Search

Complexity is not 'the same as simply complicated'. This is because its advocates present it as a theoretical approach to explaining major aspects of the social order, usually at the macro level, whereas many social phenomena, at any level, can be full of complications (such as the incidence of road accidents) without a unifying theoretical key. Thus, the latter have a strong tendency to remain at the level of events and their study to be confined to a 'variables' approach, statistically combining the most variable of potentially contributory factors, without being troubled by the absence, in particular cases of one or more common contributors to accidents (such as drivers' alcohol consumption). But 'the Complexity Turn' does much more than leaving empiricism behind, like Critical Realism from its earliest beginnings, and in some hands is seen as the senior partner of these two approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macroeconomic traditions disagree on the policies needed for the economy to properly function and how to assess them. In this paper, we contend that these disagreements originate from the social ontological commitments of a theory. The ontology of money underlines these disagreements between Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and mainstream economics. First, we assess MMT's ontology of money. Next, we identify MMT's normative commitments and classify MMT's ontology as a taxonomic definition with thick concepts. Finally, we offer reasons why MMT's ontology of money leads to rivalries with other economic traditions. We argue disagreements on policy are expected, given the ontological differences elaborated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoclassical economics is sometimes said to overlook the institutional character of markets, treating them as 'natural.' I address whether this criticism applies to Léon Walras. Walras's position is complex. Walras insists that market institutions are 'artificial' and that a purely naturalistic view of them reduces persons to mere things. However, he simultaneously characterizes market laws as natural. Specifically, he argues that exchange value is natural because it is determined by the natural property of scarcity. This argument is wanting: scarcity as defined by Walras is not exclusively natural, and, by Walras's own logic, only accounts for exchange value given the non-natural institution of the market. I suggest that Walras's attempts to give exchange value a natural foundation can be understood as a form of commodity fetishism. I further suggest two complementary explanations for this fetishism. First, Walras infers exchange value's naturalness from its autonomy with respect to individual agents in a competitive market. Second, he assumes that the use of the natural sciences as a formal model implies that the market has some natural cause. I additionally discuss his Baconian view of economics as an example of naturalistic reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a reassessment of the main import of Peter Winch's philosophy of the social sciences. Critics argue that Winch presented a flawed methodology for the social sciences, while his supporters deny that Winch's work is about methodology at all. Contrary to both, the author argues that Winch deals with fundamental questions about methodology, and that there is something substantial to learn from his account. Winch engages methodological questions without being committed to social ontology. Instead, Winch's work on methodology is best described as a descriptive metaphysics of social inquiry. This alternative reading clarifies the close link between Winch's argument for the autonomy of the social sciences and R. G. Collingwood's philosophy of history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Setting out from Okakura Kakuzō and Ernest Fenollosa's famous "discovery" of the Yumedono Kannon, this article will trace the contested construction of the categories of "religion" (shūkyō) and "fine art" (bijutsu) in Meiji Japan. In religious studies circles, it has become commonplace to think of "religion" as the only disciplinary master category with issues. However, not only was "religion" invented in Japan, but "fine art" was invented there too. Indeed, categories from "culture" to "society" to "politics" have similar issues. Attending to these will help refocus crucial debates away from an obsession with translation and onto more fundamental issues about "cultural categories" as such. This paper will advance the debate by explaining the attendant constructions of "religion" and "fine art" as process social kinds. In doing so, it will showcase the museum and the temple as central sites of materialized disputation over global categories and their local instantiation. It will show how assimilation to the world-system in the long nineteenth century was a complex multi-generational process of negotiation and contestation, producing new hybrid spaces, returns, transformations, and innovations that then reflected back on global systems, changing them in subtle but profound ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nominalism, while significantly affecting the history and development of modern western thought since the fourteenth century, has unfortunately been neglected in much recent social theory. In this article, we offer an introduction to this Special Forum on nominalism to help redress this circumstance. In addition to this introductory piece, the Forum consists of three articles respectively covering: questions of nominalism, relativism and universalism in relation to Enlightenment debates over China; tensions over nominalist and realist theoretical visualities in Durkheim and Weber; and a critique of nominalist sensibilities in the sociology of finance combined with the articulation of a novel sociologically realist alternative. Specifically, in this piece, we contextualize the emergence of nominalism, adumbrating how it affects a variety of metatheoretical judgments, especially concerning the nature of social reality and what can possibly be known about it. Michel Foucault's nominalism and Ian Hacking's conception of 'dynamic nominalism' are also discussed. Finally, it invites critical realists to consider how commitments to humanism might