Search

This paper reflects on Julia Brannen’s contribution to the development of theory and methods for intergenerational research. The discussion is contextualised within a contemporary ‘turn to time’ within sociology, involving tensions and synergies between sociological and historical imagination. These questions are informed by a juxtaposition of Brannen’s four-generation study of family change and social historian Angela Davis’s exploration women and the family in England between 1945 and 2000. These two studies give rise to complementary findings, yet have distinctive orientations towards the status and treatment of sources, the role of geography in research design and limits of generalisation [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article features the Qualitative Data Archival Resource Centre which is supported by the Economic and Social Research Council in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex in England. The main aims of the Centre are to locate, assess and document qualitative data and arrange for their deposit in suitable public archives. It also aims to disseminate information about and encourage the re-use of these data. One major function of the Centre is to maintain a database with information on the extent and availability of qualitative research material from a range of social science disciplines.