The literature on social science methods has grown considerably over the past decade or so, and continues to increase today. Yet many social scientists are ambivalent about methodology. For some, it plays a central, perhaps even an all-encompassing, role; while for others it is regarded as an irrelevance, or even as detrimental to actually doing research.<BR><BR>In this book, Martyn Hammersley argues that the role of methodology must be viewed against the background of a wider problem: the declining influence of the academic model of social science. This has occurred as a result of ideological challenges, internal as well as external, and increasing erosion of the institutional conditions that support academic work. Martyn Hammersley defends this model, spelling out the demands it places upon social scientists, and examining such issues as the nature of objectivity, the aspiration of some social scientists to be intellectuals or social critics, whether research is discovery or construction, the requirements of academic discussion, the ethics of belief, and the limits of academic freedom.