Six Rules of Qualitative Research: A Post‐Romantic Argument

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Abstract
Qualitative sociology too easily succumbs to a ‘Romantic’ impulse. In a sociological context, the Romantic seeks to understand raw ‘experience’, usually by the use of unstructured interviews. Such work can lack analytic rigour, failing to distinguish the sociologist from the journalist. Following Wittgenstein and Garfinkel, the approach adopted here emphasizes the forms of representation and contexts which inform practical reasoning. It recommends a non‐Romantic sociology–an aspiration curiously shared by Durkheim–and suggests some ways to pursue it.