[movimenti.bicocca] Problems, Methods, and Theories in the S…

The Flight from Reality in the Human Sciences
Ian Shapiro





Paper | 2007 | $19.95 / £11.95
Cloth | 2005 | $24.95 / £15.95
240 pp. | 6 x 9



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In this captivating yet troubling book, Ian Shapiro offers a searing
indictment of many influential practices in the social sciences and
humanities today. Perhaps best known for his critique of rational
choice theory, Shapiro expands his purview here. In discipline after
discipline, he argues, scholars have fallen prey to inward-looking
myopia that results from--and perpetuates--a flight from reality.

In the method-driven academic culture we inhabit, argues Shapiro,
researchers too often make display and refinement of their techniques
the principal scholarly activity. The result is that they lose sight
of the objects of their study. Pet theories and methodological
blinders lead unwelcome facts to be ignored, sometimes not even
perceived. The targets of Shapiro's critique include the law and
economics movement, overzealous formal and statistical modeling,
various reductive theories of human behavior, misguided conceptual
analysis in political theory, and the Cambridge school of
intellectual history.

As an alternative to all of these, Shapiro makes a compelling case
for problem-driven social research, rooted in a realist philosophy of
science and an antireductionist view of social explanation. In the
lucid--if biting--prose for which Shapiro is renowned, he explains
why this requires greater critical attention to how problems are
specified than is usually undertaken. He illustrates what is at stake
for the study of power, democracy, law, and ideology, as well as in
normative debates over rights, justice, freedom, virtue, and
community. Shapiro answers many critics of his views along the way,
securing his position as one of the distinctive social and political
theorists of our time.

Ian Shapiro is the Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale
University, where he also serves as Henry R. Luce Director of the
Yale Center for International and Area Studies. Among his many books
are Containment [Princeton], The State of Democratic Theory and, with
Michael J. Graetz, Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing
Inherited Wealth (Princeton); and The Moral Foundations of Politics.

Reviews:

"In these probing essays . . . Ian Shapiro offers a disturbing
portrait of contemporary social science. . . . [He] calls for
academics to reconnect the academic enterprise to the real world by
returning to problem-driven social inquiry--an urging that scholars
of international relations and other fields should indeed ponder."--
G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs

"Have you ever had difficulty talking to a political scientist about
politics? If so, this book is for you. In a searing indictment of
over-professionalization in the humanities and social sciences, Yale
University's Ian Shapiro argues that across disciplines, academics
have abandoned truth, so to speak, for method. . . . The Flight from
Reality lays the foundation for reengaging scholarship with the
historical world, by reminding us of its necessary role in public
life."--Tikkun Magazine

"[B]oth political scientists and politicians can learn something from
Shapiro's thoughtful reflections on the state of his discipline."--
Alan Wolff, Chronicle of Higher Education

"Shapiro's book is an important addition to recent debates about the
proper practice of social inquiry. Its central thesis is undeniably
important, and its engagements with influential thinkers and ideas is
consistently stimulating. It therefore merits the careful attention
of anyone who is interested in the state of the human sciences
today."--Keith Topper, Ethics

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Table of Contents:



Acknowledgments ix

INTRODUCTION: Fear of Not Flying 1
CHAPTER ONE: The Difference That Realism Makes: Social Science and
the Politics of Consent by Ian Shapiro and Alexander Wendt 19
CHAPTER TWO: Revisiting the Pathologies of Rational Choice by Donald
Green and Ian Shapiro 51
CHAPTER THREE: Richard Posner's Praxis 100
CHAPTER FOUR: Gross Concepts in Political Argument 152
CHAPTER FIVE: Problems, Methods, and Theories in the Study of
Politics: Or, What's Wrong with Political Science and What to Do
about It 178
CHAPTER SIX: The Political Science Discipline: A Comment on David
Laitin 204

Index 213