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Author: Charles F. Gattone
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 179363145X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 143
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Book Description
A Balanced Epistemological Orientation for the Social Sciences challenges social researchers to rethink the epistemological assumptions grounding their work. It reviews the strengths and weaknesses of four salient epistemological orientations in the field – positivism, relativism, interpretivism, and intersubjectivism – to identify the characteristics of a theoretically-informed epistemology for social science. Relying on such an epistemology means seeking a deeper understanding of the social world without losing sight of the constructed nature of one’s conceptual frames. It involves adopting a reflexive position with regard to the norms and traditions in one’s area of specialization and in the field as a whole. Epistemologically-balanced social research is neither the dispassionate gathering of factual information, nor the elaboration of universal assessments formed on the basis of armchair speculation. It involves engaging in inquiry in an independent manner and being aware of the perspectival character of the claims being made in the attempt to shed new light on social phenomena. The caliber of social science can be elevated when researchers recognize the symbolic nature of their work and the significance of their conclusions in the larger social order.
Author: Charles F. Gattone
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 179363145X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 143
Get Book Here
Book Description
A Balanced Epistemological Orientation for the Social Sciences challenges social researchers to rethink the epistemological assumptions grounding their work. It reviews the strengths and weaknesses of four salient epistemological orientations in the field – positivism, relativism, interpretivism, and intersubjectivism – to identify the characteristics of a theoretically-informed epistemology for social science. Relying on such an epistemology means seeking a deeper understanding of the social world without losing sight of the constructed nature of one’s conceptual frames. It involves adopting a reflexive position with regard to the norms and traditions in one’s area of specialization and in the field as a whole. Epistemologically-balanced social research is neither the dispassionate gathering of factual information, nor the elaboration of universal assessments formed on the basis of armchair speculation. It involves engaging in inquiry in an independent manner and being aware of the perspectival character of the claims being made in the attempt to shed new light on social phenomena. The caliber of social science can be elevated when researchers recognize the symbolic nature of their work and the significance of their conclusions in the larger social order.
Author: Anol Bhattacherjee
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781475146127
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 156
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Book Description
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.
Author: Isaac Ariail Reed
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226706729
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 205
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Book Description
For the past fifty years anxiety over naturalism has driven debates in social theory. One side sees social science as another kind of natural science, while the other rejects the possibility of objective and explanatory knowledge. Interpretation and Social Knowledge suggests a different route, offering a way forward for an antinaturalist sociology that overcomes the opposition between interpretation and explanation and uses theory to build concrete, historically specific causal explanations of social phenomena.
Author: Jane Azevedo
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791495485
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
With postmodernism and postructuralism sweeping the social sciences and humanities, a whole generation of students from disciplines as diverse as history, English literature, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology are learning that "truth" is bogus--a tired old liberal humanist fiction. Language is incapable of telling the truth, and science, nothing but a socially constructed discourse, functions to maintain the status quo. There is much to be said for this point of view, but ironically, relativists face precisely the same quandary, for if all claims to knowledge are equally valid, then de facto the knowledge claims of the most powerful are the ones disseminated and acted upon. This timely book offers a way out of the current realist/relativist impasse. Azevedo uses the insights of evolutionary epistemology to develop a naturalist realist methodology of science, the "mapping model of knowledge," and applies it to solving the conceptual, practical, and ethical problems faced by sociology as a discipline. The model is developed from the practice of the natural sciences, and comes with an easily applied and powerful heuristic based on mapping, filling the gap left by the downfall of positivist and empiricist methodologies. It shows the inescapably social nature of science, but argues that scientific theories can in fact be validated in perspective-neutral ways --not despite the social and interest-driven nature of science, but because of it.
Author: Tuija Takala
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 180088169X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 285
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Book Description
Covering a vast array of disciplines, this prescient Encyclopedia analyzes the many roles that applied ethics plays in the social sciences. Entries scrutinize the various manifestations of ethics across a range of disciplines and subdisciplines such as animal studies, criminology, and global health.
Author: Donatella Della Porta
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139474596
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 366
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Book Description
A 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: Marilyn Lichtman
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1483320677
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 449
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Book Description
Focusing on the integral role of the researcher, Qualitative Research for the Social Sciences uses a conversational writing style that draws readers into the excitement of the research process. Lichtman offers a balanced and nuanced approach, covering the full range of qualitative methodologies and viewpoints about the field, including coverage of social media as a tool to facilitate research or as a venue for study. After presenting theoretical concepts and a historical overview, Lichtman guides readers, step by step, through the research process, addressing issues of analyzing data, presenting completed research, and evaluating research. Real-world examples from across the social sciences provide both practical and theoretical information, helping readers understand abstract ideas and apply them to their own research.
Author: Scott Warren
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226873927
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
Scott Warren’s ambitious and enduring work sets out to resolve the ongoing identity crisis of contemporary political inquiry. In the Emergence of Dialectical Theory, Warren begins with a careful analysis of the philosophical foundations of dialectical theory in the thought of Kant, Hegel, and Marx. He then examines how the dialectic functions in the major twentieth-century philosophical movements of existentialism, phenomenology, neomarxism, and critical theory. Numerous major and minor philosophers are discussed, but the emphasis falls on two of the greatest dialectical thinkers of the previous century: Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jürgen Habermas. Warren’s shrewd critique is indispensable to those interested in the history of social and political thought and the philosophical foundations of political theory. His work offers an alternative for those who find postmodernism to be at a philosophical impasse.
Author: Christina Toren
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857455168
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
Epistemology poses particular problems for anthropologists whose task it is to understand manifold ways of being human. Through their work, anthropologists often encounter people whose ideas concerning the nature and foundations of knowledge are at odds with their own. Going right to the heart of anthropological theory and method, this volume discusses issues that have vexed practicing anthropologists for a long time. The authors are by no means in agreement with one another as to where the answers might lie. Some are primarily concerned with the clarity and theoretical utility of analytical categories across disciplines; others are more inclined to push ethnographic analysis to its limits in an effort to demonstrate what kind of sense it can make. All are aware of the much-wanted differences that good ethnography can make in explaining the human sciences and philosophy. The contributors show a continued commitment to ethnography as a profoundly radical intellectual endeavor that goes to the very roots of inquiry into what it is to be human, and, to anthropology as a comparative project that should be central to any attempt to understand who we are.
Author: Elizabeth Cancelli
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000835375
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 198
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Book Description
This book connects the work of US private foundations, the US government, and Brazilian intellectuals to explore how they worked collaboratively to address racial disparities in Brazil during the Cold War. It reveals not only how anti-racism was promoted during this period, shaping the political and academic agenda, but also the importance of American foundations, especially the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, in the process. Drawing on a vast array of archival and published sources from Brazil, the United States, and around the world, the book investigates the making of transnational connections and networks that sought to respond to the "race problem", seen as an increasingly dangerous threat to the liberal international order. This book is especially relevant to the areas of Race Studies, Social Sciences, Latin-American Studies, Political Science and History, particularly the History of Sociology and Anthropology, as well as to studies about the role of American foundations in the Cold War period. It will also be of interest to activists, social scientists, economists, historians, journalists, NGOs, and INGOs.
