Martyn Hammersley
Martyn Hammersley (born 1949) is a British sociologist whose main publications cover social research methodology and philosophical issues in the social sciences.[1][2]

Biography
He studied sociology as an undergraduate at the London School of Economics (1967–70), and was subsequently a postgraduate student in the sociology department at the University of Manchester, obtaining an MPhil and PhD with a thesis reporting an ethnography of an inner-city secondary school.[3] At that time Manchester was a major centre for ethnomethodology, where it was in tension with symbolic interactionism and Marxism, and his work was influenced by all of these approaches.[4][5]
After a research fellowship and temporary lectureship at Manchester, he obtained a permanent position at The Open University in 1975. He was recruited to work on E202 Schooling and Society, a course that was subsequently embroiled in a public controversy about 'Marxist bias'.[6] He remained at the Open University until retirement in 2015, when he became Emeritus Professor of Education and Social Research.[7]
Sociological work
Hammersley's early research was in the sociology of education, with a particular focus on processes of classroom interaction in secondary schools.[8] He joined the Open University at a time when it was one of the leading centres for the 'new sociology of education',[9] and was involved in subsequent debates about the character and value of the various kinds of work coming under this heading.[10][11]
Many of his publications have been concerned with methodological and philosophical issues arising in sociology, and across the social sciences generally. These issues have included: the nature and role of theory, the criteria by which qualitative research should be evaluated, and the issues of objectivity and value neutrality.[12][13] He wrote a book on Herbert Blumer's methodological ideas, locating these in historical context.[14] He has written a number of articles on analytic induction (an approach developed by Florian Znaniecki), examining its history. In What's Wrong with Ethnography?, he advocates what he referred to as "subtle realism",[15] as opposed to various forms of relativism and scepticism.[16][17][18][19] With Paul Atkinson, he wrote an introduction to ethnography, now in its fourth edition.[20]
He has also examined issues surrounding the qualitative-quantitative divide, and the nature of qualitative research.[21][22][23]
More recently he has co-authored a book on ethics and qualitative research.[24] He is a critic of ethical regulation, in other words of institutional review boards and research ethics committees,[25] and has sought to clarify the concept of academic freedom.[26][27]
Hammersley has been involved in a series of controversies, for example over feminist methodology,[28] about racism and anti-racist research,[29] and concerning the character of qualitative research and the criteria of validity appropriate to it.[30][31] He has also questioned the arguments of the evidence-based practice movement.[32][33][34][35][36] In The Limits of Social Science, he argued that social science is limited to the discovery of value-relevant explanations for social phenomena, a position that is at odds with the grandiose claims frequently made for its potential contribution to public policy making and to transformative political action.[37]
He has written about ethnomethodology, assessing its radical claims.[38] Most recently, he has produced books about the concept of culture and about other key sociological concepts.[39]
References
- "The British Sociological Association". Britsoc.co.uk. Retrieved 21 April 2016.
- "Google Scholar Citations". Google Scholar. Retrieved 21 April 2016.
- Hammersley, M. (1980). A Peculiar World? Teaching and Learning in an Inner City School, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester.
- Psathas, G. (2008) 'Reflections on the history of Ethnomethodology: the Boston and the Manchester "Schools"', The American Sociologist, 39, pp. 38–67.
- Worsley, Peter (2008). An Academic Skating on Thin Ice. New York: Berghahn. p. Chapter 8.
- Gould, J. (1977) "Scholarship or propaganda?", Times Educational Supplement (London), 4 February 1977, p. 20.
- "The Open University: The Senate: Minutes" (PDF). Open.ac.uk. Retrieved 21 April 2016.
- Hammersley, Martyn (1989). Classroom Ethnography. Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press.
- Brooks, C. St John. "Sociologists and education", New Society, 4 September 1980.
- Atkinson, P., et al (1988) 'Qualitative research traditions', Review of Educational Research, 58, 2, pp. 231–50.
- Hammersley, M. "An Ideological Dispute: Accusations of Marxist Bias in the Sociology of Education during the 1970s", Contemporary British History, December 2015.
- Hammersley, M. The Politics of Social Research, London, Sage, 1995.
- Hammersley, M. Taking Sides in Social Research: Essays on partisanship and bias, London, Routledge, 2000.
