ABSTRACT
A growing dissatisfaction with quantitative methods over the past two decades has brought about a ‘quiet methodological revolution’ in the social sciences (Denzin and Lincoln 1994; Vidich and Lyman 1994; also see Richardson 1996; Boyatzis 1998). Social methodologists (R.Turner 1974; Filstead 1970; Brenner 1981) believe that the measurements of social phenomena directed by the paradigm of ‘causal laws’ fail to describe adequately the social world, and therefore most social research remains irrelevant to people’s experiences (Yanai 1986). They believe that social scientists distort the empirical world by trying to make reality fit their methods. As Filstead (1970) writes: ‘Most sociologists seem to have forgotten that reality exists only in the empirical world and not in the methods sociologists use to measure it’ (cited in Yanai 1986:66). In 1971 Goffman dismissed the scientific claims of positivism altogether: ‘A sort of sympathetic magic seems to be involved, the assumption being that if you go through the motions attributable to science then science will result. But it hasn’t’ (Goffman 1971:xvi, cited in Vidich and Lyman 1994:40).
