How a social science of big data would look like? In this article, we exemplify such a social science through a number of cases. We start our discussion with the epistemic qualities of big data. We point out to the fact that contrary to the big data champions, big data is neither new nor a miracle without any error nor reliable and rigorous as assumed by its cheer leaders. Secondly, we identify three types of big data: (...) natural big data, artificial big data and human big data. We present and discuss in what ways they are similar and in what other ways they differ. The assumption of a homogenous big data in fact misleads the relevant discussions. Thirdly, we extended 3 Vs of the big data and add veracity with reference to other researchers and violability which is the current author’s proposal. We explain why the trinity of Vs is insufficient to characterize big data. Instead, a quintinity is proposed. Fourthly, we develop an economic analogy to discuss the notions of data production, data consumption, data colonialism, data activism, data revolution, etc. In this context, undertaking a Marxist approach, we explain what we mean by data fetishism. Fifthly, we reflect on the implications of growing up with big data, offering a new research area which is called as developmental psychology of big data. Finally, we sketch data resistance and the newly proposed notion of omniresistance, i.e. resisting anywhere at any occasion against the big brother watching us anywhere and everywhere. (shrink)

The global pesticide complex has transformed over the past two decades, but social science research has not kept pace. The rise of an enormous generics sector, shifts in geographies of pesticide production, and dynamics of agrarian change have led to more pesticide use, expanding to farm systems that hitherto used few such inputs. Declining effectiveness due to pesticide resistance and anemic institutional support for non-chemical alternatives also have driven intensification in conventional systems. As an inter-disciplinary network of pesticide (...) scholars, we seek to renew the social science research agenda on pesticides to better understand this suite of contemporary changes. To identify research priorities, challenges, and opportunities, we develop the pesticide complex as a heuristic device to highlight the reciprocal and iterative interactions among agricultural practice, the agrochemical industry, civil society-shaped regulatory actions, and contested knowledge of toxicity. Ultimately, collaborations among social scientists and across the social and biophysical sciences can illuminate recent transformations and their uneven socioecological effects. A reinvigorated critical scholarship that embraces the multifaceted nature of pesticides can identify the social and ecological constraints that drive pesticide use and support alternatives to chemically driven industrial agriculture. (shrink)

Hans Albert is the leading critical rationalist in the German-speaking world and the main critic of the hermeneutic tradition. He is well-known for applying the idea of critical reason to various kinds of human practice, including economics, politics, and law. But he has also improved on Popper's methodology by introducing the idea of rational heuristics. This collection of essays presents the core of his work on epistemology, philosophy of the social sciences, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of (...) law. Most of Albert's works have not been available in English. It is enormously useful to have these articles collected in a single volume. (shrink)

A hallmark of recent critical social science has been the commitment to methodological and theoretical pluralism. Habermas and others have argued that diverse theoretical and empirical approaches are needed to support informed social criticism. However, an unresolved tension remains in the epistemology of critical social science: the tension between the epistemic advantages of a single comprehensive theoretical framework and those of methodological and theoretical pluralism. By shifting the grounds of the debate in a (...) way suggested by Dewey's pragmatism, the author argues that a thoroughgoing pluralism strengthens, rather than weakens, both the social scientific and political aims of critical social science. Not only does pragmatism offer a plausible interpretation of the epistemic pluralism of the social sciences, but it also provides a way of thinking about their fundamentally practical and political character. With a better normative vocabulary with which to discuss the epistemological issues of such a pluralistic mode of inquiry, the democratic role of critical inquiry and its specifically practical form of verification can be clarified. (shrink)

Continental Philosophy of Social Science demonstrates the unique and autonomous nature of the continental approach to social science and contrasts it with the Anglo-American tradition. Yvonne Sherratt argues for the importance of an historical understanding of the Continental tradition in order to appreciate its individual, humanist character. Examining the key traditions of hermeneutic, genealogy, and critical theory, and the texts of major thinkers such as Gadamer, Ricoeur, Derrida, Nietzsche, Foucault, the Early Frankfurt School and Habermas, (...) she also contextualizes contemporary developments within strands of thought stemming back to Ancient Greece and Rome. Sherratt shows how these modes of thinking developed through medieval Christian thought into the Enlightenment and Romantic eras, before becoming mainstays of twentieth-century disciplines. Continental Philosophy of Social Science will serve as the essential textbook for courses in philosophy or social sciences. (shrink)

