Making Political Science Matter: Debating Knowledge, Research, and Method [Paperback]

Sanford Schram (Editor), Brian Caterino (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0814740332 | ISBN-13: 978-0814740330 | Publication Date: November 27, 2006

Making Political Science Matter brings together a number of prominent scholars to discuss the state of the field of Political Science. In particular, these scholars are interested in ways to reinvigorate the discipline by connecting it to present day political struggles. Uniformly well-written and steeped in a strong sense of history, the contributors consider such important topics as: the usefulness of rational choice theory; the ethical limits of pluralism; the use (and misuse) of empirical research in political science; the present-day divorce between political theory and empirical science; the connection between political science scholarship and political struggles, and the future of the discipline. This volume builds on the debate in the discipline over the significance of the work of Bent Flyvbjerg, whose book Making Social Science Matter has been characterized as a manifesto for the Perestroika Movement that has roiled the field in recent years.

Contributors include: Brian Caterino, Stewart Clegg, Bent Flyvbjerg, Mary Hawkesworth, Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, Gregory J. Kasza, David Kettler, David D. Laitin, Timothy W. Luke, Theodore R. Schatzki, Sanford F. Schram, Peregrine Schwartz-Shea, Corey S. Shdaimah, Roland W. Stahl, and Leslie Paul Thiele.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“This edited collection offers and up-to-date and very readable discussion of knowledge, research, and method in the political sciences and social studies more generally, suitable for academics and doctoral students alike.”
-Thomas Ahrens,University of Warwick

“Articulates and debates the idea that academic work should be primarily concerned with addressing the largest and most immediate challenges faced by societies.”
-Urban Studies

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“Devotees of the perestroika movement will find many of the chapters reinforce their views of the field. . . . Recommended.”
-Choice

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“A significant and thoughtful discussion of key issues in the philosophy of social science, one designed to encourage a richer variety of methodological work in political science.”
-Kristen Renwick Monroe,editor of Perestroika! The Raucous Rebellion in Political Science

“A bold call to rethink political science. The authors imagine a discipline that challenges power, challenges society, and challenges the ways we think. Making Political Science Matter is a wise, erudite, broad-ranging, sometimes witty gauntlet tossed before contemporary scholarship. It is more than a book, it is a movement.”
-James A. Morone,author of Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History

About the Author

Sanford F. Schram teaches social theory and social policy in the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College where he also teaches research methods for undergraduate political science majors. He is the author of several books including Words of Welfare: The Poverty of Social Science and the Social Science of Poverty which won the Michael Harrington Award from the American Political Science Association and Welfare Discipline: Discourse, Governance, and Globalization.

Brian Caterino is an independent scholar and has taught at the University of Rochester, the New School, and the State University of New York, Brockport. He lives in Rochester, New York.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: NYU Press (November 27, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814740332
• ISBN-13: 978-0814740330
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,421,286 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born in Newark, NJ, graduated from St. Lawrence University, and received my Ph.D. from Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy which is part of the University at Albany, the State University of New York. I have been married to Joan Schram since 1973. Our two sons are Ryan, a professor of anthropology at the University of Sydney, and Jack, a filmmaker who lives in New York City. Over the years, we have lived in the Adirondacks of Northern New York, Madison, Wisconsin, the Twin Cities of Minnesota, Hawaii Kai on Oahu, and in Haverford, Pennsylvania, where since 1997 I have taught social theory and policy in the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College.