Sociologists in Action
Title | Sociologists in Action PDF eBook |
Author | Kathleen Odell Korgen |
Publisher | SAGE |
Total Pages | 321 |
Release | 2013-03-14 |
Genre | Science |
ISBN | 1452203113 |
Brings the subject matter of sociology to life for students. Linking theory and practice, this textbook explores how sociological knowledge is used in the community to fight for social change and justice.
Public Sociology
Title | Public Sociology PDF eBook |
Author | Philip Nyden |
Publisher | SAGE Publications |
Total Pages | 337 |
Release | 2011-05-04 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1412982634 |
This book highlights the variety of ways in which sociology brings about social change in community settings, assists nonprofit and social service organizations in their work, and influences policy at the local, regional, and national levels. It also spotlights sociology that informs the general public on key policy issues through media and creates research centers that develop and carry out collaborative research. The book details a broad range of sociology projects. The 33 case studies are divided into 8 sections. Each section also includes sidebars of include non-sociologists writing about the impact of selected research projects. In some cases these are interdisciplinary projects since solutions to social problems are often multifaceted and do not fit into the disciplines as defined by universities. Further, it emphasizes actions and connections. This is not armchair sociology where self-proclaimed public sociologists just write articles suggesting what government, corporations, communities, or others "ought to do." The authors are interested in the active connections to publics and users of the research, not the passive research process.
The Explanation of Social Action
Title | The Explanation of Social Action PDF eBook |
Author | John Levi Martin |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | 411 |
Release | 2011-06-01 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 0199773440 |
The Explanation of Social Action is a sustained critique of the conventional understanding of what it means to "explain" something in the social sciences. It makes the strong argument that the traditional understanding involves asking questions that have no clear foundation and provoke an unnecessary tension between lay and expert vocabularies. Drawing on the history and philosophy of the social sciences, John Levi Martin exposes the root of the problem as an attempt to counterpose two radically different types of answers to the question of why someone did a certain thing: first person and third person responses. The tendency is epitomized by attempts to explain human action in "causal" terms. This "causality" has little to do with reality and instead involves the creation and validation of abstract statements that almost no social scientist would defend literally. This substitution of analysts' imaginations over actors' realities results from an intellectual history wherein social scientists began to distrust the self-understanding of actors in favor of fundamentally anti-democratic epistemologies. These were rooted most defensibly in a general understanding of an epistemic hiatus in social knowledge and least defensibly in the importation of practices of truth production from the hierarchical setting of institutions for the insane. Martin, instead of assuming that there is something fundamentally arbitrary about the cognitive schemes of actors, focuses on the nature of judgment. This implies the need for a social aesthetics, an understanding of the process whereby actors intuit intersubjectively valid qualities of complex social objects. In this thought-provoking and ambitious book, John Levi Martin argues that the most promising way forward to such a science of social aesthetics will involve a rigorous field theory.
Purpose, Meaning, and Action
Title | Purpose, Meaning, and Action PDF eBook |
Author | K. McClelland |
Publisher | Springer |
Total Pages | 336 |
Release | 2016-09-23 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 1137108096 |
Control Systems Theory, a newly developing theoretical perspective, starts from an important insight into human behaviour: that people attempt to control the world around them as they perceive it. This book brings together for the first time the work of prominent sociologists contributing to the development of this wideranging theoretical paradigm.
Science in Action
Title | Science in Action PDF eBook |
Author | Bruno Latour |
Publisher | Harvard University Press |
Total Pages | 292 |
Release | 1987 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9780674792913 |
From weaker to stronger rhetoric : literature - Laboratories - From weak points to strongholds : machines - Insiders out - From short to longer networks : tribunals of reason - Centres of calculation.
Central Problems in Social Theory
Title | Central Problems in Social Theory PDF eBook |
Author | Anthony Giddens |
Publisher | Univ of California Press |
Total Pages | 308 |
Release | 1979-11-29 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 9780520039759 |
"One of the most creative among the younger generation of critical social theorists, Giddens stands alone in his concern for the classical tradition on sociology; but he also makes brilliant use of the latest philosophical and theoretical work of several contemporary schools and disciplines. A very important book for all of social science."—Jeffrey C. Alexander
The Sociology of Space
Title | The Sociology of Space PDF eBook |
Author | Martina Löw |
Publisher | Springer |
Total Pages | 321 |
Release | 2016-09-09 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1349695688 |
In this book, the author develops a relational concept of space that encompasses social structure, the material world of objects and bodies, and the symbolic dimension of the social world. Löw’s guiding principle is the assumption that space emerges in the interplay between objects, structures and actions. Based on a critical discussion of classic theories of space, Löw develops a new dynamic theory of space that accounts for the relational context in which space is constituted. This innovative view on the interdependency of material, social, and symbolic dimensions of space also permits a new perspective on architecture and urban development.