The paper assesses the aims and arguments of critical social science and the reconstructions of it provided by critical realist philosophy. It argues that attempts to derive normative conclusions on the basis of explanatory critiques of social phenomena are flawed in several important respects. Accounts of critical social science standardly underestimate the problems of justifying critical standpoints and finding alternative social forms which generate fewer problems than those they replace, and (...) hence lead to net improvement. By arguing that value positions can be derived from explanatory critiques, the philosophical reconstructions make light of the normative issues raised by proposals for social change. They also ignore the question of the feasibility of alternative systems and the prevalence of structures which generate both good and bad effects. While the reconstructions succeed in defending critiques centering on straightforward cases of false beliefs or the frustration of universal human needs, in others, where culturally-specific needs and issues of social responsibilities are involved, they fail to recognise the need to address prior normative questions. It is therefore argued that the aims and claims of critical social science need to be moderated and its dependence on normative discourse properly acknowledged. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to argue for a conception of critical social science based on the model of constitutive rules. The author argues that this model is pragmatically superior to those models that employ notions like "illusion" and " ideology," as it does not demand a specification of the "real (but hidden) interests" of social actors. Key Words: constitutive rules • critical theory • ideology • recommendations • social facts.

The central aim of this thesis is to confront the world-view of positivistic materialism with its nihilistic implications and to develop an alternative world-view based on process philosophy, showing how in terms of this, science and ethics can be reconciled. The thesis begins with an account of the rise of positivism and materialism, or ‘scientism’, to its dominant position in the culture of Western civilization and shows what effect this has had on the image of man and consequently on (...) ethical views. After having shown the basic weaknesses of this world-view, the positivist account of science is criticised and an alternative epistemology is developed in which the aim of disciplined inquiry is seen to be understanding. It is argued on the basis of this epistemology that science and metaphysics are indissociable, and that the materialist conception of being is open to challenge from a different ontology. Having reviewed the various conceptions of being which have been developed in the past, a version of process philosophy is outlined and it is argued that this promises to be far more effective than materialism as a foundation for the natural sciences. In particular it is shown how in terms of process philosophy it is possible to conceive of living, sentient organisms as having emerged from inanimate being. This provides the basis for the development of a conception of humanity as an emergent form of life. The human order is then seen as a process of becoming within nature with its own unique dynamics, irreducible to any other processes, involving both intentional and unintentional processes. It is shown how on the basis of this conception of humanity it is possible to develop an ethical theory and a critical social science, and in this way, to transcend the disjunction between science and ethics. -/- . (shrink)

This book argues that a realist analysis of the structures and processes which make up the social world can provide a way out of its present impasse.

ABSTRACT This article attempts to show a way in which social science research can contribute in a meaningful and equitable way to philosophical bioethics. It builds on the social science critique of bioethics present in the work of authors such as Renée Fox, Barry Hoffmaster and Charles Bosk, proposing the characteristics of a critical bioethics that would take social science seriously. The social science critique claims that traditional philosophical bioethics gives a (...) dominant role to idealised, rational thought, and tends to exclude social and cultural factors, relegating them to the status of irrelevancies. Another problem is the way in which bioethics assumes social reality divides down the same lines/categories as philosophical theories. Critical bioethics requires bioethicists to root their enquires in empirical research, to challenge theories using evidence, to be reflexive and to be sceptical about the claims of other bioethicists, scientists and clinicians. The aim is to produce a rigorous normative analysis of lived moral experience. (shrink)

Why do many postpositivists caricature contemporary social science? Why make incorrect claims, for instance about social scientists avoiding values? Why discuss features that often no longer matter, such as seeking laws or predictions? Why reject extreme forms of social science without discussing more sensible forms? Why say little or nothing about scientific methodology, which is a great strength of recent social science? To explain such oversights and caricatures, philosophical analysis will not suffice. These (...) are not isolated intellectual errors, but systematic ones, made by numerous scholars and fostered by social practices and institutional conventions. We thus need ideological analysis, which specializes in explaining institutionalized systems of belief. Speculative explanations are offered for postpositivist caricatures, including not only psychological factors, but also external ones (for example, the arrogance of many social scientists), limitations of language (for example, the ambiguity of the term ‘methodology’), rhetorical strategies (for example, genealogical approaches), and conventions (for example, bad citation practices). (shrink)

