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Students and researchers all write under pressure, and those pressures—most lamentably, the desire to impress your audience rather than to communicate with them—often lead to pretentious prose, academic posturing, and, not infrequently, writer’s block. Sociologist Howard S. Becker has written the classic book on how to conquer these pressures and simply write. First published nearly twenty years ago, Writing for Social Scientists has become a lifesaver for writers in all fields, from beginning students to published authors. Becker’s message is clear: in order to learn how to write, take a deep breath and then begin writing. Revise. Repeat. It is not always an easy process, as Becker ...
Young carers are children and young people under the age of 18 who provide care for an ill or disabled parent or relative in the community, usually within their own home. They perform many of the same domestic, caring and other duties as adult carers but often without the recognition and support received by many adult carers. Recent legislation, the resultant media interest, and the work of care agencies and groups have raised the profile of these young carers' needs among professionals involved in child care, community care, health and education. The first comprehensive text on young carers and their families, this book is both research-based and accessible, and adopts an international perspective. It examines the background of young carers, their situations, their rights and their needs and uses case studies to illustrate experiences, relationships and dynamics. It discusses the effects of caring on the child's health and psychosocial development and considers the policy and legal context for young carers and their families, offering guidance on how to implement policy to offer the best support possible.
Drawing on more than four decades of experience as a researcher and teacher, Howard Becker now brings to students and researchers the many valuable techniques he has learned. Tricks of the Trade will help students learn how to think about research projects. Assisted by Becker's sage advice, students can make better sense of their research and simultaneously generate fresh ideas on where to look next for new data. The tricks cover four broad areas of social science: the creation of the "imagery" to guide research; methods of "sampling" to generate maximum variety in the data; the development of "concepts" to organize findings; and the use of "logical" methods to explore systematically the imp...
Howard S. Becker is a leading contemporary sociologist who interprets society as collective action and sociology, therefore, as the study of collective action. This volume explores the theory and methods necessary to study collective action and social interaction. Becker includes most of his work on theory and method that has not previously appeared in book form. It reflects his unique way of thinking about and studying society.The first part of the book treats methodological problems as problems of social interaction and lists a series of research problems requiring analytic attention. The second part illustrates Becker's approach through full reports on two of his major research projects. ...
Little is known about the experiences of children living in families affected by severe and enduring mental illness. Drawing on the experiences of 40 families, this text presents the perspectives of children (young carers), their parents and the key professionals in contact with them.
Rooted in actual practice, this collected work identifies the best methodology for creating learning environments that feel both safe and critically stimulating for all involved.
The transition from young layman aspiring to be a physician to the young physician skilled in technique and confident in his dealings with patients is slow and halting. To study medicine is generally rated one of the major educational ordeals of American youth. The difficulty of this process and how medical students feel about their training, their doctor-teachers, and the profession they are entering is the target of this study. Now regarded as a classic, Boys in White is of vital interest to medical educators and sociologists. By daily interviews and observations in classes, wards, laboratories, and operating theaters, the team of sociologists who carried out this firsthand research have not only captured the worries, cynicism, and basic idealism of medical studentsâthey have also documented many other realities of medical education in relation to society. With some sixty tables and illustrations, the book is a major experiment in analyzing and presenting qualitative data.
Explores the unconventional ways we communicate what we know about society to others. Becker explores the many ways knowledge about society can be shared and interpreted through different forms of telling—fiction, films, photographs, maps, even mathematical models—many of which remain outside the boundaries of conventional social science. Eight case studies, including the photographs of Walker Evans, the plays of George Bernard Shaw, the novels of Jane Austen and Italo Calvino, and the sociology of Erving Goffman, provide support for Becker’s argument: that every way of telling about society is perfect—for some purpose. The trick is, as Becker notes, to discover what purpose is served by doing it this way rather than that. From publisher description.