Textuality and Tectonics

In the marketplace of ideas, Social Science, plc, is in deep trouble! Exposed for decades to a 'climate of problematization', its foundational structures and technological practices - indeed the very project of a science of the social - have been eroded by critical, post-structural, social constructionist and postmodern analyses. Textuality and Tectonics seeks neither to gloat upon this threatened bankruptcy, nor to peddle false hopes of a 'quick fix' restructuring under new management. Instead it concentrates upon and argues out the new prospects, alternative projects and liberated commitments opened up by the 'climate of problematization' itself. It takes on this task seriously but far from somberly, celebrating the chance 'to boldly go' on a diversity of new enterprises, in a narrative rich in lively asides and opportunities for reflection. The result is a concerned 'critical polytextualism' which stresses the possibilities for new forms of transdisciplinary analytic craft and illustrates their use in practice. . Textuality and Tectonics will be a key text for students and scholars looking for new conceptual directions and alternative craft-skills for empirical enquiry at a time when 'social science' is 'going critical'. It will be invaluable not just for those working in its conventional disciplines (including anthropology, psychology and sociology) but for those in newer fields such as cultural and communication studies.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction, Mental Health. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.