Sociological Theory and Philosophical Analysis Edited by D. Emmet and A. MacIntyre, and The Philosophy of the Social Sciences By Alan Ryan. (Pp. xxiv+232 and 249; both 20s. each.) Macmillan Student Editions: London. 1970.

1971 ◽  
Vol 1 (5) ◽  
pp. 444-444
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
The Social

scholarly journals Sociology, Ecology and a Global Economy

2011 ◽  
pp. 97-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Marchak
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
The Social ◽  
Current Practices

Summary This paper presents the main approaches and issues of Anglo-canadian sociology of the last forty years, showing their limits and their theoretical inadequacies. It discusses the current practices of sociologists and asks the question: which social dimensions should be taken into account to strenghten sociological theory. It emphasizes the necessity to go beyond the framework of the social sciences to build a proper understanding of humanity and social activity.

Value-Relations and General Theory: Parsons’ Critique of Weber

1980 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Lassman
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Value Relevance ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Talcott Parsons ◽  
The Social ◽  
Value Neutrality ◽  
Value Relations

AbstractTalcott Parsons and Max Weber, despite the complexities and uncertainties of the latter’s work, represent two competing approaches to the nature of sociological theory. Despite his reliance upon many aspects of the work of Weber, Parsons’ critical remarks on the problems of value-relevance and value-neutrality can be interpreted in this light. The methodological views of both theorists are tied to differing views of the development of western society and of the role of the Social Sciences. Both are haunted by the spectre of relativism.

THE CURIOUS HISTORICAL DETERMINISM OF RANDALL COLLINS

2003 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
BARBARA MISZTAL ◽  
DIETER FREUNDLIEB
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Global Theory ◽  
China And India ◽  
The Social ◽  
Medieval China ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Intellectual Creativity

Randall Collins' The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (1998) examines and compares communities of intellectuals linked as networks in ancient and medieval China and India, medieval and modern Japan, ancient Greece, medieval Islam and Judaism, medieval Christendom and modern Europe. The book has been the subject of many interesting and often positive reflections (for example, European Journal of Social Theory 3 (I), 2000; Review Symposium or reviews in Sociological Theory 19 (I), March 2001). However, it has also attracted a number of critical reviews (for example, reviews in Philosophy of the Social Sciences 30 (2), June 2000). Since not many books achieve such notoriety, it is worthwhile to rethink Collins' controversial approach. The aim of this paper is to encourage further debates of notions and issues presented in Collins' book. We would like, by joining two voices—sociologist and philosopher—to reopen discussion of Collins' attempt to discover a universality of patterns of intellectual change, as we think that more interpretative rather than explanatory versions of our respective disciplines can enrich our understanding of blueprints of intellectual creativity.

Sociology’s encounter with the decolonial: The problematique of indigenous vs that of coloniality, extraversion and colonial modernity

2020 ◽  
pp. 001139212093114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sujata Patel
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
Politics Of Difference ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
Everyday Knowledge

How did the process of decolonization reframe the social sciences? This article maps the interventions made by theorists of and from the ex-colonial countries in reconceptualizing sociology both as practice and as an episteme. It argues that there are geographically varied and intellectually diverse decolonial approaches being formulated using sociological theory to critique the universals propounded by the traditions of western sociology/social sciences; that these diverse knowledges are connected through colonial and global circuits and that these create knowledge geographies; that collectively these diverse intellectual positions argue that sociology/social sciences are constituted in and within the politics of ‘difference’ organized within colonial, nationalist and global geopolitics; that this ‘difference’ is being reproduced in everyday knowledge practices and is being structured through the political economy of knowledge; and that the destabilization of this power structure and democratization of this knowledge is possible only when there is a fulsome interrogation of this political economy, and its everyday practices of knowledge production within universities and research institutes. It argues that this critique needs to be buffered by the constitution of alternate networks of circulation of this knowledge.

Nuts and Bolts, Bells, Whistles, and Rust in the Social Sciences

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (6) ◽  
pp. 472-480
Author(s):  
Daniel Fairbrother
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
Philosophical Argument ◽  
Social Mechanisms ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Social Mechanism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Analytical Sociology

Here I discuss the philosophical contributions to Analytical Sociology and Social Mechanisms, a collection of essays edited by Pierre Demeulenaere. I begin by introducing the idea of a social mechanism and showing that it has already had an impact within empirical analytical sociology. I then discuss some examples of the philosophical work offered in Demeulenaere’s collection in support of this analytical “movement” in the social sciences. I argue that some of these examples demonstrate thin scholarship and only a veneer of philosophical argument, but that Jon Elster’s contribution fuses impressively philosophical analysis and social science. I conclude by suggesting that analytical sociologists should focus on producing sociological explanations not philosophical theories.

scholarly journals Some questions on the relationship between theory and research in the application of method of observation

