Reinventing Evidence In Social Inquiry

Where and when have investigators aspired to study human culture with more trustworthy or 'objective' methods borrowed from the natural sciences? This book revisits the dominant scientific method, 'coding,' with which investigators from sociology to literary criticism have sampled texts and catalogued their cultural messages.

By returning to the primary documents used in canonical examples of such research, the author demonstrates that the celebrated hard outputs rest on misleading samples and on unfeasible classifying of the texts' meanings. The problems are so consistent, they reveal why it is a contradiction in principle to try to create 'data' out of such complex texts.

As an alternative, the author illustrates how a purely humanistic reliance on families of symptomatic exemplars sponsors research that is retraceable and more accurate and transparent in its conclusions. The book addresses scholars in the field of science studies as well as practitioners across the social sciences who investigate culture.

Review: Reinventing Evidence in Social Inquiry throws serious grit into the knowledge-making machinery of much modern sociology. It is an invitation to sociologists to stop and pause, to take a closer look at some of their methodological routines, and to re-assess the confidence with which they view their findings.

Biernacki's criticisms are meticulously assembled, and they cannot be ignored. - Steven Shapin, Franklin L. Ford Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University This is an exemplary work of serious criticism that should spark fruitful debate about the use of formal methods in cultural analysis. - Rogers Brubaker, professor of Sociology and Foundation Chair, UCLA Reinventing Evidence is an immensely serious book that should be read by anyone involved in the business of sociology. - European Journal of Sociology