Social Construction on the Edge

Social Construction on the Edge
Author: John Shotter
Publisher:
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2010
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780981907642

The overall approach taken in this collection of essays is on the edge of social constructionism in that it emphasizes the spontaneous, expressive-responsiveness of our living bodies as providing the background glue that holds us together in all our relationships.

After Virtue

After Virtue
Author: Alasdair MacIntyre
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2013-10-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1623569818

Highly controversial when it was first published in 1981, Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue has since established itself as a landmark work in contemporary moral philosophy. In this book, MacIntyre sought to address a crisis in moral language that he traced back to a European Enlightenment that had made the formulation of moral principles increasingly difficult. In the search for a way out of this impasse, MacIntyre returns to an earlier strand of ethical thinking, that of Aristotle, who emphasised the importance of 'virtue' to the ethical life. More than thirty years after its original publication, After Virtue remains a work that is impossible to ignore for anyone interested in our understanding of ethics and morality today.

The Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology

The Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology
Author: Jaan Valsiner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1149
Release: 2012-03-08
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0199930635

The goal of cultural psychology is to explain the ways in which human cultural constructions -- for example, rituals, stereotypes, and meanings -- organize and direct human acting, feeling, and thinking in different social contexts. A rapidly growing, international field of scholarship, cultural psychology is ready for an interdisciplinary, primary resource. Linking psychology, anthropology, sociology, archaeology, and history, The Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology is the quintessential volume that unites the variable perspectives from these disciplines. Comprised of over fifty contributed chapters, this book provides a necessary, comprehensive overview of contemporary cultural psychology. Bridging psychological, sociological, and anthropological perspectives, one will find in this handbook: - A concise history of psychology that includes valuable resources for innovation in psychology in general and cultural psychology in particular - Interdisciplinary chapters including insights into cultural anthropology, cross-cultural psychology, culture and conceptions of the self, and semiotics and cultural connections - Close, conceptual links with contemporary biological sciences, especially developmental biology, and with other social sciences - A section detailing potential methodological innovations for cultural psychology By comparing cultures and the (often differing) human psychological functions occuring within them, The Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology is the ideal resource for making sense of complex and varied human phenomena.

The Natural Origin of Language

The Natural Origin of Language
Author: Robin Allott
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2012-01-12
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1469144719

The Natural Origin Of Language

Epistemology, Methodology, and the Social Sciences

Epistemology, Methodology, and the Social Sciences
Author: Robert S. Cohen
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2013-03-09
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9401714584

The last decades have seen major reformations in the philosophy and history of science. What has been called 'post-positivist' philosophy of science has introduced radically new concerns with historical, social, and valuative components of scientific thought in the natural sciences, and has raised up the demons of relativism, subjectivism and sociologism to haunt the once calm precincts of objectivity and realism. Though these disturbances intruded upon what had seemed to be the logically well-ordered domain of the philoso phy of the natural sciences, they were no news to the social sciences. There, the messy business of human action, volition, decision, the considerations of practical purposes and social values, the role of ideology and the problem of rationality, had long conspired to defeat logical-reconstructionist programs. The attempt to tarne the social sciences to the harness of a strict hypothetico deductive model of explanation failed. Within the social sciences, phenome nological, Marxist, hermeneuticist, action-theoretical approaches vied in attempting to capture the distinctiveness of human phenomena. In fact, the philosophy of the natural sciences, even in its 'hard' forms, has itself become infected with the increasing reflection upon the role of such social-scientific categories, in the attempt to understand the nature of the scientific enterprise.

The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory

The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory
Author: Karin Knorr Cetina
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2005-06-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1134586280

This book provides an exciting and diverse philosophical exploration of the role of practice and practices in human activity. It contains original essays and critiques of this philosophical and sociological attempt to move beyond current problematic ways of thinking in the humanities and social sciences. It will be useful across many disciplines, including philosophy, sociology, science, cultural theory, history and anthropology.

The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics

The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics
Author: Rajend Mesthrie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 598
Release: 2011-10-06
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1139500937

The most comprehensive overview available, this Handbook is an essential guide to sociolinguistics today. Reflecting the breadth of research in the field, it surveys a range of topics and approaches in the study of language variation and use in society. As well as linguistic perspectives, the handbook includes insights from anthropology, social psychology, the study of discourse and power, conversation analysis, theories of style and styling, language contact and applied sociolinguistics. Language practices seem to have reached new levels since the communications revolution of the late twentieth century. At the same time face-to-face communication is still the main force of language identity, even if social and peer networks of the traditional face-to-face nature are facing stiff competition of the Facebook-to-Facebook sort. The most authoritative guide to the state of the field, this handbook shows that sociolinguistics provides us with the best tools for understanding our unfolding evolution as social beings.