implicate them in nominalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pragmatism, especially the works of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead, is in the midst of a revival in American sociology. American sociologists have drawn on these authors in their addressment of contemporary debates in the wider disciplinary field. Placing these contemporary applications of pragmatist thought alongside the broader intellectual tradition of pragmatic philosophy, however, demonstrates tensions associated with this revival. This paper draws on the work of John Dewey as a particularly stark case of the conflict between the philosophy of social science espoused by the original pragmatist philosophers and the use of their ideas in American sociology today. This treatment affords the opportunity to recover a vision for social science which has been overlooked in the contemporary pragmatist revival with deep implications for the practice of social science today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The leitmotif of Mario Bunge's work was that the philosophy of science should be informed by a comprehensive scientific philosophy, and vice versa; with both firmly rooted in realism and materialism. Now Bunge left such a big oeuvre, comprising more than 70 books and hundreds of articles, that it is impossible to review it in its entirety. In addition to biographical remarks, this obituary will therefore restrict itself to some select issues of his philosophy: his scientific metaphysics, his philosophy of physics, his concept of mechanismic explanation, his philosophy of social science and technology, and his approach to the demarcation problem. The final section will explore why Bunge, despite the extent and depth of his work, has not achieved a more prominent status in the philosophical community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article responds to Richard Lauer's (2019) "Is Social Ontology Prior to Social Scientific Methodology?" The article concurs that "social ontology matters" for the conduct of research and theory in social science. It argues, however, that neither of the interpretations of the status of social ontology offered by Lauer is satisfactory (either apriori philosophical realism or pragmatist anti-realism). The article argues for a naturalized, fallibilist, and realist interpretation of the claims of social ontology and presents the field of social ontology as the most abstract edge of social-science theorizing, subject to broad empirical constraints. The approach taken is anti-foundationalist in both epistemology and metaphysics. Ontological theorizing is part of the extended scientific enterprise of understanding the social world. Claims about the nature of the social world are not different in kind from more specific sociological claims about social class or individual rationality, to be justified ultimately by the coherence and explanatory success of the theories they help to create. At the same time, it is justified to treat the claims of social ontology as provisionally true, which supports a realist interpretation of the findings of social ontology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fifty years ago and still relevant today, C.P. Snow argued that the university is divided into two cultures, with humanities on the one side and the sciences on the other. This paper proposes a model of mutuality to overcome this ongoing divide as applied specifically to political philosophy and its cognate scientific disciplines of political science and political psychology. On the model of mutuality, not only can political philosophy inform theorizing and hypothesis-formation in political science and psychology, the latter fields also serve as data for political philosophy. More importantly, collaboration between philosophers and scientists can inform a conceptual dialectic that significantly benefits both areas of inquiry. The second half of the paper develops the example of democratic virtues as a case study. Capitalizing on existing work in philosophical virtue theory and related areas of psychology, I propose that the topic of democratic and not merely civic virtues is a novel area of inquiry that would profit from mutual engagement between political philosophers and political scientists and psychologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent should we focus on implicit bias in order to eradicate persistent social injustice? Structural prioritizers argue that we should focus less on individual minds than on unjust social structures, while equal prioritizers think that both are equally important. This article introduces the framework of transactive memory into the debate to defend the equal priority view. The transactive memory framework helps us see how structure can emerge from individual interactions as an irreducibly social product. If this is right, then debiasing interventions are structural interventions. One upshot is that the utility of the individual versus structural distinction is not apparent for the purposes of intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses recent moves in political science that emphasise predicting future events rather than theoretically explaining past ones or understanding empirical generalisations. Two types of prediction are defined: pragmatic, and scientific. The main aim of political science is explanation, which requires scientific prediction. Scientific prediction does not necessarily entail pragmatic prediction nor does it necessarily refer to the future, though both are desiderata for political science. Pragmatic prediction is not necessarily explanatory, and emphasising pragmatic prediction will lead to disappointment, as it will not always help in understanding how to intervene to change future outcomes, and policy makers are likely to be disappointed by its time‐scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discourse analysis offers an extremely diversified landscape, spanning time and disciplines far beyond the field of international relations (IR). With a rich lineage, it comes as no surprise that under the label "Discourse Analysis" (DA) one cannot find a unified theoretical family within IR but rather a plurality of heterogeneous ways of approaching discourse analysis. By leveraging the