ABSTRACT
This book is intended as a tribute. It aims to provide an exposition of a particular way of working as a social scientist. As will emerge, that way of working focuses on ‘meaning’ as the vehicle of understanding how social frameworks affect their members. This requires any general theoretical exposition to be grounded in the detailed aspects of the data which can reveal such meaning. Empathy on the part of the investigator is used to grasp meaning with the proviso that such an intuitive grasp must not override the need for statistical confirmation of causal links that emerge. The research itself has always begun with questions of direct concern for psychiatry and has led to a wide range of theoretical interpretations that in turn have been influenced by a range of disciplines. While in many ways the description ‘grounded theory’ neatly fits this approach, more pedantic interpretations of that epithet leave it ambiguous as to whether this is an appropriate label. Nevertheless, terminology apart, to focus in detail on the research of one of the leading exponents of this approach, George Brown, is one clear way to convey this style of work and this is the task of this first chapter. Later chapters fill out the picture by describing recent work by close colleagues operating in the same tradition.
