Stephen P. Turner – författare

The triangular relationship between the social, the political, and the cultural has opened up social and political theory to new challenges. The social can no longer be reduced to the category of society, and the political extends beyond the traditional concerns of the nature of the state and political authority.This Handbook will address a range of issues that have recently emerged from the disciplines of social and political theory, focusing on key themes as opposed to schools of thought or major theorists. It is divided into three sections which address:the most influential theoretical traditions that have emerged from the legacy of the twentieth centurythe most important new and emerging frameworks of analysis todaythe major theoretical problems in recent social and political theoryThe Second edition is an enlarged, revised, and updated version of the first edition, which was published in 2011 and comprised 42 chapters. The new edition consists of 50 chapters, of which seventeen are entirely new chapters covering topics that have become increasingly prominent in social and political theory in recent years, such as populism, the new materialism, postcolonialism, Deleuzean theory, post-humanism, post-capitalism as well as older topics that were not covered in the first edition, such as Arendt, the gift, critical realism, anarchism. All chapters retained from the first edition have been thoroughly revised and updated.The Routledge International Handbook of Contemporary Social and Political Theory encompasses the most up-to-date developments in contemporary social and political theory, and as such is an essential research tool for both undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as researchers working in the fields of political theory, social and political philosophy, contemporary social theory, and cultural theory.

The triangular relationship between the social, the political, and the cultural has opened up social and political theory to new challenges. The social can no longer be reduced to the category of society, and the political extends beyond the traditional concerns of the nature of the state and political authority.This Handbook will address a range of issues that have recently emerged from the disciplines of social and political theory, focusing on key themes as opposed to schools of thought or major theorists. It is divided into three sections which address:the most influential theoretical traditions that have emerged from the legacy of the twentieth centurythe most important new and emerging frameworks of analysis todaythe major theoretical problems in recent social and political theoryThe Second edition is an enlarged, revised, and updated version of the first edition, which was published in 2011 and comprised 42 chapters. The new edition consists of 50 chapters, of which seventeen are entirely new chapters covering topics that have become increasingly prominent in social and political theory in recent years, such as populism, the new materialism, postcolonialism, Deleuzean theory, post-humanism, post-capitalism as well as older topics that were not covered in the first edition, such as Arendt, the gift, critical realism, anarchism. All chapters retained from the first edition have been thoroughly revised and updated.The Routledge International Handbook of Contemporary Social and Political Theory encompasses the most up-to-date developments in contemporary social and political theory, and as such is an essential research tool for both undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as researchers working in the fields of political theory, social and political philosophy, contemporary social theory, and cultural theory.

This book is the first account of the way in which Weber appropriated and modified sources in the legal tradition, in which he was trained, to construct his sociology. It leads directly to a new understanding of Weber's intent and his relations to the tradition of social and political theory. the book takes the reader into the heart of Weber's conceptualizations of action and social science, without ever giving the impression that these are rarefied and marginal issues. This is an important book for understanding the significance of one of the key sociologist's of the twentieth century.

The problem of the nature of values and the relation between values and rationality is one of the defining issues of twentieth-century thought and Max Weber was one of the defining figures in the debate. In this book, Turner and Factor consider the development of the dispute over Max Weber's contribution to this discourse, by showing how Weber's views have been used, revised and adapted in new contexts.The story of the dispute is itself fascinating, for it cuts across the major political and intellectual currents of the twentieth century, from positivism, pragmatism and value-free social science, through the philosophy of Jaspers and Heidegger, to Critical Theory and the revival of Natural Right and Natural Law. As Weber's ideas were imported to Britain and America, they found new formulations and new adherents and critics and became absorbed into different traditions and new issues.This book was first published in 1984.

The problem of the nature of values and the relation between values and rationality is one of the defining issues of twentieth-century thought and Max Weber was one of the defining figures in the debate. In this book, Turner and Factor consider the development of the dispute over Max Weber's contribution to this discourse, by showing how Weber's views have been used, revised and adapted in new contexts.The story of the dispute is itself fascinating, for it cuts across the major political and intellectual currents of the twentieth century, from positivism, pragmatism and value-free social science, through the philosophy of Jaspers and Heidegger, to Critical Theory and the revival of Natural Right and Natural Law. As Weber's ideas were imported to Britain and America, they found new formulations and new adherents and critics and became absorbed into different traditions and new issues.This book was first published in 1984.

