Download or read book On Social Facts written by Margaret Gilbert and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1992-04-12 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are social groups real in any sense that is independent of the thoughts, actions, and beliefs of the individuals making up the group? Using methods of philosophy to examine such longstanding sociological questions, Margaret Gilbert gives a general characterization of the core phenomena at issue in the domain of human social life. After developing detailed analyses of a number of central everyday concepts of social phenomena--including shared action, a social convention, a group's belief, and a group itself--she proposes that the core social phenomena among human beings are "plural subject" phenomena. In her analyses Gilbert discusses the work of such thinkers as Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel, Max Weber, and David Lewis. "Gilbert's book aims to ... exhibit some general and structural features of the conceptual scheme in terms of which we think about social groups, collective action, social convention, and shared belief.... [It] offers an important corrective to individualistic thinking in the social sciences...."--Michael Root, Philosophical Review "In this rich and rewarding work, Margaret Gilbert provides a novel and detailed account of our everyday concepts of social collectivity. In so doing she makes a seminal contribution to ... some vexed issues in the philosophy of social science.... [An] intellectually pioneering work."--John D. Greenwood, Social Epistemology
Download or read book Rules of Sociological Method written by Emile Durkheim and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1982-12 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1895: Emile Durkheim's masterful work on the nature and scope of sociology--now with a new introduction and improved translation by leading scholar Steven Lukes.The Rules of the Sociological Method is among the most important contributions to the field of sociology, still debated among scholars today. Through letters, arguments, and commentaries on significant debates, Durkheim confronted critics, clarified his own position, and defended the objective scientific method he applied to his study of humans. This updated edition offers an introduction and extra notes as well as a new translation to improve the clarity and accessibility of this essential work. In the introduction, Steven Lukes, author of the definitive biography Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work, spells out Durkheim's intentions, shows the limits of Durkheim's view of sociology, and presents its political background and significance. Making use of the various texts in this volume and Durkheim's later work, Lukes discusses how Durkheim's methodology was modified or disregarded in practice--and how it is still relevant today. With substantial notes on context, this user-friendly edition will greatly ease the task of students and scholars working with Durkheim's method--a view that has been a focal point of sociology since its original publication. The Rules of the Sociological Method will engage a new generation of readers with Durkheim's rich contribution to the field."
Download or read book The Social Fact written by John P. Wihbey and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the structure of news, information, and knowledge is evolving and how news media can foster social connection. While the public believes that journalism remains crucial for democracy, there is a general sense that the news media are performing this role poorly. In The Social Fact, John Wihbey makes the case that journalism can better serve democracy by focusing on ways of fostering social connection. Wihbey explores how the structure of news, information, and knowledge and their flow through society are changing, and he considers ways in which news media can demonstrate the highest possible societal value in the context of these changes. Wihbey examines network science as well as the interplay between information and communications technologies (ICTs) and the structure of knowledge in society. He discusses the underlying patterns that characterize our increasingly networked world of information—with its viral phenomena and whiplash-inducing trends, its extremes and surprises. How can the traditional media world be reconciled with the world of social, peer-to-peer platforms, crowdsourcing, and user-generated content? Wihbey outlines a synthesis for news producers and advocates innovation in approach, form, and purpose. The Social Fact provides a valuable framework for doing audience-engaged media work of many kinds in our networked, hybrid media environment. It will be of interest to all those concerned about the future of news and public affairs.
Download or read book Public Sociology written by Ben Agger and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2007-03-06 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public Sociology, 2nd edition offers a fundamental enriching of method far beyond the scope of research methodology textbooks. It looks at sociology as a social act-as writing-in arguing for a public sociology that can more fully embrace and address crucial public issues. Building on the philosophy of science and recent postmodernist critiques, Agger shows how the social science text reproduces the existing social world, suppressing science's author in order to position itself as simply a mirror of nature, not a deliberate human version replete with ontology, theory, values, and politics. As such, method is an argument that polemicizes quietly for a certain view of the world. Agger peruses how science could be crafted differently, acknowledging, even embracing its authoriality while opening it to crosscurrents of other humanistic writing. Only by liberating sociology from the "secret writing" of science can its ineradicable humanity be realized. But rather than dwelling on recent critiques, this, more than any other book, looks ahead to a new way of doing science-one that is simultaneously more scientific and humanistic. Its prescient view of how social science can take the lead in building a more democratic public sphere will make it a must-read for every student and researcher.
