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The paper draws its inspiration from the provocation which Merton offered sociology both to engage with empirical data and to perform analyses adequate to guide intervention beyond the particular case. Whilst contemporary STS is very different both in its models of theory and its forms of methodology, this paper suggests Merton's concerns with engagement and adequacy provide a useful way to interrogate current approaches. Specifically, the paper explores some recent anthropological conceptions of ethnographic fieldwork that have provided potent models for the study of scientific and technological cultures. These multi-sited approaches have also provided the opportunity to develop new notions of intervention and explore alternative ways of making contributions to development of theory and practice. In the process of pursuing the goals of engagement and adequacy notions of ethnography have however become stretched. This sense of detachment from methodological canons accentuates the need for methodological debate and skill-sharing in STS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proportional hazards models are powerful methods for the analysis of dynamic social processes and are widely used in sociology to estimate the effects of covariates on event timing (e.g., time to arrest, birth, marriage). The proper statistical modeling of failure time data is an important analytical issue in sociology, but to date the field has largely neglected the application of these models to multiple failure time data in which the conventional assumption of the independence of failure times is not tenable. This paper critically describes a class of models known as variance-corrected proportional hazards models that have been developed by statisticians to take into account a lack of independence among failure times. The purpose is to provide an exposition and comparison for sociologists of several such models and associated methods for handling multiple failure time data that can be readily estimated in commonly available statistical software packages. We pay special attention to the data requirements necessary for estimation of the models. The paper concludes with an illustrative application of the models to analyze the arrest patterns of a sample of California Youth Authority parolees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The task essayed in this paper is a discussion of problems encountered, and solutions arrived at, during the course of the project.
The qualifications are necessary at the outset. Firstly, the demands of the 'problem and solution' approach encourage the deployment of the 'chronological lie'. Some, even much of what I discuss was only perceived in terms of problem and solution after the event. Secondly, there are many research situations where, one might say, a kind of 'principle of complementarity' obtains--that is where, when a solution to one sort of problem is approached closely, another sort of problem inevitably increases in magnitude. In the latter part of the paper certain problems will be discussed in these terms. That discussion looks at ways of optimizing the inevitably approximate fit between an external reality and what is observed. However, it should be noted that other interpretations of these observational problems are possible? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the research on masculinity in Ireland stresses the influences of family, work and education in the construction of gender (Ferguson, 1998; Ferguson and Synott, 1995; Ferguson and Reynolds, 2001; McKeown et al., 1998, Owens, 2000). Although the impact of the entertainment media is regularly alluded to, there is a dearth of empirical work in this area. While it is generally agreed that mediated images play a highly influential role in young people's lives, both the nature and the scope of this influence remain unclear in the absence of concrete ethnographies of reception. This paper discusses the findings of a quantitative and qualitative investigation into Irish male teenagers' consumption and reception of a broad range of media texts and discusses these findings in relation to the relevant literature. It points to the shortcomings of both `hypodermic needle' theories, which claim direct media influence, and of some active audience theories, which posit consumers as impervious to ideological influence. Contrary to popular discourses which frame the media as an autonomous, regressive force that lags behind a more progressive reality, the findings presented here suggest that mediated fictions are part of wider `gender scripts' (Nixon, 1996) that both inform and are informed by the social structures within which (male) viewers are immersed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of a fourfold typology referring to different definitions of the social-structure concept, and of a critique of Giddens's and Bourdieu's strategies for transcending the divide between objectivist and subjectivist sociologies, this paper argues that rapprochement rather than transcendence is the way to overcome the existing fragmentation and for bringing closer together structural/structuralist and interpretative paradigms in the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though necessarily selective, I want to present a biography of the research which principally focusses on 24 families with an epileptic child, to illustrate changing perspectives, emergent problems and some of the solutions, or attempted solutions, to overcome them, indicating my position then as it was; and how, in the light of an examination o[ the data, revisions in procedures and interpretations were required. In particular, the paper focusses on the problems of making sense of extensive data, much of which is biographical, collected on one of these families. Analysis of these accounts suggests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An attempt to conceptualize social structure must ultimately confront the dilemma posed by the problem of agency. The emerging consensus among sociologists is that society consists of both powerful, determining structures and actors that possess a degree of efficacy, freedom, and creative independence. This paper is an attempt to aid in developing an approach to role theory that is more versatile and more capable of addressing the agency-structure duality. First, a definition of role as a "cultural object" is proposed. This new conceptualization views roles as resources in the production of both agency and structure. Second, two dimensions of role variance are introduced: role type and role use. It is argued that this distinction between the types of resources and the uses of resources can serve as a theory of the middle range, directing and enhancing empirical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural explanations of the production of inequality in organizations often mimic economics in their choice of both variables and theoretical accounts. The "new structuralism" typically has neglected important social psychological processes such as social comparison categorization, and interpersonal attraction and affiliation. This paper illustrates how some basic social psychological tenets can substantially enrich the analysis of the division of labor in organizations, the assignment of wages to positions, and the process through which individuals are matched with work roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earlier attempts to define visual sociology have acknowledged that there is no real need to define visual sociology other than for bureaucratic legitimization: heads of departments want to see on paper what their staff members are teaching and what their students are studying; chairmen of research committees want to feel comfortable that research money is well spent. In a world of words, visual sociologists can do their work only to the extent that visual sociology is recognized by men of letters. This description is at least imaginative, but it limits the label of visual sociologists to those interested in photography. Michael Hill takes a broader view. He accentuates the relationship between sociologists and the visual arts, by defining the field as: "Exploration of the reflexive relationships between social structures, on the one hand, and the choice, apprehension, perception, cognition, and creation of visual imagery, on the other." There is no doubt that many other definitions and descriptions can be formulated and will be formulated in the future. It should be clear, however,that definitions, besides being instrumental in the communication between scholars, may also have a stultifying effect.