This article discusses the methodological implications of using a #gurational approach to the study of Gaelic games (the Irish sports of hurling and Gaelic football) and their organisation and governance from the late nineteenth century onwards. Following Norbert Elias, we argue that data generation guided by theories, and potentially modifying such theories, are essential components of researc...

Best known for his pioneering study Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, in which the aesthetic attitude of disinterestedness is accounted for as the expression of a class ethos, Bourdieu has become something of an icon of relativism. In thus effecting a Bakhtinian 'discrowning' of official hierarchies of the arts, he is often celebrated for his concern to place all tastes,...

In this article, I take issue with the conceptual apparatus and methodological prescriptions of comparative historical sociology. I will suggest that its problematic features are longstanding. In consequence, a dominant tendency of the field – that of returning to the ‘classics’ as a means of overcoming deficiencies found in more recent contributions – has the effect of reinforcing what is prob...