The Causal Power Of Social Structures
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The Causal Power of Social Structures
Author: Dave Elder-Vass
language: en
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Release Date: 2010-06-17
The problem of structure and agency has been the subject of intense debate in the social sciences for over 100 years. This book offers a solution. Using a critical realist version of the theory of emergence, Dave Elder-Vass argues that, instead of ascribing causal significance to an abstract notion of social structure or a monolithic concept of society, we must recognise that it is specific groups of people that have social structural power. Some of these groups are entities with emergent causal powers, distinct from those of human individuals. Yet these powers also depend on the contributions of human individuals, and this book examines the mechanisms through which interactions between human individuals generate the causal powers of some types of social structures. The Causal Power of Social Structures makes particularly important contributions to the theory of human agency and to our understanding of normative institutions.
Qualitative Comparative Analysis
Author: Roel Rutten
language: en
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Release Date: 2024-10-03
Emphasising the Q in qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), Roel Rutten presents QCA as a thoroughly qualitative method to help researchers learn from cases. He highlights that while Boolean expressions describing cross-case patterns are QCA’s most conspicuous element, they do not amount to causal explanations.
Reframing the Social
Author: Professor Poe Yu-ze Wan
language: en
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Release Date: 2013-01-28
Drawing extensively on the research findings of natural and social sciences both in America and Europe, Reframing the Social argues for a critical realist and systemist social ontology, designed to shed light on current debates in social theory concerning the relationship of social ontology to practical social research, and the nature of 'the social'. It explores the works of the systems theorist Mario Bunge in comparison with the approach of Niklas Luhmann and critical social systems theorists, to challenge the commonly held view that the systems-based approach is holistic in nature and necessarily downplays the role of human agency. Theoretically sophisticated and investigating the work of a theorist whose work has until now received insufficient attention in Anglo-American thought, this book will be of interest to those working in the field of social theory, as well as scholars concerned with philosophy of social science, the project of analytical sociology, and the nature of the relationship between the natural and social sciences.