The ethical and social implications of data mining, algorithmic curation and automation in the context of social media have been of heightened concern for a range of researchers with interests in digital media in recent years, with particular concerns about privacy arising in the context of mobile and locative media. Despite their wide adoption and economic importance, mobile dating apps have received little scholarly attention from this perspective – but they are intense sites of data generation, algorithmic processing, (...) and cross-platform data-sharing; bound up with competing cultures of production, exploitation and use. In this paper, we describe the ways various forms of data are incorporated into, and emerge from, hook-up apps’ business logics, socio-technical arrangements, and cultures of use to produce multiple and intersecting data cultures. We propose a multi-layered research agenda for critical and empirical inquiry into this field, and suggest appropriate conceptual and methodological frameworks for exploring the social and political challenges of data cultures. (shrink)

This volume explores the potential of employing a relational paradigm for the purposes of interdisciplinary exchange. Bringing together scholars from the social sciences, philosophy and theology, it seeks to bridge the gap between subject areas by focusing on real phenomena.Although these phenomena are studied by different disciplines, the editors demonstrate that it is also possible to study them from a common relational perspective that connects the different languages, theories and perspectives which characterize each discipline, by going beyond their differences (...) to the core of reality itself. As an experimental collection that highlights the potential that exists for cross-disciplinary work, this volume will appeal to scholars across a range of field concerned with critical realist approaches to research, collaborative work across subjects and the manner in which disciplines can offer one another new insights. (shrink)

has become an honorific title used by researchers to commend their work, or the particular approach they adopt. Conversely, the work of others is often dismissed on the grounds that it is "uncritical". However, there are important questions about what the term critical means, about what we should be critical of, and about the form that criticism ought to take. These questions are addressed here in relation to both the role of the social researcher itself and that (...) of researchers operating as public intellectuals. It is argued that the distinction between these roles is an important one, and has implications for what can legitimately be criticised, on what grounds, and in what way. In each case, there are proper limits to criticism, albeit different ones. Like anything else, criticism is not always a good thing. Key Words: critical social research • scientific criticism • social criticism • public intellectuals. (shrink)

This book offers a systematic and critical discussion of Peter Winch's writings on the philosophy of the social sciences. The author points to Winch's tendency to over-emphasize the importance of language and communication, and his insufficient attention to the role of practical, technological activites in human life and society. It also offers an appendix devoted to the controversy between the anthropologists Marshall Sahlins and Gananath Obeyesekere regarding Captain James Cook's Hawaiian adventures. Essential reading for those studying the development (...) of philosophy in the twentieth century, this book will also be of great interest to anthropologists, sociologists, scholars of religion, and all those with an interest in the relationship between philosophy and the social sciences. (shrink)

My goal here is to come to terms with the Enlightenment as the horizon of critical social science. First, I consider in more detail the understanding of the Enlightenment in Critical Theory, particularly in its conception of the sociality of reason. Second, I develop an account of freedom in terms of human powers, along the lines of recent capability conceptions that link freedom to the development of human powers, including the power to interpret and create norms. (...) Finally, I show the ways in which the social sciences can be moral sciences in the Enlightenment sense. This account provides us with a coherent Enlightenment standard by which to judge institutions as promoting development, understood in terms of the capabilities necessary for freedom. The relevant social science in this area might include the robust generalization that there has never been a famine in a democratic society. (shrink)

This short article represents a contribution to the debate on the motion “Social science is explanation, or it is nothing.” While in the format of parliamentary debating the contribution would fall on the side of the opposition, I will not be arguing against explanation as such. The work of explaining is in no way oppositional to or mutually exclusive with critique. Instead, my contribution will revolve around two arguments: one is that both critique and explanation exhibit characteristics we (...) commonly attribute to science; the other is that reserving the label of science for explanation draws a boundary around social sciences in ways that exclude many of the interesting things it does. Some of the examples include the sociological analysis of governmental approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic, or critical analysis of concepts such as “cancel culture” or “terrorism.” The conclusion is that explanation and critique are mutually supporting elements of science, and that combined they give us insights we cannot glean from either alone. (shrink)

The authors examine the nature of the relationship between social science and philosophy and address the sort of work social science should do, and the role and sorts of claims that an accompanying philosophy should engage in. In particular, the authors reintroduce the question of ontology, an area long overlooked by philosophers of social science, and present a cricital engagement with the work of Roy Bhaskar. The book argues against the excesses of philosophising and (...) commits itself to a philosophical approach more deeply grounded in the social sciences. (shrink)

