Esta obra aponta questões de ordem metodológica e epistemológica na teoria da estruturação de Anthony Giddens, problemas reconhecidos e debatidos por vários de seus comentadores. Seguindo pistas encontradas nos próprios textos de Giddens, ela analisa com maior detalhe alguns livros de Mary Hesse e Roy Bhaskar, em busca de elementos que ajudem numa reconstrução metodológica da teoria de Giddens. Finalmente, ela argumenta em favor de uma maior atenção ao modelo de redes de Hesse, como uma ferramenta muito mais fértil para a análise de Giddens do que o realismo crítico de Bhaskar, para tentarmos resolver os dilemas que Giddens enfrenta. Como anexo, temos traduções de vários textos dos comentaristas mais importantes de Giddens, e também dois artigos do próprio, inéditos em português. / This work raises methodological and epistemological questions regarding Anthony Giddens theory of structuration, issues that have been acknowledged and debated by several of his critics. Following clues found in Giddens own texts, it analyses more deeply some works by Mary Hesse and Roy Bhaskar, searching for elements that would help with a methodological reconstruction of Giddens theory. Finally, it argues for greater attention towards Hesses network model, as a much more fruitful tool for analyzing Giddens than Bhaskars critical realism, in order to attempt to solve the dilemmas that Giddens faces. Also included are translations of several articles written by Giddens most important critics, and two papers by Giddens himself, previously unavailable in Portuguese.

Esta obra aponta questões de ordem metodológica e epistemológica na teoria da estruturação de Anthony Giddens, problemas reconhecidos e debatidos por vários de seus comentadores. Seguindo pistas encontradas nos próprios textos de Giddens, ela analisa com maior detalhe alguns livros de Mary Hesse e Roy Bhaskar, em busca de elementos que ajudem numa reconstrução metodológica da teoria de Giddens. Finalmente, ela argumenta em favor de uma maior atenção ao modelo de redes de Hesse, como uma ferramenta muito mais fértil para a análise de Giddens do que o realismo crítico de Bhaskar, para tentarmos resolver os dilemas que Giddens enfrenta. Como anexo, temos traduções de vários textos dos comentaristas mais importantes de Giddens, e também dois artigos do próprio, inéditos em português. / This work raises methodological and epistemological questions regarding Anthony Giddens theory of structuration, issues that have been acknowledged and debated by several of his critics. Following clues found in Giddens own texts, it analyses more deeply some works by Mary Hesse and Roy Bhaskar, searching for elements that would help with a methodological reconstruction of Giddens theory. Finally, it argues for greater attention towards Hesses network model, as a much more fruitful tool for analyzing Giddens than Bhaskars critical realism, in order to attempt to solve the dilemmas that Giddens faces. Also included are translations of several articles written by Giddens most important critics, and two papers by Giddens himself, previously unavailable in Portuguese.

Sociological explanations for human conduct usually place major ontological and epistemological emphasis upon either discursive or material relations without ever establishing or adequately specifying the validity of this dichotomy. Early texts by the Critical Realist philosopher Roy Bhaskar address this forced separation by creating an integrated ontological and epistemological field that provides a more detailed and precise theoretical ordering to agents, objects, and entities. Undertaking a developmental critique of Bhaskar’s arguments, this thesis extends Critical Realism’s role as theoretical ‘underlabourer’ and creates an expanded theoretical framework that balances discursive and material accounts. Utilising the sophisticated analyses of the structure and operation of discourses found in the work of Michel Foucault alongside the innovative arguments for aleatory materialism developed by Louis Althusser, a critique is established that shows discursive, material, and social relations to be complex, immanent, and, importantly, mutually constitutive. In each theory three core concepts of events, emergence, and the extra-discursive are shown to not only be present but also to operate as the main means of explaining social change. The result of integrating Critical Realism, Foucault, and Althusser in this sympathetic but non-syncretic form is the generation of a non-reductionist materialism combined with discursive relations. On this basis, social change is shown to be the result of restructured discursive and material relations of which human agents are only one part. The thesis provides an illustration of the theoretical argument with an empirical component which examines the formation and decline of the British nuclear industry between its inception in the early 1950s to the year 2000. The conclusion is that the form taken by nuclear energy is not entirely determined by any single one of political, economic, or scientific forces but is, instead, the product of multiple and complex interactions of immanent discursive and material relations that are, importantly, mutually reinforcing. / Thesis (Ph.D, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2012-09-27 12:38:25.909

This study presents a critical investigation into the teaching of computer ethics. A qualitative pluralistic approach (a mixture of qualitative approaches) was used to investigate case studies of teaching computer ethics to university-level students from Bahrain. The main issue was that ethics to Arabs and Muslims is a matter of religion than a matter of philosophy whereas the dominant perception in the academic literature which discussed computer ethics teaching is that computer ethics is a form of practical philosophy and hence separate from religion. In order to shed light on this, the study investigated computer ethic’s perceptions and teaching practices which were occurring in universities in Bahrain. The study found that the issue was not a matter of perception but rather a matter of confusion and a misconception. Computer ethics was being confused with morality, religion, basic computer skills to name just a few. And such confusion was causing computer ethics to gradually disappear from the curriculum and become substituted with concepts which were not necessarily capable of building students’ ethical thinking. The study recommends that computer ethics teachers and policy makers from Bahrain distinguish computer ethics from religion, morality and from any other concept and identify it as an independent field of study, also teachers need to involve their students in social and ethical analysis of various kinds so that students understand that ethics is not a set of rules on what is forbidden and allowed aimed at providing straightforward answers to a given problem but rather ethics is a ‘cognitive tool’; a mechanism through which different competing ethical theories and standards are used to reflect on a given problem.