‘The televising of science is a process of television’: establishing Horizon, 1962–1967

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
TIMOTHY BOON
Keyword(s):  
Early Years ◽  
Stable Form ◽  
The Public ◽  
Television Production ◽  
The Social ◽  
Television Programme ◽  
History Of ◽  
Culture Of Science ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Key Participants

AbstractBBC Television's Horizon series, fifty years old on 2 May 2014, despite its significance to the history of the public culture of science, has been little studied. This microhistorical account follows the gestation and early years of the programme, demonstrating how it established a social and cultural account of science. This was a result of televisual factors, notably the determination to follow the format of the successful arts television programme Monitor. It illuminates how the processes of television production, with a handful of key participants – Aubrey Singer, Gerald Leach, Philip Daly, Gordon Rattray Taylor, Ramsay Short, Michael Peacock and Robert Reid – established the format of the programme. This occurred over seventeen months of prior preparation followed by three troubled years of seeking to establish a stable form. This was finally achieved in 1967 when the programme adopted a film documentary approach after extended attempts at making it as a studio-based magazine programme. The story has implications for understanding the social accounts of science that were circulating in the key decade of the 1960s.

scholarly journals The Social Experiences and Uses of Post-War Modernist Urban Heritage Conservation and Regeneration: London’s Southbank Centre

Heritage ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 641-663
Author(s):  
Patricia Aelbrecht
Keyword(s):  
Urban Design ◽  
Social Experiences ◽  
The Public ◽  
Urban Heritage ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Incomplete Assessments ◽  
Do So

Since the 1960s, post-war modernist heritage has been largely criticised and victimised by the public opinion because of its material failures and elitist social projects. Despite these critiques, post-war modernist heritage is being reassessed, revalued and in some places successfully rehabilitated. There is a growing recognition that most of the critiques have often been the result of subjective and biased value and taste judgments or incomplete assessments that took into account neither urban design nor the users’ experiences. This paper aims to contribute to these reassessments of post-war modernist urban heritage legacies. To do so, it places the user’s social experiences and uses, and the urban design at the centre of the analysis, by using a combination of ethnographic methods and urban design analysis and focusing on the public spaces of South Bank Centre in London, the UK’s largest and most iconic and contested post-war modernist ensemble with a long history of conservation and regeneration projects. Taken together, the findings demonstrate the importance of including the users’ social experiences and uses in the conservation and regeneration agendas if we want to achieve more objective and inclusive assessments.

A Historical Perspective on the Use of Randomized Trials in Social Science Settings

2000 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Oakley
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Randomized Trials ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Control Groups ◽  
Social Experiments ◽  
What Works ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

Similar to medicine, social science has historically grappled with controlling for chance and bias in assessing the effectiveness of interventions. Questions about what works and how to evaluate the evidence underlie all areas of policy intervention. In the early years of the 20th century, social science in North America developed an established tradition of quantitative sociology that included experimental studies. This was followed by a number of social experiments from the 1960s to the 1980s. The history of prospective experimental studies with control groups applied to the social domain contains important lessons for experimental social science in the 21st century.

New Wars and Their Visual Representation: Dead Bodies without Graves/Mourne

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Tuncay Şur ◽  
Betül Yarar
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Visual Representation ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Public ◽  
Photographic Images ◽  
War Photography ◽  
New Wars ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact

This paper seeks to understand why there has been an increase in photographic images exposing military violence or displaying bodies killed by military forces and how they can freely circulate in the public without being censored or kept hidden. In other words, it aims to analyze this particular issue as a symptom of the emergence of new wars and a new regime of their visual representation. Within this framework, it attempts to relate two kinds of literature that are namely the history of war and war photography with the bridge of theoretical discussions on the real, its photographic representation, power, and violence.  Rather than systematic empirical analysis, the paper is based on a theoretical attempt which is reflected on some socio-political observations in the Middle East where there has been ongoing wars or new wars. The core discussion of the paper is supported by a brief analysis of some illustrative photographic images that are served through the social media under the circumstances of war for instance in Turkey between Turkish military troops and the Kurdish militants. The paper concludes that in line with the process of dissolution/transformation of the old nation-state formations and globalization, the mechanism and mode of power have also transformed to the extent that it resulted in the emergence of new wars. This is one dynamic that we need to recognize in relation to the above-mentioned question, the other is the impact of social media in not only delivering but also receiving war photographies. Today these changes have led the emergence of new machinery of power in which the old modern visual/photographic techniques of representing wars without human beings, torture, and violence through censorship began to be employed alongside medieval power techniques of a visual exhibition of tortures and violence.

