Human Organizations and Social Theory

Pragmatism, Pluralism, and Adaptation

Murray J. Leaf

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9780252034244
• eBook ISBN:
  9780252091711
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Estudios de comunicación

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. The theory in this book fills in the missing analysis of organizations and specifies more precisely the pragmatic analysis of communication with an adaptation of information theory to ordinary unmediated communications. The study also provides the theoretical basis for understanding the success of pragmatically grounded public policies, from the New Deal through the postwar reconstruction of Europe and Japan to the ongoing development of the European Union, in contrast to the persistent failure of positivistic and Marxist policies and programs.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Orthography
• Figures
• Tables
• Introduction
• 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
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index