The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory

This book examines the practice of social science from several angles, like turning a sea shell slowly in your hand, looking at the curves and openings and aspects. The author accomplishes this by looking at social science through the eyes of empirical, phenomenological, critical, and analytical social scientists.Sound boring? It isn't -- and you can learn from each perspective. You can also learn why there is no one right approach. Some questions fit better into one framework, some into another. Any social scientist who weds him/herself to a given approach is wearing blinders. This book removes those limitations. Ideologies become tools for social examination. This book should be the starting point for any social science student.

Not very many people seem to read this book, which is a shame. In my opinion, this is a book that every serious academic social scientist should read. Bernstein takes on the difficult but extremely important--as well as largely neglected--question of how the social sciences differ from the natural sciences. The book is divided into four parts, which deal roughly deal with naturalist theories, linguistic theories, phenomenology, and critical theory in that order. He has an extraordinary gift for making clear even the most subtle ideas and manages to deftly summarize material that otherwise would be extremely difficult. In the process, he gets to the heart of complex ideas and neatly illuminates the essential problem each has.