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Social science is a social activity as well as a method of discovery. The researchers' values and politics colour their work and so do their choices of scientific method. This book is about both - the technical effects of values and the political effects of technique. The author reports what social scientists and historians actually do. He sorts out the scientific from the political content in a wide range of old and new work in history, sociology, political science and economics. The overall work is a detailed political and technical criticism of the 'scientistic' programme which would hav.

"Realism and Complexity in Social Science is an argument for a new approach to investigating the social world, that of complex realism. Complex realism brings together a number of strands of thought, in scientific realism, complexity science, probability theory and social research methodology. It proposes that the reality of the social world is that it is probabilistic, yet there exists enough invariance to make the discovery and explanation of social objects and causal mechanisms possible. This forms the basis for the development of a complex realist foundation for social research, that utilises a number of new and novel approaches to investigation, alongside the more traditional corpus of quantitative and qualitative methods. Research examples are drawn from research in sociology, epidemiology, criminology, social policy and human geography. The book assumes no prior knowledge of realism, probability or complexity and in the early chapters, the reader is introduced to these concepts and the arguments against them. Although the book is grounded in philosophical reasoning, this is in a direct and accessible style that will appeal both to social researchers with a methodological interest and philosophers with an interest in social investigation"--

Introduction -- The Designed World -- The Functionalist School and Functional Practice -- Programmatic Functionalism and Functionalist Programmes -- Bronisław Malinowski and Cultural Biology -- Radcliffe Brown: Social Anthropology as Comparative Sociology -- Marion Levy and Structural: Functional Requisite Analysis -- Robert K. Merton: Functional Tensions in a Divided World -- Functional Design and Functional Reasoning: Conclusion.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface / Roth, Paul A. -- Introduction. The Rationalitätstreit -- 1. Knowledge Denatured -- 2. Epistemology Socialized -- 3. The Rites of Rationality -- 4. Methods Unbound -- 5. Who Needs Paradigms? -- 6. Pseudoproblems in Social Science: The Myth of Meaning Realism -- 7. Voodoo Epistemology: The Strong Programme in the Sociology of Science -- 8. Voodoo Epistemology: Causality and the Strong Programme -- 9. Resolving the Rationalitätstreit -- Index

A collective intellectual biography that sheds new light on the Annales school, structuralism, and racial democracy. Would the most recognizable ideas in the French social sciences have developed without the influence of Brazilian intellectuals? While any study of Brazilian social sciences acknowledges the influence of French scholars, Ian Merkel argues the reverse is also true: the "French" social sciences were profoundly marked by Brazilian intellectual thought, particularly through the University of São Paulo. Through the idea of the "cluster," Merkel traces the intertwined networks of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Fernand Braudel, Roger Bastide, and Pierre Monbeig as they overlapped at USP and engaged with Brazilian scholars such as Mário de Andrade, Gilberto Freyre, and Caio Prado Jr. Through this collective intellectual biography of Brazilian and French social sciences, Terms of Exchange reveals connections that shed new light on the Annales school, structuralism, and racial democracy, even as it prompts us to revisit established thinking on the process of knowledge formation through fieldwork and intellectual exchange. At a time when canons are being rewritten, this book reframes the history of modern social scientific thought

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- Contributor -- Time's American Adventures: American Historians and Their Writing since 1776 -- Economics: Its Direct and Indirect Impact in America, 1776-1976 -- Sociology in America: The Experience of Two Centuries -- Understanding Political Life in America: The Contribution of Political Science -- Anthropology and America -- American Geography: Social Science Emergent -- The Social Sciences in America: Some Comments on Past, Present, and Future

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION. School Building -- PART ONE Blurred Genres: Reflections on Disciplinary Practices -- CHAPTER 1 Political Theory after the Enlightenment Project -- CHAPTER 2 Twenty-five Years of Social Science and Social Change -- CHAPTER 3 Economic History as a Cure for Economics -- CHAPTER 4 Can the "Other" of Philosophy Speak? -- CHAPTER 5 Reflections on Interdisciplinarity -- PART TWO The State of the Art: New Methods and New Questions -- CHAPTER 6 After History? -- CHAPTER 7 The Global Situation -- CHAPTER 8 Modernity and Identity -- CHAPTER 9 The Role of Norms and Law in Economics: An Essay on Political Economy -- CHAPTER 10 Material Culture, Theoretical Culture, and Delocalization -- CHAPTER 11 Science as Alchemy -- PART THREE Thick Description: Field Overviews and Institutional History -- CHAPTER 12 Whatever Happened to the "Social" in Social History? -- CHAPTER 13 Postcolonialism and Its Discontents: History, Anthropology, and Postcolonial Critique -- CHAPTER 14 Structure, Contingency, and Choice: A Comparison of Trends and Tendencies in Political Science -- CHAPTER 15 Interdisciplinarity at New York University -- PART FOUR The World in Pieces: Political Philosophy and World Governance -- CHAPTER 16 Political Theory and Moral Responsibility -- CHAPTER 17 A "Moral Core" Solution to the Prisoners' Dilemma -- CHAPTER 18 Reinterpreting Risk -- CHAPTER 19 Retrotopia: Critical Reason Turns Primitive -- CHAPTER 20 International Society: What Is the Best that We Can Do? -- AUTHOR NOTES