Sociology 6750 Linda Grant

Spring Semester 2000 334 Baldwin Hall

6:30-9:15 p.m. Tuesdays Phone: 542-3228

Room G-16 (Basement Level) Email: lgrant@arches.uga.edu

Outline and Course Syllabus

 Linda Grant’s Office Hours for Spring Semester: 1:30-3:30 Tuesdays, and by appointment. I also do not mind calls at home at reasonable hours: 548-2669.

Course Objectives: This course is designed as a general introduction to qualitative methods of social research in sociology. It has a particular emphasis on fieldwork, or a set of techniques that involve firsthand contact between the researcher and those who are the subjects of research, although we do give some attention to other qualitative techniques. Primary course objectives are as follows:

1. Reading and critiquing classic and contemporary examples of fieldwork studies, from sociology and related disciplines.

2. Analysis of theoretical, epistemological, and ethical issues related to qualitative social research.

3. Learning fieldwork techniques through reading of "how to" literatures and through

practical application.

4. Carrying out a beginning, hands-on original research project using fieldwork techniques

and producing an oral and written report on the project.

The course thus will operate on several levels simultaneously. At the conclusion of the course, students should have a rudimentary knowledge of fieldwork techniques and applications. He or she should have a sense for what types of questions are most effectively addressed with qualitative research and should be able to design a research project using qualitative methods. Proficiency in qualitative research likely will require further experience, however.

We will meet in seminar-style sessions, and students will have substantial responsibility for class sessions. Regular attendance and class participation is important, and will contribute 10% to the final grade. Please note that persistent nonattendance at any point in the course will be grounds for an instructor-initiated drop. If this drop occurs after the midpoint of the course, it will be recorded as a WF grade.

Course Materials:

I have ordered the following materials (all paperbacks) at area bookstores and recommend that you purchase a copy of each:

Patricia and Peter Adler. Membership Roles in Field Research. Sage.

Juliette Corbin and Anselm Strauss, The Basics of Qualitative Research. Sage.

Barry Glassner and Rosanna Hertz, Qualitative Sociology in Everyday Life. Sage

Rosanna Hertz, Reflexivity and Voice. Sage.

I have ordered theh following as recommended books. You may purchase them if you choose. We will be reading portions, but not all, of them.

Jaber Gubrium and James Holstein. The New Language of Qualitative Method. Oxford.

Valerie Janesik, Stretching Exercises for Qualitative Researchers. Sage.

Other required readings will be kept on reserve in a box in room 114 in Baldwin Hall. These may be checked out for a period up to 1.5 hours, or you may xerox them for your personal use. (The Main Library across from Baldwin Hall is the nearest publicly accessible xerox machine.) Materials assigned should be read before each class session.

Evaluation:

Evaluation in the course will be based on the following criteria:

Major research project, written report 40%

Major research project, oral report 10%

Midterm group project 20%

Reflection and response papers 10% each

Class attendance and participation 10%

The class will operate as a seminar, and its quality will be largely dependent on the preparation and participation of class members.

Major Research Project: You will be required to carry out a major independent research project using fieldwork techniques. In most instances, this will be a participant observation and/or intensive interview project. You are welcomed to use this class for a pilot study of a longer planned work, as long as your project fits the requirements of a fieldwork project. This project will require that you select a field setting and/or group of interviewees, complete an Institutional Review Board class project application to insure that your project meets human subjects requirements at UGA, collect data in the field, analyze those data, and prepare an oral and written final report. In the course of the project, you will be asked to turn in preliminary materials at dates to be established (for example, field notes or interview transcripts). Meeting these deadlines in a timely fashion is essential to doing well on the project and the term-long meeting of these timelines will figure into your final grade. You will need to plan to turn in both a final paper AND the primary materials on which that paper is based (for example, field notes or interview transcripts). You will also need to prepare an oral report on your project, to be presented in the last three weeks of class. The written portion of this project counts for 40% of your final grade; the oral portion counts for 10%.

We will talk more about these projects in class, especially about the scope of project that can fit within this class, but you should anticipate a major amount of time devoted to completion of this work. Fieldwork is very labor-intensive! You should plan on a MINIMUM of 10 hours of participant observation fieldwork (and preparation of field notes based on this work) or a MINIMUM of six intensive interviews (and preparation of full transcriptions of these interviews).

Midterm Assignment: For the midterm assignment, you will be asked to work with two (or in one case three) other classmates to read and critique a book-length qualitative study, focusing on methodological practices. This will culminate in a written paper of approximately 8-10 double-spaced, typewritten pages, plus a brief oral presentation in class. A "collective" grade will be assigned to each project.

I will provide a list of ethnographic studies from which you can choose, or your group might want to suggest a particular recent or classical work that would be appropriate for this assignment. Each person in the group will be assigned the same grade on this project. One of the potential learning gains of group work is management of collaborative work. This assignment counts for 20% of your final grade.