This book collects case studies and theoretical papers on expertise, focusing on four major themes: legitimation, the aggregation of knowledge, the distribution of knowledge and the distribution of power. It focuses on the institutional means by which the distribution of knowledge and the distribution of power are connected, and how the problems of aggregating knowledge and legitimating it are solved by these structures. The radical novelty of this approach is that it places the traditional discussion of expertise in democracy into a much larger framework of knowledge and power relations, and in addition begins to raise the questions of epistemology that a serious account of these problems requires.

This book outlines a new account of the tacit, meaning tacit knowledge, presuppositions, practices, traditions, and so forth. It includes essays on topics such as underdetermination and mutual understanding, and critical discussions of the major alternative approaches to the tacit, including Bourdieu’s habitus and various practice theories, Oakeshott’s account of tradition, Quentin Skinner’s theory of historical meaning, Harry Collins’s idea of collective tacit knowledge, as well as discussions of relevant cognitive science concepts, such as non-conceptual content, connectionism, and mirror neurons. The new account of tacit knowledge focuses on the fact that in making the tacit explicit, a person is not, as many past accounts have supposed, reading off the content of some sort of shared and fixed tacit scheme of presuppositions, but rather responding to the needs of the Other for understanding.

First published in 1980, this book examines the nature of sociological explanation. The tactics of interpretive sociology have often remained obscure because of confusion over the nature of the evidence for interpretation and the nature of decisions among alternative interpretations. In providing an account of the problem of interpretive sociological claims, the author argues that there is rationality to interpretation. He also presents a fresh view of the relationship between qualitative and statistical claims and shows their complementary character. Dr. Turner's lucid and comprehensive analysis breaks new ground in its fundamental re-examination of the conceptual basis for "explaining" social behaviour. By its call for more rigourous conceptual sophistication in attempted explanations of social behaviour, this book will stimulate controversy and lively discussion among sociologists.

This Timely volume represents an attempt by leading practitioners in the field to think reflexively about the present state of social theory and its historical analogues, and to consider new directions opposed to the "classical" social theorists, as well as new uses of the classics. Social Theory and Sociology begins to address a problem that is salient for students as well as academics, namely, why and how does the legacy of social theory matter? What is the value of what we are learning? No attempt is made to dodge these tough questions and some very different answers are provided. Ranging from classic figures such ad Marx top the new theoritical approaches deriving from science and tehnology studies, this book represernts a multivoiced, radically diverse consideration of what "theroy" is all about now, at the end of the century. Social Theory and Socioloogy will be esentail reading for advanced undergraduates and above of social theory-primarily those studying sociology and cultural studies-thouhjh it is also relevant for those in other humanities and social science departments.

The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of the Social Sciences collects newly commissioned essays that examine fundamental issues in the social sciences.

This book presents the first analysis and critique of the idea of practice as it has developed in the various theoretical traditions of the social sciences and the humanities. The concept of a practice, understood broadly as a tacit possession that is 'shared' by and the same for different people, has a fatal difficulty, the author argues. This object must in some way be transmitted, 'reproduced', in Bourdieu's famous phrase, in different persons. But there is no plausible mechanism by which such a process occurs. The historical uses of the concept, from Durkheim to Kripke's version of Wittgenstein, provide examples of the contortions that thinkers have been forced into by this problem, and show the ultimate implausibility of the idea of the interpersonal transmission of these supposed objects. Without the notion of 'sameness' the concept of practice collapses into the concept of habit. The conclusion sketches a picture of what happens when we do without the notion of a shared practice, and how this bears on social theory and philosophy. It explains why social theory cannot get beyond the stage of constructing fuzzy analogies, and why the standard constructions of the contemporary philosophical problem of relativism depend upon this defective notion.

