Knowing the social world

Bibliographic Information

Knowing the social world

edited by Tim May and Malcolm Williams

Open University Press, 1998

  • : hbk
  • : pbk

Available at  / 16 libraries

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Bibliography: p. [178]-192

Includes indexes

Description and Table of Contents

Description

* What is the relationship between philosophy, social theory and empirical research? * In what ways can we claim to 'know' the social world? * What properties does the social world possess and what are their implications? This ground-breaking and multi-disciplinary book brings together a distinguished team of leading thinkers to discuss issues surrounding and informing questions such as: what is the 'social', in what ways can we 'know' it, and how can our findings be validated? These issues are discussed in an accessible way, including the relationship of philosophical and research issues to each other, the nature of social reality, properties that may be ascribed to the social, research accounts and rhetorical 'persuasion', and the relations between 'gender and knowing'. The overall concern of the book is to clarify how and in what ways we can claim to know the social world and what implications and consequences this may have for social scientific practice. For too long philosophers, social theorists and methodologists have talked past each other, often unaware of the mutually beneficial insights that each offers the other. This book is intended to contribute to a more constructive encounter and dialogue in order to advance understanding of the problems and possibilities surrounding the quest to know the social world. With this overall aim in mind, it will be essential reading for advanced undergraduates and postgraduate students in the social sciences, as well as philosophers, social theorists, methodologists and social researchers in general.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Contributors Introduction knowing the social world The social world as knowable Naturalisms and anti-naturalisms When the knower is also the known Social properties and their basis Social theory and the analysis of society The reality of social domains implication for theory and method Relationism, Cubism, and reality beyond relativism Feminists' knowledge and the knowledge of feminisms epistemology, theory, methodology and method Quantitative and qualitative research strategies in knowing the social world Reflections and reflexivity Bibliography Index.

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