wealth of discourse analytical works accumulated over more than three decades, this article intends to discuss some of the main theoretical tenets of three competing perspectives on discourse analysis (PDAs): constructivism, critical realism and poststructuralism. It does so by tracing their links to their respective putative philosophical referents. Distinct from Milliken (1999), who consciously stresses the commonalities between various PDAs, this contribution identifies the differences between them. The paper proceeds as follows. First, it locates IR PDAs in the framework of debates over the core branches of the philosophy of social science. Constructivist, poststructuralist and critical realist PDAs will be located along both a foundational/nonfoundational ontological continuum and a positivist/post-positivist epistemological continuum. Secondly, it retraces the main tenets of post-structuralist, constructivist, and critical realist PDAs to discourse by identifying the relevant debates that have characterized the approach to discourse analysis in IR. Finally, it presents some methodological guidelines and provides examples on how DA endeavors have been practiced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the field of climate change adaptation research, "stories" are usually simply mined for data, developed as communication and engagement technologies, and used to envision different futures. But there are other ways of understanding people's narratives. This article explores how we can move away from understanding stories as cultural constructs that represent a reality and toward understanding them as the way in which adaptation is lived. The article investigates questions such as the following: As climate adaptation researchers, what can and should we do when we are told unsolicited stories? How can storytelling, as a way of life rather than as a source of data, inform and elaborate scientific approaches to adaptation research and planning? In this article, I move away from the literature that seeks to develop narrative methods in adaptation science. Instead, I focus on stories that we do not elicit and the world-making practice of storytelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concepts of decision, choice, decision-maker, and decision-making are common practical tools in both social science and natural science, on which scientific knowledge, policy implications, and moral recommendations are based. In this article I address three questions. First, I look into how present-day social scientists and natural scientists use decision/choice concepts. What are they used for? Second, scientists may differ in the application of decision/choice to X, and they may explicitly disagree about the applicability of decision/choice to X. Where exactly do these disagreements lie? Third, I ask how scientists should use decision/choice concepts. What are they correctly and incorrectly used for? I argue that scientists must responsibly attend to a methodological demand: you have to have a principled, non-ad hoc, well-argued-for way of telling where decision/choice applicability ends. Thus, I aim to minimize the risk of conceptual stretching and foster responsible conceptual practices in a large body of scientific work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context • Most recent attempts to define cognition dialectically lack the philosophical completeness necessary to explain neurocognitive and mental processes. > Problem • Under what conditions could neurophenomenology be thought of as dialectical and what would be the implications of such a conception for contemporary issues such as "social cognition" and phenomenological subjectivity? > M ethod • I assess dialectical approaches to neurocognitive processes and mind mostly within the recent neurophenomenological literature and provide reasons as to why these approaches could be further improved using Hegel's conception of dialectical processes. > R esults • As suggested in the context of research on extended cognition, mostly by Gallagher and Crisafi, a cognitively shaped understanding of Hegel's philosophy allows us to understand how neurophenomenology can be conceptualized dialectically. It allows us to conceive precisely of how dialectical processes can help shape our understanding of cognition from individual neurocognitive operations to socially embedded processes. A dialectical interpretation of Varela's conception of neurocognitive processes can help achieve the endeavor of recent sociological work to understand the "continuity" from individual to social "entities" through a "relational ontology." This amounts to expanding, through a neurodialectical framework, Gallagher's research on extended cognition as well as articulating it with his most recent conception of "decentered" cognition. > I mplications • Neurodialectics has straightforward implications for phenomenological understandings of subjectivity as well as for recent sociological research: in both cases, it can provide us with a philosophically meaningful and empirically sustainable framework. In particular, it could help philosophically expand Gallagher's "decentered" model of brainhood. > C onstructivist Content • I argue in favor of a general philosophical perspective, the neurodialectical one, stressing the "primacy of moulding on being.". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay draws on Antonio Gramsci's theoretical and philosophical insights to provide an alternative approach to mainstream Latino politics research that also introduces students to Gramsci. It contends that Gramsci provides a framework both for rigorously thinking about the challenges facing Latinos living in the United States and also for advancing an oppositional democratic politics in the face of the authoritarian turn in contemporary neoliberalism. Gramscian thought provides a theory and method for studying politics that can account for the structural conditions in which Latinos engage in politics, permitting the identification of dominant groups' methods of building consensus for authoritarian rule. Moreover, Gramscian theory provides analytical tools for conceptualizing an alternative approach to Latino politics research that is oppositional, theoretically driven, and grounded in a praxis focused explicitly