Read and Download eBook Full
Author: W. G. Runciman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1969-05-02
Total Pages: 212
ISBN-13: 9780521074742
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis 1969 study considers the relation of sociology to political philosophy and extends traditional political philosophy in the direction of contemporary developments.
Author: Alexander L. George
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2005-04-15
Total Pages: 347
ISBN-13: 0262262894
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe use of case studies to build and test theories in political science and the other social sciences has increased in recent years. Many scholars have argued that the social sciences rely too heavily on quantitative research and formal models and have attempted to develop and refine rigorous methods for using case studies. This text presents a comprehensive analysis of research methods using case studies and examines the place of case studies in social science methodology. It argues that case studies, statistical methods, and formal models are complementary rather than competitive. The book explains how to design case study research that will produce results useful to policymakers and emphasizes the importance of developing policy-relevant theories. It offers three major contributions to case study methodology: an emphasis on the importance of within-case analysis, a detailed discussion of process tracing, and development of the concept of typological theories. Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences will be particularly useful to graduate students and scholars in social science methodology and the philosophy of science, as well as to those designing new research projects, and will contribute greatly to the broader debate about scientific methods.
Author: Anthony Giddens
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-08-21
Total Pages: 419
ISBN-13: 1317650646
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe studies which comprise this book are essentially organized around a critical encounter with European social theory in its 'classical period' – i.e. from the middle years of the nineteenth century until the First World War – and have the aim of working out some of the implications of that encounter for the position and prospects of the social sciences today. The issues involved relate to the following series of problems: method and epistemology; social development and transformation; the origins of 'sociology' in nineteenth-century social theory; and the status of social science as critique. In each of these areas, Giddens develops views that challenge existing orthodoxies, and connects these ideas to a reconstruction of social theory in the contemporary era.
Author: Michael Vessuri, Hebe Kuhn
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Published: 2016-09-13
Total Pages: 282
ISBN-13: 3838208935
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe European social sciences tend to absorb criticism that has been passed on the European approach and re-label it as a part of what the critique opposes; criticism of European social sciences by “subaltern” social sciences, their “talking back”, has become a frequent line of reflection in European social sciences. The re-labelling of the critique of the European approach to social sciences towards a critique from “Southern” social sciences of “Western” social sciences has somehow turned “Southern” as well as “Western” social sciences into competing contributors to the same “globalizing” social sciences. Both are no longer arguing about the European approach to social sciences but about which social thought from which part of the globe prevails. If the critique becomes a part of what it opposes, one might conclude that the European social sciences are very adaptable and capable of learning. One might, however, also raise the question whether there is anything wrong with the criticism of the European social sciences; or, for that matter, whether there is anything wrong with the European social sciences themselves. The contributions in this book discuss these questions from different angles: They revisit the mainstream critique of the European social sciences, and they suggest new arguments criticizing social science theories that may be found as often in the “Western” as in the “Southern” discourse.
Author: John S Dryzek
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2008-06-12
Total Pages: 898
ISBN-13: 0199548439
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOxford Handbooks of Political Science are the essential guide to the state of political science today. With engaging contributions from 51 major international scholars, the Oxford Handbook of Political Theory provides the key point of reference for anyone working in political theory and beyond.
Author: Carol Mershon
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 2019-09-03
Total Pages: 257
ISBN-13: 0472054236
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA formal model in the social sciences builds explanations when it structures the reasoning underlying a theoretical argument, opens venues for controlled experimentation, and can lead to hypotheses. Yet more importantly, models evaluate theory, build theory, and enhance conjectures. Formal Modeling in Social Science addresses the varied helpful roles of formal models and goes further to take up more fundamental considerations of epistemology and methodology. The authors integrate the exposition of the epistemology and the methodology of modeling and argue that these two reinforce each other. They illustrate the process of designing an original model suited to the puzzle at hand, using multiple methods in diverse substantive areas of inquiry. The authors also emphasize the crucial, though underappreciated, role of a narrative in the progression from theory to model. Transparency of assumptions and steps in a model means that any analyst will reach equivalent predictions whenever she replicates the argument. Hence, models enable theoretical replication, essential in the accumulation of knowledge. Formal Modeling in Social Science speaks to scholars in different career stages and disciplines and with varying expertise in modeling.
Author: Donatella Della Porta
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2008-08-28
Total Pages: 366
ISBN-13: 1139474596
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA revolutionary textbook introducing masters and doctoral students to the major research approaches and methodologies in the social sciences. Written by an outstanding set of scholars, and derived from successful course teaching, this volume will empower students to choose their own approach to research, to justify this approach, and to situate it within the discipline. It addresses questions of ontology, epistemology and philosophy of social science, and proceeds to issues of methodology and research design essential for producing a good research proposal. It also introduces researchers to the main issues of debate and contention in the methodology of social sciences, identifying commonalities, historic continuities and genuine differences.
Author: David Byrne
Publisher: Policy Press
Published: 2011-02-16
Total Pages: 240
ISBN-13: 1847424503
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis important book examines how social science is applied now and how it might be applied in the future in relation to social transformation in a time of crisis.
Author: Gerard Delanty
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2011-03-23
Total Pages: 529
ISBN-13: 1135997942
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Handbook will address a range of issues that have emerged out of recent social and political theory. It will focus on key themes as opposed to schools of thought or major theorists. Each chapter is an emerging, cutting edge topic that is of interest both to social theory and to political theory. Most topics will have a clear and substantive focus on social or political problems.
Author: Brian Fay
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-08-27
Total Pages: 107
ISBN-13: 1317652282
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book examines the question of how our knowledge of social life affects, and ought to affect, our way of living it. In so doing, it critically discusses two epistemological models of social science – the positivist and the interpretive – from the viewpoint of the political theories which, it is argued, are implicit in these models; moreover, it proposes a third model – the critical – which is organised around an explicit account of the relation between social theory and practical life. The book has the special merit of being a good overview of the principal current ideas about the relation between social theory and political practice, as well as an attempt at providing a new and more satisfactory account of this relationship. To accomplish this task, it synthesises work from the analytic philosophy of social science with that of the neo-Marxism of the Frankfurt school.