Download or read book Reinventing Evidence in Social Inquiry written by R. Biernacki and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-08-08 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revisiting the dominant scientific method, 'coding,' with which investigators from sociology to literary criticism have sampled texts and catalogued their cultural messages, the author demonstrates that the celebrated hard outputs rest on misleading samples and on unfeasible classifying of the texts' meanings.
Download or read book The Sociogony written by Mark P. Worrell and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-11-26 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sociogony re-examines the social ontology of what Durkheim calls ‘social facts’ in the light of critical and progressive hostilities to the facticity of facts and the necessity of moral absolutes in the shift from bourgeois liberalism to a neoliberal global order. The introduction offers a wide-ranging rumination on the concept of the absolute after its apparent downfall; the chapter on facts turns the problem of external authority on its head and the chapter dealing with the sociogony situates facts in a process of generation, rule, and decay. Drawing heavily on the works of Hegel, Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, the resulting synthesis is what the author refers to as a Marxheimian Social Theory that offers a new map and a stable ontology for the homeless mind.
Download or read book Classical Sociological Theory written by Craig Calhoun and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-01-17 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive collection of classical sociological theory is a definitive guide to the roots of sociology from its undisciplined beginnings to its current influence on contemporary sociological debate. Explores influential works of Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Mead, Simmel, Freud, Du Bois, Adorno, Marcuse, Parsons, and Merton Editorial introductions lend historical and intellectual perspective to the substantial readings Includes a new section with new readings on the immediate "pre-history" of sociological theory, including the Enlightenment and de Tocqueville Individual reading selections are updated throughout
Download or read book Social Facts and Fabrications written by Sally Falk Moore and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1986-06-27 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Sally Falk Moore examines a hundred years in the history of an African people, the Chagga of Kilimanjaro, in order to understand how their present system of 'customary' laws came to be the way it is, and how the idea of custom was used in Tanzania's experiment with African socialism. She discusses the changes that have occurred in the formal legal system, alongside the vast economic and political transformations that came with cash cropping and colonial rule. She also presents a 'legal' chronicle of the members of one lineage to illustrate its use of the formal legal system. This study of the difference between law in the life of a people and law in the local courts will interest teachers and students of legal anthropology and law and also provides an important contribution to anthropological theory. In addition it has practical relevance for the understanding of the operation of 'traditional' institutions and will appeal to readers interested in African history and African studies.
Download or read book On Social Facts written by Margaret Gilbert and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are social groups real in any sense that is independent of the thoughts, actions, and beliefs of the individuals making up the group? Using methods of philosophy to examine such longstanding sociological questions, Margaret Gilbert gives a general characterization of the core phenomena at issue in the domain of human social life. After developing detailed analyses of a number of central everyday concepts of social phenomena--including shared action, a social convention, a group's belief, and a group itself--she proposes that the core social phenomena among human beings are "plural subject" phenomena. In her analyses Gilbert discusses the work of such thinkers as Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel, Max Weber, and David Lewis. "Gilbert's book aims to ... exhibit some general and structural features of the conceptual scheme in terms of which we think about social groups, collective action, social convention, and shared belief.... [It] offers an important corrective to individualistic thinking in the social sciences...."--Michael Root, Philosophical Review "In this rich and rewarding work, Margaret Gilbert provides a novel and detailed account of our everyday concepts of social collectivity. In so doing she makes a seminal contribution to ... some vexed issues in the philosophy of social science.... [An] intellectually pioneering work."--John D. Greenwood, Social Epistemology
Download or read book Writing Culture written by James Clifford and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These seminal essays place ethnography at the intersection of interpretive anthropology, cultural studies, social history, travel writing, discourse theory, and textual criticism. They grapple with issues of power and poetics in contemporary situations of globalization, post-coloniality, and post-modernity. Since its publication in 1986, Writing Culture has been a source of generative controversy and innovation in anthropology. It continues to inspire scholars and activists across the humanities, social sciences, and arts who are concerned with experimentation and ethics in cultural analysis. This anniversary edition is augmented with a new foreword by Kim Fortun, Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, exploring the legacies of Writing Culture in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book A Passion for Facts written by Tong Lam and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this path-breaking book, Tong Lam examines the emergence of the "culture of fact" in modern China, showing how elites and intellectuals sought to transform the dynastic empire into a nation-state, thereby ensuring its survival. Lam argues that an epistemological break away from traditional modes of understanding the observable world began around the turn of the twentieth century. Tracing the Neo-Confucian school of evidentiary research and the modern departure from it, Lam shows how, through the rise of the social survey, "the fact" became a basic conceptual medium and source of truth. In focusing on China’s social survey movement, A Passion for Facts analyzes how information generated by a range of research practices—census, sociological investigation, and ethnography—was mobilized by competing political factions to imagine, manage, and remake the nation.
