Search Results for: interests and the growth of knowledge rle social theory

Author: Barry Barnes
Publisher: Routledge
Size: 40.44 MB
Format: PDF, ePub, Docs
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 118
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Interests And The Growth Of Knowledge Rle Social Theory Book Description

by Barry Barnes, Interests And The Growth Of Knowledge Rle Social Theory Books available in PDF, EPUB, Mobi Format. Download Interests And The Growth Of Knowledge Rle Social Theory books, Intriguingly different in approach from conventional works in the same area of inquiry, this study deals with the central problems and concerns of the sociology of knowledge as it has traditionally been conceived of. In other words, it is concerned with the relationship of knowledge, social interests and social structure, and with the various attempts which have been made to analyse the relationship. Barry Barnes takes the classic writings in the sociology of knowledge – by Marx, Lukács, Weber, Mannheim, Goldmann, Habermas and others – and uses them as resources in coming to grips with what he regards as the currently most interesting and significant questions in this area. This approach reflects one of the principal themes of the book itself. Knowledge, it is argued, is best treated as a resource available to those possessing it. This is the best perspective from which to understand its relationship to action and its historical significance; it is a perspective which avoids the problems of holding that knowledge is derivative, as well as those generated by the view that knowledge is a strong determinant of consciousness. the result is an unusual textbook, particularly valuable when read in conjunction with the original works it discusses.

Author: Michael Mulkay
Publisher: Routledge
Size: 61.72 MB
Format: PDF, ePub, Docs
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 138
View: 481

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Science And The Sociology Of Knowledge Rle Social Theory Book Description

by Michael Mulkay, Science And The Sociology Of Knowledge Rle Social Theory Books available in PDF, EPUB, Mobi Format. Download Science And The Sociology Of Knowledge Rle Social Theory books, How far is scientific knowledge a product of social life? In addressing this question, the major contributors to the sociology of knowledge have agreed that the conclusions of science are dependent on social action only in a very special and limited sense. In Science and the Sociology of Knowledge Michael Mulkay's first aim is to identify the philosophical assumptions which have led to this view of science as special; and to present a systematic critique of the standard philosophical account of science, showing that there are no valid epistemological grounds for excluding scientific knowledge from the scope of sociological analysis. The rest of the book is devoted to developing a preliminary interpretation of the social creation of scientific knowledge. The processes of knowledge-creation are delineated through a close examination of recent case studies of scientific developments. Dr Mulkay argues that knowledge is produced by means of negotiation, the outcome of which depends on the participants' use of social as well as technical resources. The analysis also shows how cultural resources are taken over from the broader social milieu and incorporated into the body of certified knowledge; and how, in the political context of society at large, scientists' technical as well as social claims are conditioned and affected by their social position.

Author: Volker Meja
Publisher: Routledge
Size: 32.78 MB
Format: PDF, Docs
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324
View: 2747

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Knowledge And Politics Rle Social Theory Book Description

by Volker Meja, Knowledge And Politics Rle Social Theory Books available in PDF, EPUB, Mobi Format. Download Knowledge And Politics Rle Social Theory books, Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia has been a profoundly provocative book. The debate about politics and social knowledge that was spawned by its original publication in 1929 attracted the most promising younger scholars, some of whom shaped the thought of several generations. The book became a focus for a debate on the methodological and epistemological problems confronting German social science. More than thirty major papers were published in response to Mannheim’s text. Writers such as Hannah Arendt, Ernst Robert Curtius, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Helmuth Plessner, Hans Speier and Paul Tillich were among the contributors. Their positions varied from seeing in the sociology of knowledge a sophisticated reformulation of the materialist conception of history to linking its popularity to a betrayal of Marxism. The English publication in 1936 defined formative issues for two generations of sociological self-reflection. Knowledge and Politics provides an introduction to the dispute and reproduces the leading contributions. It sheds new light on one of the greatest controversies that have marked German social science in the past hundred years.

