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This book opens up a unique intellectual space where eleven female scholar-activists explore alternative forms of theorising social reality. These‘Women on the Verge’ demonstrate that a new radical subject– one that is plural, prefigurative, decolonial, ethical, ecological, communal and democratic- is in the making, but is unrecognisable with old analytical tools. Of central concern to the book is the resistance of some social scientists, many of them critical theorists, to learning about this radical subject and to interrogating the concepts, methodologies and epistemologies used to grasp it. Echoing the experiential critique of capitalist-colonial society that is taking place at the grassroots, the authors examine how to create hope, decolonise critique and denaturalise society. They also address the various dimensions of the social (re)production of life, including women in development, the commons, and nature. Finally, they discuss the dynamics of prefiguration by social movements, critiquing social movement theory in the process. This thought-provoking edited collection will appeal to students and scholars of gender studies, social, Marxist and Feminist theory, postcolonial studies and politics.
The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences provides a remarkable comparative assessment of the variations of positivism and alternative epistemologies in the contemporary human sciences. Often declared obsolete, positivism is alive and well in a number of the fields; in others, its influence is significantly diminished. The essays in this collection investigate its mutations in form and degree across the social science disciplines. Looking at methodological assumptions field by field, individual essays address anthropology, area studies, economics, history, the philosophy of science, political science and political theory, and sociology. Essayists trace disciplinary developments through the long twentieth century, focusing on the decades since World War II. Contributors explore and contrast some of the major alternatives to positivist epistemologies, including Marxism, psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, narrative theory, and actor-network theory. Almost all the essays are written by well-known practitioners of the fields discussed. Some essayists approach positivism and anti-positivism via close readings of texts influential in their respective disciplines. Some engage in ethnographies of the present-day human sciences; others are more historical in method. All of them critique contemporary social scientific practice. Together, they trace a trajectory of thought and method running from the past through the present and pointing toward possible futures. Contributors. Andrew Abbott, Daniel Breslau, Michael Burawoy, Andrew Collier , Michael Dutton, Geoff Eley, Anthony Elliott, Stephen Engelmann, Sandra Harding, Emily Hauptmann, Webb Keane, Tony Lawson, Sophia Mihic, Philip Mirowski, Timothy Mitchell, William H. Sewell Jr., Margaret R. Somers, George Steinmetz, Elizabeth Wingrove
How the NSF became an important yet controversial patron for the social sciences, influencing debates over their scientific status and social relevance. In the early Cold War years, the U.S. government established the National Science Foundation (NSF), a civilian agency that soon became widely known for its dedication to supporting first-rate science. The agency's 1950 enabling legislation made no mention of the social sciences, although it included a vague reference to "other sciences." Nevertheless, as Mark Solovey shows in this book, the NSF also soon became a major--albeit controversial--source of public funding for them.
Amidst war, economic meltdown, and ecological crisis, a "new spirit of radicalism is blooming" from New York to Cairo, according to Chris Dixon. In Another Politics, he examines the trajectory of efforts that contributed to the radicalism of Occupy Wall Street and other recent movement upsurges. Drawing on voices of leading organizers across the United States and Canada, he delivers an engaging presentation of the histories and principles that shape many contemporary struggles. Dixon outlines the work of activists aligned with anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist, and anti-oppression politics and discusses the lessons they are learning in their efforts to create social transformation. The book explores solutions to the key challenge for today’s activists, organizers, fighters, and dreamers: building a substantive link between the work of "against," which fights ruling institutions, and the work of "beyond," which develops liberatory alternatives.
This 1969 study considers the relation of sociology to political philosophy and extends traditional political philosophy in the direction of contemporary developments.
What does political science tell us about important real-world problems and issues? And to what extent does and can political analysis contribute to solutions? Debates about the funding, impact and relevance of political science in contemporary democracies have made this a vital and hotly contested topic of discussion, and in this original text authors from around the world respond to the challenge. A robust defence is offered of the achievements of political science research, but the book is not overly sanguine given its sustained recognition of the need for improvement in the way that political science is done. New insights are provided into the general issues raised by relevance, into blockages to relevance, and into the contributions that the different subfields of political science can and do make. The book concludes with a new manifesto for relevance that seeks to combine a commitment to rigour with a commitment to engagement.
Political sociology is the interdisciplinary study of power and the intersection of personality, society and politics. The field also examines how the political process is affected by major social trends as well as exploring how social policies are altered by various social forces. Political sociologists increasingly use a wide variety of relatively new quantitative and qualitative methodologies and incorporate theories and research from other social science cognate disciplines. The contributors focus on the current controversies and disagreements surrounding the use of different methodologies for the study of politics and society, and discussions of specific applications found in the widely scattered literature where substantive research in the field is published. This approach will solidly place the handbook in a market niche that is not occupied by the current volumes while also covering many of the same theoretical and historical developments that the other volumes cover. The purpose of this handbook is to summarize state-of-the-art theory, research, and methods used in the study of politics and society. This area of research encompasses a wide variety of perspectives and methods that span social science disciplines. The handbook is designed to reflect that diversity in content, method and focus. In addition, it will cover developments in the developed and underdeveloped worlds.
Writing about ideas, John Maynard Keynes noted that they are "more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else." One would expect, therefore, that political science--a discipline that focuses specifically on the nature of power--would have a healthy respect for the role of ideas. However, for a variety of reasons--not least of which is the influence of rational choice theory, which presumes that individuals are self-maximizing rational actors--this is not the case, and the literature on the topic is fairly thin. As the stellar cast of contributors to this volume show, ideas are in fact powerful shapers of political and social life. In Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research, Daniel Béland and Robert Henry Cox have gathered leading scholars from a variety of subdisciplines in political science and sociology to provide a general overview of the theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues raised by social science research on ideas and politics. Throughout, they hone in on three central questions. What is the theoretical basis for studying ideas in politics? What are the best methods? What sort of empirical puzzles can be solved by examining ideas and related phenomena such as discourse, policy paradigms, and framing processes? In sum, this is a state-of-the-art academic work on both the role of ideas in politics and the analytical utility that derives from studying them.
Professor Meek traces the prehistory of the four stages theory, with emphasis on the influence of literature about savage societies.
This textbook presents political sociology as a connective social science that studies political phenomena by creating fruitful connections with other perspectives. The relationship between politics and society is more complex than ever due to the emergence of new power structures, forms of conflict organization and management, and social practices of political participation. Several scholars describe this historical phase as the 'de-politicization of representative politics'. The book addresses classical themes of and approaches to political sociology, but also dedicates several chapters to contemporary developments within political sociology, including, for instance, the role of the internet and bottom-up political communication in social movements. In addition, the volume acts as a professional tool for those scholars and researchers that are beginning to study political processes from a sociological perspective.