Blanche Geer

Bio: Blanche Geer is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: White (horse) & Participant observation. The author has an hindex of 10, co-authored 11 publications receiving 3807 citations.

Participant Observation and Interviewing: A Comparison

Abstract: The most complete form of the sociological datum, after all, is the form in which the participant observer gathers it: An observation of some social event, the events which precede and follow it, a...

Stranger and Friend: The Way of an Anthropologist.

Abstract: \"Her book is all about people...The publishers say of it that 'field work in its personal and objective dimension is placed under a kind of microscope. The book is a must for all field workers in the social sciences.' That claim does not seem to me excessive.\" -Edmund Leach, New York Review of Books \"There are few books which are as informative of what it means to be a field-worker in social science as Hortense Powdermaker's Stranger and Friend. This book should be must reading both for scholars and students.\" -Seymour M. Lipset, Harvard University \"Stranger and Friend is a passionate plea for anthropology as a human discipline as well as a science, as an all-engrossing life experience as well as a profession, and increasingly as a subject in the curriculum of graduate and undergraduate studies.\" -Margaret Mead, American Museum of Natural History \"This is just the kind of book needed in anthropology today. It tells objectively, but in warm and human terms, how important research was done. It contributes to methodology and to the history of the science of anthropology.\" -Charles Wagley, Columbia University \"This is an essential book for anyone interested in the problems of an anthropologist at work.\" -Cornelius Osgood, Peabody Museum of Natural History

Making the Grade: The Academic Side of College Life

Abstract: Based on three years of detailed anthropological observation, this account of undergraduate culture portrays students' academic relations to faculty and administration as one of subjection. With rare intervals in crisis moments, student life has always been dominated by grades and grade point averages. The authors of "Making the Grade "maintain that, though it has taken different forms from tune to time, the emphasis on grades has persisted in academic life. From this premise they argue that the social organization giving rise to this emphasis has remained remarkably stable throughout the century. Becker, Geer, and Hughes discuss various aspects of college life and examine the degree of autonomy students have over each facet of their lives. Students negotiate with authorities the conditions of campus political and organizational life--the student government, independent student organizations, and the student newspaper--and preserve substantial areas of autonomous action for themselves. Those same authorities leave them to run such aspects of their private lives as friendships and dating as they wish. But, when it comes to academic matters, students are subject to the decisions of college faculties and administrators. Becker deals with this continuing lack of autonomy in student life in his new introduction. He also examines new phenomena, such as the impact of "grade inflation" and how the world of real adult work has increasingly made professional and technical expertise, in addition to high grades, the necessary condition for success. "Making the Grade "continues to be an unparalleled contribution to the studies of academics, students, and college life. It will be of interest to university administrators, professors, students, and sociologists.

Qualitative analysis for social scientists

Abstract: The teaching of qualitative analysis in the social sciences is rarely undertaken in a structured way. This handbook is designed to remedy that and to present students and researchers with a systematic method for interpreting qualitative data', whether derived from interviews, field notes, or documentary materials. The special emphasis of the book is on how to develop theory through qualitative analysis. The reader is provided with the tools for doing qualitative analysis, such as codes, memos, memo sequences, theoretical sampling and comparative analysis, and diagrams, all of which are abundantly illustrated by actual examples drawn from the author's own varied qualitative research and research consultations, as well as from his research seminars. Many of the procedural discussions are concluded with rules of thumb that can usefully guide the researchers' analytic operations. The difficulties that beginners encounter when doing qualitative analysis and the kinds of persistent questions they raise are also discussed, as is the problem of how to integrate analyses. In addition, there is a chapter on the teaching of qualitative analysis and the giving of useful advice during research consultations, and there is a discussion of the preparation of material for publication. The book has been written not only for sociologists but for all researchers in the social sciences and in such fields as education, public health, nursing, and administration who employ qualitative methods in their work.

Mixing Qualitative and Quantitative Methods: Triangulation in Action @

Abstract: December 1979, volume 24 There is a distinct tradition in the literature on social science research methods that advocates the use of multiple methods. This form of research strategy is usually described as one of convergent methodology, multimethod/multitrait (Campbell and Fiske, 1959), convergent validation or, what has been called "triangulation" (Webb et al., 1 966). These various notions share the conception that qualitative and quantitative methods should be viewed as complementary rather than as rival camps. In fact, most textbooks underscore the desirability of mixing methods given the strengths and weaknesses found in single method designs.

Qualitative methods for health research

Abstract: Qualitative methods for health research , Qualitative methods for health research , کتابخانه مرکزی دانشگاه علوم پزشکی تهران

The Discipline and Practice of Qualitative Research

Abstract: The global community of qualitative researchers is midway between two extremes, searching for a new middle, moving in several different directions at the same time. Mixed methodologies and calls for scientifically based research, on the one side, renewed calls for social justice inquiry from the critical social science tradition on the other. In the methodological struggles of the 1970s and 1980s, the very existence of qualitative research was at issue. In the new paradigm war, “every overtly social justice-oriented approach to research . . . is threatened with de-legitimization by the government-sanctioned, exclusivist assertion of positivism . . . as the ‘gold standard’ of educational research” (Wright, 2006, pp. 799–800). The evidence-based research movement, with its fixed standards and guidelines for conducting and evaluating qualitative inquiry, sought total domination: one shoe fits all (Cannella & Lincoln, Chapter 5, this volume; Lincoln, 2010). The heart of the matter turns on issues surrounding the politics and ethics of evidence and the value of qualitative work in addressing matters of equity and social justice (Torrance, Chapter 34, this volume). In this introductory chapter, we define the field of qualitative research, then navigate, chart, and review the history of qualitative research in the human disciplines. This will allow us to locate this handbook and its contents within their historical moments. (These historical moments are somewhat artificial; they are socially constructed, quasi-historical, and overlapping conventions. Nevertheless, they permit a “performance” of developing ideas. They also facilitate an increasing sensitivity to and sophistication about the pitfalls and promises of ethnography and qualitative research.) A conceptual framework for reading the qualitative research act as a multicultural, gendered process is presented. We then provide a brief introduction to the chapters, concluding with a brief discussion of qualitative research. We will also discuss the threats to qualitative human-subject research from the methodological conservatism movement, which was noted in our Preface. As indicated there, we use the metaphor of the bridge to structure what follows. This volume provides a bridge between historical moments, politics, the decolonization project, research methods, paradigms, and communities of interpretive scholars.