This chapter outlines the difference between starting from an inductive and an abductive logic of research–between grounded theory and abductive analysis epistemologies. We argue that the changed status of qualitative research within the disciplinary ecology over the past 50 years has given rise to different challenges and opportunities for data analysis. Grounded theory methodology acted as a powerful way to legitimize qualitative research as scientific, discipline-relevant work in an era marked by the search for universal covering laws of sociology and an increasingly quantitative takeover of sociological methodology. Abductive analysis and other current methodological approaches emerge instead in an era in which the challenge of legitimization has been put to rest: few people currently question the legitimacy of qualitative research approaches. Instead, the challenge that abductive analysis has been designed to think through is the question asked of all good research beyond the question of evidence–What is this a case of? The difference between grounded theory and abductive analysis is thus between a research strategy that is best used to outline the ways in which people make sense of their world together, and codifying these ‘ethno-narratives’(Tavory and Timmermans 2009) into general themes, thus answering the question ‘what is going on here?’and one that is geared–from its inception–to the question of theoretical relevance. And while, under the best circumstances, grounded theory ends up asking about the theoretical relevance of cases, and abductive analysis necessarily ends up providing a thematic story of empirical materials, the differences are more than a matter of slight emphasis. Instead, they emerge from different epistemological underpinnings, produce different ways of approaching the research act, and generate ways of both practically working with empirical observations and engaging in our disciplinary, theoretical, worlds (see also Swedberg 2012). Ultimately, although we still draw heavily on grounded theory’s emphasis on forms of