Action Research is one of the most practical and down-to-earth ways of doing research into working life. Beyond Theory draws on examples and actual cases to discuss action research within the framework of the modern, and postmodern, theory of science debate. While action research has been much criticized by the traditionalists, the book reflects a convergence between action research and positions emerging out of the critique of scientific traditionalism. Discussions between these two fields of knowledge, originally so very different, can enrich both. The book will be useful not only to researchers and academics but to anyone who is interested in the role and use of knowledge in social and organizational development.
Bennett perceives that many of the questions posed by eighteenth-century discourse - such as the difference between thought and language, the nature of the social, or the origin of the individual in the communal - remain current for us today. Beyond Theory is sure to provoke thought and stimulate debate among Germanists, comparatists, literary theorists, and others interested in the cultural history of eighteenth-century Europe.
This book is a must read for anyone who has a passion for leadership. Fitzpatrick’s style and story presentation could be a blueprint for any leader in any profession. His insights into building a culture of leaders, through mentoring and distributing responsibility in growing the capacity of an organization while celebrating and affirming people are the tenants of his approach to authentic accountability, where people when feeling valued become invested and perform at a high level! In the book Fitzpatrick shares the POCDICE theory, the seven key processes of Leadership that every aspiring and seasoned leaders must become good at, while never becoming complacent in improving in their roles. They are: planning, organization, communication, decision-making, influence, coordination, and evaluation. School Leadership and Governance in American schools is at a crossroads. Fewer candidates are entering this noble and honorable profession. We need great leaders for our schools and districts to flourish. This book is designed to inspire candidates to consider school and district leadership while giving insight into school governance from the principalship, superintendency, and Board of Education levels.
This is the first volume in a series of three books called Within Language, Beyond Theories, which focuses on current linguistic research surpassing the limits of contemporary theoretical frameworks in order to gain new insights into the structure of the language system and to offer more explanatorily adequate accounts of linguistic phenomena from a number of the world's languages. This volume brings together twenty-five papers pertaining to theoretical linguistics, and consists of three par ...
An approach to understanding religion that draws on both humanities and natural science but rejects approaches that employ simple monisms and radical dualisms. In Beyond Heaven and Earth, Gabriel Levy argues that collective religious narratives and beliefs are part of nature; they are the basis for the formation of the narratives and beliefs of individuals. Religion grows out of the universe, but to make sense of it we have to recognize the paradox that the universe is both mental and material (or neither). We need both humanities and natural science approaches to study religion and religious meaning, Levy contends, but we must also recognize the limits of these approaches. First, we must make the dominant metaphysics that undergird the various disciplines of science and humanities more explicit, and second, we must reject those versions of metaphysics that maintain simple monisms and radical dualisms. Bringing Donald Davidson’s philosophy—a form of pragmatism known as anomalous monism—to bear on religion, Levy offers a blueprint for one way that the humanities and natural sciences can have a mutually respectful dialogue. Levy argues that in order to understand religions we have to take their semantic content seriously. We need to rethink such basic concepts as narrative fiction, information, agency, creativity, technology, and intimacy. In the course of his argument, Levy considers the relation between two closely related semantics, fiction and religion, and outlines a new approach to information. He then applies his theory to discrete cases: ancient texts, modern media, and intimacy.
This book provides a major review of the state of international theory. It is focused around the issue of whether the positivist phase of international theory is now over, or whether the subject remains mainly positivistic. Leading scholars analyse the traditional theoretical approaches in the discipline, then examine the issues and groups which are marginalised by mainstream theory, before turning to four important new developments in international theory (historical sociology, post-structuralism, feminism, and critical theory). The book concludes with five chapters which look at the future of the subject and the practice of international relations. This survey brings together key figures who have made leading contributions to the development of mainstream and alternative theory, and will be a valuable text for both students and scholars of international relations.
This book offers a solution for the problem of structure and agency in sociological theory by developing a new pair of fundamental concepts: metric and nonmetric. Nonmetric forms, arising in a crowd made out of innumerable individuals, correspond to social groups that divide the many individuals in the crowd into insiders and outsiders. Metric forms correspond to congested zones like traffic jams on a highway: individuals are constantly entering and leaving these zones so that they continue to exist, even though the individuals passing through them change. Building from these concepts, we can understand “agency” as a requirement for group identity and group membership, thus associating it with nonmetric forms, and “structure” as a building-up effect following the accumulation of metric forms. This reveals the contradiction between structure and agency to be a case of forced perspective, leaving us victim to an optical illusion.
