Background
The previously acquired understanding or knowledge that allows utterances, beliefs, and actions to have explicit meaning for us. The problem of the background has recently received philosophical attention with respect to meaning in language, knowledge in science, and objectivity in interpretation. Words and utterances presuppose an implicit and a holistic understanding of beliefs and practices. Observation and justification in the sciences function only against the background of shared paradigms of understanding acquired in scientific socialization. And the necessary reliance of any interpreter on her own prior understanding rules out the possibility of any neutral perspective in cultural interpretation. There is disagreement about whether the background is basically conceptual and symbolic in nature - and thus in principle explicable - or whether it is mainly practical and pre-propositional - and therefore can never be captured fully in theory.
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy http://www.xrefer.com
BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE
As used by ethnomethodologists refers to commonsense reasoning and to the way
that members of society, and sociologists as well, use background knowledge of
culture and social structure as an unstated source of guidance in their
reasoning. SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE The study of the social bases of what is
known, believed or valued both by individuals and society. The essential idea is
that knowledge itself, how it is defined and constituted, is a cultural product
shaped by social context and history. In this view knowledge cannot be treated
as a thing in itself, as an objective, universally true body of facts and
theory, but must be understood in the social context in which it originated. The
principal ideas of postmodernism are closely linked to this long tradition in
philosophy and the social sciences. See POSTMODERN / .
Drislane and Parkinson - Online
Dictionary
CONVERSATIONAL ANALYSIS
Also known as sequential analysis. One of three central themes that are the focus of ethnomethodology, the other two being mundane reasoning and membership categorization. Sociologists typically examine talk or conversation as a resource to learn something of people's attitudes, the ways people's lives are structured and how people differ from each other in their values and assumptions. The ethnomethodologist, on the other hand, treats talk or conversation as a topic to learn how ordinary members of society use properties of talk (eg: its sequential properties) in order to do things with words. A great deal of research has been done on the structure of turn taking, story telling and openings.
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
An important theme in post-modernism especially in writers like Michel
Foucault (1929-1984) for whom it is important to analyze how people talk about
the world around them. The central idea is that the way people talk about the
world does not reflect some objective truth about that world, but instead
reflects the success of particular ways of thinking and seeing. These ways of
thinking and seeing tend to become invisible, because they are simply assumed to
be truthful and right, and in this way people's thought processes themselves can
come to represent and reinforce particular regimes of power and coercion.
Drislane and Parkinson - Online
Dictionary
Discourse Theory
Despite propounding very different philosophies, both Michel Foucault and
Jürgen Habermas have contributed to heightening awareness of the study of
language in social enquiry. In particular, Foucault's book 'The Archaeology of
Knowledge' and Habermas' theory of communicative action highlight the
relationship between language and power. Although these authors theorise the
link in very different ways, discourse theory nevertheless develops and draws on
both schools of thought. It is at once avowedly post-Marxist and infused with
Foucault's theory of discourse formations. Contrary to Foucault's definition of
discourse, however, Laclau and Mouffe's concept incorporates that of ideology.
In turn, their attribution of a central role to words and their meanings as
indicators of power relations informs this study's approach to neo-nationalism
and its rhetorical expression.
Sutherland 2001
ETHNOMETHODOLOGY
A sociological theory developed by Harold Garfinkel and building on the
influence of phenomenologists such as Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz and more
recent linguistic philosophers. Roughly translated the term means the study of
people's practices or methods. There are three central strands to
ethnomethodology: mundane reason analysis, membership categorization and
conversational (or sequential) analysis. This is a micro-perspective and it does
not see the social world as an objective reality but as something that people
must build and rebuild constantly in their thoughts and actions. Rather than
treating ordinary members of society as ‘cultural dopes’, driven by society, it
tries to uncover the methods and practices that are used by people as they
create the taken-for-granted-world.
Drislane and Parkinson - Online
Dictionary
COMMONSENSE REASONING
A term used by ethnomethodologists, derived from Alfred Schutz (1899-1959),
referring to the practical or everyday reasoning used by members of society to
create and sustain a sense of social reality as being objective, factual,
predictable and external to themselves. Since the objectivity of the world as a
practical accomplishment is the focus of ethnomethodology this kind of reasoning
is a primary topic of investigation. Also referred to as mundane reasoning.