Download or read book Strategic Alliances as Social Facts written by Mark De Rond and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-06-19 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can we explain a proliferation of alliances when the probability of failure is higher than success? And why have we emphasized their order, manageability and predictability whilst acknowledging that they tend to be experienced as messy, politically charged and unpredictable? Mark de Rond, in this provocative book, sets out to address such paradoxes. Based on in-depth case studies of three major biotechnology alliances, he suggests that we need theories to explain idiosyncracy as well as social order. He argues that such theories must allow for social conduct to be active and self-directed but simultaneously inert and constrained, thus permitting voluntarism, determinism, and serendipity alike to explain causation in alliance life. The book offers a highly original combination of insights from social theory and intellectual history with more mainstream strategic management and organizations literature. It is a refreshing and thought-provoking analysis that will appeal to practitioner and academic researcher alike.
Download or read book Physiology of education mental moral and social facts written by William Moore Wooler and published by . This book was released on 1860 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Suicide a Study in Sociology written by Émile Durkheim and published by Glencoe, Ill. : Free Press. This book was released on 1951 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Translated from French, this classic provides readers with an understanding of the impetus for suicide and its psychological impact on the victim, family, and society.
Download or read book Laboratory Life written by Bruno Latour and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-04 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This highly original work presents laboratory science in a deliberately skeptical way: as an anthropological approach to the culture of the scientist. Drawing on recent work in literary criticism, the authors study how the social world of the laboratory produces papers and other "texts,"' and how the scientific vision of reality becomes that set of statements considered, for the time being, too expensive to change. The book is based on field work done by Bruno Latour in Roger Guillemin's laboratory at the Salk Institute and provides an important link between the sociology of modern sciences and laboratory studies in the history of science.
Download or read book mile Durkheim and the Collective Consciousness of Society written by Kenneth SmithKenneth Smith and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2014-08-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume sets out to explore the use of Émile Durkheim’s concept of the ‘collective consciousness of society’, and represents the first ever book-length treatment of this underexplored topic. Operating from both a criminological and sociological perspective, Kenneth Smith argues that Durkheim’s original concept must be sensitively revised and suitably updated for its real relevance to come to the fore. Major adjustments to Durkheim’s concept of the collective consciousness include Smith’s compelling arguments that the model does not apply to everyone equally, and that Durkheim’s concept does not in any way rely on what might be called the disciplinary functions of society.
Download or read book A History of the Modern Fact written by Mary Poovey and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-11-30 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did the fact become modernity's most favored unit of knowledge? How did description come to seem separable from theory in the precursors of economics and the social sciences? Mary Poovey explores these questions in A History of the Modern Fact, ranging across an astonishing array of texts and ideas from the publication of the first British manual on double-entry bookkeeping in 1588 to the institutionalization of statistics in the 1830s. She shows how the production of systematic knowledge from descriptions of observed particulars influenced government, how numerical representation became the privileged vehicle for generating useful facts, and how belief—whether figured as credit, credibility, or credulity—remained essential to the production of knowledge. Illuminating the epistemological conditions that have made modern social and economic knowledge possible, A History of the Modern Fact provides important contributions to the history of political thought, economics, science, and philosophy, as well as to literary and cultural criticism.
