Problems of Reflexivity and Dialectics in Sociological Inqury

This is a work of social theory and philosophy which seeks to make the constitution of social theory a social activity. It is essentially a collaborative text, by five authors, committed to a re-awakening of some of the forgotten dimensions of social theorizing. The collaborative work was originally occasioned by an attempt to analyse the notion of social stratification and its treatment in the sociological tradition. The authors main concern here is with the nature of social theorizing, and in particular the difference between Self and Other, being and beings, Language and Speech. The papers in the book focus on themes that are fundamental to the sense of inquiry and tradition which they are concerned to display. The themes discussed include speech, Language, Identity, Difference, Critical Tradition, Community, Metaphor, Dialectics, Observing and Reading."

Sandywell is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of York.

David Silverman is Visiting Professor in the Business School, University of Technology, Sydney. He has lived in London for most of his life, where he attended Christ's College Finchley and did a BSc (Economics) at the London School of Economics in the 1960s. Afterwards, he went to the USA for graduate work, obtaining an MA in the Sociology Department, University of California, Los Angeles. He returned to LSE to write a PhD on organization theory. This was published as The Theory of Organizations in 1970.Apart from brief spells teaching at UCLA, his main teaching career was at Goldsmiths College. His three major research projects were on decision making in the Personnel Department of the Greater London Council (Organizational Work, written with Jill Jones, 1975), paediatric outpatient clinics (Communication and Medical Practice, 1987) and HIV-test counselling (Discourses of Counselling, 1997). He pioneered a taught MA in Qualitative Research at Goldsmiths in 1985 and supervised around 30 successful PhD students. Since becoming Emeritus Professor in 1999, he has continued publishing methodology books. He has also run workshops for research students in Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, France, Sri Lanka and Tanzania.Besides all this, David's other interests include classical music, literary fiction, bridge, county cricket and spending time with his grandchildren.

Maurice Roche is lecturer in sociology at the University of Sheffield, and teaches undergraduate modules on the Sociology of the EU, Leisure, Policy and Society, and the Sociology of Popular Culture, as well as postgraduate modules on Global Social Policy and International Childhood Studies.

He has authored and contributed to a number of titles, including "Mega-Events and Modernity: Olympics and Expos in the Growth of Global Culture" (Routledge, 2000), "Europe and Cosmopolitanism" (Liverpool University Press, 2007) and "The Handbook of Nations and Nationalism "(SAGE, 2006), as well as writing articles for journals such as "Citizenship Studies", "Time and Society" and "Cultural Policy".