Functionalist Construction Work in Social Science PDF Download

Author: Peter Sohlberg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000370909
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 428

View

Book Description
An understanding of the complex consequences of social processes and social design activities necessitates a holistic systemic perspective, systematised in the classic structural-functional research tradition, which is presented in Functionalist Construction Work in Social Science. In contrast to fragmented discussions of functionalism and functional analyses, the approach here covers a span ranging from ontological, epistemological and primarily methodological aspects of functionalism. The functionalist tradition in social science is placed in a historic context, and problematised from a philosophy of science perspective. Unique here is a detailed account of four classic functionalist research programmes with a discussion of functionalism, not primarily as a worldview, but as systematic knowledge-generating research strategies. In addition to descriptive and causal questions, the importance of a further research question is demonstrated, i.e., the identification of crucial problems of social organisation. Functionalist research strategies and functional analysis are of interest for social scientists and students in sociology, political science, and social anthropology. Moreover, the book is relevant for researchers and students of philosophy of science and social science methodology

Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004450025
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

View

Book Description
What are the alternative ways to construct research objects in sociology? This book gives you a variety of examples of what to do, how to think, in order to develop and use theoretical driven methodology in the social sciences.

Author: David Inglis
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509564691
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

View

Book Description
Social theory is a crucial resource for the social sciences. It provides rich insights into how human beings think and act and how contemporary social life is constructed. But often the key ideas of social theorists are expressed in highly technical and difficult language that can hide more than it reveals. The new edition of this popular book continues to cut to the core of what social theory is about. Wide-ranging in scope and coverage, it is concise in presentation and free from jargon. Covering key themes and schools of thought from the classical thinkers up to the present, the third edition features a new chapter dedicated to post-colonial sociological theory. With updated literature and examples throughout, the book also includes refreshed pedagogical features to connect theory to readers’ own life experiences. Showing why social theory matters, and why it is of far-reaching social and political importance, the book is ideal for readers seeking a clear, crisp mapping of a complex but very rewarding area.

Author: Stephen Kalberg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000414213
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 710

View

Book Description
This volume examines civilizations through the broad lens articulated by the works of Max Weber. In focusing upon his comparative-historical mode of analysis and his causal explanations for the sources, contours, and trajectories of civilizations, this study reconstructs Weber’s sociology in a manner that provides clear guidelines to researchers seeking to investigate civilizations systematically. Through detailed interpretations of the West’s unique development from Antiquity to the Modern era, precise comparisons to the long-range and singular pathways taken by China and India, and careful demarcations of the "particular rationalisms" of several civilizations, the author addresses Weber’s powerful model-building on the one hand and his opposition to organic holism and structural presuppositions on the other hand. Both a broad-ranging conceptual framework and case-based empirical investigations are pivotal to Weber. His research strategy emphasizes further the "subjective meanings" of actors East and West and the deep cultural origins of groups. Finally, this volume masterfully conveys Weber’s contextual and multi-causal methodology rooted in a tight interweaving of the present with the past. Max Weber’s Sociology of Civilizations: A Reconstruction will appeal to comparative sociologists and historians, as well as to theorists of all persuasions. The social scientist pursuing a cross-civilizational agenda will here discover the distinct contribution of Weber’s "interpretive understanding" procedures to the now-essential field of civilizational analysis.

Author: Christopher Adair-Toteff
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000467783
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 99

View

Book Description
This book examines the largely-neglected shift in Max Weber’s work from political economy to economic sociology. Considering the importance of his recognition—made during his research on the Protestant Ethic—of the reciprocal influences that exist between economics and society and the role of this realization in prompting him to rethink the study of political economy, the author sheds fresh light on his emerging belief that the study of the relationship between economic factors and social issues required a new discipline. A study that charts an important development in the thought of one of the founding figures of sociology, this volume will appeal to scholars of social theory with interests in the history of the field and the legacy of Max Weber.