Sociologija ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Ilic
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Qualitative Methodology ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Complete Separation ◽  
Power Relationship ◽  
Quantitative Methodology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Research Procedure ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

The article discusses the gradual abandonment of the efforts to verify hypotheses and complex theoretical assumptions in the social sciences by observation. The first section shows the classical understanding that emphasized the importance of the theoretically directed observation. The second section shows the efforts towards inclusion of the observed in the interpretation of observations. The third section contains an analysis of the impact of today?s strict division on the qualitative and quantitative methodology. This influence can be seen in a complete separation of the structured observation and participatory observation, the disintegration of observation as a research procedure, its replacement by ethnography and case study method, as well as abandoning more general theoretical ambition within qualitative methodology. The fourth section analyzes the epistemological consequences of efforts to understand the fieldwork primarily as a power relationship and to transform the observed into the subjects of research. Development of the attitudes on the relationship between theory and research in the application of methods of observation in social sciences is associated with theoretical eclecticism in the field of contemporary sociological theory and distancing from philosophy of science with its understanding of the role of research programs and research traditions in the field of growth of scientific knowledge.

Sociogenesis and Psychogenesis: Norbert Elias’s Historical Social Psychology as a Research Tradition in Comparative Sociology

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 548-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Mennell
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Comparative Sociology ◽  
Research Tradition ◽  
Norbert Elias ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Many ◽  
Process Sociology

What is widely known as ‘figurational sociology’, or alternatively ‘process sociology’, is the research tradition stemming from the writings of Norbert Elias. The tradition extends beyond sociology to historians and many other branches of the social sciences. Elias’s Collected Works run to 18 volumes, but the bedrock of his oeuvre is his early study On the Process of Civilisation, in which the interrelation of long-term sociogenetic processes like state-formation and equally long-term psychogenetic processes like conscience- and habitus-formation is first clearly elaborated. Of the many directions in which the theory has been subsequently developed, the most important is Elias’s sociological theory of knowledge and the sciences, which involves a radical rejection of central assumptions of Western philosophy.

African History: the Contribution of the Social Sciences

1966 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-357
Author(s):  
Robert L. Tignor
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
African History ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Science Literature ◽  
Made In

In nearly all the major historical fields one can see the increasing use historians are making of methods, models, and insights from the social sciences. E. H. Carr's exhortation, that the more history becomes sociology and the more sociology becomes history the better for both, is being taken seriously. Yet there is much more that can be done to bring these fields together. Most historians have used sociological theory only to gain insight, not with great rigour. They have learned their sociology by osmosis, so to speak. They have not gone through the social science literature, but rather have soaked it up second-hand from other interpreters. Consequently their works have not had the precision they might. Concepts have been distorted because of a lack of familiarity with them. African historians, on the whole, have been reluctant to use this rich and suggestive literature. This is probably true because the greatest efforts have been made in finding new sources in this difficult field—oral tradition, linguistic evidence, and so forth. But one is hard pressed to find works by African historians which have employed the theoretical literature of the social sciences.

scholarly journals Stadier på sociologiens vej. Søren Kierkegaard og samfundsvidenskaberne

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 79-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bjørn Thomassen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Soren Kierkegaard ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Theory Formation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Classical Sociology

Denne artikel skitserer Kierkegaards indflydelse på sociologien i det 20. århundrede. Med udgangspunkt i den ungarske sociolog Arpad Szakolczais metodiske begreb om sociologiens ”baggrundsfigurer”, argumenteres det, at Kierkegaard ofte har udøvet en ”skjult”, men afgørende indflydelse på en lang række tænkere inden for den klassiske sociologi, såsom Simmel, Mannheim, Weber, Adorno og Frankfurterskolen. I forlængelse heraf argumenteres det, at Foucaults sene forfatterskab udviklede sig i en intim dialog med Kierkegaards skrifter. Derfor bør Kierkegaard også anerkendes som en nøglefigur for den kritiske teori. Artiklen har som overordnet mål at klargøre Kierkegaards relevans for den sociologiske teoridannelse og den nutidige samfundsforståelse. ENGELSK ABSTRACT: Bjørn Thomassen: Stages on Sociology’s Way: Søren Kierkegaard and the Social Sciences The aim of this article is to ascertain Kierkegaard’s relevance for sociological theory formation as well as diagnostic understandings of contemporary society. The article surveys Kierkegaard’s influence on sociology in the 20th century. Drawing on the Hungarian sociologist Arpad Szakolczai’s methodological concept of ”background figures”, it argues that Kierkegaard has often exercised a ”hidden” but decisive influence on a series of thinkers in classical sociology, including Simmel, Mannheim, Weber, Adorno and the Frankfurt school. The article also argues that Foucault’s late authorship developed in an intimate dialogue with Kierkegaard’s writings. For these reasons, Kierkegaard must also be recognized as a key figure for critical theory. Keywords: Kierkegaard, Mannheim, Simmel, Weber, Foucault, critique.

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