People and Societies Rom Harré and Designing the Social Sciences

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.

1. Rom Harré and the Exploration of the Human Umwelt, Luk Van Langenhove Part 1: Epistemological and Ontological Foundations for the Social Sciences 2. Studying the Social Realm in a Scientific Way, Luk Van Langenhove3. The Anthropomorphic Model, Rom Harré and Paul Secore 4. A Metaphysics for Conservation: Speech-acts in People-space, Peter Muhlhauser and Rom Harré 5. The Second Cognitive Revolution, Rom Harré and Grant Gillet Part 2: Conversations as the Primary Social Reality 6. Conversation as the Primary Social Reality, Luk Van Langenhove 7. Using Cognitive Tools to Perform Cognitive Tasks, Rom Harré 8. Grammar and Cognition, Rom Harré 9. Varieties of Positioning, Rom Harré and Luk Van Langenhove 10. Social Sources of Mental Content and Order, Rom Harré Part 3: Persons as Discursive Realisations 11. Persons as Discursive Realisations, Luk Van Langenhove 12. On Being a Person: Problems of Self, Rom Harré 13. Agency and Personality, Rom Harré and Grant Gillet 14. Discursive Transformations of the Body, Rom Harré 15. Individual Lives and Social Trajectories, Rom Harré Part 4: The Discursive Dimension of Societies 16. The Discursive Dimension of Societies, Luk Van Langenhove 17. Cultural Stereotypes and Positioning Theory, Luk Van Langenhove and Rom Harré 18. Crews, Clubs, Crowds and Classes: ‘The Social’ as a Discursive Category, Rom Harré 19. Social Reality and the Myth of Social Structure, Rom Harré 20. A Social Psychology of Social Change, Rom Harré

Luk Van Langenhove is Director of a research institute of the United Nations University in Bruges. He serves as Vice-President of the International Social Sciences Council. He has worked with Rom Harré since long and is the author of ‘Innovating the Social Sciences’ (2007).