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Cited by 914

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 43 of the 43 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology

Savage, Mike, Burrows, Roger·2007·Sociology

Abstract

This ar ticle argues that in an age of knowing capitalism, sociologists have not adequately thought about the challenges posed to their expertise by the proliferation of `social' transactional data which are now routinely collected, processed and analysed by a wide variety of private and public institutions. Drawing on British examples, we argue that whereas over the past 40 years sociologists championed innovative methodological resources, notably the sample survey and the in-depth interviews, which reasonably allowed them to claim distinctive expertise to access the `social' in powerful ways, such claims are now much less secure. We argue that both the sample survey and the in-depth interview are increasingly dated research methods, which are unlikely to provide a robust base for the jurisdiction of empirical sociologists in coming decades. We conclude by speculating how sociology might respond to this coming crisis through taking up new interests in the `politics of method'.

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Metadata

Authors
Savage, M., & Burrows, R.
Venue
Sociology
Published
2007-10
Volume
41
Issue
5
Pages
885-899
ISSN
  • 0038-0385 (ISSN-L)
  • 1469-8684
OpenAlex
W2132874039
Cited by
914
References
43
FWCI
88.06
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1177/0038038507080443
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Savage, M., & Burrows, R. (2007). The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology. Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038507080443

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Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.