Qualitative Sociology Review is the journal of Symbolic Interactionism, Grounded Theories, Social Worlds/Arenas Studies, Action Studies, Biographical Analysis, Conversation Analysis, Collaborative Social Research, Content Analysis, Discourse Analysis, Deconstructivism, Ethnography, Ethnoscience, Ethnomethodology, Evaluation Social Research, Hermeneutics, Holistic Ethnography, Institutional Ethnography, Phenomenology, Phenomenography, Narrative Studies, Naturalistic Studies, Social Anthropology, Qualitative Case Studies and other qualitative orientations within social sciences.
Faculty of Economics and Sociology of the University of Lodz
State and Civil Society Response to the 2024 Floods in Southern Poland: A Critical Review
This article presents a secondary analysis of research findings on the responses of state institutions and civil society to the September 2024 flood in southern Poland. The study selectively examines results from individual and group interviews regarding flood preparedness, the mobilization of social actors during the crisis, and organizational transformations necessary to enhance state resilience. The primary research objective is to analyze the interfaces between governmental, local, and civil society institutions, conceptualized herein as “crush zones.” The original contribution of this paper lies in operationalizing these zones to evaluate how inter-institutional friction impacts societal resilience. Furthermore, the conclusions of the source report are subjected to a critical evaluation within the context of the existing literature on resilience, with attention to its potential to mask institutional power asymmetries.
Copyright (c) 2026 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Reviewing the Stigma: A Critical Analysis of Conspiracy Belief in Social Science Research
The analysis shows that empirical social science studies examining psychological and social characteristics of conspiracy belief are characterized by a persistent deficit orientation, with a strong tendency to pathologize or stigmatize individuals. The core of this research is an empirical content analysis of 25 social sciences studies published between 2020 and 2025. The analysis identifies a set of recurring patterns in the academic representation of conspiracy believers, including associations with cognitive, social, and psychological deficits, emotional instability, and maladaptive personality traits. The dynamics of marginalization become particularly evident through the examination of discursive practices of delegitimization, which are further sustained by the selective interpretation of research findings. While some studies acknowledge structural or societal factors that may foster conspiracy beliefs, the narrative remains predominantly individualizing and negative. The findings highlight an ambivalence in the scholarly discourse: although conspiracy beliefs are recognized as complex, multidimensional, and sometimes rooted in legitimate grievances, they are frequently reduced to markers of irrationality or deviance. This suggests the need for greater reflexivity within the scientific community, particularly regarding language, methodological choices, and the balance between critique and stigmatization.
Choosing a School, Imagining a Childhood. Emotional, Moral, and Social Dimensions of School Choice in Denmark
International studies have shown that concerns about children’s academic outcomes and future educational opportunities shape parents’ choice of primary school. In Denmark, such concerns are manifested differently due to a less competitive educational system that generally offers broad, flexible pathways. Even so, many Danish parents carefully consider which school will best support their child. Based on ethnographic observations and interviews with 38 parents, this article examines parents’ reflections and concerns regarding school choice. A cultural analytical approach that focuses on understanding how parents make choices and set priorities is used to show that, regardless of social class, their primary concern is ensuring their children’s well-being and psychological development rather than academic outcomes. However, this emphasis implies awareness of other parents’ parenting practices, subtly reflecting but also helping to construct and maintain social distinctions and moral boundaries despite egalitarian ideals and efforts prevalent in Danish society.
“It Looked Like I Was Going Through a Breakup”: Extinction-Based Sleep Training and the Cultural Dilemmas of Mothering
This article explores extinction-based sleep training as a case study of the lived tensions of contemporary motherhood in the United States. Extinction-based sleep training is an umbrella term for techniques used to teach an infant or young child to sleep without parental intervention, often by ignoring a child’s cries. On the one hand, extinction-based sleep training is sanctioned by medical institutions and has been commonly cited in parenting advice over the last century. On the other hand, mothering today is influenced by a culture that heralds “attachment” or “responsive” parenting as the best forms of mothering, often contradicting the very practice of extinction-based sleep training. Drawing on 30 interviews with mothers of children under the age of five, this research explores how mothers who engage in extinction-based sleep training grapple with this tension. First, mothers engage in emotion work to abide by the feeling rules of innate responsiveness. Second, mothers professionalize their sleep decisions, using expert permission, scientific language, and personal qualifications to justify their choices. Finally, mothers engage in a highly rationalized approach to sleep training, in which the practice is measurable and quantifiable.