Drislane and Parkinson -
Online Dictionary
HEGEMONY
A concept of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) which refers to the
way that the political and social domination of the bourgeois class in
capitalist society is pervasively expressed not only in ideologies but in all
realms of culture and social organization. The comprehensive expression of the
values of class divided society in social life lends this form of society an
appearance of naturalness and inevitability that removes it from examination,
criticism and challenge. While arising in the analysis of a class divided
society the term is also used in discussion of a patriarchal society or a
colonial society.
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Parkinson - Online Dictionary
HEGEMONY OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE
Neubert and Macamo 2002
hermeneutics
The name of Hermes, the messenger of the Greek gods, gave rise to hermeneuein, 'to interpret', and hermeneutike (techne) is the 'art of interpretation'. It became important after the Reformation, when Protestants needed to interpret the Bible accurately. Medieval hermeneutics ascribed to the Bible four levels of meaning: literal, allegorical, tropological (moral), and anagogical (eschatological). But the Reformation insisted on literal or 'grammatical' exegesis and on the study of Hebrew and Greek. Modern hermeneutics falls into three phases.1. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), the great Protestant theologian and Plato scholar, gave in lectures, from 1819 on, a systematic theory of the interpretation of texts and speech. (Another Plato scholar, Friedrich Ast (1778-1841), had in 1808 published Elements of Grammar, Hermeneutics and Criticism.) The interpreter's aim is to 'understand the text at first as well as and then even better than its author': 'Since we have no direct knowledge of what was in the author's mind, we must try to become aware of many things of which he himself may have been unconscious, except in so far as he reflects on his own work and becomes his own reader.' A text is interpreted from two points of view: 'grammatical', in relation to the language in which it is written, and 'psychological', in relation to the mentality and development of the author. We cannot gain complete understanding of either of these aspects, since we cannot have complete knowledge of a language or a person: we 'move back and forth between the grammatical and the psychological sides, and no rules can stipulate exactly how to do this'. We cannot fully understand a language, a person, or a text, unless we understand its parts, but we cannot fully understand the parts unless we understand the whole. Thus at each level we are involved in a hermeneutical circle, a continual reciprocity between whole and parts; a significant 'text can never be understood right away ... every reading puts us in a better position to understand since it increases our knowledge'. (It is the range of relevant knowledge, not circularity alone, that precludes definitive interpretation. Our understanding of 'Hand me my clubs!' on a golf-course is circular, since only the whole utterance disambiguates 'hand' and 'clubs', but it is definitive and complete.)2. Schleiermacher's biographer, Dilthey, extended hermeneutics to the understanding of all human behaviour and products. Our understanding of an author, artist, or historical agent is not direct, but by way of analogies to our own experience. We relive past decisions, etc. in imaginative sympathy.3. Heidegger learned of hermeneutics from his theological training and from Dilthey. Theological hermeneutics considers the interpretation of ancient texts; Dilthey is concerned with understanding in the cultural, in contrast to the natural, sciences, and again mainly, if not exclusively, with the interpretation of the products of past societies. In Heidegger's Being and Time, hermeneutics acquires a deeper and wider sense. It is concerned with the interpretation of the being who interprets texts and other artefacts, who may become, but is not essentially, either a natural or a cultural scientist: the human being or Dasein. Heidegger's phenomenology is hermeneutical, rather than, like Husserl's, transcendental. Our approach to Dasein must be hermeneutical since the fundamental traits of Dasein and its 'world' are not, as Husserl supposed, on open display, but hidden, owing in part to their very familiarity, in part to Dasein's tendency to misinterpret and obscure its own nature and such features of itself as mortality. Understanding Dasein is more like interpreting a text overlaid by past misinterpretations (or penetrating the self-rationalizations of a neurotic) than studying mathematics or planetary motions. Hermeneutics no longer presents rules for, or a theory of, interpretation; it is the interpretation of Dasein. But hermeneutic phenomenology gives an account of understanding, since a central feature of Dasein is to understand itself and its environment, not in the sense of disinterested interpretation or of explicit assertion, but of seeing the 'possibilities' available to it, seeing a hammer, for example, as something with which to mend a chair: 'All pre-predicative simple seeing of the invisible world of the ready-to-hand is in itself already an "understanding - interpreting" seeing.' It is only because Dasein has such 'pre-understanding' that it can interpret alien texts and understand itself in an explicit philosophical way. Heidegger's later works rarely mention hermeneutics, but interpret poetic and philosophical texts in a more traditional sense. His hermeneutics differs from Derrida's: for Heidegger, words 'show' something beyond themselves, namely being, and we need to think about this, not simply about the text, in order to understand what is said. Being and Time influenced Gadamer, and Rudolf Bultmann's (1884-1976) demythologizing interpretation of the Bible.
