Rationality and Cultural Interpretivism

Rationality and Cultural Interpretivism PDF Author: Kei Yoshida
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739174002
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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Book Description
Rationality and Cultural Interpretivism: A Critical Assessment of Failed Solutions critically assesses cultural interpretivism by scrutinizing five different proponents of it and their solutions to the problem of rationality. The book examines the works of Peter Winch, Charles Taylor, Clifford Geertz, Marshall Sahlins, and Gananath Obeyesekere and their contributions to the so-called rationality debate in the philosophy of the social sciences. This debate began with Winch’s criticism of Edward Evans-Pritchard and has become one of the central debates in the field since 1960s, continuing as a controversy between Sahlins and Obeyesekere. Kei Yoshida reveals the need for a cogent solution to the problem of rationality. He identifies two main problems with previous theories: first, that they exaggerate the differences between the natural and the social/cultural, and hence they also exaggerate the differences between the natural and the social sciences; and second, that they ignore important social science problems, particularly outcomes from the unintended consequences of human actions. Yoshida urges social scientists not simply to interpret agents’ intentions or symbolic systems, but also to explain the unintended consequences of human actions. Still entangled in positivism, cultural interpretivists claim that the social sciences differ from the natural sciences and thus reject any unity of method. Yoshida argues that we need to overcome the mistaken positivist image of science in order to develop a more fruitful philosophy of the social sciences. The analysis presented in this book will be of value to students and scholars of social epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of the social sciences, and the social sciences themselves, as well as anyone interested in the philosophical problem of rationality and relativism.

Rationality and Cultural Interpretivism

Rationality and Cultural Interpretivism PDF Author: Kei Yoshida
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739174002
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 157

Get Book

Book Description
Rationality and Cultural Interpretivism: A Critical Assessment of Failed Solutions critically assesses cultural interpretivism by scrutinizing five different proponents of it and their solutions to the problem of rationality. The book examines the works of Peter Winch, Charles Taylor, Clifford Geertz, Marshall Sahlins, and Gananath Obeyesekere and their contributions to the so-called rationality debate in the philosophy of the social sciences. This debate began with Winch’s criticism of Edward Evans-Pritchard and has become one of the central debates in the field since 1960s, continuing as a controversy between Sahlins and Obeyesekere. Kei Yoshida reveals the need for a cogent solution to the problem of rationality. He identifies two main problems with previous theories: first, that they exaggerate the differences between the natural and the social/cultural, and hence they also exaggerate the differences between the natural and the social sciences; and second, that they ignore important social science problems, particularly outcomes from the unintended consequences of human actions. Yoshida urges social scientists not simply to interpret agents’ intentions or symbolic systems, but also to explain the unintended consequences of human actions. Still entangled in positivism, cultural interpretivists claim that the social sciences differ from the natural sciences and thus reject any unity of method. Yoshida argues that we need to overcome the mistaken positivist image of science in order to develop a more fruitful philosophy of the social sciences. The analysis presented in this book will be of value to students and scholars of social epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of the social sciences, and the social sciences themselves, as well as anyone interested in the philosophical problem of rationality and relativism.

The Impact of Critical Rationalism

The Impact of Critical Rationalism PDF Author: Raphael Sassower
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331990826X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
As a student and disciple of Karl Popper and longtime managing editor of Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Ian C. Jarvie extended the notion of Critical Rationalism to be useful in anthropology, aesthetics, film studies, and various social sciences. In this Festschrift, contributors from a range of interests and disciplines engage with the Popperian legacy and Jarvie’s scholarly and editorial work in Critical Rationalism to contextualize it in the broader, contemporary intellectual landscape. These original essays not only honor Jarvie’s legacy, but expand it to cross the philosophical divide between analytic and continental schools of thought. In so doing, the authors bring the state-of-the-art achievements of Critical Rationalism to the forefront of current academic debates.

Culture Change and Ex-Change

Culture Change and Ex-Change PDF Author: Regina Knapp
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785333852
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
How is cultural change perceived and performed by members of the Bena Bena language group, who live in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea? In her analysis, Knapp draws upon existing bodies of work on ‘culture change’, ‘exchange’ and ‘person’ in Melanesia but brings them together in a new way by conjoining traditional models with theoretical approaches of the new Melanesian ethnography and with collaborative, reflexive and reverse anthropology.

Is Rational Choice Theory All of Social Science?

Is Rational Choice Theory All of Social Science? PDF Author: Mark I. Lichbach
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 047202485X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Advocates of rational choice theory in political science have been perceived by their critics as attempting to establish an intellectual hegemony in contemporary social science, to the detriment of alternative methods of research. The debate has gained a nonacademic audience, hitting the pages of the New York Times and the New Republic. In the academy, the antagonists have expressed their views in books, journal articles, and at professional conferences. Mark I. Lichbach addresses the question of the place of rational choice theory in the social sciences in general and in political science in particular. He presents a typology of the antagonists as either rationalist, culturalist, or structuralist and offers an insightful examination of the debate. He reveals that the rationalist bid for hegemony and synthesis is rooted in the weaknesses, not the strengths, of rationalist thought. He concludes that the various theoretical camps are unlikely to accept the claimed superiority of the rationalist approach but that this opposition is of value in itself to the social sciences, which requires multiple perspectives to remain healthy. With its penetrating examination of the assumptions and basic arguments of each of the sides to this debate, this book cuts through the partisan rhetoric and provides an essential roadmap for the future of the discipline. Mark I. Lichbach is Professor of Government and Politics, University of Maryland.