Two Decades of Reflection and Critique. The Continuous Fear of Replacement—The Renaissance of Feeling and Intuition in the Age of Artificial Intelligence in Qualitative Sociology Review (2005–2025)
On the twentieth anniversary of Qualitative Sociology Review (QSR), this article offers a critical and autoethnographic reflection on how qualitative sociology has responded to technological innovation over the past two decades. I argue that the recurring fear of replacement, first by online publishing, then by CAQDAS software, and now by Artificial Intelligence (AI), reveals a persistent disciplinary anxiety. Anxiety that qualitative sociologists are being reduced to merely instrumental analytical roles. Drawing on personal recollections as a QSR co-founder and a review of global debates, I demonstrate how these fears have shaped our collective identity. Using the example of precariat research, I highlight the impor tance of the intellectualization of qualitative research, underscoring how qualitative researchers have become replaceable by technology. While AI now threatens to take over many tasks once considered the province of our expertise, it also highlights what remains uniquely human in our field: resonance, empathy, intuition, and ontological courage. I propose a competency profile for future qualitative sociol ogists that integrates digital literacy and AI collaboration with a renewed emphasis on embodied and empathetic inquiry. My conclusion presents AI not as the end of qualitative sociology, but as a catalyst for its renewal.
Computer- Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis (CAQDAS)
Emotional Framing of Emotional Deviants as a Political Strategy for Strengthening Collective Emotional Resilience
This article examines how leaders in the United States and the United Kingdom used rhet oric to frame emotional deviants and strengthen collective emotional resilience during two crises in 2024. Drawing on emotion management theory and critical discourse analysis (CDA), we analyze House Speaker Mike Johnson’s response to the Columbia University protests and Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s address during the Southport riots. Both leaders framed dissenters as emotional deviants, deployed emo tional dichotomies, and constructed “others” to consolidate solidarity. We demonstrate that emotional framing functions as a political strategy used to foster cohesion within the dominant group, suppress dissent, and narrow the boundaries of legitimate political expression. Our comparative design reveals cross-case convergence in the use of discursive mechanisms (feeling rules, othering, and surface/deep acting) despite divergent institutional roles and rhetorical situations. This convergence underscores the structural nature of emotional framing and reveals that it is part of the governance toolkit that leaders use in mass-mediated democracies. We contribute to political sociology by showing that collective emo tional resilience is not only discursively constructed to facilitate cohesion but is also employed as an exclusionary practice that marginalizes dissent and reinforces existing power hierarchies. In doing so, we highlight the ethical dilemmas of emotional governance, including the risks of inequality, alienation, and the foreclosure of authentic political expression.
“Care Work” in Facilitative Mediation: Interactional Techniques for Emotional Support in the Context of Conflict Resolution
This paper investigates how facilitative mediators use “care work” techniques when participants display emotional or relational concerns during the session. Conversation analysis is used to analyze a pre-existing dataset of video-recorded small claims and divorce mediation sessions. Techniques the mediators used to do care work include reflection, topic refocusing, complimenting, role modeling, and coaching. The analysis shows how the trajectory of the talk in the mediation session is impacted by care work. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the mediator’s role and the effectiveness of the interaction for the conflict resolution process in mediation.
Too Little, Too Late: Consent Education, Sexual Practice, and Institutional Power in College Life
Despite widespread efforts to address sexual assault on US college campuses through consent education, understanding and practicing consent remains a complex and under-researched area. Consent, defined as clear, continuous, and voluntary communication, is often emphasized as a preventive measure against sexual assault. However, high rates of sexual assault, particularly among college students, highlight the limitations of current educational approaches. Our study examines college students’ conceptualizations of consent, their application of consent in sexual relationships, and their views on the effectiveness of consent education. Findings indicate that many students harbor concerns about consent education, particularly regarding best practices, the influence of alcohol, and individual interpretations of consent. Notably, students report that their educational experiences have a limited impact on their understanding of and practices regarding consent, and they often struggle to apply these concepts effectively in real-world contexts. These findings underscore the need for more nuanced and impactful educational consent strategies that address the complexities of consent in intimate relationships and provide clearer guidance on managing factors like alcohol. This research aims to inform more effective approaches for activists and educational institutions in reducing campus sexual assault.