on the empowerment of subaltern Latinos, such as the undocumented, refugees, indigenous "Latinos", Afro-Latinos, and LGBT Latinos, among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The approach of structuralism came to philosophy from social science. It was also in social science where, in 1950-1970s, in the form of the French structuralism, the approach gained its widest recognition. Since then, however, the approach fell out of favour in social science. Recently, structuralism is gaining currency in the philosophy of mathematics. Aft er ascertai ning that the two structuralisms indeed share a common core, the question stands whether general structuralism could not find its way back into social science. The nature of the major objections raised against French structuralism - concerning its alleged ahistoricism, methodological holism and universalism - are reconsidered. While admittedly grounded as far as French structuralism is concerned, these objections do not affect general structuralism as such. The fate of French structuralism thus does not seem to preclude the return of general structuralism into social science, rather, it provides some hints where the difficulties may lie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the excitement in social media analytics revolves around, a) capturing large-scale collections of naturally-occurring talk, b) repurposing them as data, and, c) finding ways to speak sociologically about them. Researchers have raised concerns over the use of social media data in research (for example, boyd and Crawford, 2012; Housley et al, 2014; Tinati et al, 2014), exploring the ontological and epistemological grounding of the emerging field. We contribute to this debate by drawing on Wittgensteinian philosophy to elucidate hitherto neglected aspects; namely that it is not just social scientists who are in the business of analysing social media, but users themselves. We explore how mainstream social media analytics research (1) overinflates the importance of sociological theories, concepts and methodologies (which do not typically feature in the accounts of social media users), (2) downplays the extent to which social media platforms already exhibit order prior to any sociological accounting of them, and, (3) thereby produces findings which explain social scientific perspectives rather than the phenomena themselves. We reformulate the ontological and epistemological basis of social media analytics research from a Wittgensteinian perspective concerned with what it makes sense to say about social media, as members of society and as researchers studying those members. Such a project aims to explore social media users’ language as a practice embedded within the context of social life and online communication. This reflects the everyday use of language as an evolving toolkit for undertaking social interaction, pointing towards an alternative conception of social media analytics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes recent sociological debate about transdisciplinarity (Carroll 2013; Puddephatt and McLaughlin 2015; Mišina 2015) as a springboard for elaborating on the sociological relevance of metatheory and metatheorising, with particular attention to Critical Realism. Sociologists need to more forcefully acknowledge the importance of engaging with metatheory if they are to think more productively and creatively about how the philosophical assumptions which shaped the production of theories, research design, research practice, and the organisation of our field facilitate and delimit the production of insights about the multifaceted nature of sociological objects and practice. As metatheorising promotes the neglected procedure of conceptualisation (as opposed to operationalisation) and because it is transdisciplinary (shedding disciplinary boundary maintenance while remaining rigorous and methodical), it should be routinely utilised by social scientists to yield conceptual synthesis and fuller, more adequate forms of explanation of their particular objects of investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses Michael Burawoy’s call for a public sociology. While it takes a critical view of Burawoy’s proposition, it accepts the basic idea of conceptualizing sociology as a discipline inherently engaged with the public. To this end, it draws on the philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer formulated in his Truth and Method. While Burawoy understands public sociology as a distinct type of sociological work complementary to traditional professional sociology, using Gadamer’s philosophy I attempt to avoid this division and to conceptualize sociology on the basis of the intersection between professional and public sociology. I understand sociology not as a research field formulating theories that describe society, but as a distinct interpretative tradition that participates in contemporary discussions seeking answers to the social-related questions posed by the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article evaluates the idea of the modularity of mind and domain specificity. This concept has penetrated the behavioral disciplines, and in the case of some of these—for example, the cognitive study of religion—has even formed their foundation. Although the theoretical debate relating to the idea of modularity is ongoing, this debate has not been reflected in the use of modularity in behavioral research. The idea of domain specificity or modularity of mind is not without its controversies, and there is no consensus regarding its acceptance. Many neuroscientists, as well as several evolutionary psychologists and philosophers, have raised a number of objections that cannot remain overlooked. I will show the areas in which the idea is problematic, what attempts have been made to preserve it, and how social scientific research can move beyond post-Fodorian modularity without losing any valuable insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Daniel Bromley argues against Oran Young's FIT model as a basis for environmental governance, on the grounds that humans cannot manage nature and that attempts to do so are based on a scientistic, modernist conceit. At issue is the role of natural and social scientists in adjudicating questions about what we