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Magic, Science and Society - Alex Dennis

Magic, Science and Society

(Autor)

Buch | Softcover
134 Seiten
2025
Routledge (Verlag)
978-1-032-78758-9 (ISBN)
CHF 67,95 inkl. MwSt
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This book investigates how the ‘rationality debate’ has developed from E.E. Evans-Pritchard’s study of Azande magic, through Peter Winch’s argument that there can be no such thing as a social science, across the arguments about the status of science in the 1970s and 1980s, to the more recent epistemological and ontological turns.
Magic, Science and Society investigates the way the ‘rationality debate’ has developed over the last century, from E.E. Evans-Pritchard’s study of Azande magic, through Peter Winch’s argument that there can be no such thing as a social science, across the arguments about the proper status of science in the 1970s and 1980s, to the ‘epistemological’ and ‘ontological’ turns of the early twenty-first century.

Different people have different understandings of what is rational: some practise magic, some orientate to legal convention and tradition and others defer to science and logic. Starting with anthropological studies of witchcraft, and working through to contemporary debates about epistemology and ontology in social science, this book systematically examines the ways key questions about these issues have been framed and answered. These include:



Can ‘magic’ be real, either for members of the cultures that practise it or more generally?
How can we arbitrate between different types of rationality?
Is science a benchmark for studying other forms of rationality or just a cultural practice like any other?
What are the implications of these issues for the social sciences themselves?

This book will be of interest to anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers of the social sciences and science studies practitioners.

Alex Dennis is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Sheffield, UK, where he also leads the BA Sociology programme. His research explores theories of rationality, ethnomethodology and conversational analysis, ethnographic methodologies, workplace and organisational studies, sociologies of knowledge, social interaction and social order perspectives. He is the author of Making Decisions about People: The Organisational Contingencies of Illness (Routledge, 2001), co-author of Perspectives in Sociology (Sixth Edition, Routledge, 2015) and co-editor of Human Agents and Social Structures (2010).

Introduction 1. Understanding magic 2. The implications of magic 3. A social science? 4. The ‘rationality debate’ 5. Redefining rationality 6. Is that what you want ‘cause that’s what’ll happen Conclusion: Opportunities lost

Erscheint lt. Verlag 19.12.2025
Reihe/Serie Routledge Advances in Sociology
Verlagsort London
Sprache englisch
Maße 156 x 234 mm
Themenwelt Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie Volkskunde
Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie
ISBN-10 1-032-78758-9 / 1032787589
ISBN-13 978-1-032-78758-9 / 9781032787589
Zustand Neuware
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