Advocates anthropology as a science focused on social structure.

A philosophically useful account of social structure must accommodate the fact that social structures play an important role in structural explanation. But what is a structural explanation? How do structural explanations function in the social sciences? This paper offers a way of thinking about structural explanation and sketches an account of social structure that connects social structures with structural explanation.

Christian ethics has from the beginning been concerned with moral agency and culture, and Christian social ethics has acknowledged the power of social structures for the last 150 years. But ethics has yet to employ extensively the resources of that discipline that specializes in understanding structure and culture: sociology. Out of a concern to defend human freedom, Catholic social teaching has employed an individualistic approach that misdescribes the characteristics of social evil as little more than (...) the sum of individual choices and proposes individual conversion as a remedy. This book presents a refined sociological understanding of social structures and culture: critical realist sociology. It briefly describes the roots of critical realism in the natural sciences, its understanding of social structure and culture, and how structure and culture have causal impact on human decisions - through freedom, not cancelling it. It makes clear how, in most cases, people "go along" with the restrictions and opportunities offered them but, when there is sufficient frustration with these, how decisions can transform both structure and culture. The analysis is then applied in more detail to provide needed illumination in three areas: the ecological crisis, economic life, and virtue ethics. The core claims of the volume, offering an explanatory account of moral-agency-amidst-structure-and-culture for use in social ethics, would be of great interest to all those working in the field, both Catholic and Protestant. (shrink)

This paper is an extension of “(t, i, f)-Neutrosophic Structures” applicability , where were introduced for the first time a new type of structures, called (t, i, f)- Neutrosophic Structures, presented from a neutrosophic logic perspective.

After sorting different structuralist claims, I argue that structural realist ideas are instantiated in the social sciences, providing both clarification of social science research and support for some components of structural realism. My main focus is on three distinct ways that the social sciences can be about structural relations—exemplified by claims about social structure, reduced form structures in causal modeling, and equilibrium explanations—and on the implication of structuralist ideas for thinking about issues concerning causal (...) explanation and nonreductive pictures of the unity of the science. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, 900 13th Street South, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294; e‐mail: kincaid@uab.edu. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the view that the representational structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for implicitly biased behaviour is propositional—as opposed to associationist. The proposal under criticism moves from the claim that implicit biased behaviour can occasionally be modulated by logical and evidential considerations to the view that the structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for such biased behaviour is propositional. I argue, in particular, against the truth of this conditional. Sensitivity to logical and evidential (...) considerations, I contend, proves to be an inadequate criterion for establishing the true representational structure of implicit attitudes. Considerations of a different kind, which emphasize the challenges posed by the structural social injustice that implicit attitudes reflect, offer, I conclude, better support for deciding this issue in favour of an associationist view. (shrink)

Thorough understanding of social science subject matter is dependent upon attainment of the numerous abstract concepts which compose the lexicon of social science exposition. Systematic designs for promoting concept attainment are basic to social science instruction. The instructional materials which present explication of the body of knowledge constituting social science school subjects should support concept attainment aims. There is a dearth of attention to this crucial issue in social science instructional (...) research. Whereas some evaluation of the effectiveness of concept textual structuring has received little notice. The purpose of this study is to determine if structuring social science text in accordance with a deductive concept presentation strategy affects students’ concept attainment. (shrink)

Social scientists appeal to various “structures” in their explanations including public policies, economic systems, and social hierarchies. Significant debate surrounds the explanatory relevance of these factors for various outcomes such as health, behavioral, and economic patterns. This paper provides a causal account of social structural explanation that is motivated by Haslanger (2016). This account suggests that social structure can be explanatory in virtue of operating as a causal constraint, which is a causal factor with unique (...) characteristics. A novel causal framework is provided for understanding these explanations–this framework addresses puzzles regarding the mysterious causal influence of social structure, how to understand its relation to individual choice, and what makes it the main explanatory (and causally responsible) factor for various outcomes. (shrink)

