Method and Measurement in Sociology, fifty years on

Abstract

In this article, we revisit Aaron Cicourel’s classic text Method and Measurement in Sociology. We consider the legacy and influence of the book in the context of the continued and urgent significance of such properly methodological inquiry. We examine, in particular, the ways in which Cicourel’s concern with decisions of measurement – as a situated, contingent and unavoidably practical accomplishment – makes a critical contribution to the understanding of measurement within sociology and serves as continued inspiration for the sociology of contemporary measurement practices in the context of proliferating regimes of institutional performance measurement and league tables, risk assessment and audit. We recommend a critical engagement with this text in the sociological examination of social inquiry – avoiding both overly subjective interpretations of social phenomena and the arbitrary application of crude categories to complex forms of organisation – and in sociology’s continued warrant to critically engage with the practices in and through which social reality is (re)produced.

Keywords:

• Method
• measurement
• categorisation
• ethnography
• interviews
• statistics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. There are, of course, mundane measurement practices too – see Crabtree, Tolmie, and Rouncefield (2013).

2. See http://sociologicalimagination.org/archives/16120 for Howard Becker, interviewed by Les Back, speaking on this and other topics.