Leon J. Goldstein

Bio: Leon J. Goldstein is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Philosophy education & Philosophy of sport. The author has an hindex of 12, co-authored 32 publications receiving 3457 citations.

Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation

Abstract: Leading contemporary philosopher Johann Michel offers an innovative reflection on the human being. The book presents an interdisciplinary study that engages philosophy, sociology and anthropology, offering a systematic analysis of the phenomenon of interpretation. Social scientists explain events by identifying reasons and causes. Occasionally they weave a series of events into a historical narrative. What is entailed in each kind of explanation? What form of explanation is adequate for the social sciences? In this lucid book, Gurpreet Mahajan surveys each of the major forms of inquiry—hermeneutic understanding, narrative, reasonaction, and causal explanation—to examine how each method changes our perceptions of social reality. The third edition includes a new Preface that discusses some recent shifts in the conceptualization of the social sciences. Paul Ricoeur, widely regarded as the foremost living phenomenologist, has helped to make the term hermeneutics a household word. His writings cover a wide range of topics, from the history of philosophy, literary criticism, and aesthetics, to metaphysics, ethics, religion, semiotics, linguistic structuralism, and psychoanalysis. Ricoeur's most important works, including Freedom and Nature, Freud and Philosophy, The Conflict of Interpretations, Time and Narrative, The Symbolism of Evil, and Oneself as Another, have attracted enthusiastic readers from many disciplines and from every major cultural milieu across the surface of the globe. Hermeneutic philosophies of social science offer an approach to the philosophy of social science foregrounding the human subject and including attention to history as well as a methodological reflection on the notion of reflection, including the intrusions of distortions and prejudice. Hermeneutic philosophies of social science offer an explicit orientation to and concern with the subject of the human and social sciences. Hermeneutic philosophies of the social science represented in the present collection of essays draw inspiration from Gadamer’s work as well as from Paul Ricoeur in addition to Michel de Certeau and Michel Foucault among others. Special attention is given to Wilhelm Dilthey in addition to the broader phenomenological traditions of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger as well as the history of philosophy in Plato and Descartes. The volume is indispensible reading for students and scholars interested in epistemology, philosophy of science, social social studies of knowledge as well as social studies of technology. Recognition, though it figures profoundly in our understanding of objects and persons, identity and ideas, has never before been the subject of a single, sustained philosophical inquiry. This work seeks to develop nothing less than a proper hermeneutics of mutual recognition. Examines Dilthey's hermeneutics, aesthetics, practical philosophy, and philosophy of history, showing how his work remains relevant for philosophers today. For some two centuries, scholars have wrestled with questions regarding the nature and logic of history as a discipline and, more broadly, with the entire complex of the \"human sciences, \" with include theology, philosophy, history, literature, the fine arts, and languages. The fundamental issue is whether the human sciences are a special class of studies with a specifically distinct object and method or whether they must be subsumed under the natural sciences. German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey dedicated the bulk of his long career to there and related questions. His Introduction to the Human Sciences is a pioneering effort to elaborate a general theory of the human sciences, especially history, and to distinguish these sciences radically from the field of natural sciences. Though the Introduction was never completed, it remains one of the major statements of the topic. Together with other works by Dilthey, it has had a substantial influence on the recognition and human sciences as a

International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

Abstract: Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.

A pedagogy of Multiliteracies Designing Social Futures

Abstract: THE NEW LONDON GROUP 1 In this article, the New London Group presents a theoretical overoiew of the connec­ tions between the changing social environment facing students and teachers and a new approach to literacy pedagogy that they call "multiliteracies. " The authors argue that the multiplicity of communications channels and increasing cultural and lin­ guistic diversity in the world today call for a much broader view of literacy than portrayed by traditional language-based approaches. Multiliteracies, according to the authors, overcomes the limitations of traditional approaches by emphasizing how ne­ gotiating the multiple lingustic and cultural differences in our society is central to the pragmatics of the working, civic, and private lives of students. The authors maintain that the use of multiliteracies approaches to pedagogy will enable students to achieve the authors' twin goals for literacy learning: creating access to the evolving language of work, power, and community, and fostering the critical engagement necessary for them to design their social futures and achieve success through fulfilling employment. If it were possible to define generally the mission of education, one could say that its fundamental purpose is to ensure that all students benefit from learning in ways that allow them to participate fully in public, community, and economic life. Literacy pedagogy is expected to play a particularly important role in ful­ filling this mission. Pedagogy is a teaching and learning relationship that creates the potential for building learning conditions leading to full and equitable social participation. Literacy pedagogy has traditionally meant teaching and learning

Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence

Abstract: This book demonstrates that people's basic values and beliefs are changing, in ways that affect their political, sexual, economic, and religious behaviour. These changes are roughly predictable: to a large extent, they can be interpreted on the basis of a revised version of modernisation theory presented here. Drawing on a massive body of evidence from societies containing 85 percent of the world's population, the authors demonstrate that modernisation is a process of human development, in which economic development gives rise to cultural changes that make individual autonomy, gender equality, and democracy increasingly likely. The authors present a model of social change that predicts how the value systems play a crucial role in the emergence and flourishing of democratic institutions - and that modernisation brings coherent cultural changes that are conducive to democratisation.

Engaged Scholarship: A Guide for Organizational and Social Research

Abstract: 1. Engaged Scholarship in a Professional School 2. Philosophy of Science Underlying Engaged Scholarship 3. Formulating the Research Problem 4. Building a Theory 5. Process and Variance Models 6. Designing Variance Studies 7. Designing Process Studies 8. Communicating and Using Research Knowledge 9. Practicing Engaged Scholarship