Structural realism is arguably one of the most influential movements to have emerged in philosophy of science in the last decade or so. Advocates of this movement attempt to answer epistemological and/or ontological questions concerning science by arguing that the key to all such questions is the mathematical formalism of a theory. This is so, according to structural realists, because the mathematical formalism encodes all and only what is important about a theory’s target domain, namely its structure. (...) Almost without exception, discussions of structural realism centre on the natural sciences and in particular on modern physics. Given that a number of other sciences are less – indeed in some cases much less – mathematised than modern physics, does structural realism have anything informative to say about them? In this talk, I take up the task of articulating what structural realists ought to say about the social sciences if they are to consider themselves as offering a coherent philosophy for the whole of science. (shrink)

Both classical and contemporary social theorists have created a range of frameworks to formulate and develop concepts of social structure. Focusing on the work of the key theorists, Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Talcott Parsons and Louis Althusser, Society and its Metaphors maps the linguistic basis of different theories of social structure.

“Interpretive social science” includes a variety of differing epistemological, methodological, and political commitments. It is to the credit of Mark Bevir and Jason Blakely’s Interpretive Social S...

We generalize the concept of a cooperative non-transferable utility game by introducing a socially structured game. In a socially structured game every coalition of players can organize themselves according to one or more internal organizations to generate payoffs. Each admissible internal organization on a coalition yields a set of payoffs attainable by the members of this coalition. The strengths of the players within an internal organization depend on the structure of the internal organization and are represented by an exogenously (...) given power vector. More powerful players have the power to take away payoffs of the less powerful players as long as those latter players are not able to guarantee their payoffs by forming a different internal organization within some coalition in which they have more power.We introduce the socially stable core as a solution concept that contains those payoffs that are both stable in an economic sense, i.e., belong to the core of the underlying cooperative game, and stable in a social sense, i.e., payoffs are sustained by a collection of internal organizations of coalitions for which power is distributed over all players in a balanced way. The socially stable core is a subset and therefore a refinement of the core. We show by means of examples that in many cases the socially stable core is a very small subset of the core.We will state conditions for which the socially stable core is non-empty. In order to derive this result, we formulate a new intersection theorem that generalizes the KKMS intersection theorem. We also discuss the relationship between social stability and the wellknown concept of balancedness for NTU-games, a sufficient condition for non-emptiness of the core. In particular we give an example of a socially structured game that satisfies social stability and therefore has a non-empty core, but whose induced NTU-game does not satisfy balancedness in the general sense of Billera. (shrink)

This essay’s main objective is to develop a theoretical, ontological basis for critical, social justice-oriented science education. Using Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of assemblages, rhizomes, and arborescent structures, this article challenges authoritarian institutional practices, as well as the subject of these practices, and offers a way for critical-social justice-oriented science educators and students to connect with sociopolitical contexts. Through diagramming institutional and community relationships using DG’s theory of assemblages, we envision new ontological spaces that bridge (...) class='Hi'>social and material entities. A conceptualization of science education through DG’s philosophy of rhizomes and assemblages allows educators to merge critical, post-foundational perspectives with questions of ontology: not just what exists, but what could exist in terms of human social organizations, inorganic matter, microorganisms, and plant/animal populations. (shrink)

Using a historical and biographical perspective, this paper examines the structural elements and cultural signs of contemporary social events and problems in Turkey in order to understand their basic features. Hermeneutics is used in order to understand contemporary Turkey by way of its historical background and prominent biographies. Two basic epic texts were interpreted using Gadamarian hermeneutics with the help of key concepts such as gaza1 and gaza cult. Semiotics is used to examine key concepts as binary opposites. Dialectics (...) is used to understand these concepts as the unity of binary opposites coexisting at the same time and place. It is concluded that the contemporary cultural values and biographies explored are linked to their historical past and Islam seems to be more influential on hybrid identities than on ethnic status. (shrink)

This paper identifies experiential processes through which social structures become taken for granted, termed processes of “structure marginalization”. Passive processes of structure marginalization relegate social structures to the margin of experience without the use of higher-order cognitive acts such as evaluation and reflection. Examples include adapting to social structures via routine and habitual practices, a lack of conscious awareness of the complexity, historical formation, and other details of social structures, and rendering social structures (...) irrelevant when they are unreflectively judged to be of no value for achieving ends. Active processes of structure marginalization reflectively and discursively relegate social structures to marginal consciousness. Examples include the use of naturalistic and necessitarian explanations for the social order that implicitly justify it as inalterable or “just the way things are”, normative justifications for the status quo, and conscious awareness of one’s powerlessness to control social-structural conditions. Active processes of structure marginalization originate in passive processes. The goal of the typology is to explain, at the level of experience, why social structures typically remain unproblematic and unnoticed in everyday life, even during periods of social crisis and change or when existing structures produce harmful effects. (shrink)

