developments in the field of social research and to encourage students and researchers to consider ways of learning from different approaches and perspectives in such a way as to make their own research richer, more insightful and more rewarding.

Social Researching brings together a wide variety of research methods - both qualitative and quantitative - to help students and researchers to consider the relative benefits of adopting different approaches for their own research work.

The authors clearly identify the most appropriate methods for different research questions and also highlight areas where it might be fruitful to compliment different methods with each other or exploit creative tensions between them. The book is therefore a highly practical guide which also seeks to draw readers outside their methodological comfort zones.

This book includes:

- Critical coverage of issues in research design;

- Expert experience in many methodological fields;

- An overview of the many different ways to approach similar research problems;

- Coverage of the tensions between different methodological approaches;

- Examples of excellence in research design and practice;

- An examination of how to turn methodological tensions into richer research practice.

The methods covered include highly innovative, 'cutting-edge' approaches and they are demonstrated in terms of their transferability between the different social sciences. This inter-disciplinary approach is complimented by a wide range of strategically chosen examples which demonstrate the authors' pragmatic and creative take on research design.

Jennifer Mason and Angela Dale's book seeks to set out cutting-edge developments in the field of social research and to encourage students and researchers to consider ways of learning from different approaches and perspectives in such a way as to make their own research richer, more insightful and more rewarding.

Social Researching brings together a wide variety of research methods - both qualitative and quantitative - to help students and researchers to consider the relative benefits of adopting different approaches for their own research work.

The authors clearly identify the most appropriate methods for different research questions and also highlight areas where it might be fruitful to compliment different methods with each other or exploit creative tensions between them. The book is therefore a highly practical guide which also seeks to draw readers outside their methodological comfort zones.

This book includes:

- Critical coverage of issues in research design;

- Expert experience in many methodological fields;

- An overview of the many different ways to approach similar research problems;

- Coverage of the tensions between different methodological approaches;

- Examples of excellence in research design and practice;

- An examination of how to turn methodological tensions into richer research practice.

The methods covered include highly innovative, 'cutting-edge' approaches and they are demonstrated in terms of their transferability between the different social sciences. This inter-disciplinary approach is complimented by a wide range of strategically chosen examples which demonstrate the authors' pragmatic and creative take on research design.

Inheritance, once the preserve of the propertied upper classes, has become a much more common experience. Many more people now than in the past have something of material value to bequeath when they die, mainly because of the spread of home ownership during the second half of the twentieth century. Passing On examines what these changes can tell us about kinship in England, through a study of how contemporary families handle inheritance.Based on the findings of a major research project into inheritance and kinship, Passing On examines how it is transmitted, 'who gets what' and the meaning this has for individuals and families. The authors argue that we should understand English kinship as a set of relational practices which are flexible and variable, rather than as a rigid structure or system. Inheritance is characterised more by symbolic practices and moral reasoning than by materialism.Of interest to lecturers and students of sociology, anthropology, social policy, law and gender studies, Passing On is also of considerable interest to those seeking to understand changing forms of kinship and ownership, especially researchers, policy makers and legal practitioners.

Inheritance, once the preserve of the propertied upper classes, has become a much more common experience. Many more people now than in the past have something of material value to bequeath when they die, mainly because of the spread of home ownership during the second half of the twentieth century. Passing On examines what these changes can tell us about kinship in England, through a study of how contemporary families handle inheritance.Based on the findings of a major research project into inheritance and kinship, Passing On examines how it is transmitted, 'who gets what' and the meaning this has for individuals and families. The authors argue that we should understand English kinship as a set of relational practices which are flexible and variable, rather than as a rigid structure or system. Inheritance is characterised more by symbolic practices and moral reasoning than by materialism.Of interest to lecturers and students of sociology, anthropology, social policy, law and gender studies, Passing On is also of considerable interest to those seeking to understand changing forms of kinship and ownership, especially researchers, policy makers and legal practitioners.