David Edmonds 
Understanding Humans 
How Social Science Can Help Solve Our Problems

Compiling the best episodes of SAGE′s ′Social Science Bites′ podcast since its beginning in 2012, this pocket-sized volume is sure to inspire and provoke.  With a foreword by David Edmonds, host of the podcast, this book will show you how social science can help to solve problems in today′s society.  It is structured into sections on identity, learning, human behaviour, social change, and the unexpected, with each chapter offering the perspective of one of the most dynamic thinkers in the social sciences.



Taking a multidisciplinary approach, Edmonds′ selection of interviews includes topics such as racial inequality, moral psychology, the pandemic, and the prison system.  Interviewees include Sam Friedman, Professor of Sociology at LSE, Gurminder K. Bhambra, Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies at the University of Sussex, and Jennifer Richeson, Professor of Psychology at Yale University.  This book will show you the range of voices in the social sciences today, and how this diversity is what is needed to grapple with the complexity of the issues we face.

Table des matières

PART 1: IDENTITY

Chapter 1: Sam Friedman on Class

Chapter 2: Janet Carsten on the Kinship of Anthropology

PART 2: HOW WE THINK AND LEARN

Chapter 3: Daniel Kahneman on Bias

Chapter 4: Mahzarin Banaji on Implicit Bias

Chapter 5: Gurminder K. Bhambra on Postcolonial Social Science

Chapter 6: Jonathan Haidt on Moral Psychology

Chapter 7: Jo Boaler on Fear of Mathematics

Chapter 8: Saskia Sassen on Before Method

PART 3: HUMAN BEHAVIOUR

Chapter 9: Stephen Reicher on Crowd Psychology

Chapter 10: Robert Shiller on Behavioral Economics

Chapter 11: David Halpern on Nudging

Chapter 12: Valerie Curtis on the Sources of Disgust

PART 4: MAKING SOCIAL CHANGE

Chapter 13: Jennifer Richeson on Perceptions of Racial Inequality

Chapter 14: Erica Chenoweth on Nonviolent Resistance

Chapter 15: Alison Liebling on Successful Prisons

Chapter 16: Lawrence Sherman on Experimental Criminology

PART 5: EXPLAINING THE PRESENT AND THE UNEXPECTED

Chapter 17: Hetan Shah on Social Science and the Pandemic

Chapter 18: Bruce Hood on the Supernatural

A propos de l’auteur

David Edmonds is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford University and a former BBC radio journalist.  He is the author or editor of many philosophy books (and one on chess) which together have been translated into over two dozen languages.  These include (with John Eidinow), Wittgenstein’s Poker and, most recently, a biography, Parfit: A Philosopher and his Mission to Save Morality.  As well as Social Science Bites, David also hosts a couple of philosophy podcasts. Philosophy Bites, which he makes with Nigel Warburton, has had over 47 million downloads.