In this innovative introduction to research in the social and human sciences, Valerie Malhotra Bentz and Jeremy J. Shapiro guide students through the maze of research traditions, cultures of inquiry, and epistemological frameworks that blanket the intellectual landscape. The goal of their approach is to help the researcher survive and flourish in today's often confusing multicultural, multiparadigm research environment where disciplines overlap. Postmodernism and multiculturalism have shattered the traditional unitary model of scientific research; and the emerging global, informational economy is producing new economic, social, cultural, and political problems and new research questions. Their solution is mindful inquiry-empowering the researcher both psychologically and philosophically by putting the researcher, rather than research techniques, at the center of the research process. The mindful inquirer uses awareness of self-personal, social, and historical - to shape the research project or dissertation and keep it expressive and responsible to the traditions of scholarly research. While grounding their own approach in a synthesis of critical theory, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and Buddhism, Bentz and Shapiro explain the forces that have produced the current epistemological crisis and introduce the reader to the underlying logic, rather than the detailed methods and techniques, of 10 cultures of inquiry-ethnography, quantitative behavioral science, phenomenology, action research, hermeneutics, evaluation research, feminist research, critical social science, historical-comparative research, and theoretical research. Mindful Inquiry in Social Research not only clarifies conceptual and intellectual traditions in research but also puts researchers squarely in the investigative saddle, able to choose, justify, and explain the intellectual framework and personal rationale of their research. For many students, beginning researchers, and scholarly practitioners, Mindful Inquiry in Social Research will provide clarity, grounding, and good preparation for a challenging research task such as a dissertation, thesis, major paper, or professional research project. While helping the researcher survive epistemological diversity, it will also help turn the research project into a positive contribution to the researcher's life and personal development, rather that a detour or a hindrance.

Knowledge, communication, action - these are the concepts central to all of Habermas's thought. As a philosopher, he is concerned with the rational connection of these concepts. As a sociologist, he is prepared to analyze with care the distortion of human interaction caused by existing social and political institutions.

Herbert Marcuse's Negations is both a radical critique of capitalist modernity and a model of materialist dialectical thinking. In a series of essays, originally written in the period stretching from the 1930s to 1960s, Marcuse takes up the presupposed categories that have, and continue to, ground thought and action in our administered society: liberalism, industrialism, individualism, hedonism, aggression. This book is both a testament to a great thinker and a still vital strand of thought in the comprehension and critique of the modern organized world. It is essential reading for younger scholars and a radical reminder for those steeped in the tradition of a critical theory of society. With a brilliance of conception combined with an insistence on the material conditions of thought and action, this book speaks both to the particular contents engaged and to the fundamental grounds of any critique of organized modernity.

Universities must transmit technically exploitable knowledge. That is, they must meet an industrial society's need for qualified new generations and at the same time be concerned with the expanded reproduction of education itself. In addition, universities must not only transmit technically exploitable knowledge, but also produce it. This includes both information flowing from research into the channels of industrial utilization, armament, and social welfare, and advisory knowledge that enters into strategies of administration, government, and other decision-making powers, such as private enterprises. Thus, through instruction and research the university is immediately connected with functions of the economic process.

"For those concerned with the relationships between thought and action, KNOWLEDGE AND HUMAN INTERESTS will quickly be recognized as a brilliant book -- and a bold outline for a new social theory." (Times Literary Supplement)

In this innovative introduction to research in the social and human sciences, Valerie Malhotra Bentz and Jeremy J. Shapiro guide students through the maze of research traditions, cultures of inquiry, and epistemological frameworks that blanket the intellectual landscape. The goal of their approach is to help the researcher survive and flourish in today's often confusing multicultural, multiparadigm research environment where disciplines overlap. Postmodernism and multiculturalism have shattered the traditional unitary model of scientific research; and the emerging global, informational economy is producing new economic, social, cultural, and political problems and new research questions. Their solution is mindful inquiry-empowering the researcher both psychologically and philosophically by putting the researcher, rather than research techniques, at the center of the research process. The mindful inquirer uses awareness of self-personal, social, and historical - to shape the research project or dissertation and keep it expressive and responsible to the traditions of scholarly research.

While grounding their own approach in a synthesis of critical theory, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and Buddhism, Bentz and Shapiro explain the forces that have produced the current epistemological crisis and introduce the reader to the underlying logic, rather than the detailed methods and techniques, of 10 cultures of inquiry-ethnography, quantitative behavioral science, phenomenology, action research, hermeneutics, evaluation research, feminist research, critical social science, historical-comparative research, and theoretical research. Mindful Inquiry in Social Research not only clarifies conceptual and intellectual traditions in research but also puts researchers squarely in the investigative saddle, able to choose, justify, and explain the intellectual framework and personal rationale of their research.

For many students, beginning researchers, and scholarly practitioners, Mindful Inquiry in Social Research will provide clarity, grounding, and good preparation for a challenging research task such as a dissertation, thesis, major paper, or professional research project. While helping the researcher survive epistemological diversity, it will also help turn the research project into a positive contribution to the researcher's life and personal development, rather that a detour or a hindrance.