Product Description

This book provides a clear introduction to key philosophical and epistemological issues in the social sciences, to both positivist and interpretative methodologies through comparing contemporary debates surrounding social change.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #135903 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

From the Publisher
The social sciences are currently going through a period of acute upheaval as they struggle to come to terms with the pace of social change at the beginning of a new century. The five 2nd editions of the Routledge/Open University series Understanding Social Change form part of a bold and innovative educational project. Written in conjunction with the Open University foundation course in the social sciences, they offer students beginning study in this area access to fresh perspectives and new ways of explaining the changes they see around them every day.

Each book is designed to give the greatest possible support to students' learning - whether alone or in groups.

Key text features include:

* activities with comments
* short, stop and think questions
* marginal notes of key concepts
* reading extracts and newspaper extracts
* boxed case studies
* bullet point summaries
* annotated further reading
* photos, maps and cartoons.

From the Back Cover
Knowledge and the Social Sciences takes as its point of departure the claims that all forms of knowledge, the social sciences included, must be seen and understood in their social context. It argues that the social sciences both describe and transform their object of study, though rarely in ways that social scientists intend, and introduces students to the key epistemological and philosophical terms and issues essential for further study in the social sciences.

In a radical and yet lucid and practical introduction to ways of thinking and knowing in the social sciences this text investigates:

* the origins and consequences of different types of knowledge in substantive areas of social change: medical practice, religious beliefs, and the environment
* whether there is a decline in public trust of expert knowledge systems
* whether we are entering a knowledge society, a fragmented post-modern society, or a risk society.

Customer Reviews

OPEN UNIVERSITY SOCIAL SCIENCES
This is a good book to have as an extra study tool for the OU course of Social Sciences. Naturally the course itself provides sufficient written material to complete the course, but a little extra help from Open University with this book as an additional study aid can't go wrong.