Meaning & Measurement Mini-Conference

Kathleen O'Neil —University of Arizona koneil@U.Arizona.EDU Currently I am working in collaboration with Laura Stephens and Don Grant investigating the content of religious and spiritual best-selling books. Having coded the themes contained in these books, I am using Ragin's QCA approach to create empirical typologies consisting of configurations of themes. Our data spans 9 decades of the 20th Century, allowing for comparisons of configurations across time periods. I am a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Arizona. Drawing on cultural and network approaches to the study of economic life, my proposed dissertation research will investigate the pricing of art, the social process through which a price is formed for a work of art. My dissertation will involve qualitative interviews with visual artists to examine the social meanings associated with economic exchange.