You are viewing content intended for a different location. This may affect your ability to shop online.

Our systems are now restored following recent technical disruption, and we’re working hard to catch up on publishing. We apologise for the inconvenience caused. Find out more

Recommended product

Popular links

Popular links


Dissecting the Social

Dissecting the Social

Dissecting the Social

On the Principles of Analytical Sociology
Author:
Peter Hedstrom, University of Oxford
Published:
December 2005
Availability:
Available
Format:
Paperback
ISBN:
9780521796675

Looking for an examination copy?

If you are interested in the title for your course we can consider offering an examination copy. To register your interest please contact collegesales@cambridge.org providing details of the course you are teaching.

    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.

    Author

    Peter Hedstrom , University of Oxford

    Peter Hedström is Professor of Sociology and Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. He has published numerous articles in leading academic journals and is co-author of Social Mechanisms (Cambridge, 1998) with R. Swedberg.