Practical Knowledge: Applying the Social Sciences

By Nico Stehr

The status of the social sciences as knowledge presents two fundamental problems. The first is epistemological: In what sense is the subject of the social sciences known and knowable? The second, pragmatic: Can knowledge generated by the social sciences be applied, and with what consequences? In Practical Knowledge, Nico Stehr offers a major reassessment of the utility of social science knowledge. In reassessing the practical value of social science, Stehr examines a classic case of the application of social science on a grand scale: Keynesian economics. To what extent can the political, social, and economic policies pursued in Keynesian economics be related to Keynesian ideas as social science? Arguing for a reconception of the ways in which social scientific knowledge can be and is applied, this volume will be of great interest to a broad range of social scientists including social theorists, economic theorists, sociologists of knowledge, historians of the social sciences, and those involved in social policy. "This is one of the most insightful contemporary treatments of the potential for a pragmatic sociology--′sociology as enlightenment.′ It builds explicitly on Mannheim′s thoughts about a scientific politics, and draws widely on contemporary German theories of the action-praxis matrix. . . . Stehr′s vision is irrepressible." --Contemporary Sociology "An important first step to lure academic social science out of its present deadlock and to alter the widely shared perception of its deficits. Built around a case study of Keynes′ success in producing ′knowledge for practice,′ Stehr argues for the necessity of ′practical knowledge′ as a special kind of social science knowledge that takes its context of application into account. A pragmatic social science will thus have to become enriched not only in knowing its local contingencies, but in anticipating also the contingencies of its own societal use." --Helga Nowotny, University of Vienna "This thought-provoking little book is bucking a trend within social science theory. It has avoided the dead-end alley of post-modernist, post-structuralist and de-constructionist word games addressing the serious problems which constitute the crisis of social science in our time." --The Canadian Journal of Sociology

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803986998
• ISBN13: 9780803986992
• Release Date: July 1992
• Publisher: Sage Publications Ltd
• Length: 208 Pages