Dissecting the Social
Building on his earlier influential contributions to contemporary debates on social theory, Peter Hedstrom argues for a systematic development of sociological theory so that it has the explanatory power and precision to inform sociological research and understanding--qualities lacking in much of the grand social theorizing currently fashionable.
- Represents an approach to the explanation of social phenomena
- Discusses a range of issues of fundamental importance for the social sciences
- Combines approaches to theory and methodology and uses extensive examples to illustrate how to apply them
Reviews & endorsements
"Dissecting the Social is a substantial and important contribution to the emerging paradigm of mechanism-based explanation." -Andreas Pickel, Canadian Journal of Sociology Online
"This book...is an enjoyable and important addition to the meager library of serious philosophy of social science. It gives pleasure to read because it is clearly conceived and elegantly written, and because...it is chock full of examples of current research. And Hedström's book is important because it emphasizes the thesis that to explain facts of a type is to exhibit or hypothesize the mechanisms that brings them about." -Mario Bunge, Philosophy of the Social Sciences
Product details
- Published: January 2006
- Format: Adobe eBook Reader
- ISBN: 9780511133312
- Length: 0 pages
- Weight: 0kg
- Contains: 28 b/w illus. 8 tables
- Availability: This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
Table of Contents
- 1. The analytical tradition in sociology
- 2. Social mechanisms and explanatory theory
- 3. Action and interaction
- 4. Social interaction and social change
- 5. On causal modelling
- 6. Quantitative research, agent-based modelling, and theories of the social (with Yvonne Åberg)
- 7. Coda
- References.
- Show more