Qualitative Sociology

Wohl, Hannah; Besbris, Max

doi: 10.1007/s11133-023-09553-7pmid: N/A

Across various markets, consumers rely on brokers to help them select goods. How do brokers shape consumers’ valuation? We address this question by drawing from two independent but analogous ethnographies of brokerage and purchasing in the New York housing market and the New York art market. Building upon the relational turn in economic sociology, we identify the interlocking mechanisms by which brokers influence valuation in face-to-face interaction: Brokers (1) build trust by establishing rapport and displaying expertise, (2) prepare consumers to purchase by priming the consumption setting so that consumers compare a specified set of goods and experience urgency, and (3) posit matches between consumers and products, relying on demographic and cultural characteristics of consumers to complete transactions. Our novel theorization of brokerage has broader implications for understanding valuation and consumption.

Vela Castañeda, Manolo E.

doi: 10.1007/s11133-024-09557-xpmid: N/A

In this article I present a paradigmatic case to exemplify how cross-examining sources constitutes one of the core pillars of our research work. I argue that a primary source, which can be easily regarded as a piece of evidence that is beyond accidental or intentional alterations, that can only convey veracity, and is, therefore, broadly speaking, authentic, must also be cross-examined. There is no such thing, or there should be no such thing as a primary source invested with an aura of sanctity, exempt from the need for verification. The critical examination of sources, that process of comparing and contrasting information, is to our profession what the microscope and reagents are to the natural sciences. Cross-examining pieces of evidence constitutes the crux of all research work, as a piece of evidence is, as a rule, an incomplete and imperfect piece in the puzzle. But no matter how incomplete and imperfect they may be, those fragments of evidence are all we have to recreate the past. Tracing the origins of a tiny detail, such as a handwritten note in a mostly typewritten archival document, can be the thread that gives us the answer to a series of questions. From now on, all meticulous research work will consist of pulling this thread so that it may lead us to new and better explanations. That tiny detail is what we have been waiting for in order to finally piece together the pattern. This article is made from the analysis of documents from the Guatemalan Army, documentary collections from the Historical Archive of the National Police, newspapers, declassified documents from the United States Government, and oral sources. 

O’Quinn, Jamie; Slaymaker, Erika; Goldstein-Kral, Jess; Broussard, Kathleen

doi: 10.1007/s11133-024-09556-ypmid: 40256156

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted many aspects of life, including how social scientists develop and conduct research. Transitioning to remote interview methods was one methodological adjustment made by many qualitative researchers. In this article, we draw on in-depth interviews (N=106) and fieldnotes from three qualitative research projects conducted remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, all of which center the experiences of women across a wide range of topics. In this article, we consider the opportunities and challenges of remote interviewing as a feminist method of research, analyzing how remote interviews impact both those who participate in and conduct research. We find that remote interview methods offer potential advantages for conducting participant-centered research, as they provide an opportunity for new forms of emotional engagement and options for privacy. In addition, remote methods have the capacity to increase accessibility for both participants and researchers alike. As such, remote interview methods address several feminist methodological and epistemological concerns about qualitative social scientific research, including those related to accessibility, privacy, and relationality. We weigh these advantages with the unique challenges that remote interviewing brings, including potential technological difficulties and additional considerations regarding privacy. We conclude by discussing the future of remote interview methods and consider their ability to address structural factors that shape feminist qualitative research.

Petzke, Martin

doi: 10.1007/s11133-023-09555-5pmid: 38500842

The article extends the literature on the construction of “diversity management” by personnel managers in corporate America. Such research has highlighted that Human Resource (HR) specialists draw heavily on social-scientific thinking in implementing various remedies against discrimination. However, it has paid less attention to how such esoteric views of reality, comprising such “things” as “structural barriers” impeding occupational advancement and “diversity sensitivity,” have been successfully established as a self-evident reality in the workplace. In order to more thoroughly investigate how the world of diversity management is established outside the circle of academic specialists, the article employs perspectives from science and technology studies on the ways in which sociotechnical assemblages, i.e., networks of human actors and material devices, enact scientific ontologies. It applies such perspectives to a German case of diversity management, a program of “intercultural opening” that seeks to make bureaucracies of the welfare state more accessible to immigrants. The article delineates the specific ontology behind this version of diversity management, rooted in sociological perspectives on social mobility, and explores the various techniques and instruments through which officers of intercultural opening establish this ontology as a visible reality in municipal administrations.

Singh, Sourabh

doi: 10.1007/s11133-024-09558-wpmid: N/A

In this article, I claim that demographic engineering scholarship cannot adequately explain the production of demographic engineering practices because they suffer from two classic limitations of state theory: (1) assuming the political elite to be the sole producers of the state practices, and (2) treating the state as an actor. Following the latest theoretical insights on the complex ontology of the state, I claim that we can overcome these limitations of the current demographic engineering scholarship by focusing on interactions between political and bureaucratic actors involved with the demographic engineering policy. I use this insight to examine the population control policy of the Indian state during the Emergency period (1975–1977). My main finding is that the strategies of federal bureaucrats to reproduce their authority over the regional bureaucrats, lowered by political elite dynamics during the Emergency period, enabled the street-level bureaucrats to adopt coercive strategies for achieving their unrealistically high sterilization targets. My study contributes to the studies on demographic engineering, state theory, and the Emergency period in India by highlighting the significance of studying interactions among the political and bureaucratic actors in producing state practices, including but not limited to demographic engineering.

Kumral, Sefika

doi: 10.1007/s11133-023-09552-8pmid: N/A

This paper examines the susceptibility of post-conflict democratization processes to civilian forms of ethnic violence. Shifting the focus away from institutions and political elites, which dominate analyses on democracy and ethnic violence, the paper analyzes social relations and struggles among civilians during post-conflict democratization. Through an analysis of anti-Kurdish communal violence in twenty-first-century Turkey, the paper shows that social movements led by minorities demanding recognition make ethnicity a politically salient cleavage. This triggers contention over ethnic boundaries, resulting in civilian forms of ethnic violence. A key finding of this paper is that violence is not merely an outcome of increasing polarization and division but also a strategy employed by dominant populations to reinforce former boundaries and reduce uncertainties surrounding the existing ones.

Manduca, Robert

doi: 10.1007/s11133-023-09551-9pmid: N/A

Over the past 40 years, college graduates in the USA have become increasingly concentrated in a small number of cities. This paper uses qualitative interviews to explore the processes bringing recent graduates of elite universities to one such city, metropolitan Boston, after graduation. Most respondents reported that their move to Boston was not driven by a clear preference for living there. Rather, they saw themselves as simultaneously choosing a job and a location in one bundled decision, with the job generally determining where they ended up. To reduce the cognitive complexity of the joint job-and-location search, graduates eliminated most options with minimal consideration. The options that remained were disproportionately in cities where the graduates or their universities had preexisting connections—even when the graduates themselves would have preferred to live elsewhere. The social nature of the post-college job search thus served to geographically concentrate these graduates beyond what either their own preferences or the geography of job opportunities would require.