ABSTRACT
Rom Harré has pushed the boundaries of our thinking about people and societies and has challenged the orthodox philosophy of science and social psychology. His countless books and articles have inspired generations of scholars in philosophy, psychology, linguistics, cognitive science and social theory. The diversity of his work makes that some see him as a leading figure in the critical realist school of philosophy of science, other as a key player in developing a social constructionist approach to psychology. The present volume brings together a careful selection of his key writings and presents them in a framework that stresses the evolution of his thinking as well as the place of his thinking in ongoing debates in different disciplines. The overall theme is the study of people and their ways of life. This is the first book that gives readers a systematic introduction in the conceptual universe of this towering figure.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |6 pages
Rom Harré and the exploration of the human umwelt
part |2 pages
Part I Epistemological and ontological foundations for the social sciences
chapter |10 pages
The Anthropomorphic Model of Man
chapter |22 pages
A metaphysics for conservation: Speech-acts in people-space
chapter |14 pages
The second cognitive revolution
part |2 pages
Part II Conversations as the primary social reality
chapter |12 pages
Using cognitive tools to perform cognitive tasks
chapter |25 pages
Grammar and cognition
chapter |15 pages
Varieties of positioning
chapter |30 pages
Social sources of mental content and order
part |2 pages
Part III Persons as discursive realizations
chapter |3 pages
Persons as discursive realizations: Introduction to Part III
chapter |16 pages
On being a person: Problems of self
chapter |21 pages
Agency and personality
chapter |19 pages
Discursive transformations of the body
chapter |19 pages
Individual lives and social trajectories
part |2 pages
Part IV The discursive dimension of societies