The Positions of Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Touraine Respecting Qualitative Methods

Abstract

This article exposes the developments of qualitative methodology in French sociology with respect to methods proposed by Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Touraine : 'provoked and accompanied' self-analysis and the sociological intervention. In addition to the presentation of these two methods, the propose of this article is to describe and discuss the position of these two authors on certain problems such as representative ness, objectivity, status of data, epistemological rupture and lastly on the question of the writing by which sociological knowledge is formed from common sense knowledge contained in the data. This brings to a broader discussion on these questions. The strengths and weaknesses of these two methods are finally examined