The history of a discipline records the careers of its practitioners as well as providing an account their ideas. Studying these careers reveals much about the particular people and their work, and also provides insights into general questions such as how disciplines evolve, and how impact can...

Community re-studies can inform our understanding of what members of communities want from research and the extent to which they feel that they get it. The history of community research suggests that what is expected of researchers by community members can differ from what it is felt that they...

This article reviews claims for methodological innovation in qualitative research. It comprises a review of 57 papers published between 2000–9 in which claims to innovation in qualitative methods have been made. These papers encompass creative methods, narrative methods, mixed methods,...

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Sociological commentaries on the future are frequently built around the claim that we are witnessing the beginning of a new social phenomenon as a result of an existing one coming to an end. Recent examples of discussions framed in terms of new beginnings include reference to the emergence of...

The language of 'winners' and 'losers' is frequently deployed in the discussion of social transformations, but such analyses are less straightforward than they seem. Disagreements exist about which groups might reasonably be designated as 'winners' and 'losers', what the criteria are for...

Gaining informed consent from people being researched is central to ethical research practice. There are, however, several factors that make the issue of informed consent problematic, especially in research involving members of groups that are commonly characterised as \'vulnerable\' such as...

This article argues that it is useful to compare the current recession with that which occurred three decades ago. Drawing on research undertaken at that time by Ray Pahl, it is suggested that four questions are once again revealing in the study of the current economic downturn: \'How have we...