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Scientific Practice and Ordinary Action: Ethnomethodology and Social Studies of Science by Michael Lynch. Cambridge University Press, 1994 (ISBN 0 521 43152 2). 333 pages. €35.

In discipline after discipline, old methods and theories of research have been supplanted or supple- mented by new paradigms, strategies and approaches based on naturalistic study of people in their social and cultural environment. Qualitative research privileges no single methodology over any other. Indeed, i t has no theory or para- digm that is distinctly its own. Nor does it have an entire set of methods that are entirely its own. You can become dizzy with methods from interviewing t o semiotics, discourse and phonemal analysis, and even statistics. You can draw on and utilise approaches from phenomenology and hermeneutics to participant observation and enthnomethodology, the subject of this book. All of these research practices can provide important insights and, consequently perhaps, many theoretical paradigms claim use of qualitative research methods and strategies.

Ethnomethodology is a modern interpretive theory. The ‘golden age’ of rigorous qualitative analysis more or less coincided with my doctoral research. Rising stars of qualitative research, like Bogdan and Taylor, Glaser and Strauss, and Lofland and Lofland, attempted to formalise qualitative approaches. During the 1980s, applied qualitative research gained both stature and research strate- gies from grounded theory t o case studies to ethnographic action. Diverse ways of collecting and analysing empirical data also became available. Harold Garfinkel’s ethnomethodological approach t o situated practical action and practical reasoning has emerged as a new approach and been developed over the last thirty years.

Qualitative researchers accept that research is ideologically driven. There is no value-free or bias-free design. Rather, the quali- tative researcher articulates his or her own biases and shows where the questions that guide a study are crafted. A strategy of inquiry

Neurology The latest reprint, from the August 1995 issue of Physiotherapy, contains all the papers from that issue in a handy book form. Please send payment with orders to the Journal Department, CSP, 14 Bedford Row, London WC1 R 4ED.

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combines a bundle of skills, assumptions and practices that a researcher employs as she or he moves from their paradigm to empirical world. Ethnomethod- ology, like phenomenology, examines how human beings construct and give meaning to their action in concrete social skills.

Philosophical conceptions get their hands dirty in research methods since their ability to do the job asked of them by researchers depends on the researchers’ commitment to one or other of the underpinning philosophies - more or less argumentative. Other stars in the pantheon of qualitative research, like Lazersfeld and Garfinkel, have put philosophical considerations to one side in favour of more methodological concerns about fidelity to the phenomenon under study and with a descriptive apparatus rather than an explana- tory one. However, ethnometh- odology has strong connections with a philosophical tradition and is, in fact, both a challenge to sociology and a formal sociology interested in the properties of inter-subjectivity as demonstrated by social actors in the day-to-day

world. Thus, it is a strategy that suits research questions concerning verbal interaction and dialogue in a range of small face-to-face inter- actions.

The author works in ethno- methodology and the sociology of science and in this book he has attempted to show the trans- disciplinary relevance of both. Acknowledging current debates about how science differs from more commonplace modes of reasoning and practical action, he offers a way to investigate the sciences and activities in which common terms like ‘measurement’, ‘proof, ‘observation’, and ‘inference’ are practically and locally relevant. He describes his text as polemical and pragmatic and I am attracted to his admonishment to ‘forget science’. That is, Forget trying to act - or trying to convince others that you are acting - in accordance with some general epistemological scheme. He advocates ethno- methodology as a way out of the cul-de-sac faced by the sociology of knowledge. I think it has potential to get us down off the horns of our dilemma with the medical model but understanding the approach clearly needs a long apprenticeship. The author has been aided by twenty years of contact with Garfinkel himself and attendance a t many lectures and seminars. If you are interested in research methodologies, you will probably find the book stimulating and enjoyable - in small doses. I t took me months to get a fair grip on it.

Anne Parry PhD MCSP DipTP

Women, Sport and Culture by Susan Birrell and Cheryl L Cole. Human Kinetics, Leeds, 1994 (ISBN 0 87322 650 X). 408pages. f31.50.

This hardback publication exam- ines the relation between sport and gender from various feminist view- points. There is a review of current literature and studies into the subject and guidelines about possible theoretical directions in the future.

The book is divided into five parts. Part 1 provides a general overview of feminist theories. Part 2 discusses how women are organ- ised in institutionalised sports as in schools and colleges. Part 3 explores how certain sporting prac-

tices degrade women and how they have dealt with them. Part 4 exam- ines the role of the media. Part 5 looks a t heterosexism and homo- phobia in sport.

This volume was, quite frankly, difficult to read. Some of the socio- logical jargon made it very heavy going. There might, however, be some useful reference material for anyone doing any specific work into the effects of gender in sport as part of undergraduate or postgraduate studies.

I would expect to find this book in the library of a sports science estab- lishment rather than a medical one.

Nicola Phillips MCSP PGDipSplnjandTher

Physiotherapy, April 1996, vol 82, no 4