Author: Eric Carlton
Publisher: Routledge
Size: 44.67 MB
Format: PDF, Mobi
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Ideology And Social Order Rle Social Theory Book Description

by Eric Carlton, Ideology And Social Order Rle Social Theory Books available in PDF, EPUB, Mobi Format. Download Ideology And Social Order Rle Social Theory books, Truly interdisciplinary work between Sociology and History is are, because one discipline usually exploits the concerns or data of the other. Eric Carlton, however, has succeeded in bringing together the distinctive orientations of sociology and ancient history into a clearly written discussion of concerns crucial to both disciplines. Based on a comparative analysis or two pre-industrial civilisations, those of Ancient Egypt and Classical Athens, the study is primarily concerned with three issues. The first is the relationship between belief and action: does belief (intellectualised as ideology) affect or determine social behaviour? Second, the author examines the ways in which belief contributes to stability and ‘good order’ in society, and asks to what extent such factors as social status and social change are related to institutionalised mechanisms of social control. Finally, he indicates possible sociological frameworks or models which are ideological rather than stratificatory, whereby complex pre-industrial systems might be analysed. By analysing the societies of Ancient Egypt and Classical Athens in institutional terms, Eric Carlton examines the potency and pervasiveness of the ideological factor and shows that it is a persistent and determinative feature of this type of society.

Author: Peter Hamilton
Publisher: Routledge
Size: 19.21 MB
Format: PDF, ePub, Docs
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 172
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Knowledge And Social Structure Rle Social Theory Book Description

by Peter Hamilton, Knowledge And Social Structure Rle Social Theory Books available in PDF, EPUB, Mobi Format. Download Knowledge And Social Structure Rle Social Theory books, The primary concern of this study is to present, elucidate and analyse the developments which have characterized the sociology of knowledge, and which have set for it the outlines of its major problematics. Peter Hamilton examines the most distinctive approaches to the determinate relationship between knowledge and social structure. He considers the three main ‘pre-paradigms’ of the sociology of knowledge based on the work of Marx, Durkheim and Weber, and looks at the contribution of Scheler, Mannheim and phenomenological studies to this complex field. He explores the intellectual context, particularly that of Enlightenment philosophy, in which the problems involved in producing a sociology of knowledge first came to light. In conclusion, the author suggests an inclusive perspective for approaching the difficulties posed in any attempt to describe and explain relations between knowledge and social structure.

Author: Tom W. Goff
Publisher: Routledge
Size: 18.94 MB
Format: PDF, ePub, Docs
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 172
View: 5354

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Marx And Mead Rle Social Theory Book Description

by Tom W. Goff, Marx And Mead Rle Social Theory Books available in PDF, EPUB, Mobi Format. Download Marx And Mead Rle Social Theory books, It has often been suggested that a resolution of issues generated by the sociological study of ideas might be reached through a synthesis of specific insights to be found in the works of Karl Marx and George Herbert Mead. The present study originated in an investigation of this hypothesis, particularly as it bears on the central issue of sociological relativism. The author began by delineating the specific problems such a synthesis might resolve, and in the process became aware that the nature and depth of differences separating the sociology of knowledge and its critics have never been fully analysed or understood. This volume therefore opens with a clarification of these differences, a clarification which leads to considerable redefinition of the problem as it has traditionally been understood by critics and proponents of the discipline alike. The author points out in particular that it is less a debate than a thorough-going contradiction which characterizes the literature dealing with the inadequacies of various formulations of the sociology of knowledge. In consequence, the study of Marx and Mead presented here is not simply yet another effort to discover a perspective which will satisfy the particular demands of the critics. Rather, it argues that an adequate perspective fully consistent with the central insight of the discipline – that knowledge is radically social in character – is to be found in a synthesis of elements in the perspectives of Marx and Mead.

Author: Brian Fay
Publisher: Routledge
Size: 74.49 MB
Format: PDF, ePub, Mobi
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 120
View: 406

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Social Theory And Political Practice Rle Social Theory Book Description

by Brian Fay, Social Theory And Political Practice Rle Social Theory Books available in PDF, EPUB, Mobi Format. Download Social Theory And Political Practice Rle Social Theory books, This book examines the question of how our knowledge of social life affects, and ought to affect, our way of living it. In so doing, it critically discusses two epistemological models of social science – the positivist and the interpretive – from the viewpoint of the political theories which, it is argued, are implicit in these models; moreover, it proposes a third model – the critical – which is organised around an explicit account of the relation between social theory and practical life. The book has the special merit of being a good overview of the principal current ideas about the relation between social theory and political practice, as well as an attempt at providing a new and more satisfactory account of this relationship. To accomplish this task, it synthesises work from the analytic philosophy of social science with that of the neo-Marxism of the Frankfurt school.