Science has uncovered many mistakes that had been hidden for centuries among implicit everyday assumptions. When we make explicit what lies implicit within language, there is no guarantee that we will arrive at truth about the world. Many therefore assume that only science delivers truth. Recent debates on this issue often refer to Wilfred Sellars’s arguments against the pre-conceptual given but conclude that his additional insistence on the exclusivity of the scientific image of the world is unfounded. In (...) this paper I resort to Robert Brandom’s development of these arguments to show that saying a word, understanding a concept and engaging in some practices go together. Both laws of nature and social norms regulate these practices and determine the identity conditions of objects. I argue therefore that the conceptual scheme indeed reflects the nature of things because it results from our successful engagement with the world during the long sweep of evolutionary time. (shrink)

When people talk about kinship systems, they often use co-speech gestures and other representations to elaborate. This paper investigates such polysemiotic (spoken, gestured, and drawn) descriptions of kinship relations, to see if they display recurring patterns of conventionalization that capture specific social structures. We present an exploratory hypothesis-generating study of descriptions produced by a lesser-known ethnolinguistic community to the cognitive sciences: the Paamese people of Vanuatu. Forty Paamese speakers were asked to talk about their family in semi-guided kinship interviews. (...) Analyses of the speech, gesture, and drawings produced during these interviews revealed that lineality (i.e., mother's side vs. father's side) is lateralized in the speaker's gesture space. In other words, kinship members of the speaker's matriline are placed on the left side of the speaker's body and those of the patriline are placed on their right side, when they are mentioned in speech. Moreover, we find that the gesture produced by Paamese participants during verbal descriptions of marital relations are performed significantly more often on two diagonal directions of the sagittal axis. We show that these diagonals are also found in the few diagrams that participants drew on the ground to augment their verbo-gestural descriptions of marriage practices with drawing. We interpret this behavior as evidence of a spatial template, which Paamese speakers activate to think and communicate about family relations. We therefore argue that extending investigations of kinship structures beyond kinship terminologies alone can unveil additional key factors that shape kinship cognition and communication and hereby provide further insights into the diversity of social structures. (shrink)

Vaccine hesitancy is a major public health challenge, and racial disparities in the acceptance of vaccines is a particular concern. In this essay, we draw on interviews with mothers of Black male adolescents to offer insights into the reasons for the low rate of vaccination against the human papillomavirus among this group of adolescents. Based on these conversations, we argue that increasing the acceptance of HPV and other vaccines cannot be accomplished merely by providing people with more facts. Instead, we (...) must address the pervasive racial discrimination in the United States that undermines trust in social institutions, including the health care system. In the short term, it may be helpful to increase the number of clinicians of color working in the health system, but more fundamental changes are required. The U.S. must adopt and implement policies that dismantle structural racism if it hopes to produce greater trust and community‐oriented thinking on behalf of people who have been exploited for centuries. (shrink)

Social sciences seek to understand and explain human existence in all its complexity. Thus they encompass the study of individual consciousness and behavior, social relations and cultural practices, social systems, and structural forces. Investigations of these diverse phenomena proceed in accordance with modes of inquiry sanctioned by the academic disciplines of anthropology, archaeology, cultural studies, economics, geography, history, political science, psychology, sociology, and women's studies.

Ontic structural realism (OSR) is crucially motivated by empirical discoveries of fundamental physics. To this extent its potential to furnish a general metaphysics for science may appear limited. However, OSR also provides a good account of the progress that has been achieved over the decades in a formalized special science, economics. Furthermore, this has a basis in the ontology presupposed by economic theory, and is not just an artifact of formalization. †To contact the author, please write to: 4th (...) Floor, Humanities Building, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 900 13th Street South, Birmingham, AL 35294‐1260; School of Economics, Leslie Social Science Building, University of Cape Town, Private Bag, Rondebosch 7701, Cape Town, South Africa; e‐mail: don.ross@uct.ac.za. (shrink)