This introduction to the philosophy of social science provides an original conception of the task and nature of social inquiry. Peter Manicas discusses the role of causality seen in the physical sciences and offers a reassessment of the problem of explanation from a realist perspective. He argues that the fundamental goal of theory in both the natural and social sciences is not, contrary to widespread opinion, prediction and control, or the explanation of events. Instead, theory aims (...) to provide an understanding of the processes which, together, produce the contingent outcomes of experience. Offering a host of concrete illustrations and examples of critical ideas and issues, this accessible book will be of interest to students of the philosophy of social science, and social scientists from a range of disciplines. (shrink)

Settlement Sociology in the Progressive Years claims for sociology a lost history and paradigm only recently acknowledged for shaping the American sociological tradition. Williams and MacLean trace the key works of early scholar activists through the leading settlement houses in Chicago, New York and Boston. The roots of sociology as a public enterprise for social reform are restored to the canon through early research, teaching and social advocacy. The settlement paradigm of “neighborly relations” combining the visions of (...) class='Hi'>social gospelers and first-wave feminists will resonate for a renewed public sociology today. Key to this paradigm was the movement to "settle" in neighborhoods and become active in the struggle for social change in a period of rapid industrialization, immigration, and urbanization. (shrink)

Critical theory has left an indelible mark on postwar social thought. But what are the relations between critical theory and 'the cultural turn' ? How did critical theory inform later French critical theorists, such as Lefebvre, Barthes and Baudrillard? This accomplished and accessible book: - Demonstrates the origins of critical theory in the Marxian analysis of the capitalist mode of production and Freudian psychoanalysis - Clearly explains the main achievements of critical theory - (...) Elucidates how critical theory defines culture as a system that constrains and alienates the individual - Explores the potential for social change and personal emancipation in the critical heritage. The author locates the importance of myth and reason, the significance of sexuality, the place of work, the difference between art and entertainment, the nature of everyday life and the relationship between knowledge and action. The result is a lucid and informative text which will appeal to all students interested in the critical traditions of social thought. (shrink)

In recent years, social scientists have turned their critical lens on the historical roots and contours of their disciplines, including their politics and practices, epistemologies and methods, institutionalization and professionalization, national development and colonial expansion, globalization and local contestations, and their public presence and role in society. The Social Sciences in the Looking Glass offers current social scientific perspectives on this reflexive moment in the social sciences. Examining sociology, anthropology, philosophy, political science, legal theory, (...) and religious studies, the volume's contributors outline the present transformations of the social sciences, explore their connections with critical humanities, analyze the challenges of alternate paradigms, and interrogate recent endeavors to move beyond the human. Throughout, the authors, who belong to half a dozen disciplines, trace how the social sciences are thoroughly entangled in the social facts they analyze, and are key to helping us understand the conditions of our world. Contributors. Chitralekha, Jean-Louis Fabiani, Didier Fassin, Johan Heilbron, Miriam Kingsberg Kadia, Kristoffer Kropp, Nicolas Langlitz, John Lardas Modern, Álvaro Morcillo Laiz, Amín Pérez, Carel Smith, George Steinmetz, Peter D. Thomas, Bregje van Eekelen, Agata Zysiak. (shrink)

The various tasks of this book are handled in four parts. In Part One, The Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences, two related questions will be addressed in order to contextualise the whole book's relevance and the legitimacy of the questions it asks and of the points it wishes to make. In five chapters in Part Two, The Holistic-Relational Sciences, I lay out the basic premises of the four 'dissenting' sciences -- quantum-holography, chaos theory, neo-evolutionary theory, and complexity theory/self-organised (...) criticality -- as well as demonstrate their shared holism in as a non-technical a jargon as possible and with special reference to the kinds of substantive and methodological interests that the social sciences tend to share. Part Three, Dimensions of Holistic-Relational Social Science, consisting of nine chapters, extends the discussion in Part Two by dealing with specific elements of the holistic-relational sciences in more detail, and by beginning to demonstrate how they apply to the social sciences as presently constituted and how they influence the debates which currently exercise the minds of both methodologists and philosophers in the social sciences. The final three chapters which make up Part Four, Holistic-Relational Social Science, Politics, and Economics, as already hinted at above, return to the subject-matter first raised in Chapter Two, that a holistic-relational science will necessarily lead to an alternative and complementary notion of politics and public policy. (shrink)