ought to do to close governance gaps and address unsustainable behaviors. If Bromley is right, then the lessons of the American pragmatist tradition recommend against attempts to "fit" social institutions to the natural world. The first objective of this paper is to argue that Bromley's view is not in keeping with the pragmatism of C. S. Peirce and John Dewey, which actually places a high value on natural and social scientific modes of inquiry in the service of social ends. I argue that Young's proposal is in fact a development of the pragmatist idea that social institutions must be fit in the sense of fitness, i.e., resilient and able to navigate uncertainty. Social institutions must also evolve to accommodate the emerging values of the agents who operate within them. The second objective of this paper is to examine the role of social science expertise in the design of social policies. Governance institutions typically rely on the testimony of natural scientists, at least in part, to understand the natural systems they operate within. However, natural systems are also social systems, so it seems pertinent to ask whether there is a role for social systems experts to play in helping to design environmental governance institutions. I argue that social scientists can make a unique contribution as experts on social institutions, and as such, are necessary to bring about a transformation of the unsustainable institutions that are preventing us from achieving stated sustainable development goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of social life now takes place online, and records of online social interactions are available for social science research in the form of massive digital text archives. But cultural social science has contributed little to the development of machine-assisted text analysis methods. As a result few text analysis methods have been developed that link digital text data to theories about culture and discourse. This paper attempts to lay the groundwork for development of such methods by proposing metatheoretical and theoretical foundations suitable for machine-assisted semantic text analysis. Metatheoretically I draw on the work of Elder- Vass (2012), Kaidesoja (2013) and others to argue that digital text analysis methods ought to be (and in practice implicitly are) based on a realist constructionist ontology that treats discourses as ontologically real emergent social entities that have causal relationships with non-discursive social and cognitive processes. Theoretically I follow Feldman (2006) and many others in arguing that language is fundamentally shaped by processes of embodied cognition. Researchers developing digital text analysis techniques must theoretically account for such processes if they wish to produce algorithms that can interpret texts in ways that supplement, and not only amplify, human interpretation. I critically survey contemporary text analysis methods that implicitly share these metatheoretical and theoretical positions and discuss some ways these can be further developed with newly available software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I argue that a common reading of Max Weber’s social science and its treatment of interpretation as either insufficiently or excessively “scientific” on the model of the natural sciences is inadequate. Freed from the either/or opposition of naturalism and humanism, and read through the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Weber can be read as offering a way forward for the social sciences that embraces both the subjective orientation of social scientists and the objective aspirations of social science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have sometimes argued that we should conceive of social research as a form of moral inquiry, at least in part, but none have made clear exactly how and why observational research can make a distinctive contribution to moral insight. Returning to an era before the modern distinction between social science and the humanities became entrenched, this article argues that Adam Smith provided a clear and forceful rationale for the moral role of social research, especially history. Smith believed that moral understanding relies on emotional reactions to richly described cases, preferably where our own interests are not at stake. These meditations on particular cases, in turn, provide the basis for moral generalizations that can inform future encounters with particular cases. This perspective led Smith (along with his friend David Hume) to the view that historical writing makes a more important contribution to moral understanding than abstract philosophy does. This article reconstructs Smith’s arguments about the role of empirical observation in cultivating moral sensibility in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, his Lectures on Jurisprudence, and his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. It then connects his argument to contemporary ideas about the nature of moral understanding in philosophy and cognitive science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question concerning the connection of scientific inquiry to democratic praxis is central to both Antonio Gramsci and John Dewey. They share a common philosophical origin in Hegel and are essentially both in the tradition of Left Hegelian thought. Likewise, their respective analyses of the forces obstructing democratic emancipation were sharply focused on the distortions of social life caused by economic agents cooperating under hugely unequal power relations. As Gramsci wrote from his prison cell from 1929 to 1937 in Italy, Dewey went through his most fruitful philosophical period in the United States, including his writings on politics and democracy. They both found targets of critique by diagnosing the pathologies of public life resulting from the power of private capital interests in collusion with a co-opted representative body, the authoritarian crimes and attendant culture of fascism, and the theoretical rigidity of the Soviet Marxists. In addition, true to their Hegelian roots, they marshaled their critiques of the abstractions of liberalism and its attendant moral and economic theory by insisting on the embedded, cultural, and historically deep contexts in which emancipatory practice need take place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following introductory remarks on Mills’s academic persona and current reputation, I pursue two lines of investigation. First, I analyze the deep structure of his thought, constituted by a pragmatist epistemology and a radical sociology, or ‘politics of truth.’ Then I argue that this structure is undermined by inconsistencies between its two components. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Aristotelian concept of phronesis or practical wisdom has played a prominent role in the long and deep wake of the Perestroika controversy in political science, where a diverse group of practitioners rallied in opposition to the perceived hegemony of quantitative methods in the discipline. As scholars like Bent Flyvbjerg have proposed the contours of a post-Perestroikan social science, political scientists and theorists have taken his use of the idea of practical wisdom to herald the dawning of a new social science, less beholden to notions of method. This paper examines the post-Perestroikan appropriation of Aristotle using Hans-Georg Gadamer's interpretation of phronesis as a starting point. Viewed from this vantage, contemporary uses of phronesis seem less like the foundations for a new social science, and more like a new spin on the old arguments about method that have characterized social science since the mid-1800s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1987, George Soros introduced his concepts of reflexivity and fallibility and has further developed and applied these concepts over subsequent decades. This paper attempts to build on Soros's framework, provide his concepts with a more precise definition, and put them in the context of recent thinking on complex adaptive systems. The paper proposes that systems can be classified along a ‘spectrum of complexity’ and that under specific conditions not only social systems but also natural and artificial systems can be considered ‘complex reflexive.’ The epistemological challenges associated with scientifically understanding a phenomenon stem not from whether its domain is social, natural, or artificial, but where it falls along this spectrum. Reflexive systems present particular challenges; however, evolutionary model-dependent realism provides a bridge between Soros and Popper and a potential path forward for economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A value judgment says what is good or bad, and value-free social science simply means social science free of value judgments. Yet many sociologists regard value-free social science as undesirable or impossible and readily make value judgments in the name of sociology. Often they display confusion about such matters as the meaning of value-free social science, value judgments internal and external to social science, value judgments as a subject of social science, the relevance of objectivity for value-free social science, and the difference between the human significance of social science and value-free social science. But why so many sociologists are so value-involved - and generally so unscientific - is sociologically understandable: The closest and most distant subjects attract the least scientific ideas. And during the past century sociologists have become increasingly close to their human subject. The debate about value-free social science is also part of an epistemological counterrevolution of humanists (including many sociologists) against the more scientific social scientists who invaded and threatened to expropriate the human subject during the past century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay presents a critique of the standard ascension from the rational agent to the optimal market in economic theory. Critiques of homo economicus are found unsatisfactory on grounds that its employment allows for the prediction of essential features of actual markets. Using this same criterion we introduce Gary Becker's essay, 'Irrational Behavior and Economic Theory,' which demonstrated that the same features of markets could be derived from non-rational behaviour. Thus, non-rationality is equally predictive but is less restrictive than rationality. Once the assumption of rationality is relaxed, the concept of market optimality (though not market order) must also be sacrificed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wilhelm Dilthey is, famously, an epistemological pioneer for a second, ‘human’ kind of science that ‘understands’ life as we live it, instead of ‘explaining’ things as we observe them. Even today, he is usually cited for his role in the Erklären–Verstehen debate. My article, however, follows Heidegger's suggestion that we make the existence of the debate itself the problem. Whether there are different sorts of entity, different reasons for studying them and different means for doing so – such issues raise questions about science itself, not just about how to do it better. Moreover, what sort of philosopher is competent to address such questions? Heidegger argues that Dilthey's later writings intimate that it must be one who thinks from the ‘standpoint of (historical) life itself.’ This issue, says Heidegger, is ‘alive’ in Dilthey but is continually short-circuited by his very traditional plan for a ‘Critique of Historical Reason.’ Dilthey's unsuccessful struggles to produce this Critique are his gift to us, however. They encourage us to explicitly reconsider, as Heidegger does not only in Being and Time but throughout his life, what Dilthey cannot: If philosophy, like all human practices, is historical to the core, what is it to ‘be’ philosophical, about science or anything else? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent decades, numerous psychological and sociological theories have been offered in the attempt to explain human cognition, motivation, and behavior in fundamentally evolutionary terms. Drawing inspiration from the Darwinian theory of natural selection, evolutionary approaches to social science argue that behavior arises primarily from underlying evolved psychological mechanisms and that the central task of social science is to identify and articulate the specific nature of such mechanisms. Much effort has been expended by evolutionary social scientists to definitively identify the various evolved psychological mechanisms that account for the diversity of human cognitive, emotional, and social behavior. We argue, however, that the search for evolved psychological mechanisms that adequately account for either the transmission of psychological entities (i.e., emotions, intentions, ideas, behaviors, etc.) across generations or the current existence of such entities cannot in principle succeed because evolutionary social science theorists have fundamentally mistaken their metaphors for mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, the authors consider the challenge made by two keynote speakers at recent social work research conferences, one in the United States and the other in Europe. Both spoke of a knowledge crisis in social work. Both John Brekke (Society for Social Work and Research) and Peter Sommerfeld (First Annual European Conference for Social Work Research) proposed some version of realism as a solution to the crisis. The authors will deepen the argument for realism, however, by discussing how a critical realistperspective allows us to rethink positivist and conventionalist assumptions about the fact/value relation. Using a critical realist philosophy of social science, the authors discuss how social work has taken up positivism and myriad forms of conventionalism and also identify how practical knowledge gradually loses its place and thus contribute to social work’s ongoing knowledge crisis. The authors then offer a way of thinking about practice. The authors will consider forms of practice knowledge and propose that social work has four kinds that unfold in essentially open systems: discursive, visual, embodied, and liquid systems, and that each of these have both tacit and explicit dimensions. These forms of practice, moreover, are inevitably situated in theory-to-practice gaps (the authors call them phenomenological practice gaps), which are the source of social work’s knowledge crisis. The authors conclude with a discussion of the role of reflexivity in a science of social work. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the opening chapter of Theory of International Politics Waltz makes an interesting distinction between scientific laws and theory construction. Recent special issues of this journal have suggested that this distinction allows Waltz to be read in different ways — for example, as a scientific realist who conceives of unobservable entities, or as a constructivist interested in how we create models. This contribution argues against both these interpretations by analysing the first chapter of Waltz’s book and suggesting that his distinction between theories and law-like statements is fully consistent with mainstream discussions in the philosophy of social science. It argues that Waltz’s position still depends on the identification of empirical regularities, something that makes him an empirical realist, but which undermines the claim that he is a scientific realist. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Positive psychology offers a needed corrective to deficiencies in mainstream psychology. However, there have been relatively few attempts to systematically analyze and assess this movement. This special issue examines the conceptual underpinnings and guiding ideals of positive psychology. Generally, these articles conclude that positive psychologists have not dealt adequately with the challenge of rendering credible and illuminating accounts of human flourishing in a post-positivist era and in a pluralistic society. The authors suggest ways we might better meet this challenge, allowing us to discuss questions of human agency, character, and the good life despite quite different views of them across historical eras and cultures. We hope this will help fulfill some of the aims of positive psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Bickhard's interactivism along with philosophical hermeneutics, we outline a plausible ontology of human action and development that might serve as a metatheory for positive psychology. Our nondualistic metatheory rests on a distributed notion of agency. The kinds of morally imbued social practices that are identified by hermeneutic theorists constitute one level of agency. At the first level of agency, persons are already committed, at least by implication, to folk psychologies that cover positive emotion, positive traits, and positive institutions. Higher levels of agency and knowing emerge through the process of development. The higher knowing levels incorporate the capacity for conscious self-reflexive awareness, which permits the person to consciously deliberate and form theories of the good person and the good life. These more consciously formed positive folk psychologies are always in a dialectical relationship with the more implicit and embodied understandings of the good life as manifested in social practices, emotional experiences, and habitual thoughts. We suggest that this framework helps to account for the 'diversity of goods' that underlie our lives and to clarify the relationship that the professional positive psychologist will have with his or her native folk psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of the shortcomings of 'positive psychology' seem to stem from its unreflectively perpetuating key assumptions of the very mainstream social science it censures for being too 'negative.' Philosophical hermeneutics and related social theory perspectives allow us to identify and critically examine such assumptions, including a one-sided individualism and narrow instrumentalism. Hermeneutics allows us to make sense of the 'disguised ideology' that imbues positive psychology and much modern social science, suggests that social inquiry is best seen as a kind of dialogic understanding, and may allow us to take the measure of deep human limitations without falling into cynicism or despair. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do academic publication standards reflect or determine research results? The article proposes minimal criteria for distinguishing useful ‘unpublishable’ results from low-quality research, and argues that the virtues of negative results have been overlooked. We consider the fate these results have suffered thus far, review arguments for and against their publication and introduce a new initiative – a journal to disseminate negative results and advance debate on their recognition and use.European Political Science (2007) 6, 51–68. doi:10.1057/palgrave.eps.2210114 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reflects on the possibility of a social science that aims at self–referential knowledge–acquisition. This form of social research explores and questions deep–seated presuppositions prevalent in contemporary culture and strives to become aware of other forms of life. This view of social sciences, therefore, is perfectly in line with the pragmatist perspective that language and knowledge, rather than acts of representation, allow people to increase the scope of human possibilities. Various forms of social research, in a wide range of disciplines, have already explored this self–referential knowledge: for instance, genealogical history and sociology, post–processual archaeology and the critical turn in anthropology. The article locates this self–referential knowledge within the context of contemporary American pragmatism (e.g. Rorty, Bernstein). It is argued that this type of knowledge ties in with the radical tradition in neo–pragmatism, in particular its anti–foundationalist notion of critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the context of the first introduction of the concept of‘cultural capital’ in the sociology of education analyses undertaken in the early 1960s and published by Bourdieu in collaboration with Jean-Claude Passeron in‘Lesétudiants et leursétudes’ (1964a) and). It first considers the cultural contexts within which Bourdieu's thinking about culture originated– both in relation to his social origins and in relation to his intellectual training. It then examines the extent to which Bourdieu's early anthropological research in Algeria was influenced by his knowledge of American acculturation theory. It concludes that Bourdieu sought to use acculturation theory in a distinctive way– one which he articulated more confidently as he explored the relationship between agency and structural explanation in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The specific educational researches which stimulated the articulation of the concept of‘linguistic’ or‘cultural’ capital belonged to the period in which Bourdieu was only just beginning to refine his post-structuralist philosophy of social scientific explanation. To use these concepts now involves deploying them reflexively in accordance with Bourdieu's later thinking rather than at face value as they were first developed during the period in which he and Passeron were‘apprentice’ researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses three main issues. First, it argues that David Laitin, in a misguided critique of Bent Flyvbjerg's book Making Social Science Matter for being a surrogate manifesto for Perestroika, misrepresents the book in the extreme. Second, the article argues that Laitin's claim that political science may become normal, predictive science in the natural science sense is unfounded; the claim is a dead end that perestroikans try to get beyond. Finally, the article proposes that political scientists substitute phronesis for episteme and thereby avoid the trap of emulating natural science. By doing so, political scientists may arrive at social science that is strong where natural science is weak: in the reflexive analysis and discussion of values and interests aimed at praxis, which is the prerequisite for an enlightened political, economic, and cultural development in any society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the inception of International Relations (IR) within university departments, its disciplinary status has been the subject of constant debate. Yet, the current literature on ‘the state of the discipline’ silences this debate either through IR’s assumed disciplinarity or conflation of debates about theory with the existence of IR. This Forum moves beyond this literature by explicitly engaging whether IR is a discipline or not and by enquiring how this status matters. Contributors rely on the sociology and philosophy of social science to call into question or affirm the disciplinarity of IR to argue whether IR is as a subfield of Political Science, a full-blown and autonomous discipline, or a hybrid field of interdisciplinary studies. Furthermore, contributors reveal the implications of the different disciplinary statuses regarding the academic institution, interdisciplinary possibilities and modes of organizing IR. Overall, these contributions aim to engage rather than close the disciplinary debate, creating further space for reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an investigation into the philosophy and the history of the social sciences. Some philosophers of the social sciences have suggested that a key feature of the natural sciences is their capacity to create phenomena, and that the social sciences do not meet this criterion. We suggest, to the contrary, that the social sciences can and do create phenomena, in the sense of new ways of describing and acting that have been used to produce all sorts of effects. Like the natural sciences, the social sciences create their phenomena through the procedures that are established to discover them. But the creation of phenomena is a complex, technically difficult and contested process and its success rare. Historically, this argument is developed through a case-study of the development and evolution of public opinion research in the USA and Britain. We argue that by the 1950s public opinion produced a version of the world that had entered 'into the true'. Special attention is given to technical considerations in the development of public opinion research, especially the genealogy of a particular research technology, that of the representative sample. Whilst we are not concerned with demarcation criteria, we argue that there are some important differences between the social and the natural sciences; that the former have a less concentrated 'spatial mix' and a slower 'tempo of creativity'. None the less, in this particular case, the social sciences have played a key role in the creation of opinioned persons and an opinionated society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]