Selling Sleep: A Qualitative Study of Infant Sleep Coaching in Western Canada
This article theorizes the experience of using a coach to assist with a baby or young child’s sleep “training” as occurring at the intersection of three broader phenomena: the increasing use of paid experts to advise on intimate life; the porosity of the domestic sphere; and ideologies of mothering that impact sleep. It draws on the vernacular of a growing critical literature on children’s sleep, which understands its practice and representation as symptomatic of culturally and historically specific demands on the organization of space and time, as well as understandings of the child as a site of future potential and human capital. To do so, it draws on a qualitative study of sleep coaches and the mothers who hire them. The authors conducted semi-structured, open-ended interviews with thirty women in Western Canada. The interview data revealed that the sleep deprivation entailed in having a new baby is both a dramatic (and often under-estimated) feature of human facticity and a socially mediated crisis. Paradoxically, the overabundance of expert advice on children’s sleep made mothers more likely to recruit a coach for customized support. The advice coaches provided, and how mothers interpreted it, balanced the pragmatic and the ideological, among other things, revealing poorly evidenced but pervasive anxieties about attachment, independence, mental health, and future well-being.
Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Is There a Sociologist in the Room? Raising the Sociological Voice in Educational Spaces
Educational spaces are both material and human sites. While people design and build the physical space of educational institutions, these spaces also shape human behavior, interaction, and thought, playing a crucial role in the articulation of discourse. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in educational research tends to rely primarily on document and text analysis, often overlooking the spatial dimensions of discourse and how social actors interpret the spaces they inhabit. This article presents the use of semiotic codes analysis of educational spaces as a methodological tool for studying discourse in institutions where ethnographic access is limited. Drawing on a qualitative study conducted in twelve Israeli state schools, this article examines how global discourses of entrepreneurialism and aspiration, which promote an ideal of a future-oriented and self-managing individual, are expressed and interpreted in everyday school settings. Through observations, walking interviews, and semiotic analysis, the study demonstrates how spatial articulations, wall texts, and visual displays work together with educators’ interpretations to shape and sometimes contest dominant ideals. The analysis merges critical spatial semiotics with a pragmatic approach to everyday meaning-making, offering a methodologically innovative and reflexive approach to discourse analysis in education.
The Experience of Everyday Life Alongside Virtual Companions. A Case Study of Human-Chatbot Encounters
This article a nalyses i nteractions between a human and a virtual entity, namely, a chatbot. These encounters are considered in the context of cyberspace, understood as a specific social interactional space. They are also examined in the context of an individual’s experiences, which are intertwined with ongoing social and cultural changes. This text engages with research on chatbots, complementing their findings with an in-depth study of the user perspective. The analysis is based on data from an in-depth interview with Laura, conducted as part of a research project on human interactions and relationships with chatbots. The case study of Laura’s experiences explores her perception of interacting with a chatbot, focusing on the meanings humans assign to such interactions, concerning the interviewee’s emic perspective. The article examines how a human interlocutor perceives chatbots and the role they can play in an individual’s life. In addition, the reflection in the text touches on the theme of humans seeing themselves in the responses of a chatbot, which lacks self-awareness and cannot understand the content it produces in the same way a human can. The article deepens understanding of chatbots as everyday companions, virtual friends, and social actors, encounters with whom are part of today’s reality.
COVID-19 as a Family Stressor: A Life Course Exploration of Family Stress Among Rural Grandparents and Their Adult Children in Upstate New York
COVID-19 has brought about many changes for rural families, affecting their family roles, childcare responsibilities, financial status, and experiences of family stress. In this study, I examine (1) how rural grandparents and their adult children perceive family stress related to their family roles and responsibilities during COVID-19 and (2) how rural grandparents and their adult children have coped with the stress of family roles and responsibilities during COVID-19. Data comes from 44 in-depth interviews. The findings of this study suggest that COVID-19, a family stressor, has been the source of stress among rural grandparents and their adult children. The findings suggest that families adapted through a range of improvised strategies such as relocating, abstaining from employment, taking on additional childcare, and adjusting personal identities to maintain stability during uncertainty. These adaptations were not merely practical but often guided by moral and faith-based reasoning, allowing participants to maintain agency despite constraints. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, grandparents played a significant role in childcare, sometimes to the point of being the primary childcare providers (Harrington Meyer 2014). COVID-19 has further complicated the roles and responsibilities of rural grandparents and their adult children. COVID-19 brought changes to rural families, particularly in the areas of their employment, family roles and relationships, childcare responsibilities, and sense of hope.
