Methodological Misconceptions in the Social Sciences: Rethinking Social Thought and Social Processes

✍ Scribed by Angelo Fusari (auth.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 2014
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 332
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book offers a systematic view of social analysis that will advance the communication of results between different academic disciplines. It overcomes misunderstandings that are due to the use of an unstructured variety of methodological traditions in the analysis of complex socioeconomic and political processes. The book focuses on the special features of human society: humans as subjects, non-repetitiveness and irreversibility of social actions and the peculiar relations between necessity and possibility in human action. It defines methodological criteria, procedures and rules that enable researchers to select and classify realistic hypotheses to derive general principles and basic organizational features. It then applies these criteria in critical reviews of major theories and interpretations of society and history, offering clarifications and alternative proposals with regard to crucial aspects of anthropological, political, juridical, sociological and religious thought.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xxvii
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
Preliminary Considerations on the Method of Social Thought....Pages 3-35
The Core of the Methodological Question: Procedure, Rules, Classifications....Pages 37-69
Heterogeneity of Methods in Social Thought: Weakness or Strength – Is There a Synthesis?....Pages 71-111
Social Development and Historical Processes....Pages 113-140
On the Dynamics of Societies: Is There a Universal Theory?....Pages 141-166
Front Matter....Pages 167-167
About Anthropology....Pages 169-186
Problems of Political Theory and Action....Pages 187-218
The Foundations of Law: Juridical Objectivism Versus Jus Naturalism and Juridical Positivism....Pages 219-234
Some Insight on Sociological Thought: Rationality, Relativism and Social Evolution in Boudon-Weber’s Cognitive Method....Pages 235-252
Further Meditation on Ethics: Values in the Light of Religious Thought and Its Opponents....Pages 253-294
Final Conclusion....Pages 295-296
Back Matter....Pages 297-309

✦ Subjects

Methodology of the Social Sciences; Social Structure, Social Inequality; Political Theory; Theories of Law, Philosophy of Law, Legal History