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  1. Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation.Margaret S. Archer - 2003 - Cambridge University Press.
    The central problem of social theory is 'structure and agency'. How do the objective features of society influence human agents? Determinism is not the answer, nor is conditioning as currently conceptualised. It accentuates the way structure and culture shape the social context in which individuals operate, but it neglects our personal capacity to define what we care about most and to establish a modus vivendi expressive of our concerns. Through inner dialogue, 'the internal conversation', individuals reflect upon their social situation (...)
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  • Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society.Raymond Williams - 1977 - Science and Society 41 (2):221-224.
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  • Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx's Method.Bertell Ollman - 2003 - University of Illinois Press.
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  • Critical Realism.Andrew Collier - 1990 - International Studies in Philosophy 20 (2):120-122.
    A review article on two books by Roy Bhaskar: Reclaiming Reality: A Critical Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy (London: Verso, 1989), & The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Human Sciences (2nd Edition, Harvester Wheatsheaf: London, 1989 see listings in IRPS No. 56). Bhaskar portrays critical realism as insisting on "the primacy of being over knowledge" & argues for the emancipatory consequences of this position. His philosophy distinguishes between intransitive & transitive domains & between open & closed systems, & (...)
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  • (2 other versions)The possibility of naturalism: a philosophical critique of the contemporary human sciences.Roy Bhaskar - 1998 - New York: Routledge.
    Since its original publication in 1979, The Possibility of Naturalism has been one of the most influential works in contemporary philosophy of science and social science. It is a cornerstone of the critical realist position, which is now widely seen as offering a viable alternative to move positivism and postmodernism. This revised edition includes a new foreword.
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  • Economics and reality.Tony Lawson - 1997 - New York: Routledge.
    There is an increasingly widespread belief, both within and outside the discipline, that modern economics is irrelevant to the understanding of the real world. Economics and Reality traces this irrelevance to the failure of economists to match their methods with their subject, showing that formal, mathematical models are unsuitable to the social realities economists purport to address. Tony Lawson examines the various ways in which mainstream economics is rooted in positivist philosophy and examines the problems this causes. It focuses on (...)
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  • Cultural rules and material relations.Douglas V. Porpora - 1993 - Sociological Theory 11 (2):212-229.
    This paper attempts to synthesize the Winchian stress on constitutive rules with the Marxian stress on material relationships by developing the concept of emergently material social relations. Such relationships, it is argued, arise from the constitutive rules that constitute a group's way of life. Although such relationships thus are derivative from the conscious rule-following behavior of actors, nevertheless they have an objective existence independent of actors' specific awareness. It is argued that such material relations are an important mechanism beyond the (...)
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  • Why I am not an individualist.Anthony King - 2007 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 37 (2):211–219.
    In his defence of emergence, David Elder-Vass assumes that my hermeneutic position represents a form of individualism. Although a common reading of my position, the claim that I am in individualist is incorrect; I, too, recognize the centrality of collective phenomena to social reality. In fact, there is a close convergence between emergence and the hermeneutic sociology I advocate. However, there also remains an important divide between us. Despite his care to avoid reification, Edler-Vass descends into ontological dualism, conceptualizing society (...)
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  • A Realist Philosophy of Social Science: Explanation and Understanding.Peter T. Manicas - 2006 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    This introduction to the philosophy of social science provides an original conception of the task and nature of social inquiry. Peter Manicas discusses the role of causality seen in the physical sciences and offers a reassessment of the problem of explanation from a realist perspective. He argues that the fundamental goal of theory in both the natural and social sciences is not, contrary to widespread opinion, prediction and control, or the explanation of events. Instead, theory aims to provide an understanding (...)
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  • Conflicting Varieties of Realism: Causal Powers and the Problems of Social Structure.Charles R. Varela & Rom Harré - 1996 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 26 (3):313-325.
    Proponents of the view that social structures are ontologically distinct from the people in whose actions they are immanent have assumed that structures can stand in causal relations to individual practices. Were causality to be no more than Humean concomitance correlations between structure and practices would be unproblematic. But two prominent advocates of the ontological account of structures, Bhaskar and Giddens, have also espoused a powers theory of causality. According to that theory causation is brought about by the activity of (...)
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  • Reconciling Archer and Bourdieu in an Emergentist Theory of Action.Dave Elder-Vass - 2007 - Sociological Theory 25 (4):325 - 346.
