21 articles in this issue
Miguel S. Valles,Louise Corti,Maria Tamboukou,Alejandro Baer
The use of archival materials as a point of departure when designing and launching social research takes for granted that a culture of archiving (for sharing and re-use) has rooted time ago in our complex societies. This mentality and research practice fi... see more
Louise Corti
In this article I set about describing current practices in archiving and reusing qualitative data. I discuss where can you find archived sources of qualitative data, and discuss some of the debates surrounding methodological, ethical and theoretical cons... see more
Miguel S. Valles
This FQS issue on archives and biographical methods is a special occasion to inform about a European initiative for the promotion and exchange of experiences of qualitative research in the social sciences. The whole project was designed as a a four-year (... see more
Janet Holland
This article introduces and describes Timescapes: Changing Relationships and Identities Through the Lifecourse, the first, indeed the only piece of research in the UK designed and funded (by the Economic and Social Research Council) specifically as a larg... see more
Philippe Lejeune
In 1992 and in a small town, Ambérieu-en-Bugey (France), some friends and I founded a new sort of life-writing archive, accepting from unknown persons any autobiographical items (narratives, diaries, letters), reading and indexing them, and opening them t... see more
Irena Medjedovic
The German feasibility study on archiving and reusing qualitative interview data has surveyed experts, namely qualitative researchers. Their views, ideas and problems have to be considered as central conditions if the aim is to open up the horizon for the... see more
Cristina Sánchez-Carretero,Antonio Cea,Paloma Díaz-Mas,Pilar Martínez,Carmen Ortiz
The main objective of this article is to present the "Archive of Mourning," a research project that focuses on the mourning ritual practices in public spaces that took place after the train bombings in Madrid on March 11th 2004. Due to the magnitude of th... see more
Dirk Schubotz,Martin Melaugh,Peter McLoughlin
ARK (Access Research Knowledge) was set up with a single goal: to make social science information on Northern Ireland available to the widest possible audience. The most well-known and widely used part of the ARK resource is CAIN (Conflict Archive on the ... see more
Andrea Christine Jesser
The debate about archiving and reusing not only quantitative data but also the rich resources generated through qualitative enquiry has reached a broader audience since the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) first launched its qualitative se... see more
Juan José Castillo
In recent years there has been a revitalization and even creation of archives related to the world of work, including those generated by social actors of production, as well as by exchanges and services, such as private or public companies, cooperatives, ... see more
Rosa-Àuria Munté Ramos
There are many testimonies preserved in archives that recount the horror of the Holocaust and that have become resources for historical and social research. In addition to testimonies produced with descriptive intention or in the full awareness of becomin... see more
Joan Miquel Verd,Martí López Andreu
This article highlights the benefits of incorporating the qualitative perspective, and in particular the use of life stories, in studies based on the life-course perspective. These benefits will be illustrated using as an example a study of the effects of... see more
Maria Tamboukou
In this article, I draw on my experience of doing archival research at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas at Austin and at the archives of the Rodin Museum in Paris. Reflecting on my experience of reading Dora CARRINGTON's an... see more
Daniela Böhringer
The aim of this paper is to analyze endings of conversations between agents and clients in German job centers, as an example of institutional talk. It is based on audio-recordings of 52 naturally occurring encounters in various job centers. Data ... see more
Rainer Diaz-Bone
Within the last two decades qualitative social research has established itself in most, if not all, of the social sciences. But this emergence has proceeded very differently in institutional and in socio-cognitive aspects. From the beginnings of qualitati... see more
Lewis Goodings
MySpace is an online social network site (SNS) where users regularly communicate via a particular part of the profile page known as "the wall". This article uses a discursive approach to study the construction of identity in communication on the wall. The... see more
D. Thomas Markle,Richard Edward West,Peter J. Rich
Qualitative researchers have evolved their methods continually, often due to technological breakthroughs that have enabled them to collect, analyze or present data in novel ways or to obtain a stronger authenticity or reflection of participant perspective... see more
Sladjana V. Nørskov,Morten Rask
This paper addresses the application of observation to online settings with a special focus on observer roles. It draws on a study of online observation of a virtual community, i.e. an open source software (OSS) community. The paper examines general and s... see more
Agnes Mühlmeyer-Mentzel,Ingeborg Schürmann
The implementation of our hands-on seminar is based on the understanding of grounded theory methodology (GTM) as a craft that can be taught to a great extent. The successful learning process requires knowing, understanding and practising the procedural st... see more
Rudolf Schmitt
Reflecting on the guiding force of metaphors is a long-standing tradition in the German-speaking educational sciences. However, no connection is made to the theory of metaphor, which is derived from modern cognitive linguistics. This may in part be due to... see more
Cornelia Siebeck
Given the so-called "spatial turn" in the social sciences and cultural studies, social geographers have rightfully been cautioning against positivist notions of space and place: We cannot simply deduce the social from spatial reality—on the contrary, this... see more