The Causal Power Of Social Structures PDF Download
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Author | : Dave Elder-Vass |
Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | : 235 |
Release | : 2010-06-17 |
Genre | : Social Science |
ISBN | : 1139488198 |
Download The Causal Power of Social Structures Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
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.
Author | : Jeffrey C. Alexander |
Publisher | : Univ of California Press |
Total Pages | : 302 |
Release | : 2004-09-20 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 9780520241374 |
Download Self, Social Structure, and Beliefs Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
This is an exploration of the creative work done by leading sociologists who were inspired by the scholarship of Neil Smelser.
Author | : R. Keith Sawyer |
Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | : 296 |
Release | : 2005-10-27 |
Genre | : Philosophy |
ISBN | : 9780521844642 |
Download Social Emergence Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
This book argues that societies are complex dynamical systems that can be understood through the concept of emergence.
Author | : Brian Skyrms |
Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | : 170 |
Release | : 2004 |
Genre | : Juvenile Nonfiction |
ISBN | : 9780521533928 |
Download The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
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.
Author | : John Searle |
Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | : 399 |
Release | : 2010-01-12 |
Genre | : Philosophy |
ISBN | : 0199745862 |
Download Making the Social World Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
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.
Author | : Dave Elder-Vass |
Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | : 297 |
Release | : 2012-04-23 |
Genre | : Philosophy |
ISBN | : 1107024374 |
Download The Reality of Social Construction Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
Argues that versions of realist and social constructionist ways of thinking about the social world are compatible with each other.
Author | : Daniel Little |
Publisher | : Rowman & Littlefield |
Total Pages | : 304 |
Release | : 2016-09-12 |
Genre | : Philosophy |
ISBN | : 1783487410 |
Download New Directions in the Philosophy of Social Science Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
An accessible introduction to the latest developments and debates in the philosophy of social science.
Author | : Professor Poe Yu-ze Wan |
Publisher | : Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. |
Total Pages | : 262 |
Release | : 2013-01-28 |
Genre | : Philosophy |
ISBN | : 1409494349 |
Download Reframing the Social Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
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.
Author | : François Dépelteau |
Publisher | : Springer |
Total Pages | : 686 |
Release | : 2018-01-10 |
Genre | : Social Science |
ISBN | : 3319660055 |
Download The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
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?
Author | : Giorgos Tsiolis |
Publisher | : Routledge |
Total Pages | : 130 |
Release | : 2020-11-09 |
Genre | : Social Science |
ISBN | : 1000260739 |
Download Social Causation and Biographical Research Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
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.