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Beyond Relativism

Raymond Boudon, Cognitive Rationality and Critical Realism

By Cynthia Lins Hamlin

Published November 22nd 2001 by Routledge – 168 pages

Series: Routledge Studies in Critical Realism

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Description

This book argues that critical realism offers the theory of cognitive rationality a real way of overcoming the limitations of methodological individualism by recognising both the agents' - and the social structure's - causal powers and liabilities. Cynthia Lins Hamlin persuasively argues that critical realism represents a better safeguard against the relativism which springs from the conflation of social reality and our ideas about it.

This is an important book for sociologists and anyone working in the social sciences, and for all those concerned with the methodology, and philosophy, of social science.

Author Bio

Cynthia Lins Hamlin is a lecturer in social theory at the Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil. She is currently the editor of the Brazilian journal Estudos de Sociologica