San Antonio College Library

"Lost in the raging debate over the validity of social construction is the question of what, precisely, is being constructed. Facts, gender, quarks, reality? Is it a person? An object? An idea? A theory? Each entails a different notion of social construction, Ian Hacking reminds us. His book explores an array of examples to reveal the deep issues underlying contentious accounts of reality."--Jacket.

The Social Construction of Reality introduced the term social construction into the social sciences. The central concept of The Social Construction of Reality is that persons and groups interacting in a social system create, over time, concepts or mental representations of each other's actions, and that these concepts eventually become habituated into reciprocal roles played by the actors in relation to each other. When these roles are made available...

Mind in Action explores recent developments in the sociology of knowledge, and highlights the shift away from traditional?particularly Cartesian?conceptions of person, mind and social behavior. The author argues that a new "epistemic" sociology has emerged in which the central focus is the social construction of the intelligibility of phenomena, in everyday practical affairs as well as within the conduct of scientific inquiry. This approach is documented...

Forthright and wryly humorous, philosopher Susan Haack deploys her analytic skills on some of the most highly charged cultural and social debates of recent years. Relativism, multiculturalism, feminism, affirmative action, pragmatisms old and new, science, literature, the future of the academy and of philosophy itself - all come under her keen scrutiny in Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate. Haack's goal in these essays is to get beyond fads, fashions,...

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"In this book Peter Burke adopts a socio-cultural approach to examine the changes in the organisation of knowledge in Europe from the invention of printing to the publication of the French Encyclopedie. The book opens with an assessment of different sociologies of knowledge from Mannheim to Foucault and beyond, and goes on to discuss intellectuals as a social group and the social institutions (especially universities and academies) which encouraged...

"In Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star explore the role of categories and standards in shaping the modern world. They investigate a variety of classification systems, including the International Classification of Diseases, the Nursing Interventions Classification, race classification under apartheid in South Africa, and the classification of viruses and of tuberculosis. The authors emphasize the role of invisibility in the...

"In The Future of Management, world-renowned business sage Gary Hamel argues that organizations need bold management innovation now more than ever. The current management model - centered on control and efficiency - no longer suffices in a world where adaptability and creativity drive business success." "In his most provocative book to date, Hamel takes aim at the legacy beliefs preventing twenty-first-century companies from surmounting new challenges....

Unhiddenness and Being; the Question Concerning the Essence of Untruth -- An Interpretation of Plato's Theaetetus with Respect to the Question of the Essence of Untruth -- Preliminary Considerations -- The Question Concerning the Essence of [characters not reproducible]: Man's Attack on the Self-evidences of His Self-understanding -- Fundamental Content of the Greek Concept of Knowledge: Fusion of Know-how and Seeing Having-Present of That Which Is...