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IDEOLOGY
An ideology is a flexible, adaptable, but internally coherent belief system
that offers a simple, interpretative explanation of society coupled with
practical measures for maintaining or revolutionising the political status
quo.
Sutherland 2001
IDEOLOGICAL HEGEMONY
A situation where a particular ideology (see definition) is pervasively
reflected throughout a society in all principal social institutions and
permeates cultural ideas and social relationships.
Drislane and Parkinson - Online
Dictionary
INDEXICALITY
As used by ethnomethodologists refers to the contextual nature of behaviour
and talk. Talk for example is indexical in the sense that it has no meaning
without a context or can take on various meanings dependent on the context. As
we construct talk or listen to talk we all must engage in the interpretive
process of constructing a context. With this context we give the talk a sense of
concreteness or definiteness. There is no way to avoid indexicality, however,
nor a way to remove it, since talk about context itself is also indexical. For
this reason constructing a sense of reality is an ongoing accomplishment of
social members.
Drislane and
Parkinson - Online Dictionary
life-world
The universally structured realm of beliefs, assumptions, feelings, values, and cultural practices that constitute meaning in everyday life. Critical of the classical theory of knowledge (Descartes to Kant), the concept of the life-world is first introduced as the insurmountable basis for scientific experience. Scientific theories are seen as 'idealized constructions' (Husserl), dependent on immediate sense-perception which itself, however, is part of the human everyday world that is taken for granted. Accordingly, the life-world as such is understood as the unproblematic and pre-scientific presupposition of any understanding and meaning, providing an implicit background of once explicitly held or intended and now 'sedimented' beliefs, assumptions, and practices. Whereas the life-world has first been conceptualized as the world of the subject (Husserl, Schütz), more recently its genuinely social character has been emphasized (Gadamer, Habermas). The Oxford Companion to Philosophy http://www.xrefer.com/entry.jsp?xrefid=552631&secid=
POSTMODERN
A difficult term to grasp and having somewhat different significance in
architecture, literary criticism and art than in the social sciences. In social
theory it is best seen as a rejection of central assumptions of the modern world
or of what has been described as the 'enlightenment project'. This project has
had at least two core beliefs. First is the assumption that modern society will
become more democratic and just because of our growing ability to rationally and
objectively understand the community's best interests. Second is the assumption
that scientists and social theorists hold a privileged viewpoint since they are
taken to operate outside of local interests or bias. Each of these assumptions
suggests the possibility of disinterested knowledge, universal truths and social
progress. The late twentieth century writings of Michel Foucault (1929-1984) and
Jean Francois Lyotard called these assumption into question. Foucault's work has
argued that knowledge and power are always intertwined and that the social
sciences, rather than empowering human actors, have made humans into objects of
inquiry and have subjected them to knowledge legitimated by the claims of
science. Similarly Lyotard has argued that social theory has always imposed
meaning on historical events (think of the writing of Marx) rather than
providing for the understanding of the empirical significance of events. This
rejection of the idea of social and intellectual progress implies that people
must accept the possibility of history having no meaning or purpose, abandon the
idea that we can know what is or is not true and accept that science can never
create and test theories according to universal scientific principles because
there is no unitary reality from which such principles can be established. We
are left living in a fragmented world with multiple realities, a suspicion of
science or authoritative claims and many groups involved in identity politics in
order to impose their reality on others. The clearest signs of a postmodern
approach to sociology can be found in social constructionism, ethnomethodology
and labeling theory.
Drislane
and Parkinson - Online Dictionary
PROFESSION
The sociology of work sees a number of occupations evolving over time and
becoming professions. All professions are thus occupations but not all
occupations are professions. A profession is an occupational group that is
largely self-regulating. Such a group has the legitimate authority (usually
delegated from government) to set its own standards for entrance, to admit new
members, to establish a code of conduct, to discipline members and it claims to
have a body of knowledge (achieved through education) which legitimizes its
autonomy and distinctiveness. Examples of professions would be physicians,
lawyers, clinical psychologists, or real estate agents. Other group, such as
nurses, police officers, etc. can be seen as having some of these attributes and
can be described as 'professionalizing' - in the process of becoming a
profession.