- Hammersley, Martyn (1989). The Dilemma of Qualitative Method: Herbert Blumer and the Chicago tradition. London, UK: Routledge.
- Hammersley, Martyn (1992). What's Wrong with Ethnography. London: Routledge. pp. ch3.
- Brewer, John (2000). Ethnography. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.
- Hillyard, S. (2010) "What's (still) wrong with ethnography?", New Frontiers in Ethnography, Bingley, Emerald.
- Banfield, G. (2004). "What's really wrong with ethnography?" (PDF). International Education Journal. 4: 53–63.
- Martyn Hammersley 'A Response to Banfield's "What's really wrong with ethnography?"' (2012) https://martynhammersley.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/response-to-grant-banfield_s-e28098what_s-really-wrong-with-ethnographyf.pdf
- Hammersley, M. & Atkinson, P. (2019). Ethnography: Principles in Practice, Fourth edition. London, UK: Routledge.
- Hammersley, M. 'The relationship between quantitative and qualitative research', in J Richardson (ed.) Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods for Psychology and the Social Sciences, Leicester, British Psychological Society Books, 1996.
- Cooper, B., Glaesser, J., Gomm, R. and Hammersley, M. Challenging the Qualitative-Quantitative Divide: Explorations in Case-Focused Causal Analysis, London, Continuum, 2012.
- What is Qualitative Research?, London, Bloomsbury, 2012.
- Hammersley, M. and Traianou, A. Ethics and Qualitative Research: Controversies and contexts, Sage, London: 2012.
- Hammersley, M. (2009) "Against the ethicists: on the evils of ethical regulation", International Journal of Social Research Methodology 12, 3, pp. 211–25
- "Let's be serious about academic freedom". Times Higher Education. 22 April 2015. Retrieved 21 April 2016.
- Hammersley, Martyn (April 2016). "Can academic freedom be justified? Reflections on the arguments of Robert Post and Stanley Fish". Higher Education Quarterly. 70 (2): 108–26. doi:10.1111/hequ.12086.
- Gelsthorpe, L. (1992) 'Response to Martyn Hammersley's paper "On Feminist Methodology"', Sociology, Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 213–18
- Gillborn, D. and Drew, D. (1993) "The politics of research: Some observations on "methodological purity", New Community, 19, 2, pp. 354–60.
- Smith, J. K. and Hodkinson, P. (2009) 'Challenging neorealism: A response to Hammersley', Qualitative Inquiry, 15, 1, pp. 30–39.
- Hammersley, Martyn (2008). Questioning Qualitative Inquiry. London, UK: Sage.
- Hargreaves, D. H. (1997) "In Defence of Research for Evidence-based Teaching: a rejoinder to Martyn Hammersley", British Educational Research Journal, 23, 4, pp. 405–19.
- Hammersley, M. Educational Research, Policymaking and Practice, London, Paul Chapman, 2002.
- Chalmers, I. (2003) "Trying to do more good than harm in policy and practice: the role of rigorous, transparent, up-to-date evaluations", Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol 589, pp. 22–40.
- Hammersley, M. (2005) "Is the evidence-based practice movement doing more good than harm? Reflections on Iain Chalmers' case for research-based policymaking and practice", Evidence and Policy, vol. 1, no. 1, pp 1–16.
- Hammersley, M. The Myth of Research-Based Policy and Practice, London, Sage, 2013.
- Hammersley, Martyn (2014). The Limits of Social Science. London, UK: Sage.
- For example:
- The Radicalism of Ethnomethodology, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2018.
- 'Understanding a Dispute About Ethnomethodology: Watson and Sharrock's Response to Atkinson's "Critical Review"', Forum Qualitative Research 20, 1, article no. 1, 2019.
- 'Was Blumer a cognitivist? Assessing an ethnomethodological critique', Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 48 (3):273-287, 2018.
- 'Ethnomethodological criticism of ethnography', Qualitative Research, 2019, 19(5) 578 –593. Published in Online First 2018.
- 'Exploring the distinctive ontological attitude of ethnomethodology via suicide, death, and money', Journal of Classical Sociology, 19, 2, pp. 185-204, 2019.
- 'Schutz and ethnomethodology: origins and departures', History of the Human Sciences, 32, 2, 59-75, 2019.
- The Concept of Culture: A history and reappraisal, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Troubling Sociological Concepts, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.