Social Science

A succinct, readable guidediscussing core ideas insocial science

This second edition of this respected andsuccessful text includes essential new materialcovering the following topics:

Postmodern and feminist approaches The crisis in social science An overview of the main developments in thephilosophy of the social sciences

Social Science builds on the success of the firstedition and moves the discussions forward andbrings up-to-date the material on the positivistdispute, hermeneutic theory, and the critical conceptionof social science.

The main developments examined in this textinclude the positivist dispute (the rise of rationalismand empiricism, positivism, and implicationsof the work of Popper and Kuhn); hermeneutictheory from Weber to Schutz and Taylor; and thecritical conception of social science, as in Marxism,Adorno, and Habermas.

Social Science will be of strong interest to undergraduatesand postgraduates in the social sciencesas well as to professional researchersworking in the areas of the philosophy of socialscience, the sociology of science and knowledge,and social and political theory.