The Concept of the Social in Uniting the Humanities and Social Sciences
- Philadelphia : Temple University Press, (c)2014.
- 1 online resource (538 pages)
Description based upon print version of record.
Includes bibliographies and index.
Introduction: What Is Human about Human Affairs?; I. Sociality: The Problem of Definition; 1. The Urgency of Defining the Social; 2. Society as a Basic Fact; 3. Dependence and Autonomy; 4. The Certainty of the Social as the Basic Fact; 5. The Sociality of Agency; 6. Models, Theory, and Theorizing; 7. Theorizing; 8. Historicism and Its Alternative; 9. Social Facts, Situations, and Moral Stakes; II. Social Action; 10. Can "the Social" Be a Proper Object of Theory?; 11. Further Problems in Theorizing the Social; 12. Social Action as Action; 13. The Self of the Actor 14. Self and Situation15. Self and Agency; 16. Social Action Reconsidered; III. Subjects and Situations; 17. Overview; 18. Causes of Failure in the Social Sciences; 19. Objects and Their Subjects; 20. The Positive Sense of "Situation"; 21. Practices, Situations, and Inter-subjectivity; 22. Criticism, Inter-subjectivity, and Collective Enunciation; 23. Criticism and Human Affairs; 24. Collective Enunciation; 25. Subjectivity and Objectivity; 26. Summary, Reprise, and Transition; Acknowledgments; Notes; References; Index
In this book, Michael Brown provides original and critical analysis of the state of the social sciences and the humanities. He examines the different disciplines that address human affairs--from sociology, philosophy, political science, and anthropology to the humanities in general--to understand their common ground. He probes the ways in which we investigate the meaning of individuality in a society for which individuals are not the agents of the activities in which they participate, and he develops a critical method for studying the relations among activities, objects, and situations.
9781439910177
Social sciences. Humanities. Humanities. Social sciences.