In this textbook, Derek Layder offers a better understanding of the links between theory and research, and provides an analysis of the relationship between the two. He develops clear usable strategies to encourage theory development in the practical context of social research, and introduces a new approach - adaptive theory - which can be used to generate new theory as well as develop existing theory in conjunction with empirical research. Layder concludes by providing an outline of new rules of sociological method that show how adaptive theory can be put into practice.
This second edition of a classic text in the field has been revisited by its authors and extensively reworked. It incorporates new case studies based on the authors’ experiences as well as one completely new chapter. The first edition of Clinical Sociology was published in 1996. Its goal was to explore various approaches to problem-solving at the micro, meso, and macro levels of social complexity.
Pitirim Sorokin (1889-1968) rose from a peasant childhood in Russia to become one of the most insightful figures in the history of sociology. At the Harvard Research Center for Creative Altruism, he developed a blueprint for social reconstruction. This collection includes essays that range from his early Russian years to his final works in the '60s.
This book is designed to introduce doctoral and graduate students to the process of conducting scientific research in the social sciences, business, education, public health, and related disciplines. It is a one-stop, comprehensive, and compact source for foundational concepts in behavioral research, and can serve as a stand-alone text or as a supplement to research readings in any doctoral seminar or research methods class. This book is currently used as a research text at universities on six continents and will shortly be available in nine different languages.
In this bold and original study, Jeff Kochan constructively combines the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) with Martin Heidegger’s early existential conception of science. Kochan shows convincingly that these apparently quite different approaches to science are, in fact, largely compatible, even mutually reinforcing. By combining Heidegger with SSK, Kochan argues, we can explicate, elaborate, and empirically ground Heidegger’s philosophy of science in a way that makes it more accessible and useful for social scientists and historians of science. Likewise, incorporating Heideggerian phenomenology into SSK renders SKK a more robust and attractive methodology for use by scholars in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Kochan’s ground-breaking reinterpretation of Heidegger also enables STS scholars to sustain a principled analytical focus on scientific subjectivity, without running afoul of the orthodox subject-object distinction they often reject. Science as Social Existence is the first book of its kind, unfurling its argument through a range of topics relevant to contemporary STS research. These include the epistemology and metaphysics of scientific practice, as well as the methods of explanation appropriate to social scientific and historical studies of science. Science as Social Existence puts concentrated emphasis on the compatibility of Heidegger’s existential conception of science with the historical sociology of scientific knowledge, pursuing this combination at both macro- and micro-historical levels. Beautifully written and accessible, Science as Social Existence puts new and powerful tools into the hands of sociologists and historians of science, cultural theorists of science, Heidegger scholars, and pluralist philosophers of science.
Science as Practice and Culture explores one of the newest and most controversial developments within the rapidly changing field of science studies: the move toward studying scientific practice—the work of doing science—and the associated move toward studying scientific culture, understood as the field of resources that practice operates in and on. Andrew Pickering has invited leading historians, philosophers, sociologists, and anthropologists of science to prepare original essays for this volume. The essays range over the physical and biological sciences and mathematics, and are divided into two parts. In part I, the contributors map out a coherent set of perspectives on scientific practice and culture, and relate their analyses to central topics in the philosophy of science such as realism, relativism, and incommensurability. The essays in part II seek to delineate the study of science as practice in arguments across its borders with the sociology of scientific knowledge, social epistemology, and reflexive ethnography.
This successor to the well-known Using Sociology covers standard topics found in any sociology textbook. Doing Sociology walks lay readers through the steps of doing real-life sociological practices as conducted by experts in the field. The contributors to this volume range from university and college faculty, government sociologists, and practitioners from the private sector. Each of the chapters is by intention and design a personal statement, a case study illustrating how the authors practice sociology in their own words and style, giving readers a clearer understanding of what sociologists do outside of teaching in universities. And most importantly, an understanding of what they could do with sociology. Readable, relevant, and accessible, Doing Sociology is an invaluable resource as a stand-alone course reader or as a supplement to a traditional textbook.
This text demonstrates the link between philosophy of science and scientific practice. Durkheim's sociology is examined as more than a collection of general observations about society, since the constructed theory of the meanings and causes of social life is incorporated.
Provides an introduction to the core issues in social theory. This book will be useful reading for students in sociology, social psychology, social theory, political theory and organization studies.
