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The literature on social science methods and the issues surrounding them has grown massively and continues to increase. Yet many social scientists are ambivalent about methodology. For some, it plays a central, perhaps even an all-encompassing, role; while, for others, it is desirable only in small amounts, or indeed is regarded as an irrelevance, as a distraction from actually doing research.

In this book, Martyn Hammersley argues that, in large part, this reflects and is part of a wider problem: the gradual decline of a previously influential academic model of inquiry. This has occurred as a result of ideological challenges and the erosion of the institutional conditions that support academic work. He defends this model, spelling out the demands it places upon social scientists, and examining such issues as the proper role of methodology, the nature of objectivity, the false idea that social scientists should be intellectuals or social critics, the dialectic of academic discussion, the ethics of belief, and the limits of academic freedom.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Acknowledgements(p. ix)
• Introduction(p. 1)
• Part 1 The role of the researcher: limits, obligations and virtues(p. 15)
• 1 Methodology, who needs it?(p. 17)
• 2 On the social scientist as intellectual(p. 43)
• 3 Should social science be critical?(p. 75)
• 4 Objectivity as an intellectual virtue(p. 89)
• 5 Too good to be false? The ethics of belief(p. 105)
• Part 2 The dialectic of knowledge production(p. 121)
• 6 Models of research: discovery, construction, and understanding(p. 123)
• 7 Merely academic? A dialectic for research communities(p. 138)
• 8 Academic licence and its limits: the case of Holocaust denial(p. 159)
• Epilogue(p. 185)
• References(p. 188)
• Name Index(p. 209)
• Subject Index(p. 212)

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Martyn Hammersley is Professor of Educational and Social Research at The Open University. He has carried out research in the sociology of education and the sociology of the media, but much of his work has been concerned with methodological issues.