Since Circular 34 from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Vietnam required the head of the national project to have project results published in ISI/Scopus journals in 2014, the field of economics has been dominating the number of nationally-funded projects in social sciences and humanities. However, there has been no scientometric study that focuses on the difference in productivity among fields in Vietnam. Thus, harnessing the power of the SSHPA database, a comprehensive dataset of 1,564 Vietnamese authors (...) (854 males, 705 females) with 2,410 publications in the 2008 – 2018 period was extracted and analyzed. Various factors were considered including age, gender, new authors, leading authors, co-authorship, and Impact Factor. The findings suggest a high level of contribution from authors at the age of 40 – 44 in economics (858 publications) in a 12-years period, which is equivalent to the social medicine total output, and two times more than the total output of the education. Moreover, the presence and reinforcement of male researchers are still dominating in Economics and other fields, with the only exception of education. Despite the rapid rise in the number of Vietnamese lead authors, gender disparity among disciplines is an issue. Contrary to the strong international collaboration-oriented tendency in social medicine, economics, and other fields, educational authors are not open to international collaborating. Finally, most of the publications in economics belong to the group with JIF from 0 to 2, in contrast with the high number of social medicine publications with JIF from 2 to 5, which suggesting the field of economics is fulfilling the quantity, but still, need more quality publications. (shrink)

Research on brain or cognitive/affective processes, culture, social interaction, and structural analysis are overlapping but often independent ways humans have attempted to understand the origins of their evolution, historical, and contemporary development. Each level seeks to employ its own theoretical concepts and methods for depicting human nature and categorizing objects and events in the world, and often relies on different sources of evidence to support theoretical claims. Each level makes reference to different temporal bandwidths (milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days, (...) months, years, decades, and centuries) and focuses on different spatio-temporal activities and controlled and non-controlled stimulus conditions. Biological mechanisms and environmental pressures for survival simultaneously created a gradual intersection and enhancement of cognitive/affective skills, cultural practices, and changes in collaborative social interaction and communicative skills. The evolution of a given level of analysis is assumed to have been incremental and overlapping. These innovative and independent ways humans have learned to characterize their brain or cognitive/affective and social/economic/political life often depend on unexamined, representational re-descriptions or cognitive/affective and socio-cultural devices and forms of communication that facilitate the depiction of practices and beliefs we attribute to respondents or subjects and research colleagues. (shrink)

Projections of future climate change cannot rely on a single model. It has become common to rely on multiple simulations generated by Multi-Model Ensembles (MMEs), especially to quantify the uncertainty about what would constitute an adequate model structure. But, as Parker points out (2018), one of the remaining philosophically interesting questions is: “How can ensemble studies be designed so that they probe uncertainty in desired ways?” This paper offers two interpretations of what General Circulation Models (GCMs) are and how (...) MMEs made of GCMs should be designed. In the first interpretation, models are combinations of modules and parameterisations; an MME is obtained by “plugging and playing” with interchangeable modules and parameterisations. In the second interpretation, models are aggregations of expert judgements that result from a history of epistemic decisions made by scientists about the choice of representations; an MME is a sampling of expert judgements from modelling teams. We argue that, while the two interpretations involve distinct domains from philosophy of science and social epistemology, they both could be used in a complementary manner in order to explore ways of designing better MMEs. (shrink)

As the literature on Critical Realism in the social sciences is growing, it is about time to analyse whether a new, acceptable standard for social scientific explanations is being introduced. In order to do so, I will discuss the work of Christopher Lloyd, who analysed contributions of social scientists that rely on (what he called) a structurist ontology and a structurist methodology, and advocated a third option in the methodological debate between individualism and holism. I will suggest (...) modifications to three points of Lloyd's analysis, without abandoning Lloyd's intuitions completely. Firstly, the intuitions of the structurist ontology can be made explicit in a different way, without loosing the individual-society dualism. Secondly, opting for a structurist ontology does not necessarily imply opting for a structurist methodology. Ontology and methodology are related, but not as strongly as Lloyd supposes. Thirdly, the idea of a complete explanation, present in the structurist methodology, confuses causation and explanation while denying the pragmatics of explanation. A broader spectrum of explanatory forms can be defended. Criticizing Lloyd on these three points will lead me to the defence of an explanatory pluralism, which I relate to a minimal ontology. The intention of this reconceptualisation of structurism (and related Critical Realist applications) is to broaden possible perspectives on the explanatory praxis of the social scientist, and to question the reunification of the social sciences. It will also stipulate which form of interdisciplinarity is preferable for the social sciences. (shrink)

