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Showing 1 - 14 of 14 matches in All Departments
For the past twenty years, noted sociologist Andrew Abbott has been developing what he calls a processual ontology for social life. In this view, the social world is constantly changing-making, remaking, and unmaking itself, instant by instant. He argues that even the units of the social world-both individuals and entities-must be explained by these series of events rather than as enduring objects, fixed in time. This radical concept, which lies at the heart of the Chicago School of Sociology, provides a means for the disciplines of history and sociology to interact with and reflect on each other. In Processual Sociology, Abbott first examines the endurance of individuals and social groups through time and then goes on to consider the question of what this means for human nature. He looks at different approaches to the passing of social time and determination, all while examining the goal of social existence, weighing the concepts of individual outcome and social order. Abbott concludes by discussing core difficulties of the practice of social science as a moral activity, arguing that it is inescapably moral and therefore we must develop normative theories more sophisticated than our current naively political normativism. Ranging broadly across disciplines and methodologies, Processual Sociology breaks new ground in its search for conceptual foundations of a rigorously processual account of social life.
Abbott helps social science students discover what questions to ask. This exciting book is not about habits and the mechanics of doing social science research, but about habits of thinking that enable students to use those mechanics in new ways, by coming up with new ideas and combining them more effectively with old ones. Abbott organizes his book around general methodological moves, and uses examples from throughout the social sciences to show how these moves can open new lines of thinking. In each chapter, he covers several moves and their reverses (if these exist), discussing particular examples of the move as well as its logical and theoretical structure. Often he goes on to propose applications of the move in a wide variety of empirical settings. The basic aim of Methods of Discovery is to offer readers a new way of thinking about directions for their research and new ways to imagine information relevant to their research problems. Methods of Discovery is part of the Contemporary Societies series.
In this detailed history of the Chicago School of Sociology, Andrew
Abbott investigates central topics in the emergence of modern
scholarship, paying special attention to "schools of science" and
how such schools reproduce themselves over time. What are the
preconditions from which schools arise? Do they exist as rigid
rules or as flexible structures? How do they emerge from the
day-to-day activities of academic life such as editing journals and
writing papers?
In July 2009, the American Journal of Sociology (AJS) began publishing book reviews by an individual writing as Barbara Celarent, professor of particularity at the University of Atlantis. Mysterious in origin, Celarent's essays taken together provide a broad introduction to social thinking. Through the close reading of important texts, Celarent's short, informative, and analytic essays engaged with long traditions of social thought across the globe from India, Brazil, and China to South Africa, Turkey, and Peru...and occasionally the United States and Europe. Sociologist and AJS editor Andrew Abbott edited the Celarent essays, and in Varieties of Social Imagination, he brings the work together for the first time. Previously available only in the journal, the thirty-six meditations found here allow readers not only to engage more deeply with a diversity of thinkers from the past, but to imagine more fully a sociology and a broader social science for the future.
Today's researchers have access to more information than ever before. Yet the new material is both overwhelming in quantity and variable in quality. How can scholars survive these twin problems and produce groundbreaking research using the physical and electronic resources available in the modern university research library? In Digital Paper, Andrew Abbott provides some much-needed answers to that question. Abbott tells what every senior researcher knows: that the research process in such materials is not a mechanical, linear process, but a thoughtful and adventurous journey through a non-linear world. He breaks library research down into seven basic and simultaneous tasks: design, search, scanning/browsing, reading, analyzing, filing, and writing. He moves the reader through the phases of research, from confusion to organization, from vague idea to polished result. He teaches how to evaluate data and prior research; how to follow a trail to elusive treasures; how to organize a project; when to start over; when to ask for help. He shows how an understanding of scholarly values, a commitment to hard work, and the flexibility to change direction combine to enable the researcher to turn a daunting mass of found material into an effective paper or thesis. More than a mere how-to manual, Abbott's guidebook helps teach good habits for acquiring knowledge, the foundation of knowledge worth knowing. Those looking for ten easy steps to a perfect paper may want to look elsewhere. But serious scholars, who want their work to stand the test of time, will appreciate Abbott's unique, forthright approach and relish every page of Digital Paper.
What do variables really tell us? When exactly do inventions occur?
Why do we always miss turning points as they transpire? When does
what doesn't happen mean as much, if not more, than what does?
Andrew Abbott considers these fascinating questions in "Time
Matters," a diverse series of essays that constitutes the most
extensive analysis of temporality in social science today. Ranging
from abstract theoretical reflection to pointed methodological
critique, Abbott demonstrates the inevitably theoretical character
of any methodology.
