Social theory
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Social theories are analytical frameworks, or paradigms, that are used to study and interpret social phenomena. A tool used by social scientists, social theories relate to historical debates over the validity and reliability of different methodologies (e.g. positivism and antipositivism), the primacy of either structure or agency, as well as the relationship between contingency and necessity. Social theory in an informal nature, or authorship based outside of academic social and political science, may be referred to as "social criticism" or "social commentary", or "cultural criticism" and may be associated both with formal cultural and literary scholarship, as well as other non-academic or journalistic forms of writing.
See also
- Critical theory
- Culture theory
- Engaged theory
- Ethnomethodology
- Feminist theory
- History of sociology
- History of the social sciences
- Literary theory
- Political philosophy
- Political theory
- Post-colonial theory
- Post-structuralism
- Postmodernism
- Queer theory
- Social evolution
- Sociological theory