To do research that really makes a difference--the authors of this book argue--social scientists need questions and methods that reflect the complexity of the world. Bringing together a consortium of voices across a variety of fields, "Methods that Matter" offers compelling and successful examples of mixed methods research that do just…

A volume devoted to aging and the aged in Third World societies focuses on ethnographic case studies from Papua New Guinea, China, India, the Sudan, and Mexico. The first of five articles, "Sweeping Men and Harmless Women: Responsibility and Gender Identity in Later Life" (Dorothy Ayers Counts), examines the perception of gender over the…

Readings on language and literacy within their social context include: "The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages" (Bronislaw Malinowski); "Toward Ethnographies of Communication" (Dell Hymes); "Language as Social Semiotic" (M. A. K. Halliday); "Language and Ideology" (V. N. Volosinov); "Family…