During the past decade, it has become commonplace to interpret social and cultural reality-the very groundwork of the social sciences-as linguistic constructions. Not only is society viewed as a text, but scientific texts themselves are seen as rhetorical constructions.
This collection of scholarly essays begins with an overview of this emerging field, and covers the specific stylistic practices by which social scientists create -objective- or -true- representations of society. The volume closes with a consideration of the more telling challenges to the rhetorics of the social...
During the past decade, it has become commonplace to interpret social and cultural reality-the very groundwork of the social sciences-as linguisti...
During the past decade, it has become commonplace to interpret social and cultural reality-the very groundwork of the social sciences-as linguistic constructions. Not only is society viewed as a text, but scientific texts themselves are seen as rhetorical constructions.
This collection of scholarly essays begins with an overview of this emerging field, and covers the specific stylistic practices by which social scientists create -objective- or -true- representations of society. The volume closes with a consideration of the more telling challenges to the rhetorics of the social...
During the past decade, it has become commonplace to interpret social and cultural reality-the very groundwork of the social sciences-as linguisti...
Brown makes elegant use of sociological theory and of insights from language philosophy, literary criticism, and rhetoric to articulate a new theory of the human sciences, using the powerful metaphor of society as text.
Brown makes elegant use of sociological theory and of insights from language philosophy, literary criticism, and rhetoric to articulate a new theory o...
For too long, argues Richard Harvey Brown, social scientists have felt forced to choose between imitating science's empirical methodology and impersonating a romantic notion of art, the methods of which are seen as primarily a matter of intuition, interpretation, and opinion. Developing the idea of a "cognitive aesthetic," Brown shows how both science and art as well as the human studies that stand between them depend on metaphoric thinking as their "logic of discovery" and may be assessed in terms of such aesthetic criteria of adequacy as economy, elegance, originality, scope, congruence,...
For too long, argues Richard Harvey Brown, social scientists have felt forced to choose between imitating science's empirical methodology and imperson...
Richard Harvey Brown's pioneering explorations in the philosophy of social science and the theory of rhetoric reach a culmination in "Social Science as Civic Discourse." In his earlier works, he argued for a logic of discovery and explanation in social science by showing that science and art both depend on metaphoric thinking, and he has applied that logic to society as a narrative text in which significant action by moral agents is possible. This new work is at once a philosophical critique of social theory and a social-theoretical critique of politics. Brown proposes to redirect the...
Richard Harvey Brown's pioneering explorations in the philosophy of social science and the theory of rhetoric reach a culmination in "Social Science a...
Looks at the ways social change is expressed through debates over identities and bodies. In bodies and selves, we can see politics, economics, and culture play out, and the tensions and crises of society made visible. The women's movement, lobbies for the elderly, pro-choice and pro-life movements, AIDS research and education, pedophilia and repressed memory, global sports spectacles, organ donor networks, campaigns for safe sex, chastity, or preventive medicine--all are aspects of the contemporary politics of bodies and identities touched on in this book. Three broad themes run through the...
Looks at the ways social change is expressed through debates over identities and bodies. In bodies and selves, we can see politics, economics, and cul...
Looks at the ways social change is expressed through debates over identities and bodies. In bodies and selves, we can see politics, economics, and culture play out, and the tensions and crises of society made visible. The women's movement, lobbies for the elderly, pro-choice and pro-life movements, AIDS research and education, pedophilia and repressed memory, global sports spectacles, organ donor networks, campaigns for safe sex, chastity, or preventive medicine--all are aspects of the contemporary politics of bodies and identities touched on in this book. Three broad themes run through the...
Looks at the ways social change is expressed through debates over identities and bodies. In bodies and selves, we can see politics, economics, and cul...
In this volume East Asia is used as a unit of political and economic analysis to reveal an approach to modernization that is distinct from the Western model. The volume especially focuses on the interaction between nations of East Asia; the advantages and limits of export-led growth; relations between such processes as state formation, industrial growth, urbanization, and the movement from status- to class-based social hierarchies; and the links between state, market, and civic culture.
Each chapter takes at least one country as its topic. There also is a comparative and regional...
In this volume East Asia is used as a unit of political and economic analysis to reveal an approach to modernization that is distinct from the West...
First published in 1978, this volume is addressed to the crisis prevailing in the social and cultural sciences. The authors explore the conflict between positivism and romanticism, between hard and soft sociological research methods, and between objectivity and subjectivity - conflicts that were particularly acute in sociology at the time of publication. All of the essays adopt the approach of 'symbolic realism' or 'cognitive aesthetics' to overcome the dualism in conventional sociological theory. This strategy of symbolic realism is a philosophical amalgam forged from findings in existential...
First published in 1978, this volume is addressed to the crisis prevailing in the social and cultural sciences. The authors explore the conflict betwe...
