Elucidating Social Science Concepts

Elucidating Social Science Concepts PDF Author: Frederic Charles Schaffer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136710647
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187

Get Book Here

Book Description
Concepts have always been foundational to the social science enterprise. This book is a guide to working with them. Against the positivist project of concept "reconstruction"—the formulation of a technical, purportedly neutral vocabulary for measuring, comparing, and generalizing—Schaffer adopts an interpretivist approach that he calls "elucidation." Elucidation includes both a reflexive examination of social science technical language and an investigation into the language of daily life. It is intended to produce a clear view of both types of language, the relationship between them, and the practices of life and power that they evoke and sustain. After an initial chapter explaining what elucidation is and how it differs from reconstruction, the book lays out practical elucidative strategies—grounding, locating, and exposing—that help situate concepts in particular language games, times and tongues, and structures of power. It also explores the uses to which elucidation can be put and the moral dilemmas that attend such uses. By illustrating his arguments with lively analyses of such concepts as "person," "family," and "democracy," Schaffer shows rather than tells, making the book both highly readable and an essential guide for social science research.

Elucidating Social Science Concepts

Elucidating Social Science Concepts PDF Author: Frederic Charles Schaffer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136710647
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187

Get Book Here

Book Description
Concepts have always been foundational to the social science enterprise. This book is a guide to working with them. Against the positivist project of concept "reconstruction"—the formulation of a technical, purportedly neutral vocabulary for measuring, comparing, and generalizing—Schaffer adopts an interpretivist approach that he calls "elucidation." Elucidation includes both a reflexive examination of social science technical language and an investigation into the language of daily life. It is intended to produce a clear view of both types of language, the relationship between them, and the practices of life and power that they evoke and sustain. After an initial chapter explaining what elucidation is and how it differs from reconstruction, the book lays out practical elucidative strategies—grounding, locating, and exposing—that help situate concepts in particular language games, times and tongues, and structures of power. It also explores the uses to which elucidation can be put and the moral dilemmas that attend such uses. By illustrating his arguments with lively analyses of such concepts as "person," "family," and "democracy," Schaffer shows rather than tells, making the book both highly readable and an essential guide for social science research.

The SAGE Handbook of Political Science

The SAGE Handbook of Political Science PDF Author: Dirk Berg-Schlosser
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1529715431
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 2557

Get Book Here

Book Description
The SAGE Handbook of Political Science presents a major retrospective and prospective overview of the discipline. Comprising three volumes of contributions from expert authors from around the world, the handbook aims to frame, assess and synthesize research in the field, helping to define and identify its current and future developments. It does so from a truly global and cross-area perspective Chapters cover a broad range of aspects, from providing a general introduction to exploring important subfields within the discipline. Each chapter is designed to provide a state-of-the-art and comprehensive overview of the topic by incorporating cross-cutting global, interdisciplinary, and, where this applies, gender perspectives. The Handbook is arranged over seven core thematic sections: Part 1: Political Theory Part 2: Methods Part 3: Political Sociology Part 4: Comparative Politics Part 5: Public Policies and Administration Part 6: International Relations Part 7: Major Challenges for Politics and Political Science in the 21st Century

Teaching Undergraduate Political Methodology

Teaching Undergraduate Political Methodology PDF Author: Brown, Mitchell
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1800885474
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Get Book Here

Book Description
Providing expert advice from established scholars in the field of political science, this engaging book imparts informative guidance on teaching research methods across the undergraduate curriculum. Written in a concise yet comprehensive style, it illustrates practical and conceptual advice, alongside more detailed chapters focussing on the different aspects of teaching political methodology.

