Presenting original research studies by leading scholars in the field, Orders of Ordinary Action considers how ethnomethodology provides for an 'alternate' sociology by respecifying sociological phenomena as locally accomplished members' activities. Following an introduction by the editors and a seminal statement of ethnomethodology's analytic stance by its founder, Harold Garfinkel, the book then comprises two parts. The first introduces studies of practical action and organization, whilst the second provides studies of practical reasoning and situated logic in various settings. By organizing the book in this way, the collection demonstrates the relevance of ethnomethodological investigations to established topics and issues and indicates the contribution that ethnomethodology can make to the understanding of human action in any and all social contexts. Both individually and collectively, these contributions illustrate how taking an ethnomethodological approach opens up for investigation phenomena that are taken for granted in conventional sociological theorizing.

This collection contributes to a fundamentally important set of debates about the nature of private law. The essays consider whether private law should be seen as having goals and, if so, whether those goals are particular to private as opposed to public law. They consider the legitimacy of the pursuit of community welfare goals in private law and the place of instrumentalist thinking in private law scholarship. They explore the relationship between the pursuit of policy goals and the other influences that shape private law, such as the formal values of certainty, consistency and coherence and the need to do justice to the parties to particular disputes. The collection analyses the role that particular policy goals do and should play in particular private law doctrines, and contributes to debate about the relationship between community welfare goals and considerations of interpersonal morality arising from the interactions between individuals. The contributors are drawn from across the common law world and offer a diverse range of perspectives on the controversies under consideration.

Investigating Karl Popper’s philosophy of critical rationalism, Critical Rationalism and the Theory of Society, Volume 1, explores a non-justificationist conception of critical reason and its fundamental outcomes for the theory of society. Through a set of fundamental contributions to epistemology, the theory of rationality and sociology, this volume (a) situates the idea of critical rationalism in its true epistemological context, (b) uses non-justificationist epistemology to reinvent critical rationalism and (c) applies its revised concept of rationality to show how people’s access to critical reason enables them to agree on the common values and social institutions necessary for a peaceful and just social order. These contributions lead the reader to a new epistemological understanding of the idea of critical rationalism and recognition of how a non-justificational concept of reason changes the content of the theory of society. The reader also learns how thinkers, movements and masses apply their critical reason to replace an established social order with an ideal one through activating five types of driving forces of social change: metaphysical, moral, legal, political and economic. Written for philosophers and sociologists, this book will appeal to social scientists such as moral philosophers, legal scholars, political scientists and economists.