Meta-Theoretical Issues

Bibliographic Data

ID20041077
AuthorsD Marsh (0000-0002-3308-8585, corresponding author)
Year2010
Pages212-231
Publication date2010-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenueTheory And Methods In Political Science (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherMacmillan Education UK (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/978-0-230-36664-0_11
OpenAlexW2200601026
ISBN9780230366640
LanguageEN
Citations received15

This chapter deals with some of the key problems in social science. It is focused on the relationships between structure and agency, the material and the ideational and stability and change. These issues, here termed meta-theoretical issues, are clearly related for two reasons. Firstly, discussions about/positions on structure/agency and the material and the ideational are invariably invoked to explain stability and change, surely the most fundamental issue in social science. Secondly, positions on all these meta-theoretical issues are clearly related and, as I shall argue below, influenced by the particular author s ontological and epistemological starting point. This chapter is divided into four sections: initially I take up the second point above, examining how positions on structure and agency and the material and the ideational are related; and subsequently, I deal with each of the meta-theoretical issues in turn, outlining the key positions and crucial debates in the area

Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Social structure · Sociology · Structure and agency · Computer Science · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Critical Realism in Sociology · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy

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