Prof Paul Dowling | Five two-hour sessions | Spring: 17:30 - 19:30 Tuesday 4, 11, 18, 25 February + 3 March | Room 802

Theory involves the conceptualization of your research. It may concern epistemological propositions about the nature of knowledge and knowing, or general—but explicit and to be developed—dispositions on how you see the world, or more context-specific claims that you want to test or that emerge from your collection and analysis of empirical data. Theory may need to be well organized at the front end of your research, but this is not always (or, other than in experimental work, even often) the case and it may arrive quite late on in the research process. Theory is not a single thing, but it is helpful to distinguish a theoretical field of general claims and debates from and empirical field of local activity and experience. This seminar involves reflection on this analytic distinction in the context of participants’ own work. It is unimportant what stage of research you are at—previous participants have included students in their first term and students close to completion others at just about every point in-between and some have even attended the programme more than once—but you must come prepared to talk about and discuss your interests and to have some of your ideas opened up to critical scrutiny and to be involved in the discussion and scrutinizing of the interests and ideas of other participants.

Suggested Reading

• Chung, S-y. (2011). ‘The modality of the textual institutionalisation of literary studies: towards a sociology.’ Sociological Research Online. 16/3/3. 1-14
• Douglas, M. (2002). Purity and Danger. London. Routledge.
• Collins, H. & Pinch, T. (1998). The Golem: what you should know about Science. London. CUP.
• Dowling, P. C. (2009). Sociology as method: Departures from the forensics of culture, text and knowledge. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
• Dowling, P.C. (2013). 'Social activity method: a fractal language for mathematics.' Mathematics Education Research Journal. 25: 317-340.
• Dowling, P.C. & Brown, A.J. (2010). Doing Research/Reading Research: Re- interrogating education. London. Rutledge.
• Geertz, C. (1989). Works and Lives: the anthropologist as author. Cambridge. Polity.
• Geertz, C. (2000 Edn (1977)). The Interpretation of Cultures. New York. Basic Books. 
• Glaser, B. & Strauss, A. (1967). The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for qualitative research. New York. Aldine Publishing Company.
• Whiteman, N. (2012). Undoing Ethics: rethinking practice in online research. New York. Springer.