Author: Charles P. Webel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317746716
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 301

View

Book Description
In The World as Idea Charles P. Webel presents an intellectual history of one of the most influential concepts known to humanity—that of "the world." Webel traces the development of "the world" through the past, depicting the history of the world as an intellectual construct from its roots in ancient creation myths of the cosmos, to contemporary speculations about multiverses. He simultaneously offers probing analyses and critiques of "the world as idea" from thinkers ranging from Plato, Aristotle, and St. Augustine in the Greco-Roman period to Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, and Derrida in modern times. While Webel mainly focuses on Occidental philosophical, theological, and cosmological notions of worldhood and worldliness, he also highlights important non-Western equivalents prominent in Islamic and Asian spiritual traditions. This ensures the book is a unique overview of what we all take for granted in our daily existence, but seldom if ever contemplate—the world as the uniquely meaningful environment for our lives in particular and for life on Earth in general. The World as Idea will be of great interest to those interested in the "world as idea," scholars in fields ranging from philosophy and intellectual history to political and social theory, and students studying philosophy, the history of ideas, and humanities courses, both general and specialized.

Author: Christine Hobden
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429602863
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

View

Book Description
What does it mean to be a citizen of a democracy today? This book challenges us to re- evaluate and ultimately reorient our state- based conception of democratic citizenship in order to meaningfully account for the context in which it is lived: a globalised, deeply interconnected, and deeply unjust world. Hobden argues for a new conception of citizenship that is state- based, but globally oriented. The book presents a new account of collective responsibility that includes responsibility for a wider range of collective outcomes. Drawing upon this account, Hobden argues that citizens can be held collectively morally responsible for the acts of their state, both domestically and internationally. The book explores how this conception of citizenship, with its attendant collective responsibility, can speak to citizens of today: those experiencing the costs of inequality and oppression; those living under semi- and newly democratic regimes; and those living as non- citizen residents. It encourages an active citizenship and presents innovative channels of participation, with discussions on civic education in the media and political consumerism. Offering a new lens on citizenship in a global context, this book will be of great interest to scholars and students of political theory, global justice, citizenship, democratic theory, and collective responsibility.

Author: Felipe Torres
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000432424
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

View

Book Description
Temporal Regimes provides a theoretical framework for understanding the temporal structures of society; a conceptually rich, empirically nuanced and culturally embodied account of temporal phenomena in contemporary world. What does it imply temporal regimes? How the everyday life as well as the global mobilities coordination requires temporal underpinnings? The answers to these questions mean more than simply understanding the general thesis on acceleration or space-time compression on the one hand; but also, a micro-multiple-localised time experience by gender, class or age, on the other. They also mean understanding in an integrative way the very structural temporalities within the everyday lived, embodied and situated ones. They require both a robust and flexible epistemic analysis considering their material bedrock through political and technological forefront dimensions. Advancing a rigorous, well-grounded theoretical understanding, and offering a useful way to analytically conceptualise the temporal dynamics on our societies, this book will be of interest to advanced students and scholars enquiring a rich set of topics ranging from time and politics, new materialism, conceptual history as well as technology, collective action and social change.

Author: Hartmut Rosa
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000400131
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 303

View

Book Description
Bringing together authors from two intellectual traditions that have, so far, generally developed independently of one another – critical theory and new materialism – this book addresses the fundamental differences and potential connections that exist between these two schools of thought. With a focus on some of the most pressing questions of contemporary philosophy and social theory – in particular, those concerning the status of long-standing and contested separations between matter and life, the biological and the symbolic, passivity and agency, affectivity and rationality – it shows that recent developments in both traditions point to important convergences between them and thus prepare the ground for a more direct confrontation and cross-fertilization. The first volume to promote a dialogue between critical theory and new materialism, this collection explores the implications for contemporary debates on ecology, gender, biopolitics, post-humanism, economics and aesthetics. As such, it will appeal to philosophers, social and political theorists, and sociologists with interests in contemporary critical theory and materialism.

Author: Sabrina P. Ramet
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000877124
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 359

View

Book Description
The communists of East Central Europe came to power promising to bring about genuine equality, paying special attention to achieving gender equality, to build up industry and create prosperous societies, and to use music, art, and literature to promote socialist ideals. Instead, they never succeeded in filling more than a third of their legislatures with women and were unable to make significant headway against entrenched patriarchal views; they considered it necessary (with the sole exception of Albania) to rely heavily on credits to build up their economies, eventually driving them into bankruptcy; and the effort to instrumentalize the arts ran aground in most of the region already by 1956, and, in Yugoslavia, by 1949. Communism was all about planning, control, and politicization. Except for Yugoslavia after 1949, the communists sought to plan and control not only politics and the economy, but also the media and information, religious organizations, culture, and the promotion of women, which they understood in the first place as involving putting women to work. Inspired by the groundbreaking work of Robert K. Merton on functionalist theory, this book shows how communist policies were repeatedly undermined by unintended consequences and outright dysfunctions.