The current state of social research seems to be divided into two extremes: on the one hand, there is the widespread use of secondary analysis, in which archives of data from large-scale quantitative surveys are constructed and advanced quantitative models are applied, and on the other hand, there is qualitative research, in which the subjective experiences of a few people are reconstructed.
Under these circumstances, “monograph research,” which is an attempt to clarify the actual situation by closely surveying an area, as was once done in rural and regional surveys, has become inconspicuous. However, it is not widely known that monograph research based on the region where each university is located is still being conducted steadily.
In Osaka, urban social surveys have been conducted since the era of industrialization, and these surveys have been carried over to the postwar social pathological surveys. In particular, sociologists in the Kansai region have organized the Osaka Sociological Research Group as a joint research project and have conducted social surveys based in Osaka. Although social pathological research in Osaka has had its limitations over time, various surveys have been conducted on contemporary urban and social issues.
In this paper, I would like to reconstruct the surveys conducted by the Osaka Sociological Research Group based on the “Hideo Tsuchida Materials” left by the late Hideo Tsuchida, who was a member of the research group, and consider how social surveys in Osaka have been conducted from the postwar period to the present, as well as their future development.
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