Methods for Social Theory

This book constitutes a practical guide to the important skills of both theorizing and writing in social scientific scholarship, focusing on the importance of identifying relations between concepts that are useful for explaining social entities and of producing a text that convincingly advances the theory that has been constructed. Richly illustrated with practical examples, the book is divided into two sections, the first of which presents techniques for theorizing based upon the connection of ideas, concepts and empirical patterns in both free and systematic ways, with the second section providing techniques for structuring and presenting arguments in essays, papers, articles or books.