The Saving Lie
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The Saving Lie: Truth and Method in the Social Sciences

The Saving Lie: Truth and Method in the Social Sciences


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About the Book

This book explores the distinction between selflessness and self-interestedness, between acting for one's own advantage and acting, even when disadvantageous, for reasons of duty or conscience. This apparently straightforward contrast (exemplified in the difference between rational-choice models in economics and holistic models in social anthropology) is a source of confusion. This is so, F. G. Bailey argues, because people polarize and essentialize both actors and actions and uphold one or the other side of the contrast as concrete reality, as the truth about how the social world works. The task of The Saving Lie is to show that both versions are convenient fictions, with instrumental rather than ontological significance: they are not about truth but about power. At best they are tools that enable us to make sense of our experience; at the same time they are weapons we deploy to define situations and thus exercise control. Bailey says that both models fail the test of empiricism: they can be at once immensely elegant and quite remote from anyone's experience in the real world. And since both models are "saving lies," we should accept them as necessities, but only to the extent they are useful, and we should constantly remind ourselves of their limitations. The wrong course, according to Bailey, is to promote one model to the total exclusion of the other. Instead, we should take care to examine systematically the rhetoric used to promote these models not only in intellectual discourse but also in defining situations in everyday life. The book strongly and directly advocates a point of view that combines skepticism with a determination to anchor abstract argument in evidence. It is argumentative; it invites confrontation; yet it leaves many doors open for further thought.

Table of Contents:
Preface Introduction: Ideas, Reality, and Saving Lies Things as They Are...Articulated and Unarticulated Knowledge...Expediency and Morality PART I. EXPEDIENCY Chapter 1. A Very Beautiful Theory Organizations and Markets...Unrealistic Assumptions and Positive Science Chapter 2. The Coase Recension and Its Lineage The New Economics of Organization...Holes in the Fence: Contract...Holes in the Fence: Principals...How Holes Are Plugged...Giving Ground Chapter 3. Gains from Trade The New Institutional Economics...Gains from Trade...Individual Choice and Imagined Entities...At War 'Twixt Will and Will Not PART II. MORALITY Chapter 4. Natural Systems and Moral Systems General Equilibrium Theory…Structural Functionalism...African Political Systems and The Nuer...A Pattern of Ideas...The Road to Interpretivism Chapter 5. Imaginative Constructs and Social Reality Structure in The Nuer...Essences and Wholes...Structure and Environment...A Plurality of Structures Chapter 6. A Piece of the Action The Unexamined Life...Political Agendas: Neoclassical Economics...Political Agendas: Structural Functionalism...Change the Question PART III. AGENCY AND RHETORIC Chapter 7. Affirming Structure: The Amen Category Somewhere to Stand...Defining the Situation: Exchanges...Morality as a Weapon...Inclusion and Exclusion Chapter 8. Contested Structures The Lintel...Structures in Losa...Motives and Tactics...Unfolding and Compressing...Combative Irony...Humor...Cross-talk…Assertion and Suggestion...Conceptualizing Structure...Agency Models Conclusion: General Theses and Particular Cases The Itch for Totality...General Theses and Particular Cases…Knowledge and Know-How...Knowledge and Power...Global and Local Knowledge References Index Acknowledgments

About the Author :
F. G. Bailey is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology, University of California, San Diego, and author of many books, most recently The Civility of Indifference, The Need for Enemies, and Treasons, Stratagems and Spoils.

Review :
"Ambitious, erudite, well worth a read."--Journal of Anthropological Research


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Product Details
  • ISBN-13: 9780812237306
  • Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
  • Publisher Imprint: University of Pennsylvania Press
  • Height: 229 mm
  • No of Pages: 277
  • Sub Title: Truth and Method in the Social Sciences
  • ISBN-10: 0812237307
  • Publisher Date: 23 Jul 2003
  • Binding: Hardback
  • Language: English
  • No of Pages: 277
  • Width: 152 mm


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