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The Causal Power Of Social Structures
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Book Synopsis The Causal Power of Social Structures by : Dave Elder-Vass
Download or read book The Causal Power of Social Structures written by Dave Elder-Vass and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-17 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The problem of structure and agency has been the subject of intense debate in the social sciences for over 100 years. This book offers a solution. Using a critical realist version of the theory of emergence, Dave Elder-Vass argues that, instead of ascribing causal significance to an abstract notion of social structure or a monolithic concept of society, we must recognise that it is specific groups of people that have social structural power. Some of these groups are entities with emergent causal powers, distinct from those of human individuals. Yet these powers also depend on the contributions of human individuals, and this book examines the mechanisms through which interactions between human individuals generate the causal powers of some types of social structures. The Causal Power of Social Structures makes particularly important contributions to the theory of human agency and to our understanding of normative institutions.
Book Synopsis The Reality of Social Construction by : Dave Elder-Vass
Download or read book The Reality of Social Construction written by Dave Elder-Vass and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-23 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that versions of realist and social constructionist ways of thinking about the social world are compatible with each other.
Book Synopsis Social Emergence by : R. Keith Sawyer
Download or read book Social Emergence written by R. Keith Sawyer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-10-27 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that societies are complex dynamical systems that can be understood through the concept of emergence.
Download or read book Social Structure written by José López and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plagued by confusion, the concept of social structure still presents difficulties for sociologists who have not agreed on a common definition of the term. This text discusses the concept in relation to institutional, relational and embodied structure.
Book Synopsis The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure by : Brian Skyrms
Download or read book The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure written by Brian Skyrms and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brian Skyrms, author of the successful Evolution of the Social Contract (which won the prestigious Lakatos Award) has written a sequel. The book is a study of ideas of cooperation and collective action. The point of departure is a prototypical story found in Rousseau's A Discourse on Inequality. Rousseau contrasts the pay-off of hunting hare where the risk of non-cooperation is small but the reward is equally small, against the pay-off of hunting the stag where maximum cooperation is required but where the reward is so much greater. Thus, rational agents are pulled in one direction by considerations of risk and in another by considerations of mutual benefit. Written with Skyrms's characteristic clarity and verve, this intriguing book will be eagerly sought out by students and professionals in philosophy, political science, economics, sociology and evolutionary biology.
Book Synopsis New Directions in the Philosophy of Social Science by : Daniel Little
Download or read book New Directions in the Philosophy of Social Science written by Daniel Little and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-09-12 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accessible introduction to the latest developments and debates in the philosophy of social science.
Book Synopsis Reframing the Social by : Professor Poe Yu-ze Wan
Download or read book Reframing the Social written by Professor Poe Yu-ze Wan and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-01-28 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing extensively on the research findings of natural and social sciences both in America and Europe, Reframing the Social argues for a critical realist and systemist social ontology, designed to shed light on current debates in social theory concerning the relationship of social ontology to practical social research, and the nature of 'the social'. It explores the works of the systems theorist Mario Bunge in comparison with the approach of Niklas Luhmann and critical social systems theorists, to challenge the commonly held view that the systems-based approach is holistic in nature and necessarily downplays the role of human agency. Theoretically sophisticated and investigating the work of a theorist whose work has until now received insufficient attention in Anglo-American thought, this book will be of interest to those working in the field of social theory, as well as scholars concerned with philosophy of social science, the project of analytical sociology, and the nature of the relationship between the natural and social sciences.
Book Synopsis The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology by : François Dépelteau
Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology written by François Dépelteau and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-01-10 with total page 677 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook on relational sociology covers a rapidly growing approach in the social sciences—one which is connected to the interests of a large, diverse pool of researchers across a range of disciplines. Relational sociology has been one of the key foundations of the “relational turn” in human sciences since the 1980s, and it offers a unique opportunity to redefine the basic epistemological and ontological principles of sociology as we know it. The contributors collected here aim to elucidate the complexity and the scope of this growing approach by dealing with three central questions: Where does relational sociology come from and what are its principal concerns? What are the main theoretical and methodological currents within relational sociology? What have we studied in relational sociology and what are the results?
Book Synopsis Powers and Capacities in Philosophy by : Ruth Groff
Download or read book Powers and Capacities in Philosophy written by Ruth Groff and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published in 2012, Powers and Capacities in Philosophy is a valuable contribution to the field of Philosophy.
Book Synopsis Making the Social World by : John Searle
Download or read book Making the Social World written by John Searle and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-12 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are few more important philosophers at work today than John Searle, a creative and contentious thinker who has shaped the way we think about mind and language. Now he offers a profound understanding of how we create a social reality--a reality of money, property, governments, marriages, stock markets and cocktail parties. The paradox he addresses in Making the Social World is that these facts only exist because we think they exist and yet they have an objective existence. Continuing a line of investigation begun in his earlier book The Construction of Social Reality, Searle identifies the precise role of language in the creation of all "institutional facts." His aim is to show how mind, language and civilization are natural products of the basic facts of the physical world described by physics, chemistry and biology. Searle explains how a single linguistic operation, repeated over and over, is used to create and maintain the elaborate structures of human social institutions. These institutions serve to create and distribute power relations that are pervasive and often invisible. These power relations motivate human actions in a way that provides the glue that holds human civilization together. Searle then applies the account to show how it relates to human rationality, the freedom of the will, the nature of political power and the existence of universal human rights. In the course of his explication, he asks whether robots can have institutions, why the threat of force so often lies behind institutions, and he denies that there can be such a thing as a "state of nature" for language-using human beings.