Science is very successful in discovering the structure and history of the physical world, but its success is purchased by the modesty of its ambition. There is more to be told of the encounter with reality, including the nature of scientific inquiry itself, than can be gained from impersonal experience and experimental test. This book goes beyond science to consider the human context in which it operates and to pursue that wider understanding which we all seek. It (...) looks to issues of meaning and value, intrinsic to scientific practice but excluded from science's consideration by its own self-denying ordinance. It raises the question of the significance of the deep mathematical intelligibility of the physical world and its anthropically fruitful history. It considers how we may find responsible ways to use the power that science places in human hands. Science is portrayed as an activity of human persons pursued within a convivial and truth-seeking community. This book neither over-values science (as if it were the only worthwhile source of knowledge) nor devalues it (as if it were to be treated with suspicion or not taken seriously). Beyond Science provides a considered and balanced account which firmly asserts science's place in human culture, maintained in mutually illuminating relationships with other aspects of that culture. (shrink)

Organizational research constitutes a differentiated, complex and fragmented field with multiple contradicting and incommensurable theories that make fundamentally different claims about the social and organizational reality. In contrast to natural sciences, the progress in this field can’t be attributed to the principle of truthlikeness where theories compete against each other and only best theories survive and prove they are closer to the truth and thus demonstrate scientific knowledge accumulation. We defend the structural realist view on the nature of organizational (...) theories in order to demonstrate that despite the multiplicity of isolated and competing explanations of organization-environment relations these theories are still logically compatible and mutually consistent which, in turn, assures theoretical progress in the field. Although postulating different and incompatible ontologies, three most successful organization-environments theories, namely, contingency theory, new institutionalism and population ecology share the same explanations of the relations between organizations and environments at the structural level. Without this principle one would say that what occurs in the field of organization theory is a change rather than a progress. (shrink)

Semantic Network Analysis in Social Sciences introduces the fundamentals of semantic network analysis and its applications in the social sciences. Readers learn how to easily transform any given text into a visual network of words co-occurring together, a process that allows mapping the main themes appearing in the text and revealing its main narratives and biases. Semantic network analysis is particularly useful today with the increasing volumes of text-based information available. It is one of the developing, cutting-edge methods (...) to organize, identify patterns and structures, and understand the meanings of our information society. The first chapters in this book offer step-by-step guidelines for conducting semantic network analysis, including choosing and preparing the text, selecting desired words, constructing the networks, and interpreting their meanings. Free software tools and code are also presented. The rest of the book displays state-of-the-art studies from around the world that apply this method to explore news, political speeches, social media content, and even to organize interview transcripts and literature reviews. Aimed at scholars with no previous knowledge in the field, this book can be used as a main or a supplementary textbook for general courses on research methods or network analysis courses, as well as a starting point to conduct your own content analysis of large texts. (shrink)

Aims and Scope -/- The Vietnamese Social Sciences and Humanities at a Fork in the Road, utilizing an object-oriented structured database on the productivity of Vietnamese researchers, seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of the development of Social Sciences and Humanities in Vietnam from 2008 to 2018. -/- Quan-Hoang Vuong (Ph.D., Université Libre de Bruxelles) is the director of Centre for Interdisciplinary Social Research, Phenikaa University in Hanoi, Vietnam. He is chairman of the Vietnam chapter of the (...) European Association of Science Editors and serves in the NAFOSTED Scientific Council on Basic Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities (2019-2021). Dr. Vuong has published more than 120 academic articles, and book chapters in about 50 refereed journals and books by such publishers as Elsevier, Inderscience, Nature Publishing Group, Springer, Praeger, Wiley, World Scientific, etc. -/- Trung Tran is an Associate Professor of Mathematics Education and works at Vietnam Academy for Ethnic Minorities. He is a member of the Vietnam chapter of The European Association of Science Editors (EASE), a leader of the Vietnamese Science Editors (VSE) Team, and a chairman of Editor's Board of Journal of Ethnic Minorities Research (ISSN: 0866-773X). (shrink)

