Between Ideal Type and Surrender: Field Research as Asymmetrical Relation.

The article focuses on the field research as asymmetrical relation. In this paper, sociology is viewed as an undertaking concerned with the rational and systematic study of social life in all its manifestations. This is a statement of methodological principle, that is, it pertains to the reasoning and the procedures of sociologists. It should be read neither as an ontological statement, asserting that social conduct is rational, nor as the claim that sociology is a science in the traditional sense. Within the framework of the subjective approach to sociology, the first of the three conditions is met, basically, by the methodological device of the ideal type as introduced by Max Weber and developed by Alfred Schutz. This formulation of the preconditions of research in the vein of a sociology of understanding has brought into the open an usually hidden and ignored characteristic of the subjective sociological approach: the subjectivity involved is not merely that of motives and objectives, and knowledge of pertinent conditions and the command of interactional skills on the part of the observed actors; it is as much the subjectivity of the researcher.