Methods for Social Theory

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. Richly illustrated with practical examples, the book is divided into two sections, the first of which presents techniques for theorizing based upon the connection of ideas, concepts and empirical patterns in both free and systematic ways, with the second section providing techniques for structuring and presenting arguments in essays, papers, articles or books.

'This book will be an indispensable and accessible guide for students and researchers in social theory. It provides analytical and practical tools for both theorizing and writing in a very pedagogical way. The book inspires to creative analyses and provides guidelines on how to bring order and systematics into an often complex research process. In short, this book is a vital contribution in constructing and presenting social theory.' - Professor Kristina Håkansson, Gothenburg University, Sweden 'This remarkable book explores the development and use of social theory in ways that have seldom been attempted before. Far from being an endeavour that only the minority can and should engage with, everyone, from students to professors can and should theorise. Indeed with the help of the (relatively simple) expedients and tools recommended in this book it should be easy to develop social theory and to use it in the presentation of research findings. Strongly recommended to students and indeed to fellow professionals this book embodies the message that making, developing and using concepts is and should be central to the practice of social science.' - Professor Stephen Ackroyd, Lancaster University, U.K

Autorentext

Jan Ch. Karlsson is Professor of Organization, Faculty of Business, Languages, and Social Sciences, Ostfold University College, Norway.

Ann Bergman is Professor of Working Life Science at Karlstad University, Sweden.

Inhalt

List of figures

List of tables

Preface

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 Theorizing and writing social theory

Social theory

Theorizing

Writing

Writing in the research process

Writing in the reporting process

Outline of the book

References

PART I Tools for theorizing in social science

Graphic representations

Displays and property spaces as preliminary endpoints

References

Chapter 2 Basics of displays

What is a display?

Building blocks of displays

Putting a display together

Summary

References

Chapter 3 The use of displays in theorizing

Theorizing by extending

Theorizing by mapping interaction

Stepwise theorizing

Summary

References

Chapter 4 Basics of property spaces

Constructing a property space

Hidden property spaces

Housekeeping

Labelling the types: terms

Developing existing terminology

Summary

References

Chapter 5 Reduction of property spaces in theorizing

Rescaling

Indexing

Logic reduction

Empirical reduction

Theoretical reduction

Pragmatic reduction

Summary

References

Chapter 6 Expansion of property spaces in theorizing

Substruction

More properties of existing dimensions

More dimensions

Combining property spaces

Inserting process arrows

Creating scales

Summary

References

PART II Tools for writing social science

References

Chapter 7 The Model of Argumentation: chain of reasoning, chains of argument and arguments

The rhetorical situation

Purpose

Persona

Audience

Tone

The subject matter

The model

Summary

References

Chapter 8 Examples of using the Model of Argumentation

The process of writing a social science text: an example

The (preliminarily) finished structure of a text: an example

The structure of Chapter 4, 'Basics of property spaces'

Constructing a property space

Housekeeping

Moving the model down one level

Summary

References

Chapter 9 Theorizing and writing

Research process and reporting process

Displays

Property spaces

Writing

Summary

References

Appendix: from Bergman, Ann, Jan Ch. Karlsson and Jonas Axelsson (2010) 'Truth Claims and Explanatory Claims an Ontological Typology of Futures Studies', Futures, 42(8): 85765

Index