Normativity is what gives reasons their force, makes words meaningful, and makes rules and laws binding. It is present whenever we use such terms as ‘correct,' ‘ought,' ‘must,' and the language of obligation, responsibility, and logical compulsion. Yet normativists, the philosophers committed to this idea, admit that the idea of a non-causal normative realm and a body of normative objects is spooky. Explaining the Normative is the first systematic, historically grounded critique of normativism. It identifies the standard normativist pattern of argument, and shows how this pattern depends on circularities, assumptions about the unique correctness of preferred descriptions, problematic transcendental arguments, and regress arguments that end in mysteries. The book considers in detail a paradigm case: legal normativity as constructed by Hans Kelsen. This case exemplifies the problems with normativist arguments. But it also shows how normativism was constructed as an alternative to ordinary social science explanation. The normativist argument is that social science explanations themselves are forced to rely on normative conceptsÑminimally, on normative rationality and on a normative view of ‘concepts' themselves.Empathic understanding of the reasoning and meanings of others, however, can solve the regress problems about meaning and rationality that are central to the appeal of normativism. This account has no need for a parallel normative world, and has a surprising and revealing lineage in the history of philosophy, as well as a basis in neuroscience.

Normativity is what gives reasons their force, makes words meaningful, and makes rules and laws binding. It is present whenever we use such terms as ‘correct,' ‘ought,' ‘must,' and the language of obligation, responsibility, and logical compulsion. Yet normativists, the philosophers committed to this idea, admit that the idea of a non-causal normative realm and a body of normative objects is spooky. Explaining the Normative is the first systematic, historically grounded critique of normativism. It identifies the standard normativist pattern of argument, and shows how this pattern depends on circularities, assumptions about the unique correctness of preferred descriptions, problematic transcendental arguments, and regress arguments that end in mysteries. The book considers in detail a paradigm case: legal normativity as constructed by Hans Kelsen. This case exemplifies the problems with normativist arguments. But it also shows how normativism was constructed as an alternative to ordinary social science explanation. The normativist argument is that social science explanations themselves are forced to rely on normative conceptsÑminimally, on normative rationality and on a normative view of ‘concepts' themselves.Empathic understanding of the reasoning and meanings of others, however, can solve the regress problems about meaning and rationality that are central to the appeal of normativism. This account has no need for a parallel normative world, and has a surprising and revealing lineage in the history of philosophy, as well as a basis in neuroscience.

`This is a very fine text, a powerful piece of work that deserves to be read widely. The analysis is truly panoramic. It ranges across central concerns in the fields of social theory, political theory, and science studies and engages with and/or draws upon the ideas of key classical and contemporary thinkers, including Tocqueville, Weber, Schumpeter, Polyani, Habermas, Foucault, Schmitt and Beck' - Barry Smart, Professor of Sociology, University of Portsmouth

What are the political implications of 'expert' knowledge and especially scientific knowledge for liberal democracy? If knowledge is not evenly distributed upon what basis can the philosophy of equal rights be sustained?

This important book points to the crisis in knowledge in liberal democracies. This crisis, simply put, is that most citizens cannot understand, much less judge, the claims scientists make.

One response is the appointment of public commissions to provide conclusions for policy-makers to act upon. There are also `commissions from below', such as grass roots associations that quiz the limits of expert knowledge and power and make rival knowledge claims. Do these commissions represent a new stage in the development of liberal democracy? Or is it merely a pragmatic device of no political consequence.

The central argument of the book is that in a `knowledge society' in which specialized knowledge is increasingly important to politics, more has to be delegated because democratic discussion can't handle it. This limitation in the scope of liberal democracy threatens its fundamental character.

The book will be required reading in the fields of social theory, political theory and science studies.

`This is a very fine text, a powerful piece of work that deserves to be read widely. The analysis is truly panoramic. It ranges across central concerns in the fields of social theory, political theory, and science studies and engages with and/or draws upon the ideas of key classical and contemporary thinkers, including Tocqueville, Weber, Schumpeter, Polyani, Habermas, Foucault, Schmitt and Beck' - Barry Smart, Professor of Sociology, University of Portsmouth

What are the political implications of 'expert' knowledge and especially scientific knowledge for liberal democracy? If knowledge is not evenly distributed upon what basis can the philosophy of equal rights be sustained?

