[Tps] Tps/ECPR Policy Network - Making Political Science Matter

[Navdeep Mathur]

Dear Colleague.

In 2004, the journal Politics & Society invited David Laitin and I to
discuss the question of what political science is and can hope to be
as an academic discipline. Sanford Schram and Brian Caterino decided
to invite more scholars to join the debate, and I thought it might
interest you to know that next week the result will be published as
the book Making Political Science Matter by NYU Press.

Below, please find links to the book's Table of Contents and first
chapter. You may also link directly to the publisher's site for the
book at:
http://www.nyupress.org/books/Making_Political_Science_Matter-products_id-4862.html

Please feel free to forward this mail to interested colleagues.
Apologies for any cross postings.

Kind regards.

Bent
---------
Bent Flyvbjerg, Professor Dr.
Dept. of Development and Planning
Aalborg University, 9220 Aalborg, Denmark
Phone: +45 96358379, Fax: +45 98153788
Email: flyvbjerg at plan.aau.dk or bentflyvbjerg at stofanet.dk (please use only one)
Homepage: http://flyvbjerg.plan.aau.dk




New Book Alert



Making Political Science Matter


Debating Knowledge, Research, and Method

Edited by Sanford F. Schram and Brian Caterino

288 pages

Paperback $24.00

Hardcover $70.00

View the Table of Contents.

Read the Introduction.

"A significant and thoughtful discussion of key issues in the
philosophy of social science, one designed to encourage a richer
variety of methodological work in political science."

—Kristen Renwick Monroe, editor of Perestroika! The Raucous Rebellion
in Political Science

"A bold call to rethink political science. The authors imagine a
discipline that challenges power, challenges society, and challenges
the ways we think. Making Political Science Matter is a wise, erudite,
broad-ranging, sometimes witty gauntlet tossed before contemporary
scholarship. It is more than a book, it is a movement."

—James A. Morone, author of Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in
American History

Making Political Science Matter brings together a number of prominent
scholars to discuss the state of the field of Political Science. In
particular, these scholars are interested in ways to reinvigorate the
discipline by connecting it to present day political struggles.
Uniformly well-written and steeped in a strong sense of history, the
contributors consider such important topics as: the usefulness of
rational choice theory; the ethical limits of pluralism; the use (and
misuse) of empirical research in political science; the present-day
divorce between political theory and empirical science; the connection
between political science scholarship and political struggles, and the
future of the discipline. This volume builds on the debate in the
discipline over the significance of the work of Bent Flyvbjerg, whose
book Making Social Science Matter has been characterized as a
manifesto for the Perestroika Movement that has roiled the field in
recent years.

Contributors include: Brian Caterino, Stewart Clegg, Bent Flyvbjerg,
Mary Hawkesworth, Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, Gregory J. Kasza, David
Kettler, David D. Laitin, Timothy W. Luke, Theodore R. Schatzki,
Sanford F. Schram, Peregrine Schwartz-Shea, Corey S. Shdaimah, Roland
W. Stahl, and Leslie Paul Thiele.

Purchase This Book

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838 Broadway, 3rd flr, New York, NY 10003-4812