Social Reality

1. Auflage 1997
ISBN: 978-0-415-14797-2
Verlag: CRC Press

Buch, Englisch, 266 Seiten, Format (B × H): 138 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 490 g

Reihe: Problems of Philosophy

Social reality is currently a hotly debated topic not only in social science, but also in philosophy and the other humanities. Finn Collin, in this concise guide, asks if social reality is created by the way social agents conceive of it? Is there a difference between the kind of existence attributed to social and to physical facts - do physical facts enjoy a more independent existence? To what extent is social reality a matter of social convention.
Finn Collin considers a number of traditional doctrines which support the constructivist position that social reality is generated by our 'interpretation' of it. He also examines the way social facts are contingent upon the meaning invested in them by social agents; the nature of social convention; the status of social facts as symbolic; the ways in which socially shared language is claimed to generate the reality described, as well as the limitations of some of the over-ambitious popular arguments for social constructivism.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Collin, Finn

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein Gesellschaftstheorie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction; Part 1 The Broad Arguments; Chapter 1 Ethnomethodology; Chapter 2 The Cultural Relativity Argument; Chapter 3 Social Constructivism and the Sociology of Knowledge: Berger and Luckmann; Chapter 4 The Linguistic Relativity Argument; Summary of Part One; Part 2 The Narrow Arguments; Chapter 5 The Arguments from the ‘Meaningfulness’ of Action; Chapter 6 The Arguments from the ‘Meaningfulness’ of Action; Chapter 7 The Argument from the Symbolic Nature of Social Facts; Chapter 8 The Argument from Convention; Summary of Part TwoPart 3 Methodological Implications of Constructivism;

Über Autor(innen)

Finn Collin is Senior Lecturer at the University of Copenhagen. He holds doctorates in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Copenhagen. Dr Collin is the author of Theory and Understanding: A Critique of Interpretive Social Science (1985).