A Stagecraft of New Zealand Evaluation

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil T Lunt ◽  
Ian G Trotman
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Performance Management ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Companion Paper ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Tertiary Sector ◽  
Evaluation Activity ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

Since the 1960s there has been a growing interest in evaluation shown by most Western countries. Alongside discussion of practical and theoretical issues of evaluation, such as methodological developments, best practice, and cross-cultural practice, there has also been increased interest in mapping the history of evaluation activity. Historical discussions are significant for three reasons; first, in providing a record for future generations of evaluators. Second, they provide a consideration of the domestic and international context that has shaped evaluation development, giving each country its distinct institutional make-up and brand of evaluation activity. Third, they assist a country's evaluation capacity development by building on its strengths and compensating for the weaknesses of its history. This article traces the emergence of evaluation within New Zealand using the metaphor of dramaturgy to introduce the settings and actors that we consider to have been constituent of what was played out in the New Zealand situation. Our remit is a broad one of attempting to describe and explain the range of evaluation activities, including program evaluation, organisational review, performance management, and process and policy evaluation. Within this article a broad overview only is possible. As an example of a more in-depth study, a comprehensive article could be prepared on the history of performance management in the public service. Our comments cover developments in the public sector, tertiary sector, and private and professional organisations. It is a companion paper to one on the history of evaluation in Australia, prepared by Colin A Sharp in a recent issue of this journal (Sharpe 2003).

The Social Background of Political Liberty in the Early Italian Renaissance

1960 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 440-451
Author(s):  
Hans Baron
Keyword(s):  
Social Background ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Economic Class ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Italian City ◽  
City States ◽  
Revolutionary Period

An attempt at a synopsis of Mr. Becker's and Mr. Hicks' findings requires an enlargement of focus. They have much in common in their approaches: both are sympathetic to reactions in Italian scholarship against a school which had conceived the history of the Italian city-states chiefly in terms of social clashes caused by antagonistic economic class interests. About 1900 that had been the perspective shared by most students. During the late 13th century (it was then argued), the half-chivalric magnati, owners of landed property, were replaced by the capitalistic merchants and industrialists of the arti maggiori; these, in turn, by the middle of the 14th century were followed by the artisans of the arti minori who, for a short revolutionary period in 1378, opened the door for the laborers of the great textile industries, the Ciompi. After class struggle had thus sapped the public spirit, Florence and other cities were ripe for the heavy, but pacifying hand of despotism.

scholarly journals Džon i Žaklina Kenedi: politika, kultura i „nova granica“ odevanja

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 857
Author(s):  
Simona Čupić
Keyword(s):  
Political Affiliation ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Specific Kind ◽  
The Public ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Internal Politics ◽  
Art And Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

Jacqueline Kennedy’s style is one of the mainstays of the history of fashion and popular culture, as well as contemporary politics. John Kennedy’s way of dressing garnered much less attention. Even though, at first glance, not as interesting as the first lady’s “fashion sense”, the president’s style was no less thought-out. If, however, we view the changes in clothing as social changes and a determinant of various kinds of social differentiation: marital status, sex, occupation, religious and political affiliation, the way in which the Kennedys were presented to the public becomes more interesting – from the (carefully planned) photos and appearances to art and culture. Having in mind that the 1960s were a time when the appropriation of popular and fictional came back into modern art, and that general changes inherent in the new lifestyle, as well as a layered image of American internal politics, and the cold war map of the world, the carefully thought-out image of the presidential couple can be viewed as a specific kind of metaphor for a complicated time.

Long-Term Ecological Research Over the Long Term: A Historian’s Perspective

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Hamlin
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Environmental Research ◽  
Ecological Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Long Term Ecological Research ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ecological Science

There are many precedents for long-term research in the history of science. Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program’s current identity reflects significant change—intended and accidental, both consensual and conflictual—from research concerns that were prevalent in the 1980s. LTER program has pioneered modes of research organization and professional norms that are increasingly prominent in many areas of research and that belong to a significant transformation in the social relations of scientific research. The essays in this volume explore the impact of the LTER program, a generation after its founding, on both the practice of ecological science and the careers of scientists. The authors have applied the agenda of long- term scrutiny to their own careers as LTER researchers. They have recognized the LTER program as distinct, even perhaps unique, both in the ways that it creates knowledge and in the ways that it shapes careers. They have reflected on how they have taught (and were taught) in LTER settings, on how they interact with one another and with the public, and on how research in the LTER program has affected them “as persons.” A rationale for this volume is LTER’s distinctiveness. In many of the chapters, and in other general treatments of the LTER program, beginning with Callahan (1984), one finds a tone of defensiveness. Sometimes the concerns are explicit: authors (e.g., Stafford, Knapp, Lugo, Morris; Chapters 5, 22, 25, 33, respectively) bemoan colleagues who dismiss LTER as mere monitoring instead of serious science or who resent LTER’s independent funding stream. But more broadly, there is concern that various groups, ranging from other bioscientists to the public at large, may not appreciate the importance of long-term, site-specific environmental research. Accordingly, my hope here is to put LTER into several broader contexts. I do so in three ways. First, to mainstream LTER within the history of science, I show that the LTER program is not a new and odd way of doing science but rather exemplifies research agendas that have been recognized at least since the seventeenth century in the biosciences and beyond.

Scientific realism and social science

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Keat
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Central Issue ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Realist Conception

A central issue in the philosophy of the social sciences is the possibility of naturalism: whether disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, economics and psychology can be ‘scientific’ in broadly the same sense in which this term is applied to physics, chemistry, biology and so on. In the long history of debates about this issue, both naturalists and anti-naturalists have tended to accept a particular view of the natural sciences – the ‘positivist’ conception of science. But the challenges to this previously dominant position in the philosophy of science from around the 1960s made this shared assumption increasingly problematic. It was no longer clear what would be implied by the naturalist requirement that the social sciences should be modelled on the natural sciences. It also became necessary to reconsider the arguments previously employed by anti-naturalists, to see whether these held only on the assumption of a positivist conception of science. If so, a non-positivist naturalism might be defended: a methodological unity of the social and natural sciences based on some alternative to positivism. That this is possible has been argued by scientific realists in the social sciences, drawing on a particular alternative to positivism: the realist conception of science developed in the 1970s by Harré and others.

Family and Childhood

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret L. King
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Childhood And Youth ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Annales School

Scholars largely neglected the history of the family until after World War II, when they began to employ theoretical perspectives imported from the social sciences. In the 1960s, two principal figures triggered its study: Philippe Ariès, associated with the French Annales school, and Peter Laslett, cofounder at Cambridge University, England, of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure. Since that period, studies have proliferated on the history of family and household in Europe and its subregions and on the related topics of childhood and youth.

The Chinese Communist Party to 1949

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Saich ◽  
Nancy Hearst
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Chinese Revolution ◽  
The Public ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Historical Periods

There is a vast array of materials available to assist in the study of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) before 1949. In China this is aided by the presence of a large number of officially employed researchers at party research centers and related archives. To earn their keep, these researchers have to put out publications. Availability of materials was boosted by the start of reforms in 1978 and preparations for the 1981 official party history. Given that, especially in the early years of reform, when expression of personal opinions could be dangerous, many of the released publications were documentary collections or chronologies. These came in several different varieties, based on either historical periods, particular events, or the lives of key individuals. These materials were complemented by memoirs of key figures who wanted to ensure that their version of history was in the public eye. This makes selection very difficult. Some of the works that follow are a must for students and scholars; others are personal favorites of the compilers and should be treated as exemplary of the types and varieties of sources that are available for the study of the CCP before 1949. More recently, materials from China have allowed researchers to conduct more detailed research on the social and economic transformations wrought by CCP presence and the difficulties the party had in maintaining local support. This has meant that, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, we have seen fewer monographs that attempt to paint the broader picture of the sweep of the CCP revolution. Instead, there are many fine-grained analyses of particular events or CCP activities in specific locales that reveal the extremely complex and multifaceted nature of the Chinese revolution.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document