Making Political Science Matter: Debating Knowledge, Research, and Method

Sanford F. Schram · Brian Caterino

Nov 2006 · NYU Press

About this ebook

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.

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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.