Philosophy of Social Science

Philosophy of Social Science PDF Author: Mark Risjord
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136627510
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
The Philosophy of Social Science: A Contemporary Introduction examines the perennial questions of philosophy by engaging with the empirical study of society. The book offers a comprehensive overview of debates in the field, with special attention to questions arising from new research programs in the social sciences. The text uses detailed examples of social scientific research to motivate and illustrate the philosophical discussion. Topics include the relationship of social policy to social science, interpretive research, action explanation, game theory, social scientific accounts of norms, joint intentionality, reductionism, causal modeling, case study research, and experimentation.

Beyond Reason

Beyond Reason PDF Author: Sanjay Seth
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197500609
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
The knowledge disseminated by universities and mobilized by states to govern populations has been globally dominant for more than a century. It first emerged in the early modern period in Europe and subsequently became globalized through colonialism. Despite the historical and cultural specificity of its origins, modern Western knowledge was thought to have transcended its particularities such that, unlike pre-modern and non-Western knowledges, it was "universal," or true for all times and places. In this bold and ambitious book, Sanjay Seth argues that modern knowledge and the social sciences are a product of Western modernity claiming a spurious universality: that what we treat as the "truths" discovered by social scientific reason are instead a parochial knowledge. Drawing upon and deriving its critical energies principally from postcolonial theory, Beyond Reason traverses many disciplines, including science studies, social history, art and music history, political science, and anthropology, and engages with a range of contemporary thinkers including Butler, Habermas, Chakrabarty, Chatterjee, and Rawls. It demonstrates that while global in their impact, the social sciences do not and cannot transcend the Western historical and cultural circumstances in which they emerged. If the social sciences are not explained and validated simply by the fact that they are "true," it becomes possible to ask what purpose they serve, what it is that they "do." A defining feature of modern knowledge is that it is divided into disciplines, each with its own object of inquiry and corresponding protocols, and thus asking what such knowledge "does" requires asking what purpose disciplines serve. It also requires asking what ways of understanding the world they facilitate and what they disallow. Beyond Reason proceeds to anatomize the disciplines of history and political science to ask what representations and relations with the past and with politics these academic disciplines enable, and what ways of understanding and engaging the world they foreclose.

Understanding Cultures

Understanding Cultures PDF Author: Robert C. Ulin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780292785168
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Understanding Cultures confronts the major theoretical issues involved in cross-cultural interpretation. The book introduces students to rationality among the ancestors of anthropology before proceeding to a wide-ranging evaluation of the Anglo-American rationality debates. At issue is the opposition between scientific models of understanding human action and those models that emphasize human action as symbolic and meaningful, thus privileging an interpretive framework. This long-awaited second edition includes a new chapter on globalism and cultural diaspora that challenges conventional notions of bounded culture and bounded self and has important implications for refiguring the rationality debates, fieldwork, and cross-cultural interpretations more generally.

Stephen Turner and the Philosophy of the Social

Stephen Turner and the Philosophy of the Social PDF Author: Christopher Adair-Toteff
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004449604
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Stephen Turner has produced a large and varied body of work on core issues in the philosophy of social science which is deeply engaged with its history. This book presents a critical review by distinguished scholars, together with his response.

Rationality and the Environment

Rationality and the Environment PDF Author: Bo Elling
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136559167
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Environmental assessment and management involve the production of scientific knowledge and its use in decision-making processes. The result is that within these essentially rational, political assessment frameworks, experts are creating and applying scientific knowledge for decision and management purposes that actually have strong ethical and aesthetic dimensions. Yet these rational political frameworks lack the tools to provide guidance on ethical and aesthetic issues that affect the wider public. This revolutionary work argues that ethical and aesthetic dimensions can only be brought into environmental politics and policies by citizens actively taking a stand on the specific matters in question. The author draws on Habermas trisection of rationality as cognitive-instrumental, moral-practical and aesthetic-expressive, to suggest that truly effective environmental policy needs to activate all three approaches and not favour only the rational. To achieve this objective, the author argues that public participation in environmental policy and assessment is necessary to counteract the dictatorship of technical and economic instrumentality in environmental policy - the failure to take ethical and aesthetic rationalities into account - and, more importantly, how such policy is applied on the ground to shape our natural and material world.

The Ropes to Skip and the Ropes to Know

The Ropes to Skip and the Ropes to Know PDF Author: R. Richard Ritti
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470169672
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Now in its eighth edition, The Ropes has been used by business professionals for over thirty years. Throughout this updated book, brief descriptions of theory are followed by groups of illustrative stories. The material deals with issues central to life in an organization – issues of how the culture of an organization functions. Incorporated throughout are numerous examples of behaviors and decisions with real consequences that can enhance or impede careers. Business professionals will also discover the unwritten rules of organizations, such as the impact of stereotypes.