Welcome to Social Theory

Welcome to Social Theory

Author: Tom Brock

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2023-03-08

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 1529786681

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Welcome to Social Theory is exactly what students want: a lucid and engaging introduction to social theory that carefully uses images, examples and quotations to illustrate new ways of examining contemporary social life. Tom Brock’s comprehensive and accessible style produces an indispensable guide to social theory that examines the major theoretical traditions from Marxism through to poststructuralism, and from feminism through to postcolonial theory, new materialism and posthumanism. Welcome to Social Theory gives careful appraisal of classical ideas and debates in social theory and traces their impact through discussion of major contemporary theorists – including Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, Margaret Archer, Judith Butler, bell hooks, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Bruno Latour, Gilles Deleuze and Rosi Braidotti. Social theory matters and this book shows why through relevant and compelling examples, including the gig economy, everyday sexism, digital black feminism, animal and environmental activism, stigma and discrimination against migrants, the need to decolonise the sociology curriculum and many more. Welcome to Social theory is an indispensable text for undergraduate students who are new to social theory. Dr. Tom Brock is a Senior Lecturer of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University.


Ideology and Social Knowledge

Ideology and Social Knowledge

Author: Harold J. Bershady

Publisher: Transaction Publishers

Published: 2014-08-07

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 1412854199

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This book analyzes Talcott Parsons’ largest-scale effort to overcome the relativism and subjectivism of the social sciences. Harold J. Bershady sets forth Parsons’ version of the characteristics desirable for social knowledge, showing that Parsons deems the relativistic and subjectivistic arguments as powerful challenges to the validity of social knowledge. Bershady maintains that all Parsons’ intellectual labors exhibit a deep and abiding concern for social knowledge. From his first major work in the 1930s to his later writings on social evolution, Parsons’ theoretical aim has been to provide an unassailable answer to the question, "how is social knowledge possible?" Ideological criticisms of Parsons’ work, Bershady argues, not only miss his awareness of ideological influences upon social thought, but also miss the logical and epistemological strands of his thinking. This book sheds light on the persistent importance of the work of a major theoretical sociologist of the twentieth century. It also brings into the open and discusses issues of deepest concern to the philosophy and methodology of all of the social sciences.


The Monist

The Monist

Author: Paul Carus

Publisher:

Published: 1927

Total Pages: 666

ISBN-13:

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Vols. 2 and 5 include appendices.


Digital Social Networks and Travel Behaviour in Urban Environments

Digital Social Networks and Travel Behaviour in Urban Environments

Author: Pnina O. Plaut

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-10-17

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 0429949723

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This book brings together conceptual and empirical insights to explore the interconnections between social networks based on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and travel behaviour in urban environments. Over the past decade, rapid development of ICT has led to extensive social impacts and influence on travel and mobility patterns within urban spaces. A new field of research of digital social networks and travel behaviour is now emerging. This book presents state-of-the-art knowledge, cutting-edge research and integrated analysis methods from the fields of social networks, travel behaviour and urban analysis. It explores the challenges related to the question of how we can synchronize among social networks activities, transport means, intelligent communication/information technologies and the urban form. This innovative book encourages multidisciplinary insights and fusion among three disciplines of social networks, travel behaviour and urban analysis. It offers new horizons for research and will be of interest to students and scholars studying mobilities, transport studies, urban geography, urban planning, the built environment and urban policy.


Text Analysis for the Social Sciences

Text Analysis for the Social Sciences

Author: Carl W. Roberts

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-07-24

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 1000149242

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This book provides descriptions and illustrations of cutting-edge text analysis methods for communication and marketing research; cultural, historical-comparative, and event analysis; curriculum evaluation; psychological diagnosis; language development research; and for any research in which statistical inferences are drawn from samples of texts. Although the book is accessible to readers having no experience with content analysis, the text analysis expert will find substantial new material in its pages. In particular, this collection describes developments in semantic and network text analysis methodologies that heretofore have been accessible only among a smattering of methodology journals. The book's international and cross-disciplinary content illustrates the breadth of quantitative text analysis applications. These applications demonstrate the methods' utility for international research, as well as for practitioners from the fields of sociology, political science, journalism/communication, computer science, marketing, education, and English. This is an "ecumenical" collection that contains applications not only of the most recent semantic and network text analysis methods, but also of the more traditional thematic method of text analysis. In fact, it is originally with this volume that these two "relational" approaches to text analysis are defined and contrasted with more traditional "thematic" text analysis methods. The emphasis here is on application. The book's chapters provide guidance regarding the sorts of inferences that each method affords, and up-to-date descriptions of the human and technological resources required to apply the methods. Its purpose is as a resource for making quantitative text analysis methods more accessible to social science researchers.