Download or read book Realism and Sociology written by Justin Cruickshank and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2007-01-24 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, methodological debates in the social sciences have increasingly focused on issues relating to epistemology. Realism and Sociology makes an original contribution to the debate, charting a middle ground between postmodernism and positivism. Critics often hold that realism tries to assume some definitive account of reality. Against this it is argued throughout the book that realism can combine a strong definition of social reality with an anti-foundational approach to knowledge. The position of realist anti-foundationalism that is argued for is developed and defended via the use of immanent critiques. These deal primarily with post-Wittgensteinian positions that seek to define knowledge and social reality in terms of 'rule-following practices' within different 'forms of life' and 'language games'. Specifically, the argument engages with Rorty's neo-pragmatism and the structuration theory of Giddens. The philosophy of Popper is also drawn upon in a critically appreciative way. While the positions of Rorty and Giddens seek to deflate the claims of 'grand theory', albeit in different ways, they both end up with definitive claims about knowledge and reality that preclude social research. By avoiding the general deflationary approach that relies on reference to 'practices', realism is able to combine a strong social ontology with an anti-foundational epistemology, and thus act as an underlabourer for empirical research.
Download or read book Realism and Social Science written by R. Andrew Sayer and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2000-02-11 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Realism and Social Science offers an authoritative guide to critical realism and an assessment of its virtues in comparison with other leading traditions in social science. It is illustrated throughout with relevant and accessible examples.
Download or read book Sociological Realism written by Andrea Maccarini and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2011-03-28 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sociological Realism presents a clear and updated discussion of the main tenets and issues of social theory, written by some of the top scholars within the critical realist and relational approach. It connects such approaches systematically to other strands of thought that are central in contemporary sociology, like systems theory and rational choice theory. Divided into three parts, social ontology, sociological theory, and methodology, each part includes a systematic presentation, a comment, and a wider discussion by the editors, thereby taking on the form of a dialogue among experts. This book is a uniquely blended and consistent conversation showing the convergence of European social theory on a critical realist and relational way of thinking. This volume is extremely important both for teaching purposes and for all those scholars who wish to get a fresh perspective on some deep dynamics of contemporary sociology.
Download or read book Social Realism Knowledge and the Sociology of Education written by Karl Maton and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-11-03 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume covers issues in the sociology of knowledge, the educational system and policy, professional autonomy, vocational education, educational research and teaching, as well as the nature of such disciplines as cultural studies, English, science and the arts. The chapters also directly address the nature of sociology of education itself.The realist position developed in the book challenges two major currents of thought that have for a long time been prominent and influential in sociology and education: postmodernism and progressivism/constructivism. This well-edited collection of papers is provocative and original in that it represents a sustained, collective critique that offers a genuine alternative to these current orthodoxies.
Download or read book Reconstructing Sociology written by Douglas V. Porpora and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-03 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A general critique of sociology, particularly sociology in the United States, from a critical realist perspective.
Download or read book Critical Realism for Marxist Sociology of Education written by Grant Banfield and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-09-16 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a critical realist intervention into the field of Marxist Sociology of Education. Critical realism, as developed by British philosopher Roy Bhaskar, is known for its capacity to serve as a conceptual underlabourer to applied fields like education. Indeed, its success in clarifying and resolving thorny issues of educational theory and practice is now well established. Given critical realism’s sympathetic Marxist origins, its productive and critical engagement with Marxism has an even longer history. To date there has been little sustained attention given to the application of critical realism to Marxist educational praxis. The book addresses this gap in existing scholarship. Its conceptual ground clearing of the field of Marxist Sociology of Education centres on two problematics well-known in the social sciences: naturalism and the structure-agency relation. Marxist theory from the days of Marx to the present is shown to also be haunted by these problematics. This has resulted in considerable tension around the meaning and nature of, for example, reform, revolution, class determinism and class struggle. With its emergence in the 1970s as a child of Western Marxism, the field continues to be an expression of these tensions that seriously limit its transformative potential. Addressing these issues and offering conceptual clarification in the interests of revolutionary educational practice, Critical Realism for Marxist Sociology of Education provides a new perspective on education which will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners alike.
