Author: David W. Hall
Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 646

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Author: Kavous Ardalan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317356322
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
Social theory can usefully be conceived in terms of four key paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. The four paradigms are founded upon different assumptions about the nature of social science and the nature of society. Each generates theories, concepts, and analytical tools which are different from those of other paradigms and together they provide a more balanced understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. This book demonstrates that an understanding of these different paradigms and how they can be applied leads to a better understanding of the multi-faceted nature of political economy. Any explanation of a given phenomenon is based on a worldview. The premise of this book is that any worldview can be associated with one of the four key paradigms. Each chapter of the book takes an important phenomenon (i.e., the state, justice, freedom, democracy, liberal democracy, media, and the great recession) and discusses it from the four different viewpoints. It emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative. They look at the phenomenon from their certain paradigmatic perspective and together provide a more balanced understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. The diversity of economics research possibilities referred to in this book is vast. While each paradigm advocates a research strategy that is logically coherent, in terms of underlying assumptions, these vary from paradigm to paradigm. The phenomenon to be researched can be conceptualized and studied in many different ways, each generating distinctive kinds of insight and understanding. This book is for those who study political economy as well as economic theory and philosophy.

Author: Norman Blaikie
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509515402
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This unique book explains the central role that research paradigms play in the design and conduct of social research. The authors argue that social research should not just describe or confirm a social problem but should seek to find an explanation for it – and to do so requires research with 'eyes philosophically wide open'. Important philosophical and practice elements of three widely recognized paradigms – Neo-Positive, Interpretive and Critical Realist – are carefully elaborated and their use in action illustrated with detailed examples. The authors show that the philosophical assumptions of a chosen paradigm must match those embedded in a characterization of a research problem and its context. This paradigm orientation is shown to be fundamental to appropriately framing a problem, formulating research questions, deciding on a logic of inquiry and selecting and using methods to investigate it. Ultimately, an appropriate paradigm orientation to social research provides a dispassionate, rigorous and effective basis for the production of new social scientific knowledge. Following on from Blaikie's Approaches to Social Enquiry and Designing Social Research, this innovative book will be invaluable to upper-level and research students, their lecturers and supervisors, and researchers across the social sciences.

Author: Roberto Esposito
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509546448
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This new book by the Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito addresses the profound crisis of contemporary politics and examines some of the philosophical approaches that have been used to try to understand and go beyond this crisis. Two approaches have been particularly influential – one indebted to the thought of Martin Heidegger, the other indebted to Gilles Deleuze. While opposed in their political thrust and orientation, both approaches remain trapped within the political ontology that has framed our conceptual language for some time. In order to move beyond this political ontology, Esposito turns to a third approach that he characterizes as ‘instituting thought’. Indebted to the work of the French political philosopher Claude Lefort, this third approach recognizes that the road to reconstructing a productive relation between ontology and politics, one that is both realistic and innovative, lies in instituting praxis. Building on this insight, Esposito conceptualizes social being as neither univocal nor plurivocal but as cross-cut by the dual semantics of political conflict. This new book by one of the most original European philosophers writing today will be of great interest to students and scholars in philosophy, social and political theory and the humanities generally.

Author: Andrew C. Janos
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804713337
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Recent economic and political developments in the Third World and in Communist and advanced industrial societies have challenged some of the most cherished assumptions of social science, forcing social scientists to rethink many of the categories of their discipline. In a concisely written and provocative book, the author traces this process of rethinking. He does so by going back to the nineteenth-century origins of political sociology and economy, and by exploring more recent attempts by American scholarship to fashion from the writings of Smith, Marx, Spencer, Weber, and Durkheim a new universal theory of modernization and political change. The author argues that these attempts led to a new intellectual crisis, which could be resolved only by a "paradigm shift," that is, by refocusing the discipline from the classical concept of social relations to a new global concept of the division of labor and systems of exchange. Overall, the volume may be read both as an intellectual history of modern political science, and as an attempt to fashion an analytical tool for empirical research. As such, it will be of interest to students of political philosophy as well as of comparative politics.

Author: Michael Haas
Publisher: Greenwood Publishing Group
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
This book deconstructs competing paradigms in political science and sociology in order to demonstrate metaphysical, methodological, and normative assumptions that underpin the paradigms themselves. Haas covers alternative paradigms in seven fields of middle-range theory--development, community power, presidential voting, ethnic voting, civil strife, international violence, and international community--in both political science and sociology. Haas concludes that competing theorists argue ideologically when they should be discussing their differences in terms of underlying philosophical assumptions. Many disputes between theorists are naive from a philosophical point of view. This unique contribution to social science theory attempts to clarify the issues in the fields of political science and sociology. Haas demonstrates some of the confusions: Some debates are between scholars who are unaware that they agree on paradigms; many scholars are not even testing their own paradigms because they have not examined the basic philosophical assumptions of their theories. Many paradigmatic debates fail to focus on issues of normative importance and thus have little relevance to policy; methodological differences should lead to multimethodological research designs rather than monomethodological disputation. This important study will be of value to practitioners and students in the fields of political science and sociology.