This important book points to the crisis in knowledge in liberal democracies. This crisis, simply put, is that most citizens cannot understand, much less judge, the claims scientists make.

One response is the appointment of public commissions to provide conclusions for policy-makers to act upon. There are also `commissions from below', such as grass roots associations that quiz the limits of expert knowledge and power and make rival knowledge claims. Do these commissions represent a new stage in the development of liberal democracy? Or is it merely a pragmatic device of no political consequence.

The central argument of the book is that in a `knowledge society' in which specialized knowledge is increasingly important to politics, more has to be delegated because democratic discussion can't handle it. This limitation in the scope of liberal democracy threatens its fundamental character.

The book will be required reading in the fields of social theory, political theory and science studies.

The rise of cognitive neuroscience is the most important scientific and intellectual development of the last thirty years. Findings pour forth, and major initiatives for brain research continue. The social sciences have responded to this development slowly--for good reasons. The implications of particular controversial findings, such as the discovery of mirror neurons, have been ambiguous, controversial within neuroscience itself, and difficult to integrate with conventional social science. Yet many of these findings, such as those of experimental neuro-economics, pose very direct challenges to standard social science. At the same time, however, the known facts of social science, for example about linguistic and moral diversity, pose a significant challenge to standard neuroscience approaches, which tend to focus on "universal" aspects of human and animal cognition. A serious encounter between cognitive neuroscience and social science is likely to be challenging, and transformative, for both parties. Although a literature has developed on proposals to integrate neuroscience and social science, these proposals go in divergent directions. None of them has a developed conception of social life. This book surveys these issues, introduces the basic alternative conceptions both of the mental world and the social world, and show how, with sufficient modification, they can be fit together in plausible ways. The book is not a "new theory " of anything, but rather an exploration of the critical issues that relate to the social aspects of cognition which expands the topic from the social neuroscience of immediate interpersonal interaction to the whole range of places where social variation interacts with the cognitive. The focus is on the conceptual problems produced by any attempt to take these issues seriously, and also on the new resources and considerations relevant to doing so. But it is also on the need for a revision of social theoretical concepts in order to utilize these resources. The book points to some conclusions, especially about how the process of what was known as socialization needs to be understood in cognitive science friendly terms. But there is no attempt to resolve the underlying issues within cognitive science, which will doubtless persist.

The rise of cognitive neuroscience is the most important scientific and intellectual development of the last thirty years. Findings pour forth, and major initiatives for brain research continue. The social sciences have responded to this development slowly--for good reasons. The implications of particular controversial findings, such as the discovery of mirror neurons, have been ambiguous, controversial within neuroscience itself, and difficult to integrate with conventional social science. Yet many of these findings, such as those of experimental neuro-economics, pose very direct challenges to standard social science. At the same time, however, the known facts of social science, for example about linguistic and moral diversity, pose a significant challenge to standard neuroscience approaches, which tend to focus on "universal" aspects of human and animal cognition. A serious encounter between cognitive neuroscience and social science is likely to be challenging, and transformative, for both parties. Although a literature has developed on proposals to integrate neuroscience and social science, these proposals go in divergent directions. None of them has a developed conception of social life. This book surveys these issues, introduces the basic alternative conceptions both of the mental world and the social world, and show how, with sufficient modification, they can be fit together in plausible ways. The book is not a "new theory " of anything, but rather an exploration of the critical issues that relate to the social aspects of cognition which expands the topic from the social neuroscience of immediate interpersonal interaction to the whole range of places where social variation interacts with the cognitive. The focus is on the conceptual problems produced by any attempt to take these issues seriously, and also on the new resources and considerations relevant to doing so. But it is also on the need for a revision of social theoretical concepts in order to utilize these resources. The book points to some conclusions, especially about how the process of what was known as socialization needs to be understood in cognitive science friendly terms. But there is no attempt to resolve the underlying issues within cognitive science, which will doubtless persist.

