Core+Categories

This sketch should identify at least two “core categories” that your research will flesh out, describing the material you can use to make them “dense.” The concept of a “core category” comes from the grounded theory tradition of sociology. See Strauss & Corbin (1990) Basics of Qualitative Research. Newbury Park: Sage.

“Advocacy” is a core category in //Advocacy After Bhopal//, for example. A core category:

-accounts for a phenomena or pattern of action/language that is relevant and problematic to people in the study -recurs frequently in the data itself -- such that the intellectual project is a matter of taking up theorizations already initiated by our informants; then we return them, a little more robust, a little more broad in their explanatory power, infused with theories we bring from different scholarly traditions -is integrative, providing a theoretical concept densely saturated by empirical detail - yet privileges scope -- accounting for as much variation as possible, compelling a researcher to "code" for its many dimensions, properties, conditions, consequences, and connections to other things -can be related to many other key categories in the research - overall: is intended to draw different things together, while privileging variation -- creating, in process, new idioms with which we can engage the world.

Here is a review of grounded theory and the concept of a core category.