The moderate interpretation of the Thomas´Theorem suggests little more than a failure at the assessment of objective situation. Its radical interpretation allows thinking the existence of new social reality. The postmodern condition facilitates this understanding. The underlying idea is not recent; Marx´s theory is a precurson to the constructionist approach. The canonical foundations of social constructionism were laid by Berger and Luckmann, who sought to reconcile Weberian and Durkheimian traditions in their concept of the social construction of reality. Phenomena like gender or consumerism appear to be suitable objects for such an approach. Attribution of meaning in culture nonetheless offers to expand the principle to any domain and, in some cases, such as the labeling theory of deviation, its tries its own limits. Applied to science itself, the pricniple raises questions about the status of scientific knowledge that circumvent epistemological issues. Social consturctionism is itself surpassed by the linguistic turn and discursive theories of soicety. The notion of society as text may challenge realist and objectivist positions. In order to remain productive, however, the notion must retain the presupposition of order and rules of reading and thus admit that, actually, society is not merely a text., Miloslav Petrusek., and Obsahuje použitou literaturu
William Foote Whyte’s Street Corner Society is a classic study in which research was carried out on an Italian slum in a large US city. The methodology and conclusions of the study, however, depart from the standard typology. It was not community research, or a case study, and it did not even fit the narrative model of qualitative research. Whyte’s study did not use quantitative methods and yet reached analytical conclusions. Interpersonal relations are its primary focus. It tries to reveal the patterns of recurring group activities with the objective of capturing the hierarchy in small groups and the rules these groups are guided by. This article examines the motivations of Whyte’s influential study, his research strategy and his main method - participant observation. In the concluding section of this article there is a discussion of the basic paradigmatic debate in which , Norman K. Denzin, Laurel Richardson and others criticised the methodology of the Street Corner Society while Arthur J. Vidich and other scholars praised this study’s innovative approach., Hynek Jeřábek., and Obsahuje bibliografii