Humane Politics and Methods of Inquiry

by de Sola Pool,Ithiel

• ISBN13: 9781560004011
• ISBN10: 1560004010
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781351514293
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-09-30
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Ithiel de Sola Pool was a distinguished scholar of the political process, and one of the most original thinkers in the development of an integrated social science. This volume focuses upon his contributions to the development of research methods that deepen our understanding of human behavior.The book is divided into five parts treating the analysis of communications, computer simulation, forecasting, network theory, and the social sciences in political contexts. The first part considers the problems and possibilities of analysis raised by the unprecedented quantity of data made available by widespread and improved communications technology; what should be counted and how should inferences be made. Part two explores computer simulation in the study of presidential election patterns and how it can provide in-depth analyses of crisis situations in history. Part three focuses on strategies for predicting the future of international politics and methods to forecast the impacts of new communications technologies, while part four offers a rigorous analysis of domestic and global contact networks and the so-called "small world" phenomenon. Part five is concerned with external challenges to the use of social science to create more humane politics, including the question of value neutrality, ideology, "deconstructive" critical theory, and threats by government to the health of universities. In a concluding essay Lloyd Etheredge draws upon Pool's work to discuss several new ways in which the methods treated in this volume can be applied to contemporary social change.

Table of Contents

Preface	xiii
Acknowledgments	xv
Introduction	xvii
Part I: The Analysis of Communications
Editor's Introduction	3	(4)
Symbols, Meanings, and Social Science	7	(12)
Content Analysis and the Intelligence Function	19	(24)
Scratches on Social Science: Images, Symbols, and Stereotypes	43	(22)
Part II: Computer Simulation
Editor's Introduction	61	(4)
The Simulmatics Project	65	(20)
A Postscript on the 1964 Election	85	(14)
The Kaiser, the Tsar, and the Computer: Information Processing in a Crisis	99	(28)
Part III: Forecasting
Editor's Introduction	123	(4)
The International System in the Next Half-Century	127	(8)
The Art of the Social Science Soothsayer	135	(20)
Foresight and Hindsight: The Case of the Telephone	155	(34)
Part IV: Network Theory
Editor's Introduction	187	(2)
Contacts and Influence	189	(68)
Part V: Social Science in Political Contexts
Editor's Introduction	249	(8)
Some Facts About Values	257	(12)
What Ferment? A Challenge for Empirical Research	269	(6)
How Powerful Is Business?	275	(12)
Human Subjects Regulations on the Social Sciences	287	(14)
What's Next? The Intellectual Legacy of Ithiel de Sola Pool	301	(16)
Lloyd S. Etheredge
Index	317