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A driving force behind the establishment of a qualitative data archive in the United Kingdom has been the oral historian, Paul Thompson. He has complained that there is a `strange silence' among qualitative sociologists on re-analysis, and that many have been reluctant to deposit data. The first part of the paper suggests that the common ethical and practical objections can be overcome in establishing an archive in Australia. However, there is a more serious underlying ideological objection: that archiving promotes and institutionalises a narrow empiricist version of qualitative research. The rest of the paper makes this case by examining teaching materials on a British website, by reviewing Thompson's arguments, and by considering some examples of re-analysis by sociologists. It is argued that qualitative researchers should respond critically, but that it is possible to address and overcome these problems when developing an Australian archive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the state of law and society studies in Britain by revisiting the arguments raised by C.M. Campbell and Paul Wiles in the late 1970s. It argues that the divide they identified between theoretically-oriented “sociology of law” and a-theoretical or empiricist “socio-legal studies” has widened, discusses some of the cultural and institutional reasons, and makes some practical recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]