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Meanings in motorcycling

University of British Columbia

The thesis is divided into three major sections. Section One is devoted to a discussion of the motives and assumptions behind this particular study and of the problems involved in formulating a research procedure. The general intent is to generate an account of some important facets of the North American motorcycling boom. The basic method is to ask approximately fifteen hundred cyclists, "What do you get out of it?" in a series of separate motorcycle -situated encounters. It is assumed that this procedure elicits subject accounts of what motorcycling means. A schemata is developed to explain the process by which a single account of these many participant explications may be created. The result is a thematization of recurrent elements of responses. In addition, the further procedure of consultative feedback is employed in a series of one hundred second-order encounters. Section two contains a discussion of the nine major themes which are redacted as an account of the fifteen hundred encounters. Each theme is discussed at length, and the schematized relations between them are explained in terms of the clustering of concurrent response elements. In addition, two findings which do not fit the schema are presented: one is the adamant refusal to respond, the other is the invocation of a form of communality

Text

2011-04-08

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/33436

Sociology

University of British Columbia

Graduate