Robert Prus provides an erudite treatise of the recurring theoretical and methodological debates now evident throughout the social sciences. These debates challenge the status of theory and method more generally and more forcefully than any in the last half century. Yet within them, old theoretical tensions between determinism and human agency arise anew. For Prus, any theory about the human condition must assume that human beings are active, reflective agents who construct their lives and, in turn, this assumption must systematically inform any method designed to study them.
This is a book about people. It focuses on the human quest for intersubjectivity (or mutuality of understanding) and the development of meaningful activity amidst the ambiguities entailed in the human struggle for existence. More specifically, it considers the implications of intersubjectivity and the social essences of action for those in the social sciences.Published by.
State University of New York Press, Albany.
© 1996 State University of New York.
