ABSTRACT

This groundbreaking and innovative text addresses the deep ontological and epistemological commitments that underpin conventional positivist methods and then demonstrates how "method" can be understood in much broader and more interesting ways.

Drawing on a broad range of philosophical and methodological theory as well as a wide variety of artistic sources from fine art to cinema and from literature to the blues, leading contemporary thinker Michael Shapiro shows the reader how a more open understanding of the concept of method is rewarding and enlightening. His notion of ‘writing-as-method’ is enacted throughout the text and offers a stimulating alternative for students to positivist social science methods.

This is essential reading for all students and faculty with an interest in post-positivist methods.

chapter 1|32 pages

Philosophy, method and the arts

chapter 2|21 pages

The moralized economy in hard times

chapter 3|17 pages

The blues subject

Counter-memory, genre, and space

chapter 4|15 pages

Zones of justice

A philo-poetic engagement

chapter 5|14 pages

For an anti-fascist aesthetics

chapter 6|17 pages

The micro-politics of justice

Language, sense, and space

chapter 7|20 pages

A continuing violent cartography

From Guadalupe Hidalgo to contemporary border crossings

chapter 8|18 pages

The presence of war 1

"Here and Elsewhere"