The SAGE Handbook of Research Methods in Political Science and International Relations

The SAGE Handbook of Research Methods in Political Science and International Relations PDF Author: Luigi Curini
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1526486393
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1941

Get Book Here

Book Description
The SAGE Handbook of Research Methods in Political Science and International Relations offers a comprehensive overview of research processes in social science — from the ideation and design of research projects, through the construction of theoretical arguments, to conceptualization, measurement, & data collection, and quantitative & qualitative empirical analysis — exposited through 65 major new contributions from leading international methodologists. Each chapter surveys, builds upon, and extends the modern state of the art in its area. Following through its six-part organization, undergraduate and graduate students, researchers and practicing academics will be guided through the design, methods, and analysis of issues in Political Science and International Relations: Part One: Formulating Good Research Questions & Designing Good Research Projects Part Two: Methods of Theoretical Argumentation Part Three: Conceptualization & Measurement Part Four: Large-Scale Data Collection & Representation Methods Part Five: Quantitative-Empirical Methods Part Six: Qualitative & "Mixed" Methods

Doing Good Qualitative Research

Doing Good Qualitative Research PDF Author: Associate Professor of Political Science Jennifer Cyr
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197633145
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 505

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Doing Good Qualitative Research, Jennifer Cyr and Sara Wallace Goodman bring together over forty experts to provide one of the first comprehensive introductions to using qualitative methods across the social sciences, from start to finish. Each chapter introduces the theoretical considerations and best practices involved in the application of qualitative data collection and analysis. Additionally, contributors provide first-person accounts of methodology in action, address the expected and unexpected challenges associated with conducting qualitative research, and demonstrate the real-world applications of academic debates.

Philosophical Organization Theory

Philosophical Organization Theory PDF Author: Haridimos Tsoukas
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198794541
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 487

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume explores key concepts that have gained currency in organization studies, and revisits traditional concepts such as change, strategy, and organization. It discusses organizational knowledge, judgment, and reflection-in-action, and suggests complex forms of theorizing that do justice to the complexity of organizations.

Rethinking Comparison

Rethinking Comparison PDF Author: Erica S. Simmons
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108832792
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

Get Book Here

Book Description
Brings together chapters from more than a dozen leading methods scholars to revolutionize qualitative research design. Provides novel strategies for conducting comparative political research beyond the controlled comparisons typically taught in graduate methods courses.

Reclaiming Everyday Peace

Reclaiming Everyday Peace PDF Author: Pamina Firchow
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110841625X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Get Book Here

Book Description
Introduces the Everyday Peace Indicators as a measurement, diagnostic and evaluation tool and makes an argument for its utility in conflict affected contexts.

Order at the Bazaar

Order at the Bazaar PDF Author: Regine A. Spector
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501712381
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Get Book Here

Book Description
Order at the Bazaar delves into the role of bazaars in the political economy and development of Central Asia. Bazaars are the economic bedrock for many throughout the region—they are the entrepreneurial hubs of Central Asia. However, they are often regarded as mafia-governed environments that are largely populated by the dispossessed. By immersing herself in the bazaars of Kyrgyzstan, Regine A. Spector learned that some are rather best characterized as islands of order in a chaotic national context. Spector draws on interviews, archival sources, and participant observation to show how traders, landowners, and municipal officials create order in the absence of a coherent government apparatus and bureaucratic state. Merchants have adapted Soviet institutions, including trade unions, and pre-Soviet practices, such as using village elders as the arbiters of disputes, to the urban bazaar by building and asserting their own authority. Spector’s findings have relevance beyond the bazaars and borders of one small country; they teach us how economic development operates when the rule of law is weak.

Lights, Camera, Feminism?

Lights, Camera, Feminism? PDF Author: Prof. Samantha Majic
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520384911
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Get Book Here

Book Description
Celebrities in the United States have drawn significant attention and resources to the complex issue of human trafficking—a subject of feminist concern—and they are often criticized for promoting sensationalized and simplistic understandings of the issue. In this comprehensive analysis of celebrities’ anti-trafficking activism, however, Samantha Majic finds that this phenomenon is more nuanced: even as some celebrities promote regressive issue narratives and carceral solutions, others use their platforms to elevate more diverse representations of human trafficking and feminist analyses of gender inequality. Lights, Camera, Feminism? thus argues that we should understand celebrities as multilevel political actors whose activism is shaped and mediated by a range of personal and contextual factors, with implications for feminist and democratic politics more broadly.