Author: Donald V Kurtz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429977891
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
The field of political anthropology is complicated by a breadth and depth of interests that include every kind of ethnographically and historically represented political community, and nearly every kind of recorded political practice, behavior, and organization. To make sense of this array of information, political anthropologists examine political topics and issues in the context of research paradigms that include structural-functionalism, pro-cessualism, political economy, political evolution, and, arguably, post-modernism. In Political Anthropology, Donald V. Kurtz examines how anthropologists think about politics, political organizations, and problems fundamental to political anthropology. He explores the ideas with which they address universal political concerns, the paradigms that direct political research by anthropologists, and political topics of special interest.

Author: Alain Touraine
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745636721
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Introduction: A New Paradigm p. 1 Part 1 When We Referred to Ourselves in Social Terms 1 The Break p. 9 9/11 Fear A world in decline Where is meaning to be found? 2 Globalization p. 19 From the post-war states to the globalization of the economy An extreme capitalism The rupturing of societies Alter-globalism From society to war A globalized world 3 Europe: A State without a Nation p. 33 Decline of the national state? Is European unity possible? European Union and United States of America The European state European powerlessness The absence of European consciousness 4 The End of Societies p. 44 The social representation of society The European mode of modernization Society and modernity The crisis of representation The three deaths of European society Irruption of democracy The return of the political Farewell to society The war above us When system and actors separate off The rupturing of the social bond Are we witnessing the end of social movements? Conclusion 5 Revisiting the Self p. 71 What is modernity? The victory of modernity The end of social thought Emancipatory individualism Forms of social determinism From focusing on the world to focusing on the self The awakening of the subject Part 2 Now that We Refer to Ourselves in Cultural Terms 6 The Subject p. 101 The subject and identity The sources of the subject Defence of sociology The individual subject Rights Are we all subjects? The negation of the subject A related note The subject, social movements and the unconscious Proximity The subject and religion The subject and the school The experience of being a subject The anti-subject Between gods and societies 7 Cultural Rights p. 144 Political rights and cultural rights Minorities, multiculturalism, communitarianism Redistribution and recognition The new social movements Modernizations Entry into the post-social world Sexual rights The limits of cultural mixing About the 'veil' Communities and communitarianisms Liberals and communitarians Secularism Intercultural communication Return to new ideas 8 A Society of Women p. 184 An altered situation Equality and difference Sexuality and gender The woman-subject The role of men Post-feminism Argument: By Way of Conclusion p. 208 Bibliography p. 211 Index p. 216.

Author: John R. Champlin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351500910
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Generations of men have used the notion of "power" to make sense of their political experience. Despite the fact that the term has recently fallen into comparative disfavor, the scholarly debate over the nature of power continues, with experts still striving to obtain an exact understanding of what power really is. The works collected by John R. Champlin here clearly set forth all the important arguments in the lively dispute, with a focus on the essential question: can the concept of power be used to unify the study of politics?The contributors to this work search for a definition of power, assess the value of serious political analysis in terms of power, and illustrate applications of the "power concept" to issues locally, nationally, and internationally. Hans Morgenthau supports a power-based political theory; he is countered by Charles A. McClelland and James G. March. Seeking a coherent, useful definition of the term, Thomas Hobbes investigates power in terms of its cause, and Dorothy Emmet draws up a list of distinct uses of power. Theodore Lowi achieves a fresh start on power studies by distinguishing "arenas" of power according to expectations of costs and benefits. The Lowi contribution bears on the debate over how the United States is to be characterized. Opposing C. Wright Mills' theory of the power elite as well as the idea of pluralism, Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz find that opportunities for participation in political decisions and power are very unequally distributed.This unique debate on the definition of power, engaging all sides in direct dialogue with one another, includes the work of important leading scholars in this area of thought. Together with an excellent introduction by the editor, the debate gives an active dimension to this book that will enliven all college classes and interested audiences.

Author: Rudra Sil
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1137013591
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
While paradigm-bound research has generated powerful insights in international relations, it has fostered a tunnel vision that hinders progress and widens the chasm between theory and policy. In this important new book, Sil and Katzenstein draw upon recent scholarship to illustrate the benefits of a more pragmatic and eclectic style of research.