Social Causation and Biographical Research: Philosophical, Theoretical and Methodological Arguments

ISBN-13: 9780367620363 / Angielski / Twarda / 2020 / 120 str.

Giorgos Tsiolis; Michalis Christodoulou

Opis

Bringing reconstructive biographical research into dialogue with critical realism, this book argues that causal explanations are not at odds with biographical research and that biographical research is in fact a valuable tool for explaining how and why things in social and personal lives are one way and not another.

Spis treści

1. Introduction: Singular causation and biographical research  2. Philosophical arguments on social causality: Cases of reductionism  3. Critical realism: Causal mechanisms as emergent powers  4. Causal explanation as process tracing  5. Relating cases with phenomena: Arguments for generalizing through mechanisms  6. The relational subject and latent meaning structures  7. Why the temporal is causal  8. Case reconstruction and relational mechanisms in biographical research practice  9. Epilogue: Summarizing the argumentation