Debate over the nature of science has recently moved from the halls of academia into the public sphere, where it has taken shape as the "science wars." At issue is the question of whether scientific knowledge is objective and universal or socially mediated, whether scientific truths are independent of human values and beliefs. Ronald Giere is a philosopher of science who has been at the forefront of this debate from its inception, and Science without Laws offers (...) a much-needed mediating perspective on an increasingly volatile line of inquiry. Giere does not question the major findings of modern science: for example, that the universe is expanding or that inheritance is carried by DNA molecules with a double helical structure. But like many critics of modern science, he rejects the widespread notion of science--deriving ultimately from the Enlightenment--as a uniquely rational activity leading to the discovery of universal truths underlying all natural phenomena. In these highly readable essays, Giere argues that it is better to understand scientists as merely constructing more or less abstract models of limited aspects of the world. Such an understanding makes possible a resolution of the issues at stake in the science wars. The critics of science are seen to be correct in rejecting the Enlightenment idea of science, and its defenders are seen to be correct in insisting that science does produce genuine knowledge of the natural world. Giere is utterly persuasive in arguing that to criticize the Enlightenment ideal is not to criticize science itself, and that to defend science one need not defend the Enlightenment ideal. Science without Laws thus stakes out a middle ground in these debates by showing us how science can be better conceived in other ways. (shrink)

This book examines the key debates, both theoretical and empirical, in the fields of urbanization, industrialization and stratification in India. The essays in the volume engage with the problems of typologies--tribal, peasant and industrial--in order to rethink the issues of modernity and tradition. The authors problematize a vast array of literature on tribal, peasant and industrial sociology, grappling with conceptual problems caused by the uncritical application of theories germinated in the West to the Indian context. The primary assumption of all (...) the essays is that the conventional binary opposition between primitive and modern, and the evolutionary schema of viewing the world in terms of First, Second and Third Worlds is redundant to our times. Keeping this in mind, the book provides an essential framework for understanding globalization. The contributors to the volume attempt to engage with the discursive and volatile aspects of the discipline of sociology, enlivening and re-invigorating old debates through an understanding of questions teachers and students put to each other in classroom situations, thus enabling students to read sociology in a new and refreshing way. In a new Preface, the editor contextualizes the issues of tribe, caste, gender and work in tribal, peasant and industrial societies in the current scenario. It is essential reading for students and teachers of sociology and anthropology, bureaucrats, administrators, social workers, journalists and the interested lay reader. (shrink)

Introduction -- Repression, ignorance, and undone science -- The epistemic dimension of the political opportunity structure -- The politics of meaning: from frames to design conflicts -- The organizational forms of counterpublic knowledge -- Institutional change, industrial transitions, and regime resistance politics -- Contemporary change: liberalization and epistemic modernization -- Conclusion.

This paper demonstrates the role of the governance system and the governance structure in corporate social performance (CSP). By building on a longitudinal study in Dutch finance, it extends the CSP-model of Wood. The extension enables us to study the impact of the institutional environment and the characteristics of a governance structure on CSP. Furthermore, the study confirms Wood’s assumption that anticipating managers are critical in CSP. However, if stakeholders desire structural influence, the governance structure and (...) the governance system offer important opportunities. (shrink)

This paper examines the potential contribution of structuration theory to an understanding of firm-stakeholder networks. Central ideas of structuration theory areintroduced in an examination of the structure of networks and interactions between a firm and its stakeholders within the network. Based on those concepts, implications are derived regarding the description of a firm-stakeholder network and the related identification of stakeholders on the one hand and the design of interactions with stakeholders on the other hand.

Humanities and Social Science education is integral in the development of active and informed citizens, and encourages learners to think critically, solve problems and adapt to change. Making Humanities and Social Sciences Come Alive: Early Years and Primary Education prepares pre-service educators to become high quality HASS educators who can unlock the potential of all students. Closely aligned with the Australian Curriculum and Early Years Learning Framework, this text is designed to enhance teaching practices in history, geography, (...) economics and business, and civics and citizenship. The text provides readers with an in-depth understanding of the curriculum structure, the individual disciplines, pedagogical approaches to teaching HASS, inclusivity, global connections and the transition to practice. Examples are provided for early childhood and primary education, making this an inclusive, versatile and comprehensive text. This book is an invaluable resource that provides pre-service educators with the knowledge and skills to deliver this exciting curriculum. (shrink)

Introduction -- Repression, ignorance, and undone science -- The epistemic dimension of the political opportunity structure -- The politics of meaning: from frames to design conflicts -- The organizational forms of counterpublic knowledge -- Institutional change, industrial transitions, and regime resistance politics -- Contemporary change: liberalization and epistemic modernization -- Conclusion.

