Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences

· Cambridge University Press
3.5
2 reviews
Ebook
422
Pages
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About this ebook

This book is an expanded and revised edition of the author's critically acclaimed volume Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. In twenty-six succinct chapters, Jon Elster provides an account of the nature of explanation in the social sciences. He offers an overview of key explanatory mechanisms in the social sciences, relying on hundreds of examples and drawing on a large variety of sources - psychology, behavioral economics, biology, political science, historical writings, philosophy and fiction. Written in accessible and jargon-free language, Elster aims at accuracy and clarity while eschewing formal models. In a provocative conclusion, Elster defends the centrality of qualitative social sciences in a two-front war against soft (literary) and hard (mathematical) forms of obscurantism.

Ratings and reviews

3.5
2 reviews
A Google user
July 27, 2011
This book is a wonderful guide to understanding how to develop or evaluate explanations for social behavior. An educated layman will find the book very useful in evaluating research studies in the social sciences. This is not a book on social behavior so much as how to create a solid theory or research study to explain behavior and the limitations of various methodologies in developing a fully causal explanation of people's behavior.
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About the author

Jon Elster is Professor and Chaire de Rationalite et Sciences Sociales at the College de France. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, he is a recipient of fellowships from The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation, among many others. Dr Elster has taught at the University of Chicago and Columbia University and has held visiting professorships at many universities in the United States and in Europe. He is the author and editor of thirty-four books, most recently Closing the Books: Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective, Elementary Social Science from an Advanced Standpoint, and Retribution and Restitution in the Transition to Democracy.

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