The Sociality and Liminality of Bangkok’s Cannabis Cafés
In June 2022, Thailand became the first country in Asia to decriminalize cannabis, only to face opposition from conservative political forces that are now attempting to pass policies that will recriminalize its recreational use. My qualitative study conducted between summer 2022 and the conclusion of 2024 examines the sociality of 45 cannabis cafés in the capital Bangkok despite these developments, enhanced by my status as having grown up in the city and speaking the Thai language and local Chinese dialects. Employing urban sociological concepts such as Ray Oldenburg’s third places and Lyn Lofland’s notion of the urban experience as characterized by interactions with strangers, I describe Bangkok’s cannabis cafés as third places that reduce the status of the stranger, and thus destress the actor in its lifeworld. These dynamics are argued to counter Bangkok’s over-stimuli and stressor-filled experiences, now challenged by policy developments that place the continuing operations of cannabis cafés in a liminal state.
Recording Solo: Managing Long-Distance Data Collection within Audio Diary Research with Healthcare Professionals
This paper explores the methodological and reflexive implications of using audio diaries in remote qualitative research with healthcare professionals. Drawing on a three-month study involving 18 participants who submitted audio recordings weekly, complemented by follow-up interviews, the article examines how this method enables the collection of rich, emotionally nuanced, and temporally proximate narratives. The audio diary format proved particularly effective for engaging professionals under high emotional and organizational pressure, offering a flexible and participant-led space for reflection. The study also sheds light on the challenges of sustaining participation over time, the importance of ethical responsiveness, and the role of the researcher in supporting engagement at a distance. Ultimately, the paper proposes the concept of long-distance reflexivity to describe how both participants and researchers negotiate meaning, presence, and vulnerability in fully remote research settings.
Labor of Care and Contracts: A Study of Surrogacy after the Transnational Ban in India
Characterized by the interplay of care and contracts, surrogacy is an exclusive form of gendered work. The paper is based on a micro-level ethnographic study exploring the lived and embodied challenges of commercial gestational surrogates in Gujarat, India, who were undertaking surrogacy work after the ban on transnational surrogacy. The experiential accounts collected through in-depth, face-to-face interviews bear the challenges, stigma, and shame involved in surrogacy work. Not only is surrogacy work devalued, deprived of dignity, and shrouded in secrecy, but it is also corrupted by contracts, complicated by alienation and relinquishment of the gestated child. Surrogates disguise their work and stay in surrogacy hostels. Poverty in India compels many women to engage in surrogacy to eke out a living and improve their living conditions. Surrogate mothers are poorly paid, deprived of health benefits and legal security, they receive only twenty percent of the total cost of the surrogacy arrangement, and are also treated as fungible and disposable. The paper adopts the ethics of care perspective to analyze surrogacy arrangements. Such a perspective is directed toward promoting a responsible and humane attitude toward commercial surrogates. It is motivated by the need to uphold the dignity of the surrogates, their legal rights, and the social recognition of their work. The application of care ethics can alleviate the neglect and oppression of surrogates.
Ethical Processes and Dilemmas during Research with Youth on Cyber-Risk
In this article, we reflect on the ethical processes and dilemmas we encountered in almost a decade of qualitative research with teenagers about digital technologies and cyber-risk. Our research underscores both the opportunities and challenges of teenagers’ engagements with digital technologies, including cyberbullying and image-based sexual harassment and abuse (i.e., non-consensual sexting), on popular social media platforms. Our current research explores teenagers’ experiences with cyber-risk during the COVID-19 pandemic, including managing homeschooling (due to lockdowns), online addiction, mental health challenges, and encounters with disinformation and misinformation. We discuss our experiences with focus group facilitation and one-to-one semi-structured interviews, specifically our reflections on ethical processes encountered in the field, such as fostering rapport with young participants given the significant age gaps and our lack of knowledge at times, regarding digital technologies or topics like image-based sexual abuse. We also discuss our experiences conducting research with teenagers under the new capacity to consent ethical framework, which positions children and youth as often having agency to consent to research independently from their parents or legal guardians. Here, we detail reflections on navigating a new approach and highlight some of the considerations arising from ascertaining assent and consent. Centralizing issues of developing rapport, trust, and ethical processes related to interactional dynamics during interviews, the paper provides insights and possible strategies for those conducting research with children and youth.