This article aims to contribute to a critical ontology of social objects. Recent works on collective intentionality and norm-following neglect the question how free agents can be brought to collectively intend to x , although x is not in their own interest. By arguing for a natural disposition to empathic understanding and drawing on recent research in the neurosciences, this article outlines an ontological framework that extends collective intentionality to questions of oppression and status asymmetries. In a contribution (...) to this journal, Wisnewski (2005) unfortunately mischaracterizes the problem of meaning in social criticism. Implementing status problems in studies of collective intentions and construing social facts as both subjective and objective in character helps explain why agents can have persistent "misunderstandings" of social objects. (shrink)

Some scholars claim that Critical Realism promises well for the unification of the social sciences, e.g., "Unifying social science: A critical realist approach" in this volume. I will first show briefly how Critical Realism might unify social science. Secondly, I focus on the relation between the ontology and methodology of Critical Realism, and unveil the politics of metaphysics. Subsequently, it is argued that the division of labour between social scientific disciplines (...) should not be metaphysics-driven, but rather question-driven. In conclusion, I will therefore defend a question-driven pluralism as a guide for interdisciplinarity. (shrink)

Continental Philosophy of Social Science demonstrates the unique and autonomous nature of the continental approach to social science and contrasts it with the Anglo-American tradition. Yvonne Sherratt argues for the importance of an historical understanding of the Continental tradition in order to appreciate its individual, humanist character. Examining the key traditions of hermeneutic, genealogy, and critical theory, and the texts of major thinkers such as Gadamer, Ricoeur, Derrida, Nietzsche, Foucault, the Early Frankfurt School and Habermas, (...) she also contextualizes contemporary developments within strands of thought stemming back to Ancient Greece and Rome. Sherratt shows how these modes of thinking developed through medieval Christian thought into the Enlightenment and Romantic eras, before becoming mainstays of twentieth-century disciplines. Continental Philosophy of Social Science will serve as the essential textbook for courses in philosophy or social sciences. (shrink)

Drawing heavily on Wittgenstein, Winch’s The Idea of a Social Science advanced a forceful and still valuable critique of positivist/empiricist conceptions of social science. In its more self-confident assertions concerning the nature of philosophy and society, however, Winch failed to recognize Wittgenstein’s acknowledgement of and appreciation for the indeterminacy and unsettled character of social and moral life.

Andrew Sayer undertakes a fundamental critique of social science's difficulties in acknowledging that people's relation to the world is one of concern. As sentient beings, capable of flourishing and suffering, and particularly vulnerable to how others treat us, our view of the world is substantially evaluative. Yet modernist ways of thinking encourage the common but extraordinary belief that values are beyond reason, and merely subjective or matters of convention, with little or nothing to do with the kind of (...) beings people are, the quality of their social relations, their material circumstances or well-being. The author shows how social theory and philosophy need to change to reflect the complexity of everyday ethical concerns and the importance people attach to dignity. He argues for a robustly critical social science that explains and evaluates social life from the standpoint of human flourishing. (shrink)

The article discusses principles that form part of evolutionary systems thinking in social sciences and humanities. It is argued that introducing the concept of self-organization relates agency and structures in a way that makes it possible to take up certain features of Critical Theory by which it can meet the demands for a critical social science. These principles are applied to the question of whether there is convergence or divergence in and by means of the (...) Internet. It will be clarified that the Internet is basically a social system and that it is a subsystem of the larger and overarching system of the whole society. It will be shown how the Internet can be perceived as a possible trigger for societal developments bringing about fundamental change in the nature of society. Thus the article cuts across philosophical, system theoretical, social theoretical, sociology of technology, and information society theory considerations. Key Words: dynamic • "mechanism" • self-organizaton • revolution • evolution • Critical Theory • information society • Internet. (shrink)

Many influential stances within the social sciences regard nature in one of two ways: either as none of their concern (which is with the social and cultural aspects of human existence), or as wholly a social and cultural fabrication. But there is also another strand of social scientific thinking that seeks to understand the interplay between social and cultural factors on one side and natural factors on the other. These volumes contain the main contributions that (...) have been made within each of these streams of thought. The selections illustrate to the reader the complexity of the various positions within these streams, and the strengths and limitations of each perspective. A new introduction places these articles in their historical and intellectual context and the volumes are completed with an extensive index and chronological table of contents. (shrink)

