Toward Transformation in Social Knowledge
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Sage Publications Ltd
Published:22nd Dec '93
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Critical resistance to traditional empirical methods and the quest for foundational knowledge of human action is widespread. Recognition of theoretical and methodological inadequacies has sparked a search for a more robust conception of human science.
This fascinating and carefully reasoned book develops the argument for human science as social construction. Demonstrating that descriptions of human action can neither be derived from nor corrected by scientific observation, Gergen provides a bold interdisciplinary challenge to traditional views, thus clearing the way for significant alterations in scientific practice. In the preface to the Second Edition, Gergen describes the major movements taking place since the First Edition was published over a decade ago.
`Gergen has written a magnificent book... It is the fruit of a sustained intellectual quest for a new metaphysics for the social/behavioural sciences′ - Clyde Hendrick, Contemporary Psychology
`The book offers an overview of theories of science as a social and cultural process. The thesis that science is but a social and ideological edifice based on little more than misguided attempts by individual scientists to legitimate their moral discourse will already be familiar to sociologists, longstanding critics of "scientism" in social science. But the thoroughness with which it is stated in this book, with a new introduction bringing some of the discussions up to date, should make the reading of it rewarding for philosophically interested students′ - Reviewing Sociology
ISBN: 9780803989726
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 440g
288 pages
2nd Revised edition