摘要：Many sociologists have picked their research topics - sometimes those which
occupied them for their entire career - because of some experience, something in
their background which gave them a more detailed knowledge of a topic than is
available to most other people. You might belong to an ethnic group whose
distinctive culture appears interesting to you once you have acquired the sociological
ideas that give it that interest. You might have participated in a political group or
activity and now feel that the conventional accounts you read of such political actions
don't square with your experience. You may have worked in a factory or office whose
culture, which seems so banal seen from the outside, takes on great interest once
you learn the sociological way of thinking about it. And you might, like the editors of
this issue of the Qualitative Sociology Review Journal, have practiced one of the arts,
performed in musical groups before a public, and learned what such performances
require of you, what the "real" problems of being an artist of that kind are (as
opposed to the problems some theory might suggest you will have), and learn the
real world contingencies that govern the eventual form art works of that kind take.
