In 1991 the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) published "Postgraduate Taining Guidelines". Throughout the document emphasis is placed on the need for universities to make postgraduate research students aware of the methodological issues that affect their work.; This text explores the relationship between knowledge, methodology and research practice across the broad spectrum of the social sciences in langage that is accessible to researchers at all levels of their research careers. It follows the themes that there is no single practice or correct methodology, and that the diversity and variety in terms of methodology and disciplinary focus are a sign of the sophistication and complexity of the proceses of social research. The text examines socio-cultural contexts of social research and relates them to contemporary shifts in focus such as feminism, critical theory and postmodernism. The importance of selecting the research methodology most appropriate to the subject discipline concerned is emphasized.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: Remembering the glory days of the nation: sport as lieu de memoire in Japan Andreas Niehaus and Christian Tagsold 2. Lieux de memoire/sites of memories and the Olympic Games: an introduction Gertrud Pfister 3. Swimming into memory: the Los Angeles Olympics (1932) as Japanese lieu de memoire Andreas Niehaus 4. Remember to get back on your feet quickly: the Japanese women’s volleyball team at the 1964 Olympics as a ‘Realm of Memory’ Christian Tagsold 5. One world one dream? Twenty-first century Japanese perspectives on hosting the Olympic Games Robin Kietlinski 6. Tokyo’s 1964 Olympic design as a ‘realm of [design] memory’ Jilly Traganou 7. Koshien Stadium: performing national virtues and regional rivalries in a ‘theatre of sport’ William W. Kelly 8. From national event to local memory – World Cup 2002 Yoshio Takahashi 9. ‘By running. . . / by fighting. . . / by dying. . .’: remembering, glorifying, and forgetting Japanese Olympian war dead Aaron Skabelund 10. ‘It was October 1964, when I met the demon for the first time’: Supo-kon manga as lieux de memoire Ikuo Abe 11. The professional wrestler Rikidozan as a site of memory Lee Thompson 12. Sports sites of memory in Japan’s cultures of remembrance and oblivion:collective remembrance is like swimming – in order to stay afloat you have to keep moving Wolfram Manzenreiter and John Horne