Cognitive Science and the Reconceptualization of Social Theory explores how core social science ideas can be naturalized and reconceptualized through the lens of cognitive science. It bridges the gap between emerging cognitive research and established social theory by demonstrating how concepts central to sociology and related fields can be understood in cognitive science terms. This book’s distinctive approach lies in its deep historical engagement with social science concepts, tracing their development from classical social theory through to contemporary debates. It examines the tensions between traditional computational approaches and newer 4E (embodied, embedded, enacted, extended) cognitive theories, while addressing why social sciences have been slow to engage with cognitive science. This book is aimed at scholars and postgraduate students working at the intersection of social science and cognitive science, including sociologists, philosophers, cognitive scientists, and researchers in emerging interdisciplinary fields like social neuroscience. It will particularly appeal to those seeking to understand how traditional social theory can engage with contemporary cognitive research without losing its conceptual richness.

This book is the first account of the way in which Weber appropriated and modified sources in the legal tradition, in which he was trained, to construct his sociology. It leads directly to a new understanding of Weber's intent and his relations to the tradition of social and political theory. the book takes the reader into the heart of Weber's conceptualizations of action and social science, without ever giving the impression that these are rarefied and marginal issues. This is an important book for understanding the significance of one of the key sociologist's of the twentieth century.

This book collects case studies and theoretical papers on expertise, focusing on four major themes: legitimation, the aggregation of knowledge, the distribution of knowledge and the distribution of power. It focuses on the institutional means by which the distribution of knowledge and the distribution of power are connected, and how the problems of aggregating knowledge and legitimating it are solved by these structures. The radical novelty of this approach is that it places the traditional discussion of expertise in democracy into a much larger framework of knowledge and power relations, and in addition begins to raise the questions of epistemology that a serious account of these problems requires.

This book outlines a new account of the tacit, meaning tacit knowledge, presuppositions, practices, traditions, and so forth. It includes essays on topics such as underdetermination and mutual understanding, and critical discussions of the major alternative approaches to the tacit, including Bourdieu’s habitus and various practice theories, Oakeshott’s account of tradition, Quentin Skinner’s theory of historical meaning, Harry Collins’s idea of collective tacit knowledge, as well as discussions of relevant cognitive science concepts, such as non-conceptual content, connectionism, and mirror neurons. The new account of tacit knowledge focuses on the fact that in making the tacit explicit, a person is not, as many past accounts have supposed, reading off the content of some sort of shared and fixed tacit scheme of presuppositions, but rather responding to the needs of the Other for understanding.

"An excellent guidebook through different approaches to social science measurement, including the all-important route-maps that show us how to get there."- Roger Jowell, City University

"In this wide-ranging collection of chapters, written by acknowledged experts in their fields, Outhwaite and Turner have brought together material in one volume which will provide an extremely important platform for consideration of the full range of contemporary analytical and methodological issues."- Charles Crothers, Auckland University of Technology

This is a jewel among methods Handbooks, bringing together a formidable collection of international contributors to comment on every aspect of the various central issues, complications and controversies in the core methodological traditions. It is designed to meet the needs of those disciplinary and nondisciplinary problem-oriented social inquirers for a comprehensive overview of the methodological literature. The text is divided into 7 sections:

Overviews of methodological approaches in the social sciencesCases, comparisons and theoryQuantification and experimentRationality, complexity and collectivityInterpretation, critique and postmodernityDiscourse constructionEngagement.

Edited by two leading figures in the field, the Handbook is a landmark work in the field of research methods. More than just a 'cookbook' that teaches readers how to master techniques, it will give social scientists in all disciplines an appreciation for the full range of methodological debates today, from the quantitative to the qualitative, giving them deeper and sharpen insights into their own research questions. It will generate debate, solutions and a series of questions for researchers to exploit and develop in their research and teaching.

The SAGE Handbook of Political Sociology offers a comprehensive and contemporary look at this evolving field of study. The focus is on political life itself and the chapters, written by a highly-respected and international team of authors, cover the core themes which need to be understood in order to study political life from a sociological perspective, or simply to understand the political world.  The two volumes are structured around five key areas: PART 1: TRADITIONS AND PERSPECTIVESPART 2: CORE CONCEPTSPART 03: POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES AND MOVEMENTSPART 04: TOPICSPART 05: WORLD REGIONSThis future-oriented and cross-disciplinary handbook is a landmark text for students and scholars interested in the social investigation of politics.