Work, Identity, and Paradoxes. The Intertwining of New Technologies, Algorithm Logic, and Individual Experiences
Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Disruptive Masculinities? Male Workers Challenging Gender(ed) Norms in Technology Startup Organizations
The tech industry is one of the most influential and profitable sectors of the new economy, with startup organizations playing a significant role within it. Existing research highlights that these emerging companies remain male-dominated—structurally, normatively, and symbolically. However, researchers rarely consider how norms and gender inequalities, which privilege men and masculinities, might be questioned and negotiated by male employees, especially those in positions of privilege. This article examines how men occupying different roles in tech startups contest, transgress, or redefine dominant gender(ed) norms in their workplaces. Drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted between 2021 and 2023 with 43 male and female startup employees—as part of a broader study funded by the Polish National Science Centre (grant no. 2020/37/N/HS6/03913)—this analysis demonstrates how men engaging in emotional labor (on individual and collective levels), actively reconfigure the gender regime and “disrupt” the reproduction of normative models of masculinity within their companies.
The Biographical Experience of Being a Stay-at-Home Mother of a Large Family Versus Online Activity. A Case Study
The article presents the analysis of two cases of women reconstructed based on autobiographical narrative interviews. They are mothers of many children and are active online, having accounts on Instagram and creating content. Most research focused on the activities of online creators is based on an analysis of their web content. Due to the type of research data, autobiographical narratives and the interpretations of one’s biographical experiences and actions are the main frame of this analysis. Both narrators represent contemporary modern women, combining opposing patterns of tradition and modernity, which are often presented in public discourses as contradictory or mutually excluding. Internet activity seems to remedy the accompanying experience of tension and supports women’s biographical work. What stands out is the identity work undertaken by the two narrators, whose frame of reference is the tension between the planned and voluntary entry into traditionally understood motherhood and the plan for one’s development inscribed in the identity of an educated modern woman socialized in a culture of individualism. In this respect, their online activity appears to have a compensatory function in their biographies.
Can You Make Money from Being Queer? Commodification of Queerness on Social Media as Biographical Experience
The article presents a case study of an autobiographical narrative interview with Adam—a young influencer who creates books-related content. Special attention is given to Adam’s relationship with his audience and how it influences his self-perception. Of significant importance to the influencer’s biography are Adam’s non-heteronormative sexual orientation and the stigma associated with it. Using the sociolinguistic tools of Fritz Schütze’s biographical approach and its process structures, Erving Goffman’s theory of stigma, and Anselm Strauss’s concept of social worlds, I attempt to reconstruct the processes related to influencer activity on social media. The analysis reveals tensions between the ideological vision of one’s duties and the necessity to meet the expectations of the audience, including in the context of accusations related to the commodification of queerness. The text attempts to capture the possible biographical meanings of being an influencer and the identity-related entanglements of this role. It also highlights potential disruptions to biographical work caused by activities within social media.
Navigating Recognition: The Symbolic Struggles in the Biographies of Young Polish Internet Content Creators
This paper aims to examine the symbolic struggles embedded in the biographies of internet content creators. Pursuing a relatively new profession that lacks symbolic legitimization necessitates both explanatory and emotional labor to justify a “biographical action scheme” that does not align with existing “institutionalized schedules for organizing biographies,” in Fritz Schütze’s sense. Drawing on interviews with young Polish internet content creators, I analyze these struggles through the lens of Axel Honneth’s concept of the “struggle for recognition” and Michèle Lamont’s notion of “symbolic boundaries.” The empirical analysis suggests that the initial struggle involves proving their worth to close family and friends, who may question the legitimacy of being an influencer compared to a stable 9-to-5 job. This tension is particularly pronounced in intergenerational relationships, such as between children and their parents. The second struggle occurs between content creators and their audiences. Here, the challenge is defending oneself against justified or unjustified accusations and hate speech. The third struggle is inherent to those operating at the intersection of various social fields. For these influencers, who build their content on popular science, the lack of recognition or hostility from the academic community is another serious biographical problem. The necessity to engage in constant power struggles, which demand considerable skill, challenges the widespread perception of internet influencing as a “childish” profession—one that offers an enjoyable job paired with undeservedly high earnings.