Post-modernism offers a revolutionary approach to the study of society: in questioning the validity of modern science and the notion of objective knowledge, this movement discards history, rejects humanism, and resists any truth claims. In this comprehensive assessment of post-modernism, Pauline Rosenau traces its origins in the humanities and describes how its key concepts are today being applied to, and are restructuring, the social sciences. Serving as neither an opponent nor an apologist for the movement, she cuts through (...) post-modernism's often incomprehensible jargon in order to offer all readers a lucid exposition of its propositions. Rosenau shows how the post-modern challenge to reason and rational organization radiates across academic fields. For example, in psychology it questions the conscious, logical, coherent subject; in public administration it encourages a retreat from central planning and from reliance on specialists; in political science it calls into question the authority of hierarchical, bureaucratic decision-making structures that function in carefully defined spheres; in anthropology it inspires the protection of local, primitive cultures from First World attempts to reorganize them. In all of the social sciences, she argues, post-modernism repudiates representative democracy and plays havoc with the very meaning of "left-wing" and "right-wing." Rosenau also highlights how post-modernism has inspired a new generation of social movements, ranging from New Age sensitivities to Third World fundamentalism. In weighing its strengths and weaknesses, the author examines two major tendencies within post-modernism, the largely European, skeptical form and the predominantly Anglo-North-American form, which suggests alternative political, social, and cultural projects. She draws examples from anthropology, economics, geography, history, international relations, law, planning, political science, psychology, sociology, urban studies, and women's studies, and provides a glossary of post-modern terms to assist the uninitiated reader with special meanings not found in standard dictionaries. (shrink)

In Structures in Science, Theo A. F. Kuipers presents a detailed analysis of reductive, including microreductive, explanations. One goal of a microreduction is to explain the laws governing a structured object in terms of laws about its parts, plus a description of its structure. Kuipers refers to structures in his book, and uses the idea of a "structure representation function," but does not characterize the relevant concept of structure. To characterize microreductions fully, we need an adequate (...) characterization of the relevant sense of "structure." After discussing examples, I present general analyses of bonds and of structured wholes. My analyses apply from physics to the social sciences, the latter illustrated by a hypothetical robotic social structure. Since Kuipers' philosophical position appears to be generally compatible with my own, I do not critique of any part of his work. Instead, this article is intended to fill in a gap in his presentation. (shrink)

This bold and lively essay is one of those rarest of intellectual achievements, a big small book. In its short length are condensed enormous erudition and impressive analytical scope. With verve and self-assurance, it addresses a broad, central question: How can we improve our understanding of the large-scale processes and structures that transformed the world of the nineteenth century and are transforming our world today? Tilly contends that twentieth-century social theories have been encumbered by a nineteenth century heritage of (...) “pernicious postulates.” He subjects each misleading belief to rigorous criticism, challenging many standard social science paradigms and methodologies. As an alternative to those timeless, placeless models of social change and organization, Tilly argues convincingly for a program of concrete, historically grounded analysis and systematic comparison. To illustrate the strategies available for such research, Tilly assesses the works of several major practitioners of comparative historical analysis, making skillful use of this selective review to offer his own speculative, often unconventional accounts of our recent past. Historically oriented social scientists will welcome this provocative essay and its wide-ranging agenda for comparative historical research. Other social scientists, their graduate and undergraduate students, and even the interested general reader will find this new work by a major scholar stimulating and eminently readable. This is the second of five volumes commissioned by the Russell Sage Foundation to mark its seventy-fifth anniversary. "In this short, brilliant book Tilly suggests a way to think about theories of historical social change....This book should find attentive readers both in undergraduate courses and in graduate seminars. It should also find appreciative readers, for Tilly is a writer as well as a scholar." —Choice. (shrink)