Semiotics and Fieldwork - Paperback

by Peter K. Manning (Author)

Ethnographic fieldwork and formal linguistic analysis have traditionally been thought to be diametric opposites. But in this provocative analysis, these diverse methods of qualitative research are demonstrated to be complementary. The author reveals that the formalism of semiotics adds breadth and depth to the particularism of traditional fieldwork; similarly, the many details of ethnographic description give semiotic analysis a more realistic perspective. After examining the potential benefits and limitations of each method of analysis, the author shows how the synthesis of the two is potentially more powerful that either alone. "This book succeeds in bringing together two branches of science that are rather different with respect to traditions and levels of abstraction." --Methodika "Provides a brief and useful statement of the method....It is both a summary of what has been said and a commentary on the simultaneous deformalization and formalization of American life." --Social Forces

Author Biography

Peter K. Manning holds the Elmer V. H. and Eileen M. Brooks Chair in the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University, Boston, MA. He has taught at Michigan State, MIT, Oxford, and the University of Michigan, and was a Fellow of the National Institute of Justice, Balliol and Wolfson Colleges, Oxford, the American Bar Foundation, the Rockefeller Villa (Bellagio), and the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Wolfson College, Oxford. Listed in Who′s Who in America, and Who′s Who in the World, he has been awarded many contracts and grants, the Bruce W. Smith and the O.W. Wilson Awards from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and the Charles Horton Cooley Award from the Michigan Sociological Association. The author and editor of some 20 books, including Privatization of Policing: Two Views (with Brian Forst) (Georgetown University Press, 2000), his research interests includes the rationalizing and interplay of private and public policing, democratic policing, crime mapping and crime analysis, uses of information technology, and qualitative methods.