Author: Thomas Baumgartner
Publisher: Routledge
Size: 34.27 MB
Format: PDF
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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The Shaping Of Socio Economic Systems Rle Social Theory Book Description

by Thomas Baumgartner, The Shaping Of Socio Economic Systems Rle Social Theory Books available in PDF, EPUB, Mobi Format. Download The Shaping Of Socio Economic Systems Rle Social Theory books, Actor-systems dynamics is an innovative, multidisciplinary methodology for investigating and analyzing social struggles over economic resources and the related interplay between economic and socio-political institutions and processes. The authors, sociologists and economists, offer a systemic perspective on contemporary socio-economic issues such as economic crisis, unemployment, inflation, economic democracy and development; in their analyses, they identify several of the key factors that drive people to interact, to initiate change and transformation as well as to resist such change. Major underlying themes in the book are: Conflict over the distribution of economic resources and economic policies and institutions; the structural bases of economic inequality and conflict; the shaping and reshaping of socio-economic institutions, and the contradictions, conflicts and instabilities evoked by such developments; the failure of orthodox economic theories, including Keynesianism, in the face of recurrent economic crises and instabilities; the development and application of an open, dynamic actor-oriented systems theory – grounded in the social sciences – addressing complex socio-economic phenomena in ways diverging substantially from conventional economics. All in all, the papers collected here deal, on the one hand, with social power, conflict, and struggle concerning economic resources and institutions and, on the other hand, the structural and other factors which drive powering initiatives, conflict, and social innovation and transformation. The book is addressed to a broad spectrum of social and managerial scientists concerned with socio-economic issues, institutions, and development.

Author: James Robert Brown
Publisher: Routledge
Size: 56.41 MB
Format: PDF
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206
View: 6623

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The Rational And The Social Rle Social Theory Book Description

by James Robert Brown, The Rational And The Social Rle Social Theory Books available in PDF, EPUB, Mobi Format. Download The Rational And The Social Rle Social Theory books, To paraphrase Marx, sociologists have only interpreted science; the point is to improve it. The Rational and the Social attempts both. It begins by sketching recent sociological approaches to science, notably the strong programme – Bloor’s ‘science of science’ and Barnes’s ‘finitism’ – and that of the ‘anthropologists in the lab’, Collins and Latour and Woolgar. The author argues that although sociological accounts are valuable in many respects, when morals are drawn about the structure and epistemology of science, they are badly flawed. In rejecting the sociological theory of science, it is not necessary to conclude that science develops without reference to the social. James Robert Brown argues for an alternative account. He proposes a novel way of viewing the history of science as a source of evidence for how to do good science and argues that the most important aspect of methodology is that it is comparative. Rival theories are evaluated by comparison and the contribution of the social to this process is inevitable and should be acknowledged. This is the challenge to science.

Author: Josef Bleicher
Publisher: Routledge
Size: 59.75 MB
Format: PDF, ePub, Docs
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180
View: 4748

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The Hermeneutic Imagination Rle Social Theory Book Description

by Josef Bleicher, The Hermeneutic Imagination Rle Social Theory Books available in PDF, EPUB, Mobi Format. Download The Hermeneutic Imagination Rle Social Theory books, In his previous book, Contemporary Hermeneutics, Josef Bleicher offered an introduction to the subject, locating it mainly within the philosophy of social science, and looking at the profound impact it is having on a wide range of intellectual pursuits. This book follows on from this and expounds the author's view that the development of the hermeneutic imagination is an indispensable condition for reflexive sociological work and emancipatory social practice. Dr Bleicher examines the various approaches to sociology – empiricist, functionalist, structuralist, interpretive, critical – by reference to a hermeneutic paradigm, and shows how the hermeneutic imagination leads to a redirection in sociology, away from scientistic presuppositions and towards an awareness of the dialogue which links the subject and object in the study of social phenomena. He argues that by allowing the hermeneutic imagination to develop, it is possible to counter the steering of social processes on the basis of technocratic imperatives, and to provide a rational anticipation of a better future.