Lists
Lists
Targarona Rifa, Nuria, Ryan, Louise and Ciordia, Alejandro (2025) Social categories and boundary-making: exploring the potential of interactive visual tools to study boundary work within personal networks. Sociological Research Online: 1360780425. pp. 1-20. ISSN 1360-7804
Research on categorisation and boundary work has often focused on how institutional actors draw boundaries between groups of individuals, overlooking how individuals informally contest or reinforce these boundaries and categories. In this article, we make the case for new interactive qualitative data collection strategies to inductively explore social categorisation and boundary-making processes within personal networks, bringing together the potential of visualisation and personal network research. We introduce an innovative methodological procedure for in-depth interviewing that consists of asking participants to report on specific network members while using two novel interactive visual tools displayed on electronic devices. By discussing examples from our research, we illustrate the method’s potential in the data collection and analysis stages and highlight the technical, methodological, and conceptual contributions it can make to the study of social boundaries.
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial 4.0.
Download (406kB) | Preview
 |
View Item |