Academic literature on the topic 'Social Work|Psychology, General|Sociology, General'

The nature of sociology and psychology is clarified accounting for the achievements of modern philosophy of science. The general scientific significance of these sciences is determined in accordance with said clarification. Any scientific theory functions, in particular, in the form of group and individual theories. In this connection, the general scientific significance of sociology and psychology becomes evident. The status of sociology is primarily determined by the study of group theories that have general scientific significance. The status of psychology is determined by individual theories. Its priority in this area is also indisputable. Therefore, same as sociology, psychology presents a science of auxiliary nature. Auxiliary sciences are necessary for the development of the content of the independent sciences. Unfortunately, the mainstream tendency is that both sociology and psychology are considered independent branches of science. In this regard, the status of sociology is determined by a certain class of social phenomena, and the status of psychology is determined by mental processes.

Clinical social work's tie with psychoanalytic theory has been a mixed blessing. Self-psychology theory, however, has potential to enhance person-in-environment treatment. The author explains self-psychology theory and discusses ways to integrate it with social work practice.

The article of a well-known German social theorist Friedrich Tenbruck, which once provoked a heated debate among Weberian scholars, analyzes the works of Max Weber in terms of their thematic structure and general heuristics. The first section reconstructs the genesis and content of the idea that Economy and Society was the main work of the classic German scholar of sociology, an idea that was initially made popular among scholars by Marianne Weber. The second part is devoted to disenchantment as a fundamental process in the history of religion, the discovery of which is traditionally attributed to Weber’s famous work The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism. The third part analyzes the broad conceptual field used by Max Weber to study Western rationalization. The fourth part critically analyzes the thesis of Western rationalization as Weber’s main, life-long topic, the thesis which was originally introduced by Reinhard Bendix. In the fifth part, an attempt is made to determine the exact place of Economic Ethics of the World Religions in the overall structure of Weber’s work. In the sixth part, the processes of Western rationalization are placed within the general context of Weber’s conception of the universal history understood as a field of tension between ideas and interests. The final section emphasizes the importance of Weber’s writings on the sociology of religion, with Economic Ethics of the World Religions in particular as the core of his entire mature sociology. It also poses the question of the problematic nature of various Weberian notions for contemporary sociology, and points out the persisting validity of Weber’s sociological diagnosis of the time for the analysis of current problems in the perspective of a world-wide historical significance.

In this article, we aim to explore the potential consequences of an approach to the theme of work that lies between culture psychology and work psychology. We argue that culture and work, considered as entities, have suffered from a process of mutual distancing over the course of history. Our first argument is to show the fallacy underlying this distancing, by arguing that culture is not an entity, but rather a process by which we use signs as tools to mediate our relationship with the environment and to regulate our own action in irreversible time. We also argue that work is a sign-mediated activity that occurs through culture. Most importantly, we advance the urgency of considering work as a cultural phenomenon, whose specific role is to make culture by getting things transformed into objects. The second argument we put forward is that work is a meaning-making complex. We further develop this concept by claiming that work should be analysed at the general level of the semiotic principles of meaning-making.

This paper is intended to draw the main theoretical lines of the notion of value, in order to avoid some flaws in the quantitative surveys on values as well as in some qualitative studies of value judgements. Through a number of redefinitions based on a pragmatic approach, inspired not only by Dewey’s concept of ‘valuation’ but also by the new French pragmatic sociology and by the pragmatist trend in linguistics, it tries to specify the conditions under which sociology can address the notion of ‘value’ while avoiding their reduction to scholarly supports for morals or normative guides for action and evaluation. Meanwhile, it tries to construct a unified concept of value that would work for all the concerned disciplines: not only sociology but also economics, psychology, anthropology, and even philosophy.

The article is an attempt at the reverse engineering of conceptual architecture and logic of David Bloor's Strong Programme (SP) in the sociology of scientific knowledge via explicating key resources and interpretative techniques for constructing it. To do this I show how problematic is a conventional interpretation of the SP as a radicalization of Kuhn's theory of science and as a sociologization of epistemology. This problematization allows me to put anew three questions concerning the SP. In what sense it is post-positivist? In what sense it is sociological? Does it belong to social epistemology? To answer these questions I set myself four tasks. First, Bloor’s theoretical position concerning the Kuhn-Popper debate is located. Second, I point to and present Mary Hesse’s network model of science (NM) as a crucial theoretical source for the early SP. Third, I analyze in detail how Bloor interpreted and appropriated NM. Finally, I show what theoretical and methodological effects this interpretation had for the SP as presented in 1976. The general layout of the conceptual architecture of SP is modeled on the Hesse’s NM. It combines the principle of correspondence and that of coherence and sees the language of science as a network of predicates and laws segmented by contingent and empirical boundaries and not a priori logical divisions between theory and observation. But Bloor creatively interprets and appropriates NM by the double move of generalization and specification. Whereas Hesse’s NM refers to the functioning of scientific language, in Bloor’s hands, it comes to describe human learning in general inscribed in psychological processes (perception and thinking). As a result, SP is based on a form of psychological empiricism that sees science as a two-storied building. The first floor (perception) ensures correspondence and the second one (thinking) provide conditions of coherence. SP of 1976 is a specific model for the sociological segmentation of the second floor.