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Qualitative Sociology

Erschienen in:

01.09.2020

Theorizing with Archives: Contingency, Mistakes, and Plausible Alternatives

verfasst von: Armando Lara-Millán, Brian Sargent, Sunmin Kim

Erschienen in: Qualitative Sociology | Ausgabe 3/2020

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Abstract

What are “good” kinds of archival evidence for theorizing? Surprisingly, the word archive and discussions of the archival process rarely appear in methods textbooks or discussions of methods in historical sociology. Yet, much recent historicized sociology relies upon documents left over by a small group of actors to make large-scale claims. To address this oversight, we leverage the evidentiary strengths of qualitative sociology and translate them for historical sociology. Our central argument is that three kinds of archival evidence are likely to produce generalizable claims: positive contingency, learning by mistakes, and plausible alternatives. Examples are illustrated with the cases of jail overcrowding in Los Angeles County, anti-redlining policy in the Federal Reserve, and immigration policy in the Dillingham commission.

Vorheriger Artikel How Do you Repair a Broken World? Conflict(ing) Archives after the Holocaust

Nächster Artikel Beyond Triangulation: Reconstructing Mandela’s Writing Life through Propulsive Facilitation at the Archive

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Titel: Theorizing with Archives: Contingency, Mistakes, and Plausible Alternatives
verfasst von: Armando Lara-Millán
Brian Sargent
Sunmin Kim
Publikationsdatum: 01.09.2020
Verlag: Springer US
Erschienen in: Qualitative Sociology / Ausgabe 3/2020
Print ISSN: 0162-0436
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-7837
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-020-09461-0

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