Drislane and
Parkinson - Online Dictionary
Representations
Korff 2002
OVERREPRESENTATION
A group that has a number of its members in some condition in greater numbers
than their population would suggest. If a group makes up 20% of the population
then a researcher might for example predict, other things being equal, that they
would represent 20% of offenders, victims and those in prison. For example, men
are overrepresented in prisons, as are Aboriginals. Women are overrepresented as
victims in sexual assault offences.
Drislane and Parkinson - Online
Dictionary
PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
An electoral system where the number of seats won is directly linked to the
number of votes cast for each party. Examples include Israel, Germany and, since
1996, New Zealand. In Germany, voters cast one ballot to elect a constituency
representative and one ballot for a party: parties must win at least 5% of the
vote before receiving an allocation of parliamentary seats. In Canada a 'simple
plurality system' is used where the individual receiving the largest number of
votes is elected in each constituency. This system leads to persistent
disproportion between seats won by parties and the votes cast for them. For
example in 1993, the Reform Party won 19% of the total vote and over fifty seats
while the Progressive Conservative Party, with just over 16% of the vote, gained
only two seats. It is suggested that in a federal system such as Canada,
proportional representation would further weaken the power of the central
government.
Drislane and
Parkinson - Online Dictionary
REFLEXIVITY
As used by ethnomethodologists the term means that an object or behaviour and
the description of this can not be separated one from the other, rather they
have a mirror-like relationship. Reflexivity and indexicality are properties of
behaviour, settings and talk which make the ongoing construction of social
reality necessary. Both of these properties question the objectivity of
accounts, descriptions, explanations, etc. An ethnographic description of a
setting is reflexive in that the description seeks to explain features of a
particular setting (eg: village life) but the setting itself is what is employed
to make sense of the description.
Drislane and Parkinson - Online
Dictionary
ACTION THEORY A sociological perspective that focuses on the individual as a subject and views social action as something purposively shaped by individuals within a context to which they have given meaning. This approach has its foundations in Max Weber's (1864-1920) ‘interpretive sociology’ which claims that it is necessary to know the subjective purpose and intent of the actor before an observer can understand the meaning of social action. Those sociologists who focus on ‘action’ tend to treat the individual as an autonomous subject, rather than as constrained by social structure and culture. As a subject, the individual is seen as exercising agency, voluntarism, giving meaning to objects and events and acting with intent. While Max Weber insisted on the power of society and historical context in giving shape to human action, some sociologists adopting action theory have been accused of neglecting the influence of social structure and culture on people's behaviour. Last updated 2002-09-26
BROKEN WINDOW (THEORY) The title of a 1982 article by criminologist James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. This simple theory argues that a broken window left unrepaired will make a building look uncared for or abandoned and soon attract vandals to break all the other windows. If this is so, then prevention of crime will be accomplished by steps like painting over graffitti, keeping buildings in good repair, maintaining clean streets and parks and responding effectively to petty street crime. These actions make citizens feel safer and when they frequent public places criminal activity is less likely to occur. Many jurisdictions in North America have adopted practices based on this perspective. Last updated 2002-09-26
CLASSICAL ECONOMIC THEORY Known also as ‘laissez faire’, the theory claims that leaving individuals to make free choices in a free market results in the best allocation of scarce resources within an economy and the optimal level of satisfaction for individuals - ‘the greatest happiness for the greatest number’. See: CLASSICAL LIBERALISM / . Last updated 2002-09-26
CRITICAL THEORY A sociology developed by the Frankfurt school that is influenced by divergent intellectual ideas, including Marxism and psychoanalysis. It starts from two principles: opposition to the status quo and the idea that history can be potentially progressive. Together these principles imply a position from which to make judgments of human activity (rather than just describing) and provide the tools for criticism. Sometimes associated with highlighting the ‘dark side’ of modernity, critical theory attacks social ideas and practices which stand in the way of social justice and human emancipation (the rational organization of society as an association of free people). Critical theory is opposed to ‘bourgeois liberalism’. Last updated 2002-09-26
EXCHANGE THEORY A theory associated with the work of George Homans and Peter Blau and built on the assumption that all human relationships can be understood in terms of an exchange of roughly equivalent values. These exchanges are seldom monetary, rather they are frequently intangibles like intimacy, status, connections. Last updated 2002-09-26