Download or read book Explaining Society written by Berth Danermark and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-06-29 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book will be immensely valuable for students and researchers in social science, sociology and philosophy in that it connects methodology, theory and empirical research. It provides an innovative picture of what society and social science is, along with the methods used to study and explain social phenomena.
Download or read book Humanist Realism for Sociologists written by Terry Leahy and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-01-20 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent critiques treat humanism as a mistaken value framework. Indeed, the concept of human nature is in fact essential for sociology, but is often being denied at the same time as it appears without acknowledgement. While classic authors can show us how to connect an ethics with a concept of human nature, current humanists must tackle the sociobiological view of human nature and interrogate humanism in the light of the ecological crisis. Humanist Realism for Sociologists both explains and explores some of the main arguments surrounding humanism put forward by classic social theorists such as Aristotle, Marx and Weber, as well as more contemporary authors, such as Braidotti, Oakley, Weedon, Firestone, Connell, Flyvjberg, Foucault and Bourdieu. A must-have tool for understanding how value perspectives cannot be eliminated from the social sciences, this book is essential for undergraduates, postgraduates and postdoctoral researchers interested in the fields of sociology, anthropology, women’s studies, social work, human geography, political philosophy and ecology.
Download or read book Realism and Complexity in Social Science written by Malcolm Williams and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-30 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Realism and Complexity in Social Science is an argument for a new approach to investigating the social world, that of complex realism. Complex realism brings together a number of strands of thought, in scientific realism, complexity science, probability theory and social research methodology. It proposes that the reality of the social world is that it is probabilistic, yet there exists enough invariance to make the discovery and explanation of social objects and causal mechanisms possible. This forms the basis for the development of a complex realist foundation for social research, that utilises a number of new and novel approaches to investigation, alongside the more traditional corpus of quantitative and qualitative methods. Research examples are drawn from research in sociology, epidemiology, criminology, social policy and human geography. The book assumes no prior knowledge of realism, probability or complexity and in the early chapters, the reader is introduced to these concepts and the arguments against them. Although the book is grounded in philosophical reasoning, this is in a direct and accessible style that will appeal both to social researchers with a methodological interest and philosophers with an interest in social investigation.
Download or read book Realism and Racism written by Bob Carter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-01-04 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are continuing difficulties within social science surrounding concepts of race. This book suggests that these difficulties stem from the uncertain ontological and epistemological status of ideas about race, itself a consequence of the recognition that concepts of race have all but lost their relevance as sociologically significant descriptions. This book surveys ways in which social scientists have attempted to come to terms with this situation, before developing an alternative approach based on recent work by realist authors. This approach offers a radical revision of orthodox debates about race concepts, about the possibility of a social science and about the nature of empirical research. This illustrated through two policy examples: an account of post war migration to the UK, and debates about trans-racial adoption in the UK and the USA.
Download or read book Religion Realism and Social Theory written by Philip A Mellor and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2004-10-18 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges those contemporary sociologists who argue that the notion of 'society' is an outmoded basis for sociological analysis and instead revitalizes the idea that sociology is truly 'the study of society'. Mellor returns the human and religious aspects of social life to the centre of social theory.
Download or read book Making Realism Work written by Bob Carter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-10-09 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this innovative book, theorists and researchers from various social science disciplines explore the potential of realist social theory for empirical research. The examples are drawn from a wide range of fields health and medicine, crime, housing, sociolinguistics, development theory and deal with issues such as causality, probability, and reflexivity in social science. Varied and lively contributions relate central methodological issues to detailed accounts of research projects which adopt a realist framework. Making Realism Work provides an accessible discussion of a significant current in contemporary social science and will be of interest to social theorists and social researchers alike.
