In this detailed history of the Chicago School of Sociology, Andrew Abbott investigates central topics in the emergence of modern scholarship, paying special attention to "schools of science" and how such schools reproduce themselves over time. What are the preconditions from which schools arise? Do they exist as rigid rules or as flexible structures? How do they emerge from the day-to-day activities of academic life such as editing journals and writing papers?

Abbott analyzes the shifts in social scientific inquiry and discloses the intellectual rivalry and faculty politics that...

In this vital new study, Andrew Abbott presents a fresh and daring analysis of the evolution and development of the social sciences. "Chaos of Disciplines" reconsiders how knowledge actually changes and advances. Challenging the accepted belief that social sciences are in a perpetual state of progress, Abbott contends that disciplines instead cycle around an inevitable pattern of core principles. New schools of thought, then, are less a reaction to an established order than they are a reinvention of fundamental concepts.
"Chaos of Disciplines" uses fractals to explain the patterns of...

This text focuses particularly on questions of time, events and causality. The author, Andrew Abbott, grounds each essay in straightforward examinations of social scientific analysis.

What do variables really tell us? When exactly do inventions occur? Why do we always miss turning points as they transpire? When does what doesn't happen mean as much, if not more, than what does? Andrew Abbott considers these fascinating questions in "Time Matters, " a diverse series of essays that constitutes the most extensive analysis of temporality in social science today. Ranging from abstract theoretical reflection to pointed methodological critique, Abbott demonstrates the inevitably theoretical character of any methodology.
"Time Matters" focuses particularly on questions of...