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Due to the fragmentary nature of research findings and conceptual models, the Durkheimian legacy remains undervalued in contemporary spatial theory. The paper addresses this neglect by proposing a unified Durkheimian model of place which can be applied to case history and comparative analyses. It draws together the fragmented insights of Durkheimian theory to characterize four elementary forms of place: sacred, profane, liminal and mundane. These place/space identities are maintained and transformed through rituals and narratives which depend upon contingent human actions for their sustenance. The paper concludes with an extended case study which deploys the model to explain the changing meanings of the site of the Bastille (Paris, France) over the past two centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A substantial intellectual movement has been growing in the social sciences around the adoption of mechanism- and process-based explanations as complements to variable-based explanations, or even as substitutes for them. But once we have recognized the validity and dignity of studying mechanisms and processes, what is the next step? Recently, both political scientists’ and sociologists’ discussions have begun to turn away from correlation to mechanism-based approaches to causation. But there is still a widespread assumption that mechanisms are unobservable. We maintain that ways can be developed to observe the presence or absence of mechanisms either directly or indirectly. In this paper, by way of example, we put forward four methods—two direct and two indirect—for measuring mechanisms of contention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of recent writers have advocated a computer-based approach to the analysis of qualitative data that leans on John Stuart Mill's method of agreement and the indirect method of difference. Those discussions, however remain fairly abstract and provide little insight into how analyses based on Mill-type methods unfold and their relative costs and benefits. In this paper we describe the logic and use of one prominent Mill-type software program called QCA (Qualitative Comparative Analysis) in the context of an analysis of evidence drawn from twenty-two interviews with managers in textile plants. Our substantive aim is to understand labor-management practices in Southern textile manufacturing plants; our methodological aim is to illustrate the strength sand weaknesses of the Mill-type logic in action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]