The Explanation of Social Action

With a new preface by the author

John Levi Martin (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

424 Seiten

2021
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-760162-4 (ISBN)

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The Explanation of Social Action is a sustained critique of the conventional understanding of what it means to "explain" something in the social sciences. It makes the strong argument that the traditional understanding involves asking questions that have no clear foundation and provoke an unnecessary tension between lay and expert vocabularies. Drawing on the history and philosophy of the social sciences, John Levi Martin exposes the root of the problem as an attempt to counterpose two radically different types of answers to the question of why someone did a certain thing: first person and third person responses. The tendency is epitomized by attempts to explain human action in "causal" terms. Martin, instead of assuming that there is something fundamentally arbitrary about the cognitive schemes of actors, focuses on the nature of judgment. He argues that the most promising way forward to such a science of social aesthetics will involve a rigorous field theory. This paperback edition includes a new preface, in which Martin connects The Explanation of Social Action to deep neural networks that are important to the study of artificial intelligence and to the development of computational social science.

John Levi Martin is Florence Borchert Bartling Professor of Sociology at The University of Chicago. He is also the author of Thinking Through Theory and Social Structures, which was awarded the 2010 Theory Prize from the American Sociological Association.

Preface to the Paperback Edition
Preface
Chapter 1-Why Questions? What Explanations?
Chapter 2-Causality and Persons
Chapter 3-Authority and Experience
Chapter 4-The Grid of Perception
Chapter 5-Action In and On a World
Chapter 6-A Social Aesthetics
Chapter 7-Valence and Habit
Chapter 8-Fields and Games
Chapter 9-Explanations Explained
References
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	23.06.2021
Zusatzinfo	10 b/w line drawings
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	160 x 235 mm
Gewicht	608 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Empirische Sozialforschung
ISBN-10	0-19-760162-6 / 0197601626
ISBN-13	978-0-19-760162-4 / 9780197601624
Zustand	Neuware