Description
This book constitutes a practical guide to the important skills of both theorizing and writing in social scientific scholarship, focusing on the importance of identifying relations between concepts that are useful for explaining social entities and of producing a text that convincingly advances the theory that has been constructed. Taking as its point of departure the distinction between the research process and the reporting process – between clarifying one’s ideas to oneself and writing to express these ideas clearly to others – this volume concentrates on writing when theorizing as a way of thinking, emphasizing the series of relations that exist between ontology, epistemology and rhetoric upon which successful theoretical writing depends.
Richly illustrated with practical examples, the book is divided into two parts, the first of which presents techniques for theorizing based upon visualized and logical connections of ideas, concepts and empirical patterns in both free and systematic ways, and the second part providing techniques for structuring and presenting arguments in essays, papers, articles or books.As such, Methods for Social Theory offers a toolbox for the development and presentation of social thought, which will prove essential for students and teachers across the social sciences.
Table of Contents
List of Tables and Figures
Preface
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. Theorizing and Writing Social Theory
Part I Tools for Theorizing in Social Science
Chapter 2. Basics of Displays
Chapter 3. The Use of Displays in Theorizing
Chapter 4. Basics of Property Spaces
Chapter 5. Reduction of Property Spaces in Theorizing
Chapter 6. Expansion of Property Spaces in Theorizing
Chapter 7. The Model of Argumentation: Chain of Reasoning, Chains of Argument and Arguments
Chapter 8. Examples of Using the Model of Argumentation
Chapter 9. Theorizing and Writing
References
Appendix: Truth Claims and Explanatory Claims – an Ontological Typology of Futures Studies
Index
