Comte After Positivism
Author: Robert C. Scharff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2002-06-20
Total Pages: 252
ISBN-13: 9780521893039
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis 1996 book provides a detailed, systematic reconsideration of Auguste Comte.
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After Positivism
Author: Nicholas Hoover Wilson
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2024-04-30
Total Pages: 612
ISBN-13: 0231557329
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhat is the value of comparison for research in historical sociology? Today, social scientists regularly express doubt about the positivist premises that have long justified comparison’s use: that cases can be unproblematically compared as though they are independent of one another, that comparison can reliably yield valid causal inference, and that comparative methods can grapple with questions of meaning, sequence, and process that are central to historical explanation. Yet they remain reluctant to abandon comparison altogether, not least because comparisons are still manifestly useful in the research process. After Positivism presents a bold new set of warrants and methodologies for comparison that takes these criticisms fully into account. The contributors to this book marshal a wide array of postpositivist approaches to knowledge to reconstruct the analytic potential of comparison for a new generation of social scientists. In addition to providing fresh answers to classic questions about case selection and causal inference, authors ponder the role comparison plays in a world where social phenomena are demonstrably time-, space-, and concept-dependent; where causation is typically conjunctural; where social structures and groups emerge and die; and where important objects of inquiry can be understood only in terms of relationships, emergent properties, or contingent and irregular effects. Engaging and timely, this book will be of interest to all those who seek to improve our explanations of historical change in social-scientific research.
How History Matters to Philosophy
Author: Robert C. Scharff
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-02-03
Total Pages: 346
ISBN-13: 1134626738
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn recent decades, widespread rejection of positivism’s notorious hostility toward the philosophical tradition has led to renewed debate about the real relationship of philosophy to its history. How History Matters to Philosophy takes a fresh look at this debate. Current discussion usually starts with the question of whether philosophy’s past should matter, but Scharff argues that the very existence of the debate itself demonstrates that it already does matter. After an introductory review of the recent literature, he develops his case in two parts. In Part One, he shows how history actually matters for even Plato’s Socrates, Descartes, and Comte, in spite of their apparent promotion of conspicuously ahistorical Platonic, Cartesian, and Positivistic ideals. In Part Two, Scharff argues that the real issue is not whether history matters; rather it is that we already have a history, a very distinctive and unavoidable inheritance, which paradoxically teaches us that history’s mattering is merely optional. Through interpretations of Dilthey, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, he describes what thinking in a historically determinate way actually involves, and he considers how to avoid the denial of this condition that our own philosophical inheritance still seems to expect of us. In a brief conclusion, Scharff explains how this book should be read as part of his own effort to acknowledge this condition rather than deny it.
After International Relations
Author: Heikki Patomäki
Publisher: Psychology Press
Published: 2002
Total Pages: 284
ISBN-13: 9780415256599
DOWNLOAD EBOOKShows how and why theories based on the international problematic have failed; articulates an alternative, critical realist research programme; and illustrates how this research programme can be put to work.
After Marx
Author: Terence Ball
Publisher: CUP Archive
Published: 1984-06-29
Total Pages: 308
ISBN-13: 9780521276610
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThese twelve original essays are 'after' Marx in several senses. The first and most obvious is the purely chronological sense: They are written one hundred years after Marx's death. The authors are therefore able to see more clearly what Marx did not or could not see and to see more clearly that which he foresaw only dimly. The second sense in which they are after Marx is political: In this century virtually all revolutionaries call themselves Marxists and purport to apply Marx's precepts to political practice. Armed with their different interpretations of a nineteenth-century theory, they have altered - and continue to reshape - the political contours of the twentieth century. Marx raised more questions than he, or anyone else, could ever reasonably hope to answer. To raise anew some of these questions and to approach them in the critical spirit of Marx's own thinking, are the common themes running through and uniting these essays.
Postpositivism and Educational Research
Author: Denis Charles Phillips
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2000
Total Pages: 118
ISBN-13: 9780847691227
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume presents in a forthright and lively way, an account of the philosophical position generally identified as Postpositivistic that undergirds much of mainstream research in education and the related social sciences. The discussion throughout is informed by recent developments in philosophy of science. This book argues that, while there is much to be learned from recent critiques regarding truth in research, traditional scientific values and assumptions are not outmoded. Visit our website for sample chapters!
Critical Realism, Post-positivism and the Possibility of Knowledge
Author: Ruth Groff
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2004-07-31
Total Pages: 161
ISBN-13: 1134312946
DOWNLOAD EBOOKGroff defends 'realism about causality' through close discussions of Kant, Hilary Putnam, Brian Ellis and Charles Taylor, among others. In so doing she affirms critical realism, but with several important qualifications. In particular, she rejects the theory of truth advanced by Roy Bhaskar. She also attempts to both clarify and correct earlier critical realist attempts to apply realism about causality to the social sciences. By connecting issues in metaphysics and philosophy of science to the problem of relativism, Groff bridges the gap between the philosophical literature and broader debates surrounding socio-political theory and poststructuralist thought. This unique approach will make the book of interest to philosophers and socio-political theorists alike.
The Eighty Years' Crisis
Author: Ken Booth
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1998
Total Pages: 272
ISBN-13: 9780521667838
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book uses the agenda of E. H. Carr, and most obviously extends the title of his classic book The Twenty Years' Crisis, as the point of departure to discuss aspects of the world historical crisis from the end of the First World War until the end of the 1990s. This crisis - identified by 80 years of destructive wars, inequalities in life chances, and today's casualities of the global political economy - has shaped both the practices of international politics and the way they have been conceptualised and reconceptualised by specialists in International Relations. A distinguished group of contributors have written about the development of the academic discipline of International Relations in the inter-war years, the Cold War and post-Cold War eras; ethics, power and nationalism; the conditions of peace and the roles of law and peaceful change; and finally, considering future prospects, about globalization and the end of the old order.
Beyond Positivism
Author: Bruce Caldwell
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-07-20
Total Pages: 440
ISBN-13: 1134838638
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSince its publication in 1982, Beyond Positivism has become established as one of the definitive statements on economic methodology. The book‘s rejection of positivism and its advocacy of pluralism were to have a profound influence in the flowering of work methodology that has taken place in economics in the decade since its publication. This editi
The SAGE Handbook of Tourism Studies
Author: Tazim Jamal
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Published: 2009-07-01
Total Pages: 737
ISBN-13: 1412923972
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"The strongest overview I have encountered of the scope and the current state of research across all the fields involved in advancing our understanding of tourism. For its range of topics, depth of analyses, and distinction of its contributors, nothing is comparable." - Professor Dean MacCannell, University of California, Davis "The breadth of vision and sweep of accounts is remarkable, and range of topics laudable... a rare combination of the authoritative, the challenging and stimulating." - Professor Mike Crang, Durham University Tourism studies developed as a sub-branch of older disciplines in the social sciences, such as anthropology, sociology and economics, and newer applied fields of study in hospitality management, civil rights and transport studies. This Handbook is a sign of the maturity of the field. It provides an essential resource for teachers and students to determine the roots, key issues and agenda of tourism studies, exploring: The evolution and position of tourism studies The relationship of tourism to culture The ecology and economics of tourism Special events and destination management Methodologies of study Tourism and transport Tourism and heritage Tourism and postcolonialism Global tourist business operations Ranging from local to global issues, and from questions of management to the ethical dilemmas of tourism, this is a comprehensive, critically informed, constructively organized overview of the field. It draws together an inter-disciplinary group of contributors who are among the most celebrated names in the field and will be quickly recognized as a landmark in the new and expanding field of tourism studies.