FEMINIST THEORY While there is not a single feminist theory, central to all such theories is an attempt to understand the social, economic and political position of women in society, with a view to liberation. Feminist theory has challenged the claims to objectivity of previous social science and by examining society from women's position has called much social science into question as being male-centred and a component of the hegemonic rule of patriarchy. See: LIBERAL FEMINISM / RADICAL FEMINISM / MARXIST FEMINISM / ECOFEMINISM / . Last updated 2002-09-26
GROUNDED THEORY Theory which has been derived through inductive reasoning, thus giving it a firm grounding in data or observations of the world. This was an attempt to avoid sociological theory which was overly abstract and for which the references to the real world were unclear. Such abstract theory would be simply a logical construction deduced from assumptions and propositions. Last updated 2002-09-26
INTERPRETIVE THEORY A general category of theory including symbolic interactionism, labeling, ethnomethodology, phenomenology and social constructionism. The term is typically contrasted with structural theories which claim to remove the subjectivity of the actor and the researcher and assume that human behaviour can best be understood as determined by the pushes and pulls of structural forces. Interpretive theory is more accepting of free will and sees human behaviour as the outcome of the subjective interpretation of the environment. Structural theory focuses on the situation in which people act while interpretive theory focuses on the actor's definition of the situation in which they act. See: DEFINITION OF THE SITUATION / . Last updated 2002-09-26
LABELING THEORY A theory which arose from the study of deviance in the late 1950's and early 1960's and was a rejection of consensus theory or structural functionalism. These approaches to deviance assumed that deviance could be understood as consisting of behaviour that violates social norms. Deviance is therefore something objective: it is a particular form of behaviour. Labeling theory rejected this approach and claimed that deviance is not a way of behaving, but is a name put on something: a label. Law is culturally and historically variable: what is crime today is not necessarily crime yesterday or tomorrow. For example in 1890 it was legal to possess marijuana, but illegal to attempt suicide. Today, the law is reversed. This shows that deviance is not something inherent in the behaviour, but is an outcome of how individuals or their behaviour are labeled. If deviance is therefore just a label it makes sense to ask: where does the label come from? How does the label come to be applied to specific behaviours and to particular individuals? The first question leads to a study of the social origins of law. The second question leads to an examination of the actions of labelers such as, psychiatrists, police, coroners, probation officers, judges and juries. See: AMPLIFICATION OF DEVIANCE / SECONDARY DEVIANCE / MORAL ENTREPRENEURS / . Last updated 2002-09-26
LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE A fundamental component of the economic and social theories of Karl Marx (1818-1883) and of his analysis of capitalist exploitation. Marx argues that the value of any commodity is determined by the socially necessary labour time that goes into its production. Marx uses the term ‘socially necessary labour time’ because the labour time required to create a commodity depends on the society's levels of technology and craft. In Marx's theory, commodities should in principle be exchanged in the market place for prices that exactly correspond to the necessary labour time embodied in them. When a commodity is exchanged- or sold - for more than its labour value, a surplus value is realized. This theory of value provides the foundation of Marx's claim that labour is exploited in a capitalist society: the capitalist, through the power of capital ownership, is able to pay the worker less than the market value of the commodities produced and the surplus value is captured by capital and largely re-invested to augment the means of production. See: SURPLUS VALUE / . Last updated 2002-09-26
LIFESTYLE/EXPOSURE THEORY A theory of victimization that acknowledges that not everyone has the same lifestyle and that some lifestyles expose people to more risks than do other lifestyles. If you go to bed early you are less at risk than if you like to visit the bars many nights a week. Last updated 2002-09-26
METROPOLIS-HINTERLAND THEORY A theory of social and economic development that examines how economically advanced societies, through trade and colonialism, distort and retard the economic development of less developed societies and regions. A metropolis is identified as the centre of political and economic power, as having a more advanced labour market, more skilled and educated workers, an abundance of value-added production, higher standard of living, etc. A hinterland would be less able to withstand the political and economic interference of the metropolis, would have an abundance of resource extraction industries, fewer skilled and educated workers, a lower standard of living and in many ways would emulate the culture of the metropolis. For more than a century Ontario, or even more narrowly the Toronto region, was seen as the metropolis to a vast Canadian hinterland and the United States has been seen as the metropolis for a Canadian hinterland. See: DEPENDENT DEVELOPMENT / WORLD SYSTEMS THEORY / . Last updated 2002-09-26
MODERNIZATION THEORY A theory of social and economic development, following functionalist or consensus assumptions, that societies need to have harmony among their component parts. This assumptions leads to the belief that modern economies (capitalist) demand special characteristics in their culture and the structure of social relationships. For example, family systems are assumed to change towards a narrow conjugal form, and away from extended structure, in order to accommodate the individualism and occupational flexibility that is demanded by a modern complex economy undergoing continual transformation. Last updated 2002-09-26
