Ruth Horowitz

Introduction: The methodological strengths and dilemmas of qualitative sociology

The articles in this symposium critically reflect upon the methodological strengths and limitations of several diverse yet important works of qualitative sociology, broadly defined:Michael Schwalbe’sUnlocking the IronCage: TheMen’s Movement, Gender Politics, and American Culture (1996); Paul Willis’s Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs (1977); Perry Anderson’s Lineages of the Absolutist State (1974); Doug McAdam’s Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970 (1982); and Julian McAllisterGroves’sHearts andMinds: TheControversyOverLaboratoryAnimals (1997). Among the questions addressed in this symposium are the following: Are the general theoretical or empirical claims of these books persuasive, and are they well supported by the data that are presented by the authors? Are these books persuasive because they adhere to certain methodological rules or standards, if only implicitly? And what are those rules or standards? Or are these books powerful or persuasive despite, or even because of, their lack of methodological rigor, conventionally understood? And would these books have been improved appreciably had they been more methodologically self-conscious or differently designed? This symposium thus addresses the concern—shared by quantitative social scientists, general readers, and not a few qualitative sociologists themselves—that qualitative sociology lacks methodological rigor and, accordingly, truly reliable or generalizable findings. Some social scientists view qualitative sociology, in no uncertain terms, as methodologically and empirically “soft” and highly subjective, if not completely solipsistic—a characterization that a few qualitative researchers have ironically embraced.At best, according to certain critics, qualitative sociology might generate provisional hypotheses that more rigorous social scientists can then go forth to test and revise, but it cannot itself glean much solid understanding of the social world. We believe that this view of qualitative sociology is badly mistaken, and the essays in this symposium collectively refute it. Qualitative sociology is not— or need not be—merely literature or navel-gazing, and its findings have proven

Epidemic City: The Politics of Public Health in New York

In The Tender Cut, Patricia Adler and Peter Adler present the largest, to date, qualitative sociologically-grounded investigation of the lived experience of a non-clinical population of people who self-injure. Drawing on data from over 135 in-depth life history interviews, the authors go beyond the interpersonal and psychological dynamics behind the ‘‘self-injurer’’ to examine the larger world that situates, provokes, and even reinforces the need to engage in self-injury for people who clearly are not a homogeneous population. The social transformation of the practice of self-injury as it has increased in social acceptability and moved beyond the act of an isolated individual to that of a person embedded in a ‘‘real’’ or cyber community (where they note it is still possible for a self-injurer to feel excluded) is documented, as well as the self-presentation of self-injurers on the internet (e.g., the roles different people take in the groups) and the relationships between people who self-injure. The patience, empathy, and understanding of the authors is also evident as they neither demonize the act, nor stigmatize or alienate those who shared their stories; rather they expose in a dignified manner the turmoil, angst, fear, impulsivity, ritual, stress and pain, among other factors, behind the act of self-injury. The strengths of the book are multifold. Adler and Adler present self-injury (broadly defined to include behaviors such as cutting, burning, hair pulling, picking, and bone breaking) as a way some people cope with the challenges, stresses, and difficulties they experience in life. They explain that there is no typical self-injurer or typical start to the injurious career; the only commonality among many self-injurers is the experience of stress. They note the role of social living and personal experiences or exposure in the instigation of the self-injurious career. The authors also take into account how selfinjuring has moved from a psychological ‘‘disorder’’ into a learned social trend— a ‘‘sociological occurrence’’ (p. 3) situated in subcultures and, even at times, resembling a ‘‘fad.’’ It is established, via sampling a ‘‘sociological population’’ of self-injurers that ranged from youths to persons in their mid-fifties, that self-injury is more common among the population than the authors initially anticipated. They noted similarities and differences between the struggles of self-injurers across all ages and described the increased alienation felt by older selfcutters, as the normative attitude suggests these older self-cutters should have ‘‘grown out of it’’ (p. 34). Theoretically, the manuscript adds support to the feminist critique of the medical model’s ‘‘disempowerment of self-injurers,’’ theoretically addresses the gendered context in which self-injury is framed, and expands interactionist and other theoretical views. Although methodologically strong, the authors do not provide an overview of the demographics of their sample. Given that the experiences of people who self-injure appear, on many levels, to parallel those of people who self-harm through other means or use other negative coping behaviors (e.g., alcoholics, drug users, bulimics, anorexics, etc.) and that some interviewees were noted to practice other negative coping behaviors, extended reporting of demographics could assist the reader to substantiate the sample. Moreover, providing additional information on these explicit factors may clarify what aspects of the self-injurer experience result from their injurious career, or if some part of their experience or motivation to continue to self-injure is more appropriately viewed as a consequence of other negative coping mechanisms. The weakest point of the book is the lack of an explicitly embodied analysis of self-injury. The reader is left wondering how the scaring