-
1Getting the Design Job Done: Notes on the Social Organisation of Technical WorkJournal of Intelligent Systems 3 (2-4): 319-344. 1993.
-
29II. Wittgenstein and comparative sociologyInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 27 (1-4): 268-276. 1984.Focusing on a discussion by Ruddich and Stassen of the ?Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough?, this paper shows that some of the usual criticisms made by sociologists of Wittgenstein are misplaced. He does not reject causal explanations of beliefs and actions and replace them with some other form of explanation, but dismisses the idea that any explanation is called for here. His argument that the origin of the desire to explain beliefs is to be found in a misconceived parallel between science and ma…Read more
-
12The relationship between ethnomethodology and phenomenologyJournal of the British Society for Phenomenology 16 (3): 221-235. 1985.
-
279The death of Peter Winch in 1997 sparked a revived interest in his work with this book arguing his work suffered misrepresentation in both recent literature and in contemporary critiques of his writing. Debates in philosophy and sociology about foundational questions of social ontology and methodology often claim to have adequately incorporated and moved beyond Winch's concerns. Re-establishing a Winchian voice, the authors examine how such contentions involve a failure to understand central the…Read more
-
7Kuhn: Philosopher of Scientific RevolutionPolity. 2002.Thomas Kuhn's shadow hangs over almost every field of intellectual inquiry. His book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has become a modern classic. His influence on philosophy, social science, historiography, feminism, theology, and (of course) the natural sciences themselves is unparalleled. His epoch-making concepts of ‘new paradigm’ and ‘scientific revolution’ make him probably the most influential scholar of the twentieth century. Sharrock and Read take the reader through Kuhn's work i…Read more
-
12Making Sense of Reification, by Burke C. ThomasonJournal of the British Society for Phenomenology 14 (1): 104-106. 1983.
-
13Life Forms and Meaning Structure, by Alfred Shütz, translated, introduced and annotated by Helmut Wagner. Routledge and Kegan PaulJournal of the British Society for Phenomenology 14 (1): 104-106. 1983.
-
25Cultural Analysis, by R. Wuthnow, J. D. Hunter, A. Bergesen and E. KurzweilJournal of the British Society for Phenomenology 16 (2): 215-216. 1985.
-
36On the demise of the native: Some observations on and a proposal for ethnography (review)Human Studies 5 (1). 1982.
-
37Iv. understanding Peter WinchInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 28 (1-4). 1985.Peter Winch's The Idea of a Social Science has been the subject of repeated misunderstanding. This discussion takes one recent example and shows how Winch's argument is gravely distorted. What is at issue is not, as is usually supposed, whether we can accept or endorse another society's explanations of its activities, but whether we have to look for an explanatory connection between concepts and action. Winch's argument is that before we can try to explain actions, we have to identify them corre…Read more
-
19
-
74Kuhn: philosopher of scientific revolutionsPolity. 2002.Thomas Kuhn's shadow hangs over almost every field of intellectual inquiry. His book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has become a modern classic. His influence on philosophy, social science, historiography, feminism, theology, and (of course) the natural sciences themselves is unparalleled. His epoch-making concepts of 'new paradigm' and 'scientific revolution' make him probably the most influential scholar of the twentieth century. Sharrock and Read take the reader through Kuhn's work i…Read more
-
6Statistical Practice: Putting Society on DisplayTheory, Culture and Society 33 (3): 51-77. 2016.As a contribution to current debates on the ‘social life of methods’, in this article we present an ethnomethodological study of the role of understanding within statistical practice. After reviewing the empirical turn in the methods literature and the challenges to the qualitative-quantitative divide it has given rise to, we argue such case studies are relevant because they enable us to see different ways in which ‘methods’, here quantitative methods, come to have a social life – by embodying a…Read more
-
University of ManchesterRegular Faculty