Download or read book Critical Realism for Health and Illness Research written by Alderson, Priscilla and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2021-02-11 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical realism, as a toolkit of practical ideas, helps researchers to extend and clarify their analyses. It resolves problems arising from splits between different research approaches, builds on the strengths of different methods and overcomes their individual limitations. This original text draws on international examples of health and illness research across the life course, from small studies to large trials, to show how versatile critical realism can be in validating research and connecting it to policy and practice. To meet growing demand from students and researchers, this book is based on the course at UCL, first taught by Roy Bhaskar, the founder of critical realism.
Download or read book Realist Inquiry in Social Science written by Brian D. Haig and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2015-11-09 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Realist Inquiry in Social Science is an invaluable guide to conducting realist research. Written by highly regarded experts in the field, the first part of the book sets out the fundamentals necessary for rigorous realist research, while the second part deals with a number of its most important applications, discussing it in the context of case studies, action research and grounded theory amongst other approaches. Grounded in philosophical methodology, this book goes beyond understanding knowledge justification only as empirical validity, but instead emphasises the importance of theoretical criteria for all good research. The authors consider both quantitative and qualitative research methods, and approach methodology from an interdisciplinary viewpoint. Using abductive reasoning as the starting point for an insightful journey into realist inquiry, this book demonstrates that scientific realism continues to be of major relevance to the social sciences.
Download or read book Realist Social Theory written by Margaret Scotford Archer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-10-19 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Building on her seminal contribution to social theory in Culture and agency, Margaret Archer develops here her morphogenetic approach, applying it to the problem of structure and agency. Since structure and agency constitute different levels of stratified social reality, each possesses distinctive emergent properties which are real and causally efficacious but irreducible to one another. The problem, therefore, is shown to be how to link the two rather than conflate them, as has been common practice - whether in upwards conflation (by the aggregation of individual acts) downwards conflation (through the structural orchestration of agents), or, more recently, in central conflation which holds the two to be mutually constitutive and thus precludes any examination of their interplay by eliding them. Realist social theory: the morphogenetic approach thus not only rejects methodological individualism and collectivism, but argues that the debate between them has been replaced by a new one between elisionary theorizing (such as Giddens' structuration theory) and the emergentist theories based on a realist ontology of the social world. The morphogenetic approach is the sociological complement of transcendental realism, and together they provide a basis for non-conflationary theorizing which is also of direct utility to the practising social analyst.
Download or read book Sociological Realism written by Andrea Maccarini and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-03-28 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sociological Realism presents a clear and updated discussion of the main tenets and issues of social theory, written by some of the top scholars within the critical realist and relational approach. It connects such approaches systematically to other strands of thought that are central in contemporary sociology, like systems theory and rational choice theory. Divided into three parts, social ontology, sociological theory, and methodology, each part includes a systematic presentation, a comment, and a wider discussion by the editors, thereby taking on the form of a dialogue among experts. This book is a uniquely blended and consistent conversation showing the convergence of European social theory on a critical realist and relational way of thinking. This volume is extremely important both for teaching purposes and for all those scholars who wish to get a fresh perspective on some deep dynamics of contemporary sociology.
Download or read book Relational Sociology written by Pierpaolo Donati and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-07-12 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Simultaneous invention’ has become commonplace in the natural sciences, but is still virtually unknown within the sphere of social science. The convergence of two highly compatible versions of Critical Realism from two independent sources is a striking exception. Pierpaolo Donati’s Relational Sociology develops ‘upwards’ from sociology into a Realist meta-theory, unlike Roy Baskhar’s philosophy of science that works ‘downwards’ and ‘underlabours’ for the social sciences. This book systematically introduces Donati’s Relational Sociology to an English readership for the first time since he began to advance his approach thirty years ago. In this eagerly awaited book, Pierpaolo Donati shifts the focus of sociological theory onto the relational order at all levels. He argues that society is constituted by the relations people create with one another, their emergent properties and powers, and internal and external causal effects. Relational Sociology provides a distinctive variant upon the Realist theoretical conspectus, especially because of its ability to account for social integration. It will stimulate debate amongst realists themselves and, of course, with the adversaries of realism. It is a valuable new resource for students of social theory and practising social theorists.
