Beyond relativism : Raymond Boudon, cognitive rationality, and critical realism / Cynthia Lins Hamlin.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [142]-148) and index.

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1. The action paradigm: bringing the agent back inches Interactionist and determinist paradigms of action. Nominalism, rationalism and individualism. Structure, agency and methodological individualism. The concept of structure and its relation to theoretical structures -- 2. Linking structure and agency in Boudon's substantive analyses. The early phase: the sociology of education. The intermediate phase: perverse effects and social order. The most recent phase: the study of ideas -- 3. Beyond Homo sociologicus and Homo economicus: a complex theory of rationality. Utilitarianism and the social sciences. The sceptical approach towards rationality. The classical and the utilitarian approaches and some attempts to correct them.

"Beyond Relativism reflects the current identity crisis in the social sciences. The relativist consensus, exemplified through the ascendancy of postmodernism, holds that knowledge and moral values are so embedded in concrete social and cultural settings that any objective account of either knowledge or morality has been rendered meaningless. This questions the relevance of the social sciences.".

"Raymond Boudon's theory of cognitive rationality represents a refreshing alternative to this view. Drawing on the assumption that mental contents and discourse are not completely shaped by society but rest on cognitive processes of active and reflexive subjects, his controversial approach suggests that social scientific knowledge is reducible neither to cultural and linguistic contexts nor to particular pragmatic interests. Can the theory of cognitive rationality simultaneously transcend relativism and overcome the limitations traditionally associated with methodological individualism?".

"Cynthia Lins Hamlin, in her challenging new work, persuasively argues that critical realism, by recognising both the agents' and social structure's causal powers and liabilities, offers the theory of cognitive rationality a powerful argument against the relativism that springs from the conflation of social reality and our ideas about it. Beyond Relativism is an important book for sociologists and for all those concerned with the methodology, and philosophy, of social science."--BOOK JACKET.