Research Catalog

Title

Human organizations and social theory : pragmatism, pluralism, and adaptation / Murray J. Leaf.

Author

Leaf, Murray J.

Publication

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2009], ©2009.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xii, 244 pages : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

"In the 1930s, George Herbert Mead and other leading social scientists established the modern empirical analysis of social interaction and communication, enabling theories of cognitive development, language acquisition, interaction, government, law and legal processes, and the social construction of the self. However, they could not provide a comparably empirical analysis of human organization, one that could show how interactive communication actually came about. They could say how people communicate to establish mutual relationships but not what they communicate." "The theory in this book fills in the missing analysis of organizations and specifies the pragmatic analysis of communication with an adaptation of information theory to ordinary unmediated communications. In the process it brings together four major streams of modern empirical social analysis: the developmental-social psychology associated with Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky; the cultural-ecological analyses associated with Esther Boserup; the language and culture tradition identified with Benjamin Wharf, Edward Sapir, and Paul Friedrich; and the more empirical streams of economic theory identified with Frank Knight, Paul Samuelson, and Theodore Schultz."--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

• Social structure
• Organization

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [225]-236) and index.

Contents

Note on Orthography -- 1. Empirical Starting Points -- 2. Skepticism, Pragmatism, and Kant -- 3. New Tools -- 4. Social Idea Systems -- 5. Technical Information Systems -- 6. Organizations -- 7. Groups and Institutions -- 8. Adaptation -- 9. Conclusion.

ISBN

• 9780252034244 (cloth : alk. paper)
• 0252034244 (cloth : alk. paper)

LCCN

• 2008045153
• 40016801467

OCLC

• ocn251193066
• 251193066
• SCSB-5479185

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries