It can be challenging to introduce the philosophy of social science (PoS) to students in the social sciences. Noting the lack of literature providing guidance to the prospective PoS teacher, this paper outlines several pieces of advice on how to engage social science undergraduates in the subject. This advice centres on showing the relevance of the PoS in academia and beyond, reducing complexity and presenting only a few contending PoS perspectives. It is also proposed to use textbooks with caution or (...) avoiding them altogether, illustrating how PoS assumptions are embedded in contemporary social research and showing the connection between the PoS on one hand and research questions, methods, and theory on the other. Finally, the importance of showing students how they can make use of the PoS in their own work and teaching the subject in a ‘hands on’ manner is emphasized. (shrink)

Social network analysis (SNA) is an increasingly popular approach that provides researchers with highly developed tools to map and analyze complexes of social relations. Although a number of network scholars have explicated the assumptions that underpin SNA, the approach has yet to be discussed in relation to established philosophies of science. This article argues that there is a tension between applied and methods-oriented SNA studies, on the one hand, and those addressing the social-theoretical nature and implications of networks, on the (...) other. The former, in many cases, exhibits positivist tendencies, whereas the latter incorporate a number of assumptions that are directly compatible with core critical realist views on the nature of social reality and knowledge. This article suggests that SNA may be detached from positivist social science and come to constitute a valuable instrument in the critical realist toolbox. (shrink)

What does it entail to study the climate crisis from – or consistently with – a critical realist perspective? The paper addresses this question in three steps. First, it considers the boundaries of critical realism in relation to climate crisis research. In this context it identifies climate science as a field that in important respects resonates implicitly with critical realism. Conversely, a book by human ecologist Andreas Malm is introduced as an example of a work that, while sympathetic to critical (...) realism, in key respects contradicts core features of it. Second, to illustrate what an analysis of the crisis informed by critical realism can look like, the paper brings into focus the main causes of the climate crisis – including the capitalist growth imperative, neoliberalism, and consumer culture. Finally, the status quo project, the green growth project and the degrowth project are identified as fundamentally different ways of approaching the climate crisis. (shrink)