ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the myriad ways in which paradox underpins—and purportedly constrains—key discussions and research trajectories in the study of society. The chapter is structured around four distinct social scientific disciplines: politics (including paradoxes of ideological conviction, electoral dynamics, liberalism, socialism, and conservatism); economics (including paradoxes of specialization, resources, choice, price, competition, prosperity, and economic ideology); psychology (including paradoxes of psychoanalysis, self, dependency, anxiety, intimacy, professional practise, and emotion); and sociology (including paradoxes of proximity, feminism, racism, minor representation, cultural nuance, and genocide).
