The Idea of History is the best-known book of the great Oxford philosopher, historian, and archaeologist R.G. Collingwood. It was originally published posthumously in 1946, having been mainly reconstructed from Collingwood's manuscripts, many of which are now lost. For this revised edition, Collingwood's most important lectures on the philosophy of history are published here for the first time. These texts have been prepared by Jan van der Dussen from manuscripts that have only recently become available. The lectures contain Collingwood's first (...) comprehensive statement of his philosophy of history; they are therefore essential for a full understanding of his thought, and in particular for a correct interpretation of The Idea of History itself. Van der Dussen contributes a substantial introduction in which he explains the background to this new edition and surveys the scholarship of the last fifty years. (shrink)

This book reformulates the sociological subdiscipline known as the sociology of knowledge. Knowledge is presented as more than ideology, including as well false consciousness, propaganda, science and art.

'Search for a Method' is a separate and introductory essay published together with 'Critique of Dialectical Reason'.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Protestant ethic — a moral code stressing hard work, rigorous self-discipline, and the organization of one's life in the service of God — was made famous by sociologist and political economist Max Weber. In this brilliant study (his best-known and most controversial), he opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and its view that change takes place through "the struggle of opposites." Instead, he relates the rise of a capitalist economy to the Puritan determination to work out anxiety over (...) salvation or damnation by performing good deeds — an effort that ultimately discouraged belief in predestination and encouraged capitalism. Weber's classic study has long been required reading in college and advanced high school social studies classrooms. (shrink)

More than three decades after its advent in political science, rational choice theory has yet to add appreciably to the stock of knowledge about politics. In Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory we traced this failure to methodological defects rooted in the aspiration to come up with universal theories of politics. After responding to criticisms of our argument, we elaborate on our earlier recommendations about how to improve the quality of rational choice applications. Building on suggestions of contributors to this volume, (...) we lay out an empirically based research program designed to delineate the conditions under which rational choice explanations are likely to be useful. (shrink)

First published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This classic series provides students with concise and readable introductions to the work, life and influence of the great sociological thinkers.

Green and Shapiro's critique of rational choice theory underestimates the value of unification and the necessity of universalism in science. The central place of intentionality in social life makes both unification and universalism feasible norms in social science. However, ?universalism? in social science may be partial, in that the independence hypothesis?that the causal mechanism governing action is context independent?may hold only locally in certain classes of choice domains.

Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory is a largely valid critique of the rational choice approach to politics. Rational choice theory may be useful under some conditions, but a general characterization of these suggests that American political behavior is unpromising terrain. Some forms of behavior cannot without strain be treated as instrumental; some sources of behavior cannot be accomodated by any theory built wholly out of preferences and beliefs. Explaining cooperation, in particular, requires attention to normative, expressive, and intrinsic motivations and (...) social identification, and to the conditions in which they are mobilized. (shrink)

The rational choice assumption that any chosen behavior can be understood as optimizing material self?interest is not borne out by psychological research. Expressive motives, for example, are prominent in the symbols of politics, in social relationships, and in the arts of persuasion. Moreover, instrumentality is a mindset that is learned (perhaps overlearned), and can be situationally manipulated; because it is valued in our society, it provides a privileged vocabulary for justifying behaviors that may have been performed for other reasons, and (...) encourages the illusory belief in the universality of rational choice. (shrink)

The debate over Green and Shapiro's Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory sustains their contention that rational choice theory has not produced novel, empirically sustainable findings about politics?if one accepts their definition of empirically sustainable findings. Green and Shapiro show that rational choice research often resembles the empirically vacuous practices in which economists engage under the aegis of instrumentalism. Yet Green and Shapiro's insistence that theoretical constructs should produce accurate predictions may inadvertently lead to instrumentalism. Some of Green and Shapiro's critics (...) hint at a better approach, which would eschew predictive testing in favor of testing the applicability of the theory to particular cases. (shrink)

The anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss was one of the greatest intellectuals of the twentieth century. His work has had a profound impact not only within anthropology but also linguistics, sociology and philosophy. In this short book he examines the nature and role of myth in human history, distilling a lifetime of writing into a few sharp insights. It is a crystalline overview of many of the basic ideas underlying his work, including the theory of structuralism and the difference between 'primitive' and (...) 'scientific' thought and shows why Levi-Strauss remains a hugely important intellectual figure. With a new foreword by Patrick Wilcken. (shrink)