Affective Governmentality in Food Delivery Platforms: A Study of Bolt Food Riga Push Notifications
The paper uses a governmentality perspective to discuss the issue of control in food delivery platforms through analysis of 4083 push notifications sent by the Bolt Food platform to its couriers in Riga from 2020 to 2023. It examines intensity, rationalization, subjectification, and the use of emojis in push notifications and demonstrates affective governmentality technology to control labor mobility. The analysis contributes to the literature on algorithmic management that focuses predominantly on the control embedded in the platform application. Suppose a platform application is viewed as an algorithmic panopticon in which a worker is free to enter or exit by signing on or off. In that case, other semi-automated control technologies, such as push notifications, are affective persuasive tools for bringing workers into the panopticon that limits workers’ autonomy and control.
Aspirations and Networks of Italian Migrants to Bogota. A Typology
This paper aims to understand the individual and relational motives supporting migration from Italy to Bogota. Our concern is to achieve a nuanced understanding of how aspirations, on the one hand, and social networks, on the other, shape migratory decisions and structure in broader migration patterns. To do this, we chose a qualitative approach based on narrative interviews with Italians living in Bogota, which were selected through snowball sampling. As a result, we produced a typology of five different migration pathways: globetrotters aspiring to international mobility with no mediators supporting their process of continuous migration; careerists who accept moving on demand of their company for advancing their career supported by professional mediators; risk-takers aspiring to professional independence and supported in their entrepreneurial project by weak ties; tied migrants aspiring to better family quality of life and supported by strong familial ties; and exiled migrants who find a refuge from the difficulties they encounter in Italy and supported by strong professional ties.
Sing A Song for Home: How Displaced Iranian Song-Writers in LA Conceive of Home and Homeland
We ask how being apart from home impacts the very definition of home. We conducted a content analysis of songs produced by Iranians who have left their first “home” in Iran and resettled in Los Angeles. Our findings suggest that distance from one’s home expands the definition and image of home from a structure where one dwells and calls home, to an imagined community at the personal (home family), local (hometown), and regional (homeland) levels. The 1979 revolution in Iran caused many people, including singers and songwriters, to immigrate. Many of them moved to Europe and North America. We analyzed songs from 1979 to 1999, produced in Los Angeles, as the heart of Iranian pop music after the revolution, focusing on the concept of “home.” Four main themes emerged: the “body of the home,” which includes windows, niches, and gardens; “homeland as home;” “home and family;” “home as a heaven to remember and a haven for return,” which involves home as a place for making memories and recalling them and home as a retreat. We explain how these themes are related to Iran’s situation post-revolution, the image of the Iranian home, and the singers’ situation in Los Angeles after the revolution. The most significant finding is the relationship between home and homeland. Songs use home as a metaphor for the homeland, even when describing the body of the home. The sadness about the destroyed home, hope to return to home, and the tendency to come back to their mother (or motherland) point to the singers’ emotions about their homeland. The distance from home has changed the conceptualization of “home.” The borders of home are not around the songwriters’ houses or intimate families anymore, but they are around the homeland.
Why Are There So Many Ways to Measure Pain? Epistemological and Professional Challenges in Medical Standardization
Pain is a profoundly subjective phenomenon, which remains largely impenetrable to the tools of biomedicine. How, then, do pain researchers—specifically, quantitative medical researchers whose work is predicated on transforming pain into numbers—measure pain in their studies? How do they select and justify specific measures, and does this process lead to measurement standardization? This article analyzes 79 published medical studies about low back pain (LBP) and 20 interviews with pain experts (including 15 with authors of the reviewed studies) to address these questions. Findings reveal that LBP researchers use an extremely diverse set of outcome measures in their studies, typically based on patient self-report. The subjectivity and interpersonal incomparability of self-reports are widely acknowledged but treated as largely unproblematic—a matter of acceptable measurement error rather than “epistemological purgatory” (Barker 2005). However, researchers frequently disagree on what constitutes a “pain measure.” Many respond to the considerable challenge of treating pain intensity by redefining their work—sometimes in the face of resistance from patients—around other, putatively more treatable domains, such as disability. The diverse, arguably unstandardized approaches to measuring pain appear attributable less to pain’s epistemological fragility than to its therapeutic intractability, and to the medical community’s diffuse social structures and professional goals.
