Gerhard Kleining (1926-2022): An Obituary

Abstract

Following a brief overview of the life of Gerhard KLEINING, the founder of qualitative heuristics, we recognize his early sociological work, especially the analysis of meaning, and his contributions to the discussion of the concept of stratification and class—including the further development of the stratification model by a new procedure of stratification classification, the self-assessment procedure (SSE procedure). This is followed by an outline of qualitative heuristics in general, in which social research is understood not as a process of interpretation, but as a process of discovery through dialogue. Qualitative heuristics are governed by rules relating to the openness of the researcher, the openness of the research object, the variation of perspectives to investigate the research object and further by analyzing commonalites in the data. An overview of important qualitative-heuristic work by KLEINING is given, through which the broad applicability of the methodology for different fields of research becomes clear. In the two concluding sections, two research methods belonging to qualitative heuristics are outlined: the qualitative experiment and dialogical introspection.

Kleining; qualitative research; qualitative heuristics; analysis of meaning; qualitative experiment; dialogical introspection

Doe you mean object, as in inanimate object?  Of do you mean subject as participant？If you mean participant, then use subject. 

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