Yoshida considers two broad understandings of how social scientists can and should “describe and explain other cultures or their aspects under concepts of rationality” . In the one corner is a family of approaches that Yoshida finds deeply flawed: cultural interpretivist approaches. Five authors representative of this family are given fine chapter length examinations: Winch, Taylor, Geertz, Sahlins, and Obeyesekere. In the other corner is Yoshida’s favored approach: critical rationalism. This approach is associated with the intellectual descendants of (...) Karl Popper—notably Jarvie and Agassi. It is presented in outline and treated as the clear winner. By virtue of not having the defects that are diagnosed in the interpretivist approaches, critical rationalism is presented as the fitting approach in the social sciences. This dialectical structure has two notable weaknesses: First, showing that one item, A, lacks the problems found in another item, B, should not be take .. (shrink)

Annotation A clear, critical inquiry into the norms, processes and purposes of social science work. Diesing (political science, SUNY, Buffalo) begins with a wonderfully lucid survey of philosophical approaches to social science to examine the question of how social science ought to work. He then surveys sociological, political, and psychological studies of social science to find out what actually occurs in practice. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

The article is devoted to the problem of the demarcation of social sciences from social philosophy. The author proposes to model the relations between these two disciplines as a continuum instead of binary opposition - a continuum in which certain authors and concepts are located depending on the nature of their statements and the amount of empirical data involved. To illustrate a number of this continuum’s positions and features, the concept of the sacred is brought: emerging in Modern (...) history as a cultural idea, in the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in the works of French sociologists it becomes an empirical model that describes both the effect of social solidarity and the particular forms of religious existence. However, later, in the College of Sociology and in the works of such thinkers as G. Bataille, R. Caillois, etc., the concept acquires value meanings and becomes socio-philosophical. The absence of a clear boundary between the two statement formats, it makes possible both the “drifting” from one to another over time and the ambiguity of any critics of social science from social philosophy’s position and vice versa. At the same time, the historical “load” of the concept could be discarded in order to use it within the framework of “pure” social science or philosophy. (shrink)

The thought about this book has been developed with the view of adding value to the teaching of Research Methodology for undergraduate and graduate students in developing economies like Sierra Leone. At the same time, it is a very useful tool for professionals engaged in research as part of their work life and for which their understanding of the dichotomy between Research Methods and Research Methodology needs to be addressed. It is divided into distinct sections, which makes it very easy (...) for the beginner researcher to understand the difference in concepts used, while at the same time enhancing their basic understanding of scientific tool(s) needed to pursue ontological research, with the aim of adding new value in the body of knowledge. The main motivation for producing the first edition is based on the following: ● To write a book that focused on using and applying the techniques of research methodology in a research setting. ● To write a book that is accessible to students and practicing researchers in developing country like Sierra Leone, where the subject matter is not so well taught, but critical in developing knowledge capacity for graduates entering the profession of research. ● To pursue critical research, particularly in the social science field pertaining to Econometrics, Sociology, Development Economics and many more. (shrink)

This article examines the conventional Rehnist interpretation of active labor market policy in Sweden during the period from the war to the early 1970s and asks how it relates to the basic principles of evidence-based social science research.It is shown that the interpretation is misleading, reproducing and communicating material, stories, and images that were supplied bysome of the leading Swedish actors rather than producing an analysis based on the empirical examination of actual developments.The conclusion of the article offers (...) suggestions for an alternative evidencebased interpretation of the Swedish case. (shrink)

This volume offers one of the first systematic analyses of the rise of modern social science. Contrary to the standard accounts of various social science disciplines, the essays in this volume demonstrate that modern social science actually emerged during the critical period between 1750 and 1850. It is shown that the social sciences were a crucial element in the conceptual and epistemic revolution, which parallelled and partly underpinned the political and economic transformations (...) of the modern world. From a consistently comparative perspective, a group of internationally leading scholars takes up fundamental issues such as the role of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution in the shaping of the social sciences, the changing relationships between political theory and moral discourse, the profound transformation of philosophy, and the constitution of political economy and statistics. (shrink)

This book addresses, and at the same time reflects, the impact of Max Weber on both the social sciences and on critical theory's critique of the social sciences ...

In this outstanding reinterpretation - and extension - of the Critical Theory tradition, Craig Calhoun surveys the origins, fortunes and prospects of this most influential of theoretical approaches. Moving with ease from the early Frankfurt School to Habermas, to contemporary debates over postmodernism, feminism and nationalism, Calhoun breathes new life into Critical Social Theory, showing how it can learn from the past and contribute to the future.