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Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences
Abstract
This book is an expanded and revised edition of the author's critically acclaimed volume Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. In twenty-six succinct chapters, Jon Elster provides an account of the nature of explanation in the social sciences. He offers an overview of key explanatory mechanisms in the social sciences, relying on hundreds of examples and drawing on a large variety of sources - psychology, behavioral economics, biology, political science, historical writings, philosophy and fiction. Written in accessible and jargon-free language, Elster aims at accuracy and clarity while eschewing formal models. In a provocative conclusion, Elster defends the centrality of qualitative social sciences in a two-front war against soft (literary) and hard (mathematical) forms of obscurantism.
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Citations
Cited by
Unpacking black boxes: mechanisms and theory building in evaluation
Astbury, B., & Leeuw, F. L. (2010) · American Journal of Evaluation · doi:10.1177/1098214010371972 · Cited by 850
A mutualistic approach to morality: The evolution of fairness by partner choice
Baumard, N., André, J.-B., & Sperber, D. (2013) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x11002202 · Cited by 668
Political Feasibility: A Conceptual Exploration
Gilabert, P., & Lawford-Smith, H. (2012) · Political Studies · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00936.x · Cited by 481
Business models for sustainability from a system dynamics perspective
Abdelkafi, N., & Täuscher, K. (2016) · Organization & Environment · doi:10.1177/1086026615592930 · Cited by 443
Gerring, J. (2012) · British Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1017/s0007123412000130 · Cited by 435
Metadata
- Authors
- Elster, J.
- Venue
- Cambridge University Press eBooks
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- Published
- 2007-04-30
- OpenAlex
- W4254678884
- Cited by
- 849
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 51.40
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
