Understanding Social Life PDF Download

Author: William Outhwaite
Publisher: London : George Allen & Unwin
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Author: Michael Martin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351327100
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
In late nineteenth-century German academic circles, the term verstehen (literally, understanding, or comprehension) came to be associated with the view that social phenomena must be understood from the point of view of the social actor. Advocates of this approach were opposed by positivists who stressed the unity of method between the social and natural sciences and an external, experimental, and quantitative knowledge. Although modified over time, the dispute between positivists and antipositivists--nowadays called naturalists and antinaturalists--has persisted and still defines many debates in the field of philosophy of social sciences. In this volume, Michael Martin offers a critical appraisal of verstehen as a method of verification and discovery as well as a necessary condition for understanding. In its strongest forms, verstehen entails subjectively reliving the experience of the social actor or at least rethinking his or her thoughts, while in its weaker forms it only involves reconstructing the rationale for acting. Martin's opening chapter offers a reconsideration of the debate between the classical verstehen theorists--Wilhelm Dilthey, Max Weber, R.G. Collingwood--and the positivists. Chapters 2 and 3 deal with positivist critiques of verstehen as a method of social scientific verification and understanding. In the subsequent chapters Martin considers contemporary varieties of the verstehen position and argues that they like the classical positions, they conflict with the pluralistic nature of social science. Chapter 4 discusses Peter Winch's and William Dray's variants of verstehen, while chapters 5 through 9 consider recent theorists--Karl Popper, Charles Taylor, Clifford Geertz--whose work can be characterized in verstehenist terms: In his conclusion Martin defines the limitations of the classical and recent verstehen positions and proposes a methodological pluralism in which verstehen is justified pragmatically in terms of the purposes and contexts of inquiry. This volume is the only comprehensive and sustained critique of verstehen theory currently available. It will be of interest to sociologists, philosophers, political scientists, and anthropologists.

Author: Raymond Donovan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Author: Marcello Truzzi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Author: Uljana Feest
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9048135400
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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twentieth-century literature about the distinction between explanation and und- standing)? Second, can we do justice to a particular writer’s notion of that category by taking at face value what he writes about his own motivation for adopting it? In response to both types of questions, there is by now a consensus amongst many historians of science and of philosophy that (a) intellectual history – like other kinds of history – has to be careful not to uncritically adopt actors’ categories, and (b) more generally, even the actors’ own thinking about a particular issue has to be contextualized vis-à-vis their other intellectual commitments and interests, as well as the complex conditions that make the totality of their commitments possible. Such conditions include cognitive as well as practical, institutional, and cultural factors. The articles in this volume respond to these challenges in several ways. For example, one author (Christopher Pincock) seeks to read some of the nineteen- century philosophical writings about Erklären and Verstehen as standing for a more fundamental problem, which he terms the problem of the “unity of experience”.

Author: Charles A. Pressler
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 143841644X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Interpretive sociology involves the consideration of not only sense evidence, but also of meanings, affects, and other subjective phenomena. Sociologists and social philosophers have attempted to understand social behavior through observable interaction and wellsprings of behavior. This book is dedicated to a critical analysis of these approaches, from the positivist hermeneutics of Emilio Betti to the non-rational ethics of Max Scheler. Guided by a general model of social scientific activity developed in the introduction, it carefully explores the rich diversity of interpretive positions.

Author: Horst Jürgen Helle
Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
The volume Verstehen and Pragmatism demonstrates that there is a common bond between the various methodological positions in interpretative sociology: What unites them is the neo-Kantian epistemology as well as the rejection of the notion of a unified science. The individual chapters elaborate on the thesis that history and the social sciences differ significantly from the natural sciences. The book includes articles on the history of sociology, epistemological and methodological problems as well as on the practical application of interpretative methods. It deals with the most significant parts of the writings of Simmel, Max Weber, Scheler, Znaniecki, Schütz, Blumer, Goffman, and Peter Berger.

Author: Richard Lachmann
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745672043
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 131

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Sociology began as a historical discipline, created by Marx, Weber and others, to explain the emergence and consequences of rational, capitalist society. Today, the best historical sociology combines precision in theory-construction with the careful selection of appropriate methodologies to address ongoing debates across a range of subfields. This innovative book explores what sociologists gain by treating temporality seriously, what we learn from placing social relations and events in historical context. In a series of chapters, readers will see how historical sociologists have addressed the origins of capitalism, revolutions and social movements, empires and states, inequality, gender and culture. The goal is not to present a comprehensive history of historical sociology; rather, readers will encounter analyses of exemplary works and see how authors engaged past debates and their contemporaries in sociology, history and other disciplines to advance our understanding of how societies are created and remade across time. This illuminating book is designed for use in graduate and advanced undergraduate courses as an introduction to historical sociology and as a guide to employing historical analysis across the discipline.

Author: Gerard Delanty
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780761971733
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
Systematic and informative, this book is a complete and authoritative guide to historical sociology in three parts foundations, different approaches and major substantive themes.

Author: Philip Abrams
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801492433
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
This book argues that history and sociology share the same vital preoccupation: the desire to unravel the puzzle of human agency. How do large-scale social transformations occur, and what is the role of the individual in them? Phil Abrams devotes three chapters to the development of industrialism and scrutinizes, in that connection, the theories of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. Subsequent chapters consider Talcott Parsons and the debate on "convergence"; the formation of "states"; the idea of the "event" as a legitimate concern of history and sociology; individuals and sociological generations; deviancy and revolution; and a final chapter on the limits of historical sociology.