Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How it Can Succeed Again - Hardcover

Bent Flyvbjerg, Translated By Steven Sampson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521772680 ISBN 13: 9780521772686

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2001

Synopsis

New approach demonstrating how social science can be successful, focusing on context, values, and power.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"This is a book I have been waiting for for a long time. It opens up entirely new perspectives for social science by showing us that abandoning the aspiration to be like natural science is the beginning of wisdom about what we can and ought to be doing instead. It is a landmark book that deserves the widest possible reading and discussion." ROBERT N. BELLAH, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY

"Flyvbjerg, author of Rationality and Power: Democracy In Practice, an innovative, fine-grained and civically-engaged study of local power in Denmark, here reflects, in accessible and pleasurable prose, on large, challenging questions: What, fundamentally, makes social science different from natural science? Why is it relatively so poor in producing cumulative and predictive theories? What kinds of knowledge should it seek and with what methods? His answers, drawing on Nietzsche, Foucault, Bourdieu and others, are worth the close attention of those predisposed to reject them out of hand." STEVEN LUKES, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

"Excellent ... It would be hard to find a more synthetic and clear exposition of ideas, theories, and methods that lie at the core of an activist social science. I know of no better introduction to this subject than Making Social Science Matter." DAVYDD J. GREENWOOD, GOLDEN SMITH PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY, CORNELL UNIVERSITY

"Flyvbjerg writes with great passion and exemplary clarity ... will be of special interest to planners, providing valuable guidelines for practice-based research." JOHN FRIEDMANN, DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING, UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521772680
• ISBN 13: 9780521772686
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 216