Jan Ch. Karlsson is Professor of Organization, Faculty of Business, Languages, and Social Sciences, Ostfold University College, Norway.

Ann Bergman is Professor of Working Life Science at Karlstad University, Sweden.

List of figures

List of tables

Preface

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 Theorizing and writing social theory

Social theory

Theorizing

Writing

Writing in the research process

Writing in the reporting process

Outline of the book

References

PART I Tools for theorizing in social science

Graphic representations

Displays and property spaces as preliminary endpoints

References

Chapter 2 Basics of displays

What is a display?

Building blocks of displays

Putting a display together

Summary

References

Chapter 3 The use of displays in theorizing

Theorizing by extending

Theorizing by mapping interaction

Stepwise theorizing

Summary

References

Chapter 4 Basics of property spaces

Constructing a property space

Hidden property spaces

Housekeeping

Labelling the types: terms

Developing existing terminology

Summary

References

Chapter 5 Reduction of property spaces in theorizing

Rescaling

Indexing

Logic reduction

Empirical reduction

Theoretical reduction

Pragmatic reduction

Summary

References

Chapter 6 Expansion of property spaces in theorizing

Substruction

More properties of existing dimensions

More dimensions

Combining property spaces

Inserting process arrows

Creating scales

Summary

References

PART II Tools for writing social science

References

Chapter 7 The Model of Argumentation: chain of reasoning, chains of argument and arguments

The rhetorical situation

Purpose

Persona

Audience

Tone

The subject matter

The model

Summary

References

Chapter 8 Examples of using the Model of Argumentation

The process of writing a social science text: an example

The (preliminarily) finished structure of a text: an example

The structure of Chapter 4, 'Basics of property spaces'

Constructing a property space

Housekeeping

Moving the model down one level

Summary

References

Chapter 9 Theorizing and writing

Research process and reporting process

Displays

Property spaces

Writing

Summary

References

Appendix: from Bergman, Ann, Jan Ch. Karlsson and Jonas Axelsson (2010) 'Truth Claims and Explanatory Claims - an Ontological Typology of Futures Studies', Futures, 42(8): 857-65

Index