Reflection/Response Papers: You will be asked to write two briefer reflection and response paper, based on your responses to readings assigned for the course, class discussions, or emergent themes in your work. You might want to relate them to current debates or events within research. These should be brief papers, 3-4 pp., generally not drawing upon materials beyond those assigned for the course. These should be focused on specific concepts or ideas, much as a brief "comment" in a professional journal might be. They may be position papers in which you take a stand on an issue of concern within the field of research methods, especially qualitative methods (for example, the value of the insider versus the outsider perspective, appropriate ethical behavior in the field, etc.)

The final portion of your grade will be determined by class participation and attendance. Included in this portion of the grade will be your timely completion of occasionally short "homework" type assignments.

Syllabus

R Denotes materials in reserve box, room 114, Baldwin Hall

Materials from assigned texts are listed by author/editor names

Week One: (Jan. 11)

Introduction, Explanation of Course Requirements

Guest Speaker: Julia Alexander, Institutional Review Board

Read

Josephine Beoku-Betts, "When Black is Not Enough" from NWSA Journal (Nov. 1994). (R)

Patricia Zevalla, "Feminist Insider Dilemmas with Chicano Informants," from Wolf, Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork.

Laud Humphries, "Reflections on the Tearoom Trade," from The Research Experience (R)

Gary Alan Fine, "The Ten Lies of Ethnography," from Journal of Contemporary Ethnography (R)

Rainwater and Pittman, "Ethical Problems in Studying a Politically Sensitive and Deviant Community" (R)

Week Three: January 25: The Background and Logic of Fieldwork

Read

Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory, chs. 1 & 2 (R)

Harry Wolcott, The Art of Fieldwork, chs. 1 & 2 (R)

Gubrium and Holstein, chapters 1 & 2 (R)

Hirsch article in Glassner and Hertz

Read Adler and Adler book

Stephen Lenkenau, "Stronger than Dirt," Journal of Contemporary Ethnography (R)

Gamson, Schwartz, and Kaplan Daniels articles in Glassner and Hertz

Peter Adler, "The Sociologist as Celebrity," from Qualitative Sociology (R)

Week Five (Feb. 9): Reflexivity in Field Work

Articles by Reinharz, Michalowski, Bolak, Adler and Adler in Hertz

Schnaiberg and Thorne and Hochschild, Davidman, Denzin in Glassner and Hertz

May and Pattillo-McCoy, "What We Saw" (R)

Week Six (Feb. 16): Doing Fieldwork: Data Collection

Read Corbin and Strauss, chapters 1-5

Tamar-Or in Hertz

Conrad article in Glassner and Hertz

First reflection paper is due no later than tonight

Week Seven (Feb. 23): Interviewing as a Data Source

Read

*Andrea Fontana and James H. Frey. "Interviewing: The Art of Science" from Handbook of Qualitative Sociology (R)

Ellis et al. aricle in Hertz

"Focus Groups," from Bruce Berg, Qualitative Analysis in the Social Sciences.

Excerpts from Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters (R)

Week Eight (Mar. 1): Analyzing Qualitative Data

Read Remainder of Strauss and Corbin, parts II and III

Gubrium and Holstein, chapters 8 and 9

Linda Grant, "Black Females’ ‘Place’ in Desegregated Classrooms." (R)

SPRING BREAK FROM MARCH 4-13

Week Nine (Mar. 14): Analyzing Qualitative Data

James Gee, Sarah Michaels, and Mary O’Connor, "Discourse Analysis" from Handbook of Qualitative Research in Education (R)

Excerpts from Donna Eder, School Talk (R)

Blauner, "Problems in Edting First Person Sociology" (R)

Week Ten: (Mar. 21): Analysis of Text

Read Ralph LaRossa, Excerpts from The Modernization of Fatherhood (R)

Gaye Tuchman, "Analysis of Historical Documents," from Handbook of Qualitative Research, ed. by Denzin and Lincoln (R)

Week Eleven: (Mar. 28): Writing (and Otherwise Presenting) Research

Read Carolyn Ellis and Art Bochner, "Telling and Performing Personal Stories: The Constraints of Choice in Abortion," in their Invesigating Subjectivity (R)

Charmaz and Mitchell, DeVault, Mykhalovsky, Robillard in Hertz

Week Twelve: (April 4):Voice and Representation

Read Robillard, Wichroski, Ginsburg, and Patel in Hertz

Laurel Richardson, "Writing as Analysis," in her Handbook of Qualitative Sociology.(R)

Howard Becker, Writing for Social Scientists, chapters 3, 5, and 6

Excerpts from Janesik, Excerpts from Stretching Exercises for Qualitative Researchers (R)

Second "reflection" paper is due no later than tonight.

Remaining weeks of the class are devoted to student reports on final projects

The final paper is due in no later than 5 p.m. on Monday, May 1, 2000.