In "The System of Professions" Andrew Abbott explores central questions about the role of professions in modern life: Why should there be occupational groups controlling expert knowledge? Where and why did groups such as law and medicine achieve their power? Will professionalism spread throughout the occupational world? While most inquiries in this field study one profession at a time, Abbott here considers the system of professions as a whole. Through comparative and historical study of the professions in nineteenth- and twentieth-century England, France, and America, Abbott builds a general theory of how and why professionals evolve.
In this vital new study, Andrew Abbott presents a fresh and daring
analysis of the evolution and development of the social sciences.
"Chaos of Disciplines" reconsiders how knowledge actually changes
and advances. Challenging the accepted belief that social sciences
are in a perpetual state of progress, Abbott contends that
disciplines instead cycle around an inevitable pattern of core
principles. New schools of thought, then, are less a reaction to an
established order than they are a reinvention of fundamental
concepts.
Today's researchers have access to more information than ever before. Yet the new material is both overwhelming in quantity and variable in quality. How can scholars survive these twin problems and produce groundbreaking research using the physical and electronic resources available in the modern university research library? In Digital Paper, Andrew Abbott provides some much-needed answers to that question. Abbott tells what every senior researcher knows: that the research process in such materials is not a mechanical, linear process, but a thoughtful and adventurous journey through a non-linear world. He breaks library research down into seven basic and simultaneous tasks: design, search, scanning/browsing, reading, analyzing, filing, and writing. He moves the reader through the phases of research, from confusion to organization, from vague idea to polished result. He teaches how to evaluate data and prior research; how to follow a trail to elusive treasures; how to organize a project; when to start over; when to ask for help. He shows how an understanding of scholarly values, a commitment to hard work, and the flexibility to change direction combine to enable the researcher to turn a daunting mass of found material into an effective paper or thesis. More than a mere how-to manual, Abbott's guidebook helps teach good habits for acquiring knowledge, the foundation of knowledge worth knowing. Those looking for ten easy steps to a perfect paper may want to look elsewhere. But serious scholars, who want their work to stand the test of time, will appreciate Abbott's unique, forthright approach and relish every page of Digital Paper.
For the past twenty years, noted sociologist Andrew Abbott has been developing what he calls a processual ontology for social life. In this view, the social world is constantly changing--making, remaking, and unmaking itself, instant by instant. He argues that even the units of the social world--both individuals and entities--must be explained by these series of events rather than as enduring objects, fixed in time. This radical concept, which lies at the heart of the Chicago School of Sociology, provides a means for the disciplines of history and sociology to interact with and reflect on each other. In Processual Sociology, Abbott first examines the endurance of individuals and social groups through time and then goes on to consider the question of what this means for human nature. He looks at different approaches to the passing of social time and determination, all while examining the goal of social existence, weighing the concepts of individual outcome and social order. Abbott concludes by discussing core difficulties of the practice of social science as a moral activity, arguing that it is inescapably moral and therefore we must develop normative theories more sophisticated than our current naively political normativism. Ranging broadly across disciplines and methodologies, Processual Sociology breaks new ground in its search for conceptual foundations of a rigorously processual account of social life.
What do variables really tell us? When exactly do inventions occur?
Why do we always miss turning points as they transpire? When does
what doesn't happen mean as much, if not more, than what does?
Andrew Abbott considers these fascinating questions in "Time
Matters," a diverse series of essays that constitutes the most
extensive analysis of temporality in social science today. Ranging
from abstract theoretical reflection to pointed methodological
critique, Abbott demonstrates the inevitably theoretical character
of any methodology.
In this vital new study, Andrew Abbott presents a fresh and daring
analysis of the evolution and development of the social sciences.
"Chaos of Disciplines" reconsiders how knowledge actually changes
and advances. Challenging the accepted belief that social sciences
are in a perpetual state of progress, Abbott contends that
disciplines instead cycle around an inevitable pattern of core
principles. New schools of thought, then, are less a reaction to an
established order than they are a reinvention of fundamental
concepts.
In this detailed history of the Chicago School of Sociology, Andrew
Abbott investigates central topics in the emergence of modern
scholarship, paying special attention to "schools of science" and
how such schools reproduce themselves over time. What are the
preconditions from which schools arise? Do they exist as rigid
rules or as flexible structures? How do they emerge from the
day-to-day activities of academic life such as editing journals and
writing papers?
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