Book Reviews : Rethinking Cognitive Theory. By Jeff Coulter. London: Macmillan, 1983. Pp. 179 + xi. 20.00

McHoul, A.W. (1988) Book Reviews : Rethinking Cognitive Theory. By Jeff Coulter. London: Macmillan, 1983. Pp. 179 + xi. 20.00. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 18 (1). pp. 129-133.

Abstract

In this book and its earlier companion volume, The Social Construction of Mind,’ Coulter shows something which may surprise many social scientists namely that ethnomethodology is no simplistic and empiricist contribution to sociological ’micro-analysis’ but has powerful contributions to make to the (critique of) theory in the behavioural sciences. To Coulter’s credit, he achieves this with clarity, erudition and scholarly precision, making his two-volume study as important a contribution to the critique of the human sciences in the Anglo- American tradition as Foucault’s has been in the Continental.