Explaining Society

Berth Danermark is Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology in the School of Health Sciences at the Swedish Institute for Disability Research, Örebro University. He is the co-author of Interdisciplinarity and Wellbeing: A Critical Realist General Theory of Interdisciplinarity and co-editor of The Experience of Hearing Loss: Journey Through Aural Rehabilitation. Mats Ekström is Professor in the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He is the co-editor of Talking Politics in Broadcast Media: Media Talk and Political Elections in Europe and America and The Mediated Politics of Europe: A Comparative Study of Discourse. Jan Ch. Karlsson is Professor of Organization in the Faculty of Business, Languages and Social Sciences at Østfold University College, Norway. He is the author of Organizational Misbehaviour in the Workplace, the co-author of Methods for Social Theory and Gender Segregation: Divisions of Work in Post-Industrial Welfare States, and the co-editor of Commitment to Work and Job Satisfaction and Flexibility and Stability in Working Life.

1. Introduction

Part I: Introduction to Critical Realism

2. Science and Reality

3. Conceptual Abstraction and Causality

Part II: Methodological Implications

4. Social Structures and Human Agency

5. Generalization, Scientific Inference and Models for Explanatory Social Science

6. Theory in the Methodology of Social Science

7. Critical Methodological Pluralism – Intensive and Extensive Research Design and Interdisciplinarity

8. Social Science and Practice

9. Conclusion

Glossary

Index