Display Full Text | Download Full Text
320.30 kB PDF file

Degree

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, Political Science (Arts and Sciences), 2008.

Abstract

This thesis examines the role of difference in methods and concepts in the social sciences. The first chapter presents a summarization and defense of two variants of pluralism, methodological and conceptual, in political science. These pluralisms suggest that there is value in engaging with ostensible incommensurabilities across subfields. The second and third chapters extend the analysis to the rest of the social sciences and show how two individuals, Amartya Sen and Avner Greif, may be seen as embodying some of the virtues of the two pluralisms. In the final chapter, the discussion of social scientific practice is tied to a theory of deliberative democracy; this results in a new vision of methodological discussions as a site of democratic deliberation and a new way of understanding democracy as a process of inquiry into one another's differences.

Subject Headings

Political science; Soil sciences

Keywords

methodological pluralism; conceptual pluralism; incommensurability; deliberative democracy; institutionalism; freedom

Committee / Advisors

Julie A. White (Advisor)
James Mosher (Committee Member)
Takaaki Suzuki (Committee Member)

Pages

98p.

Document number: ohiou1212757204
Permalink: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1212757204

This ETD has been downloaded 323 times (through March 2013)