This groundbreaking and innovative text addresses the deep ontological and epistemological commitments that underpin conventional positivist methods and then demonstrates how "method" can be understood in much broader and more interesting ways.

Drawing on a broad range of philosophical and methodological theory as well as a wide variety of artistic sources from fine art to cinema and from literature to the blues, leading contemporary thinker Michael Shapiro shows the reader how a more open understanding of the concept of method is rewarding and enlightening. His notion of ‘writing-as-method’ is enacted throughout the text and offers a stimulating alternative for students to positivist social science methods.

This is essential reading for all students and faculty with an interest in post-positivist methods.

Reviews

'Shapiro’s post-hermeneutic approach to method shows how "writing and critical thinking are radically entangled". While creatively resisting appropriative understanding he challenges partisan or identity politics by depriving the present of its necessity'.

Luis Lobo-Guerrero, Reader in International Relations, Royal Holloway, University of London

A brilliant reflection on ‘aesthetic subjects’ and the trans-disciplinary practice of critique from one of the finest minds in political theory.

Ritu Vij, Politics and International Relations, University of Aberdeen, UK.

Contents

1. Philosophy, Method and the Arts 2. The Moralized Economy in Hard Times 3. The Blues Subject: Counter-Memory, Genre, and Space 4. Zones of Justice: A Philo-Poetic Engagement 5. For an anti-Fascist Aesthetics 6. The Micropolitics of Justice: Language, Sense and Space 7. A Continuing Violent Cartography: From Guadalupe Hidalgo to Contemporary Border Crossings 8. The Presence of War: "Here and Elsewhere"

Author Bio

Michael J. Shapiro is a Professor of Political Science at the Univf Hawaii.