By Richard Swedberg
Richard Swedberg (ed.)
All social scientists research the distinguished theories and frameworks in their predecessors, utilizing them to notify their very own study and observations. yet ahead of there may be idea, there needs to be theorizing. Theorizing in Social Science introduces the reader to the subsequent iteration of conception building and indicates worthy methods for developing social theory.
What makes specific sorts of theories inventive, and the way does one pass approximately theorizing in an inventive approach? The members to this landmark collection—top social scientists within the fields of sociology, economics, and management—draw on own reviews and new findings to supply more than a few solutions to those questions. a few flip to cognitive psychology and neuroscience's impression on our figuring out of human proposal, others inspire better discussion among and around the arts and sciences, whereas nonetheless others specialize in the techniques during which remark results in conceptualization. Taken jointly, in spite of the fact that, the chapters jointly and actively motivate a shift within the position of concept in social technology this day. attractive to scholars and scientists throughout disciplines, this assortment will motivate cutting edge methods to generating, instructing, and studying theory.
Reviews:
"The debate approximately technique within the social sciences has nearly thoroughly bypassed dialogue of the instruments that we will use to construct reliable theories. This publication is massive breakthrough in correcting this omission. If we're fortunate, it is going to stimulate a brand new department of method dedicated to the techniques that analysts can such a lot productively use within the context of discovery."—James Mahoney, Northwestern University
Contents:
1 From conception to Theorizing
Richard Swedberg
2 Intuitionist Theorizing
Karin Knorr Cetina
3 Analogy, circumstances, and Comparative Social Organization
Diane Vaughan
4 The Unsettlement of groups of Inquiry
Isaac Ariail Reed and Mayer N. Zald
5 3 Frank inquiries to self-discipline Your Theorizing
Daniel B. Klein
6 Mundane Theorizing, Bricolage, and Bildung
Stephen Turner
7 The Counterfactual mind's eye
Roland Paulsen
8 The paintings of Theorizing
Karl E. Weick
9 Susan Sontag and Heteroscedasticity
James G. March
Afterword
Neil Gross
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Additional info for Theorizing in Social Science: The Context of Discovery
Example text
This means newspapers, archives, books, dreams, daydreams, illusions, speculations, interviews, details, statistical tables, big data, anecdotes, conversations, what is on the Web, what one has overheard, and much, much, much more. Ideally, one should use all of one’s senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste (Simmel [1907] 1997). Anything that provides knowledge, information, associations, and ideas for what something is like is acceptable at this stage of the inquiry. The first rule for observation at the stage of discovery is: Anything goes!
Hughes’s precise formulation, is first of all about the importance “to see for oneself ” (Hughes 1984: 497, emphasis added). It is imperative to hold off on theorizing one’s observations until one knows quite a bit about the topic to be theorized. Unless this is done, one will theorize on the basis of scant information or on the basis of ideas that float around in society but do not capture what actually goes on. ” (Wittgenstein 1953: 66e). The classical place where this attitude toward observation is explained is The Rules of Sociological Method by Durkheim.
While emphasizing that a functionalist analysis can be “highly dangerous,” he also argues that it is not only helpful but “indispensable” at an early stage of the analysis (Weber [1922] 1978: 15). Models are crucial to certain types of explanations; and they are often formulated in mathematical language (Schelling 1978; Simon 1991; Varian 1998). Models are more intuitive and less worked out at the stage of discovery than at the stage of justification. Still, one advantage of using a model when theorizing is that all assumptions are explicit and open for inspection.