MORAL DEVELOPMENT THEORY Refers generally to theories of individual psychology that investigate how moral reasoning emerges and develops as the individual matures. Last updated 2002-09-26
POLITICAL ECONOMY THEORY A major tradition in Canadian history and the social sciences. This is not a specific theory but a general approach to social analysis that stresses the interconnection of social, political and economic processes in society. Classic writers within this tradition include Harold Innis (1894-1952) and C. B. Macpherson (1911-1987). It remains central to contemporary Canadian social analysis and academic discourse. Last updated 2002-09-26
POWER-CONTROL THEORY An explanation for differences in criminality building on the idea that social control is stratified within the family. Traditionally, for example, girls have been subjected to more social control than have boys. Further, mothers have traditionally been responsible for exercising social control and their increasing involvement in the work place may enhance their power within the home, decrease their social control activity and affect the willingness of girls to violate norms. Last updated 2002-09-26
ROLE THEORY, GENDER The theory that women's lesser involvement in crime can be attributed to their socialization into traditional roles within the family and in society. Last updated 2002-09-26
ROUTINE-ACTIVITY THEORY A theory developed in the 1970's to explain variations in victimization rates among categories of persons, areas or over time. Dependent on the notions of life style and opportunity, this theory argues that it is the life styles (ie: their routine activities) of young males which explains their high rate of victimization compared to seniors, or that it is the changes in routine-activities accompanying the increase in small households and two-income families which has increased the opportunity for property crimes. Last updated 2002-09-26
SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY Used metaphorically to suggest that a group of self-interested and rational individuals came together and formed a contract which created society. Each was willing to give up a little bit of freedom to create social rules that would protect their self-interest. This theory suggests that individuals were historically prior to societies. It was this view which sociologist Emile Durkheim argued against in the late nineteenth century with his claim that society must come before the individual since human culture and communication can only arise in society. Last updated 2002-09-26
SOCIAL CONTROL THEORY Attempts to explain why it is that all of us do not commit crime. Or to put this another way: why are most people law-abiding? The answer lies in dimensions of social control. The many ways in which people are controlled by family, schools, work situations, conscience, etc. Most conventional theories, by contrast try to explain why individuals commit crime. Last updated 2002-09-26
SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION THEORY The theory that crime and other deviant behaviour is most likely to occur where social institutions are not able to direct and control groups of individuals. It is argued that gangs will arise spontaneously in social contexts that are weakly controlled. Some criminologists think that the concept of social disorganization just reflects middle-class failure to comprehend organization different from their own. Last updated 2002-09-26
THEORY All sciences use theory as a tool to explain. It is useful to think of theory as a conceptual model of some aspect of life. We may have a theory of mate selection, or the emergence of capitalist societies, or of criminal behaviour, or of the content of dreams. In each case the theory consists of a set of concepts and their nominal definition, assertions about the relationships between these concepts, assumptions and knowledge claims. Carl Jung's theory of the self, for examples, begins by asserting the key concepts --introversion and extroversion, and the relationship between these two components -- one is dominant and the other subordinate. It assumes that the dominant characteristic will be displayed in behaviour and the subordinate one in our dreams or unconscious. The content of dreams can be explained by bringing Jung's model to the inquiry. In the classic model of how science is conducted, the scientist begins with a theory, deduces a hypothesis about the real world from the theory and then engages in the necessary research to determine if the hypothesis is true or false. In this way science is always about theory testing. See: HYPOTHETICO-DEDUCTIVE MODEL OF SCIENCE / . Last updated 2002-09-26
WORLD SYSTEMS THEORY Derived from the work of Karl Marx and made into a developed set of ideas by Immanuel Wallerstein. He shows that capitalism is not just an economic system bounded by national borders highlighting class inequality. Rather, capitalism must also be seen as involving relationships among nations and these relationships too are based on inequality. Those nations which developed capitalistic economies early then went on to dominate other nations through colonization or simply through linking the economies of the nations in ways that favored the more dominant nation and placed the others into a condition of dependency on the dominant nation. This state of dependency tended to hamper the development of the other economies. See: DEPENDENT DEVELOPMENT / METROPOLIS-HINTERLAND THEORY / .