What Is the Empirical?

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Adkins, Lisa and Lury, Celia. 2009. What Is the Empirical? European Journal of Social Theory, 12(1), pp. 5-20. ISSN 1368-4310 [Article]

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Abstract or Description

This special issue poses the question: what is the empirical? More specifically, it
raises this question for the discipline of Sociology. This question, we believe, is
a vital one to pose in our current juncture which witnesses two seemingly paradoxical
movements in regard to the place, status and significance of the empirical
within Sociology. On the one hand, the discipline faces what has been termed a
‘coming crisis’ of empirical Sociology (Savage and Burrows, 2007), an impending
crisis created by the expansion of the production of data relating to the social
world by researchers (and technologies) outside the university. This expansion
puts in question the sociologist’s claim to have a monopoly of expertise in the
techniques of the generation of social data and the analysis of social life.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431008099641