    Margaret Archer and Pierre Bourdieu have advanced what seem at first sight to be incompatible theories of human agency. While Archer places heavy stress on conscious reflexive deliberation and the consequent choices of identity and projects that individuals make, Bourdieu's concept of habitus places equally heavy stress on the role of social conditioning in determining our behavior, and downplays the contribution of conscious deliberation. Despite this, I argue that these two approaches, with some modification, can be reconciled in a single (...)
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  • A Method for Social Ontology: Iterating Ontology and Social Research.Dave Elder-Vass - 2007 - Journal of Critical Realism 6 (2):226-249.
    How should critical realism affect the practice of social science? This paper responds to this and related questions by suggesting some methodological implications of the realist theory of emergence. Given that critical realism understands causation as the interaction of emergent causal powers, and that the theory of emergence describes the type of structural relations that underpins such powers, we can practise social ontology by seeking to identify these structural relations in the social domain. Such methods, however, cannot stand or fall (...)
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  • Varieties of realism: a rationale for the natural sciences.Rom Harré - 1986 - New York, NY, USA: Blackwell.
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  • How not to structure a social theory: A reply to a critical response.Anthony King - 2006 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 36 (4):464-479.
    In his recent review of my book, The Structure of Social Theory , Karsten Stueber rejected my criticisms of contemporary social theory. Against my "hermeneutic" sociology which prioritizes human social relations, he advocates a return to a dualistic ontology of structure and agency. This reply addresses Stueber’s criticisms to re-affirm the ontology of social relations against ontological dualism. Key Words: structure • agency • hermeneutics • social relations.
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  • Elder-Vass's move and Giddens's call.Charles Varela - 2007 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 37 (2):201–210.
    David Elder-Vass's “For Emergence: refining Archer's account of social structure,” is the latest of a number of papers which together constitute a family quarrel in the cognitive space After Postmodernism among realist social scientists. In the case under examination here in “Elder-Vass's Move and Giddens's Call”, the concern is the structure and agency problem in the social sciences. The debate continuing in Elder-Vass's paper represents the proponents of the resurrection of Durkheim's social realism under the auspices of Bhaskar's Transcendental Realism; (...)
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  • On Elder-Vass: Refining a refinement.Douglas Porpora - 2007 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 37 (2):195–200.
    This paper responds to Dave Elder-Vass's generally sympathetic critique of Margaret Archer's position on structure and emergence. Elder-Vass does helpfully emphasize the synchronic effects of structure. Yet, it is argued here, in his treatment of structure, Elder-Vass tends to concede too much to methodological individualism and to overemphasize social rules at the expense of social relations. Finally, a question is raised about how both Archer and Elder-Vass and Critical Realism in general speak of emergence.
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  • Exploring the concept of causal power in a critical realist tradition.Tuukka Kaidesoja - 2007 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 37 (1):63–87.
    This article analyses and evaluates the uses of the concept of causal power in the critical realist tradition, which is based on Roy Bhaskar's philosophy of science. The concept of causal power that appears in the early works of Rom Harré and his associates is compared to Bhaskar's account of this concept and its uses in the critical realist social ontology. It is argued that the concept of emergence should be incorporated to any adequate notion of causal power. The concept (...)
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  • For emergence: Refining Archer's account of social structure.Dave Elder-Vass - 2007 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 37 (1):25–44.
    The question of social structure and its relationship to human agency remains one of the central problems of social theory. One of the most promising attempts to provide a solution has been Margaret Archer's morphogenetic approach, which invokes emergence to justify treating social structure as causally effective. Archer's argument, however, has been criticised by a number of authors who suggest that the examples she cites can be explained in reductionist terms and thus that they fail to sustain her claim for (...)
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  • On participation and membership in discursive practices.Kenneth Shockley - 2006 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 36 (1):67-85.
    For a view which grounds norms in the practices of a particular group, determining who is in that group will determine the scope of those norms. Such a view requires an account of what it is to be a member of the group subject to that practice. In this article, the author presents the beginnings of such an account, limiting his inquiry to discursive practices; we might characterize such practices as those which require, as a condition of participation, participants both (...)
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  • The structure of social theory.Anthony King - 2004 - New York: Routledge.
    Over the last three decades, social theory has become an increasingly important subdiscipline within sociology. Social theory has attempted to elucidate the philosophical basis of sociology by defining the nature of social reality. According to social theory, society consists of objective institutions, structure, on the one hand, and individuals, agency on the other, it promotes human social relations, insisting that in every instance social reality consists of these relations.
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  • Ethogenic theory and psychoanalysis: The unconscious as a social construction and a failed explanatory concept.Charles R. Varela - 1995 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 25 (4):363–385.
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