Sociology is a challenging discipline, ripe with exciting possibilities. It offers sociologists the chance to choose multiple theoretical and methodological traditions that offer a full range of important questions and ways to answer them. A long standing complaint of many sociology professors, however, is that their students seem to have difficulty moving from problem formation to a theoretical approach and then onto an appropriate research design.
In his provocative new book, Robert Alford proposes that the starting point for any researcher in the process and craft of inquiry should...