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Bezig met laden... Polity and Society: Philosophical Underpinnings of Social Science Paradigmsdoor Michael Haas
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This book deconstructs competing paradigms in political science and sociology in order to demonstrate metaphysical, methodological, and normative assumptions that underpin the paradigms themselves. Haas covers alternative paradigms in seven fields of middle-range theory--development, community power, presidential voting, ethnic voting, civil strife, international violence, and international community--in both political science and sociology. Haas concludes that competing theorists argue ideologically when they should be discussing their differences in terms of underlying philosophical assumptions. Many disputes between theorists are naive from a philosophical point of view. This unique contribution to social science theory attempts to clarify the issues in the fields of political science and sociology. Haas demonstrates some of the confusions: Some debates are between scholars who are unaware that they agree on paradigms; many scholars are not even testing their own paradigms because they have not examined the basic philosophical assumptions of their theories. Many paradigmatic debates fail to focus on issues of normative importance and thus have little relevance to policy; methodological differences should lead to multimethodological research designs rather than monomethodological disputation. This important study will be of value to practitioners and students in the fields of political science and sociology. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)306.2Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Culture and Institutions Political institutionsLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: Geen beoordelingen.Ben jij dit?Word een LibraryThing Auteur. |
In any case, the author could be forgiven for riding on Kuhn's coattails. It's easy enough to ignore his use of the word "paradigm" and just read it as "theory". But after finishing Kuhn he seems to have read an introduction to metaphysics, and his abuse of metaphysical vocabulary is far more annoying. His bizarre philosophical thesis is that "Attention to how mind acts on body or vice versa can alone advance our knowledge about politics and societies" (p. 9). So the "philosophical underpinnings" of social science are the basic theories of mind-matter metaphysics: materialism, idealism, interactionism, epiphenomenalism. In practice he classifies each "paradigm" based on its "materialist" and "idealist" components and their mutual influences. The "materialist" parts are the economic and social facts the theory considers, the "idealist" parts are the human thoughts and ideas it takes into account. The author meticulously notes which aspect is dominant in each "paradigm".
I'm not sure what results he expected from this futile exercise. Using concepts from mind-matter metaphysics to classify social theories is about as informative as classifying books by their color. The strange thing is that this seems like a well-written and thorough review of political theories if you just ignore the author's pseudo-philosophical musings. I don't doubt his credentials as a political scientist, but he seems to be completely ignorant of even the most basic questions in the philosophy of social science.
In short, this book is a review of political theories. It has nothing to do with philosophy.