Passions, Travel, and Cultural Participation—Intergenerational Transmission of Middle-Class Lifestyles
The article addresses the intergenerational transmission of a middle-class lifestyle in Poland. The analysis demonstrates mechanisms through which cultural practices are inherited in the context of leisure activities. The following categories of leisure activities were identified as being of particular interest: 1) passions, that is, the most pronounced leisure interests, including sport, 2) travel, 3) various forms of cultural participation, such as reading, visual and performing arts, or audiovisual content. The innovative research plan included reanalysis, revisits, and new in-depth interviews. The findings are based on a substantial corpus of qualitative empirical material, comprising 66 individual in-depth interviews. This material covers interviews conducted approximately twenty years before my research, new interviews with the same participants conducted subsequently, and interviews with their adult children. The aforementioned methodological procedures permitted comparisons over time and between generations. Middle-class parents proactively transmit values and practices to their children that are instrumental in maintaining their children’s social status. The effort to format lifestyle messages has significant implications for the long-term viability of this social structure segment in Poland. The analyses conducted indicate the cultural identity of the middle class and the stability of values and practices enacted in non-work and non-educational leisure time. Consequently, they are expected to yield tangible benefits in the professional and educational domains for subsequent generations. This represents the anticipated return on investment in leisure time for middle-class children.
Game-Based Technique for Studying Identity Change in Disturbed Communities
Studying social identity change in non-standard contexts is always challenging. This article presents a new research technique that allows researchers to obtain rich and ethical data even in adverse and fragile conditions. It is based on the popular associative card game and combines projective and game-based data generation methods. The game component adds a playful atmosphere to the research environment and encourages interaction, while the projective aspect allows participants to express identity elements more easily. The features of the new technique presented in this paper are demonstrated through a case study of the post-2020 Belarusian diaspora. In addition to data generation, I describe a coding process that blends deductive and inductive approaches and show how textual and visual data can be analyzed together. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of this innovative technique are assessed, including creative expression, a safe space for dialogue, and the ability to capture nuanced perspectives.
Copyright (c) 2024 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Class Clash: Unpacking Conflicts of Class Affiliation in the Bodily Practices of Polish Men Under 35 Years with Working-Class Origins
The article examines conflicts of class affiliation in the bodily practices of young Polish men of working-class origin. The empirical basis of the analysis is individual in-depth interviews with biographical elements carried out in 2022 as part of a study on the bodily practices of four generations of Polish men. The article contains the state of research on practices in the context of class affiliation. The theoretical framework is based on the concept of classist phantasm and middle-class hegemony. The study shows the critical importance of working-class backgrounds in shaping and controlling the body throughout the lifespan. The piggy bank ethos is one of the key categories emerging from the analysis, and research participants remain trapped in negotiating class identity reflected in bodily practices. In negotiating their class affiliation, men experience conflict with the values of the family of origin from their early teenage years. As they study and strive for advancement, they pay a hidden emotional cost, as they must authenticate themselves as deserving of their place in the middle class. Even if they are upgrading to the middle class (as working adults), they remain in the power of the piggy bank ethos. The study’s main conclusion is that social advancement is only partly achievable. Climbing up the social ladder, the study participants still balance middle-class practices and working-class values, which become apparent in what they do about the body.
In-Depth Interviews with Biographical Elements
The “Imperceptibly Narrowing Diamond” Generation—Adaptation Strategies of the Generation X Representatives Toward Their Old Age
Population aging is becoming one of society’s priority issues. An assumption is that it is beneficial (the benefits for the individual and society are shown in the text) for people currently of working age (representatives of Generation X) to anticipate their old age. In this article, the results of a qualitative study are presented. The aim is to identify the adaptation strategies of representatives of Generation X toward their old age. The theoretical basis was set by reflections on generations, enriched by the metaphor of the “imperceptibly narrowing diamond.” The data collection method was an unstructured interview with a standardized list of information sought, conducted with ten people (with higher education) from Generation X. As a result of the thematic analysis, two adaptation strategies toward old age emerged for the representatives of Generation X: proactive and reactive.
Strengths and Limitations of an Online Qualitative Survey in Times of Social Crisis: Example of the COVID-19 Pandemic
The aim of the article is to argue that an online qualitative survey (OQS) is a useful research technique that is feasible to apply during a social crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic. An OQS has an unclear status in the spectrum of research techniques, as it combines features of quantitative and qualitative research, and there is little recognition in the literature of its advantages and disadvantages in the context of other research techniques used during a social crisis. We describe our research experiences of using this technique and the experiences of our survey participants. We also compare the strengths and limitations of using an OQS during the COVID-19 pandemic against other techniques used at the time.
Non-Standardized Qualitative Written Accounts