Systematic Methods For Analyzing Culture

Systematic Methods for Analyzing Culture is a practical manual that provides step-by-step instruction for collecting and analyzing cultural data. This compact guide explains complex topics in straightforward and practical terms, via research examples, textual and visual software guides, and hands-on exercises. Through each chapter’s introductory examples, the manual illustrates how socially learned knowledge provides group members with shared understandings of the world, which allow for mutually intelligible interactions. The authors then carefully walk readers through the process of eliciting those socially learned, shared, and thus cultural representations of reality, which structure the thinking and practice of individuals inhabiting social groups. Specifically, the book shows how researchers can elicit such thought and behavior via methods such as free lists, pile sorts, cultural consensus and consonance analysis, textual analysis, and personal network research. The book will help both undergraduate and graduate students identify ways to unpack the "black box" of culture, which may be absent or given only cursory attention within their training and respective fields. The book’s clear and systematic step-by-step walkthroughs of each method will also encourage more established researchers, educators, and practitioners—from diverse fields and with varying levels of experience—to integrate techniques for assessing cultural processes into their research, teaching, and practice.

This is a practical guidebook for conducting field research on cultural issues. The first third of the book describes how one constructs a research design. The rest of the book describes different methods that the author used during his own NSF sponsored cross-cultural research on romantic love in Russia, Lithuania, and the U.S. The methods described are: freelists, pile or Q sorts questionnaires, consensus analysis, interviews, process analysis, and participant observation. Participant observation is intentionally left to the end, to emphasize that it is the most difficult of all methods and also to show that participant observations is a more powerful tool when preceded by more structured and systematic methods of data collection. The strengths and weaknesses of these methods are discussed as are the 'pitfalls' that occur when a research design is implemented in the field. The book is useful for anyone who is preparing to conduct fieldwork on socio- cultural issues.

This edited collection presents a range of heretofore unpublished, unavailable methods for the systematic reconstruction of culture from interviews and other discourse. Authors set the design and evolution of their methods in the context of their own research projects, and draw general lessons about investigating culture through discourse. These methods have largely grown out of the work of the cultural models school, and represent the approaches of some of the very best methodologists in cultural anthropology today. An impetus for the volume has been inquiries from researchers, many of them graduate students, about how to conduct the kind of research that cultural models theorists do. This is not a linguistics book; unlike approaches to discourse analysis from linguistics, this volume focuses on culture, treating discourse as a medium especially rich in clues for cultural analysis, and hence a window into culture.

This book covers a huge range of methods used by anthropologists in the study of culture.

`In a cogent and easily accessible style, it provides superb guidelines for observing, interpreting, and understanding the subtle and complex nuances of an organization′s culture. The integration of qualitative research methods with cultural analyses makes this text distinctive and valuable addition to any organizational communication class′ - Linda Putnam, Texas A&M University `The authors skillfully weave together theory, application, and their professional experiences to create a wonderfully useful book that meets the needs of students and practitioners. Anyone who takes cultural analysis seriously should read this book′ - Phillip G Clampitt, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and Metacomm `Organizational Culture in Action fills a real resource gap. It is a "workbook" in the most positive sense of the word. It offers enough step-by-step guidance to give students the confidence they need to move forward independently. At the same time, it does not sidestep the theoretical complexities, conflicts, and confusions surrounding the world of organizational culture and cultural analysis. The book is well conceived, usefully structured, and filled with application exercises that really make sense and are pedagogically justified. My students found it to be both accessible and stimulating′ - John Gribas, Idaho State University What is organizational culture? And how might knowledge of culture improve our organizational performances? This stimulating workbook guides students through data collection, analysis, interpretation, and application of organizational culture data using a practical five-step process. It begins by explaining theories on which organizational culture is based. It then provides guides for gathering information to help improve organizational performance. Based on more than 20 years of experience in using this approach with hundreds of students, the authors help students apply cultural insights to fostering diversity, supporting organizational change, making leadership more dynamic, exploring the link between ethics and culture, and making organizations more effective overall.

Intersectional Analysis as a Method to Analyze Popular Culture: Clarity in the Matrix explores how race, class, gender, sexuality, and other social categories are represented in, and constructed by, some of the most significant popular culture artifacts in contemporary Western culture. Through readings of racialized television sitcoms, LGBTQ+ representation in mainstream American music, the role of Black Panther in Western imperialist projects, and self-love narratives promoted by social media influencers, it demonstrates how novice and emerging researchers can use intersectional theory as an analysis method in the field of cultural studies. The case studies presented are contextualized through a brief history of intersectional theory, a methodological rationale for its use in relation to popular culture, and a review of the ethical considerations researchers should take before, during, and after they approach popular artifacts. Intended to be a textbook for novice and emerging researchers across a wide range of social science disciplines, this book serves as a practical guide to uncover the multiple and interlocking ways oppression is reified, resisted and/or negotiated through popular culture. 2021 Winner of the AESA Critics’ Choice Book Award

The Handbook of Teaching Qualitative and Mixed Research Methods: A Step-by-Step Guide for Instructors presents diverse pedagogical approaches to teaching 71 qualitative and mixed methods. These tried-and-true methods are widely applicable to those teaching and those being trained in qualitative and mixed-methods research. The methods for data collection cover ethics, sampling, interviewing, recording observations of behavior, Indigenous and decolonizing methods and methodologies as well as visual and participatory methods. Methods for analyzing data include coding and finding themes, exploratory and inductive analysis, linguistic analysis, mixed-methods analysis, and comparative analysis. Each method has its own 1,500-word lesson (i.e., chapter) written by expert methodologists from around the globe. In these lessons, contributors give the reader a brief history of the method and describe how they teach it by including their best practices—with succinct, step-by-step instructions—focusing on student-centered experiential and active learning exercises. This comprehensive, one-of a-kind text is an essential reference for instructors who teach qualitative and/or mixed methods across the Social and Behavioral Sciences and other related disciplines, including Anthropology, Sociology, Education, and Health/Nursing research.

Offering students and practitioners an applied approach to the subject, Organizational Culture in Action (OCA) walks them through a six-step model for analyzing an organization’s culture to provide insight into positive communication practices to improve organizational ethics and effectiveness. The authors review relevant theory while integrating a constitutive approach to studying organizational culture and communication. Practical guides for multiple data collection methods are provided, and the workbook format is full of interactive tools that engage students and reinforce learning. The revised OCA cultural analysis model in this edition provides the below elements. • The revised first step in the model – "articulating the value of cultural analysis" includes connections to public relations and crisis management. • A definition of communication and the analysis process that foregrounds ethics throughout the book is included. • Recent research on organizational moral learning is integrated in the ethics chapter, and throughout the book. • The Communicative Constitutive of Organizations is now foregrounded throughout the book, and reflected in a table capturing variable and metaphor approaches to culture. • The latest applied research is integrated in units on diversity, change, leadership, and effectiveness in relation to positive organizational communication. • Enriched guides on multiple data collection methods now includes surveys. • Cases, examples, and applications relevant to crisis, employee engagement, virtual organizations, conflict management, and public relations are provided. Professionals come away equipped to apply cultural insights to fostering inclusiveness in relation to diversity, supporting organizational change, making leadership more dynamic, understanding the link between ethics and culture, and achieving personal and professional growth.