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This work, sequel to the author's Theories of Civil Violence, attacks questions that have long troubled social science and social scientists - questions of the cumulative nature of social inquiry. Does the knowledge generated by the study of social, political, and economic life grow more comprehensive over time? These questions go to the heart of social scientists' soul-searching as to whether they are indeed engaged in 'science'. The author pursues these questions through in-depth examination of various theoretical programs currently influential in social science, including feminist social science, rational choice theory, network analysis and others

"Real Social Science presents a new, hands-on approach to social inquiry. The theoretical and methodological ideas behind the book, inspired by Aristotelian phronesis, represent an original perspective within the social sciences, and for the first time this volume gives readers a set of studies exemplifying what applied phronesis looks like in practice. The reflexive analysis of values and power gives new meaning to the impact of research on policy and practice. Real Social Science is a major step forward in a novel and thriving field of research. This book will benefit scholars, researchers, and students who want to make a difference in practice, not just in the academy. Its message will make it essential reading for students and academics across the social sciences"--

Despite the extensive commentary on the work of Peter Winch, there has been inadequate recognition of how his Idea of a Social Science discerned the implications of Wittgenstein's philosophy for confronting issues regarding the nature and interpretation of social phenomena. Winch's subsequent confrontation with anthropology can be further illuminated by examining one of the most contentious contemporary debates in this field. This case illustrates the paradoxes involved in meta-practices such as philosophy and social science seeking to make descriptive and normative claims about conceptually preconstituted forms of life, and it indicates the limitations of philosophical realism as a social scientific meta-theory.

International audience ; Deux caractéristiques au moins rapprochent les jeunes auteurs de ce livre : tous ont obtenu à l'Université de Montpellier, ou sont sur le point d'y achever, un doctorat d'histoire consacré à la Grande Guerre ; tous, surtout, mobilisent les ressources, les méthodes, les questionnements des principales sciences sociales de la science politique à la sociologie, en passant par la socio-psychologie et l'anthropologie.Cette approche interdisciplinaire permet de repenser la Grande Guerre, et au-delà, de questionner à nouveaux frais les comportements et les motivations des différents acteurs confrontés à des situations d'exception telles que les guerres et les génocides.

International audience ; Deux caractéristiques au moins rapprochent les jeunes auteurs de ce livre : tous ont obtenu à l'Université de Montpellier, ou sont sur le point d'y achever, un doctorat d'histoire consacré à la Grande Guerre ; tous, surtout, mobilisent les ressources, les méthodes, les questionnements des principales sciences sociales de la science politique à la sociologie, en passant par la socio-psychologie et l'anthropologie.Cette approche interdisciplinaire permet de repenser la Grande Guerre, et au-delà, de questionner à nouveaux frais les comportements et les motivations des différents acteurs confrontés à des situations d'exception telles que les guerres et les génocides.

Some of the most celebrated theories of nationalism exemplify the self-confirming, evidence-averse, deterministic, & ideological aspects of social science as we know it. What has gone wrong? The social sciences have modeled themselves on physics, failing to grasp the essential difference between the contingent, historical development of cultural particularity & the universal, lawlike regularities of inanimate matter. The physicist's tools for conducting the method Popper called "conjecture & refutation" are largely inappropriate when dealing with imaginative & therefore unpredictable human beings. Obsessive quantification & the assumption of universal social "laws," in particular, need to be de-emphasized in favor of a Weberian willingness to make conjectures about the cultural causes of unique events, & to test those hypotheses by comparing them to apparently similar cases. References. Adapted from the source document.

SUMMARYThe fact has been widely recognized that the present stagnation of social sciences is fraught with dangers for the physical existence of humanity. This premise being accepted, the article sets out to discover the factors hampering the development of social sciences. These, it is here suggested, have three sources: (1) the nature of the subject of enquiry; (2) the nature of the empiric method and (3) the limited applicability of the present‐day social sciences to the life of the private individual.The difficulties attributable to the first source are two: the high degree of differentiation in human psychology and the inventive capacity of the human mind. Both of them have the effect of creating a pattern of behaviour distinguished by great variety and rapidity of change. Ensuing, to some extent, from the other two is the third characteristic, namely the fact that some of our lines of behaviour are incapable of being measured quantitatively. Under such conditions, the task of scientific analysis is obviously extremely difficult, and this accounts for the strong "post‐ante" bias inherent in most of our present‐day social sciences.The empirical method of analysis, so much in vogue at present, has contributed two additional difficulties of its own. These are: taxonomic approach and anti‐normative inclination. The former is another way of saying that, unlike their predecessors in the 18th and 19th centuries, which operated on the implied assumption of the perennial uniformity of human behaviour, the present‐day social sciences have adopted the method of dealing with each situation as a unique case. Consequently, the "social laws" derived from this procedure have only a limited validity.It was the very simplicity of the social sciences of the preceding two centuries that made them popular and gave them an influence over the actual shaping of public life, and, incidentally, it is the lack of such simplicity that so effectually prevents the social sciences of today from winning popularity. For it is manifest that, in the present state of social knowledge, an extremely important aim of social science—probably the most important of all its aims—namely, to help the individual to form a comprehensive and consistent outlook on life, is a dream of the very distant future.But, however formidable the difficulties in this field may be, the need for the social sciences of our day to produce a coherent synthesis is most pressing. This is so because of (1) the decline in the influence of religion, (2) the increasing capacity of man for self‐destruction and (3) the existence of sharp political conflict between the communist and non‐communist worlds. This necessity being admitted, a further problem arises. It is a question of popularizing the social sciences. For, assuming that our social sciences are, or will shortly be, capable of serving as a guide to the understanding of social life, it is obvious that unless such knowledge is widely spread it will remain useless. Here the main stumbling‐block is the low earning power of social sciences. Thus it would appear that the prospects of solving the problems connected with the relative underdevelopment of our social knowledge are by no means hopeful.

The concept of the General Will has been criticized as being either tyrannical or empirically unattainable. From a social choice perspective, Riker (1982) and others have merged the substance of both perspectives. The new argument maintains that Arrow's Theorem and similar impossibility results imply that the General Will is both dangerous and "intellectually absurd." While not denying the relevance of the collective choice literature, it is argued that such apocalyptic conclusions are premature.

This international exploration on different economic systems provides a comprehensive account which brings a wide range of countries to the forefront in terms of both comparability and accountability, this study shines a light on the differences in systems between states, and provides information to equip readers to minimize those differences.