Book Synopsis Social Causation and Biographical Research by : Giorgos Tsiolis
Download or read book Social Causation and Biographical Research written by Giorgos Tsiolis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-09 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book extends debates in the field of biographical research, arguing that causal explanations are not at odds with biographical research and that biographical research is in fact a valuable tool for explaining why things in social and personal lives are one way and not another. Bringing reconstructive biographical research into dialogue with critical realism, it explains how and why relational social ontology can become a unique theoretical ground for tapping emergent mechanisms and latent meaning structures. Through an account of the reasons for which reductionist epistemologies, rational action models and covering law explanations are not appropriate for biographical research, the authors develop the philosophical idea of singular causation as a means by which biographical researchers are able to forge causal hypotheses for the occurrence of events and offer guidance on the application of this methodological principle to concrete, empirical examples. As such, this volume will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in biographical research and social research methods.
Book Synopsis Clarity and Confusion in Social Theory by : Leonidas Tsilipakos
Download or read book Clarity and Confusion in Social Theory written by Leonidas Tsilipakos and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2015-02-28 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Departing from a concern with certain ‘hard’ problems in social theory and focusing instead on the theoretical strategies employed in their solution, especially on how these strategies depend on what the author calls the theoretical attitude towards language, this book considers whether these strategies, far from being indispensable guides to thinking, might in fact lead social theorists to misunderstand the concepts constitutive of social life. Making use of the insights and practice of Ordinary Language Philosophy, understood as encompassing the work of Wittgenstein, Ryle, Austin and their followers, Clarity and Confusion in Social Theory reveals the profound logical flaws in some of the central methodological procedures often employed in social theory for dealing with concepts, offering alternative approaches to social scientists and philosophers for tackling the conceptual issues that have so bedevilled social science from its inception. A lucid explication of Ordinary Language Philosophy and the potential that it offers for deepening and re-orienting theoretical work in the social sciences, this volume, apart from being a challenge to the influential Critical Realist paradigm, constitutes a radical critique of social theoretical reason. As such, it will appeal to social theorists and philosophers of social science, those with interests in research methods and theory construction, and anyone interested in thinking clearly about society.
Book Synopsis The Structures of Virtue and Vice by : Daniel J. Daly
Download or read book The Structures of Virtue and Vice written by Daniel J. Daly and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daly uses the lens of virtue and vice to reimagine a Catholic ethics that can better scrutinize the social forces that both affect our moral character and contribute to human well-being or human suffering, creating a framework to respond virtuously to problems caused by global social systems, from poverty to climate change.
Book Synopsis The Routledge Handbook of Emergence by : Sophie Gibb
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Emergence written by Sophie Gibb and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-13 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emergence is often described as the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts: interactions among the components of a system lead to distinctive novel properties. It has been invoked to describe the flocking of birds, the phases of matter and human consciousness, along with many other phenomena. Since the nineteenth century, the notion of emergence has been widely applied in philosophy, particularly in contemporary philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and metaphysics. It has more recently become central to scientists’ understanding of phenomena across physics, chemistry, complexity and systems theory, biology and the social sciences. The Routledge Handbook of Emergence is an outstanding reference source and exploration of the concept of emergence, and is the first collection of its kind. Thirty-two chapters by an international team of contributors are organised into four parts: Foundations of emergence Emergence and mind Emergence and physics Emergence and the special sciences Within these sections important topics and problems in emergence are explained, including the British Emergentists; weak vs. strong emergence; emergence and downward causation; dependence, complexity and mechanisms; mental causation, consciousness and dualism; quantum mechanics, soft matter and chemistry; and evolution, cognitive science and social sciences. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and metaphysics, The Routledge Handbook of Emergence will also be of interest to those studying foundational issues in biology, chemistry, physics and psychology.
Book Synopsis Georg Lukács and the Possibility of Critical Social Ontology by : Michael J. Thompson
Download or read book Georg Lukács and the Possibility of Critical Social Ontology written by Michael J. Thompson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-12-16 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Georg Lukács was one of the most important intellectuals and philosophers of the 20th century. His last great work was an systematic social ontology that was an attempt to ground an ethical and critical form of Marxism. This work has only now begun to attract the interest of critical theorists and philosophers intent on reconstructing a critical theory of society as well as a more sophisticated framework for Marxian philosophy. This collection of essays explores the concept of critical social ontology as it was outlined by Georg Lukács and the ways that his ideas can help us construct a more grounded and socially relevant form of social critique.
Book Synopsis Modern and Postmodern Social Theorizing by : Nicos P. Mouzelis
Download or read book Modern and Postmodern Social Theorizing written by Nicos P. Mouzelis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-11-20 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the conflict between modern and postmodern theories in sociology and attempts to bridge the divide between them.
Book Synopsis The Constitution of Society by : Anthony Giddens
Download or read book The Constitution of Society written by Anthony Giddens and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-06-28 with total page 585 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthony Giddens has been in the forefront of developments in social theory for the past decade. In The Constitution of Society he outlines the distinctive position he has evolved during that period and offers a full statement of a major new perspective in social thought, a synthesis and elaboration of ideas touched on in previous works but described here for the first time in an integrated and comprehensive form. A particular feature is Giddens's concern to connect abstract problems of theory to an interpretation of the nature of empirical method in the social sciences. In presenting his own ideas, Giddens mounts a critical attack on some of the more orthodox sociological views. The Constitution of Society is an invaluable reference book for all those concerned with the basic issues in contemporary social theory.
