Capitalist Social Reproduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 320-340
Author(s):  
Martha E. Gimenez
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
First Century ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Abstract Feature

This entry will look at Marx’s theoretical contributions to social reproduction in relationship to critical assessments of his alleged “neglect” of reproduction and to the development of the social sciences, particularly the “radical” social sciences that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and continued to develop ever since. Marx, as well as Engels, offered important insights for understanding social reproduction as an abstract feature of human societies that, however, can only be fully understood in its historically specific context (i.e., in the context of the interface between modes of production and social formations). Social reproduction in the twenty-first century is capitalist social reproduction, inherently contradictory, as successful struggles for the reproduction of the working classes, for example, do not necessarily challenge capitalism. Finally, this article argues that radical social scientists, because they identify the capitalist foundations of the social phenomena they study, have made important contributions to the study of capitalist reproduction.

Determinism, Predictions, and Probabilism

2021 ◽  
pp. 85-88
Author(s):  
Francois Dépelteau
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Biological Determinism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Social Cause ◽  
Social Causes ◽  
The Universe

This chapter addresses determinism, which has been the predominant mode of perceiving the universe in modern sciences. The basic assumption is that any event is the effect of an external cause. Generally speaking, biological determinism focuses on the biological causes of events, whereas social sciences focus on the social causes. This mode of perceiving the social universe is typically associated with positivism and, more specifically, social naturalism — or the idea that there is no significant difference between social phenomena and natural phenomena. In this logic, it is assumed that social scientists can and should discover ‘social laws’ — or universal relations of causality between a social cause and a social effect. However, determinism in the social sciences has been criticized since its very beginning. In response to these critiques, many social scientists have adopted various forms of ‘soft’ determinism. The chapter then considers social predictions and probabilism.

scholarly journals Ontology, neural networks, and the social sciences

Synthese ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Strohmaier
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Neural Networks ◽  
Statistical Models ◽  
Internal Representation ◽  
Representation Learning ◽  
Machine Learning Techniques ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Ontological Commitments ◽  
The Social

AbstractThe ontology of social objects and facts remains a field of continued controversy. This situation complicates the life of social scientists who seek to make predictive models of social phenomena. For the purposes of modelling a social phenomenon, we would like to avoid having to make any controversial ontological commitments. The overwhelming majority of models in the social sciences, including statistical models, are built upon ontological assumptions that can be questioned. Recently, however, artificial neural networks (ANNs) have made their way into the social sciences, raising the question whether they can avoid controversial ontological assumptions. ANNs are largely distinguished from other statistical and machine learning techniques by being a representation-learning technique. That is, researchers can let the neural networks select which features of the data to use for internal representation instead of imposing their preconceptions. On this basis, I argue that neural networks can avoid ontological assumptions to a greater degree than common statistical models in the social sciences. I then go on, however, to establish that ANNs are not ontologically innocent either. The use of ANNs in the social sciences introduces ontological assumptions typically in at least two ways, via the input and via the architecture.

scholarly journals Islamic Studies in the Twenty-first Century

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Traditional Methods ◽  
Islamic Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Twenty First Century

In recent decades, traditional methods of philology and intellectual history, applied to the study of Islam and Muslim societies, have been met with considerable criticism from rising generations of scholars who have turned to the social sciences, most notably anthropology and social history, for guidance. This change has been accompanied by the rise of new fields, studying, for example, Islam in Europe and Africa, and new topics, such as the role of gender. This collection surveys these transformations and others, taking stock of the field and showing new paths forward.

scholarly journals What is Education for? Situating History, Cultural Understandings and Studies of Society and Environment against Neo-Conservative Critiques of Curriculum Reform

2005 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 306-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Curriculum Reform ◽  
Global Citizenship ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
European Heritage ◽  
Purpose Of Education ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Discursive Field

This article explores some of the debates about the nature and purpose of education in the social sciences in the Australian curricula. It examines recent attempts in studies of society and environment and history curricula to prepare students for global citizenship and responds to neo-conservative critiques that our ‘politically correct’ curricula does not impart the ‘truth’ about our ‘European’ heritage. This article argues that while the neo-conservative discourse makes claim to traditional views of knowledge and rationality, its discursive field does not address the broader questions of what sort of education our students require for the twenty-first century.

“A Fanatic of Order in an Epoch of Confusing Turmoil”

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Meierhenrich ◽  
Oliver Simons
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
First Century ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The Social ◽  
Twenty First Century

This handbook engages with the critical ordering of Schmitt’s writings, investing in the proper contextualization of his polycentric thought. More important than whether Schmitt’s positions and concepts are relevant in the twenty-first century is how to read Schmitt so as to grasp the original meanings of his many publications. The handbook intends to provoke debate about the relevance of his canon for thinking about the present. It argues that the motif of order is central to making sense of Schmitt’s contributions to law, the social sciences, and the humanities, as well as that his contributions to diverse disciplines constituted a trinity of thought. Schmitt’s political thought cannot be understood without reference to his legal and cultural thought; his legal thought was informed equally by his political and cultural thought; and his cultural thought contains important traces of his political and legal thought. This theoretical and substantive overlap was deliberate.

scholarly journals The Debate of Minimizing Subjectivity in Gender Studies: A Critical Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 164
Author(s):  
Madiha Nadeem
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Gender Studies ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
Systematic Knowledge

The social sciences have always been contested on the philosophical and ethical grounds of producing scientific knowledge. Similarly, the standpoints of Gender studies are analytically linked to certain domains of reasoning for human behavior. It discusses social phenomena from a societal and cultural perspective, which raises questions for the scholars of this subject about the application of particular procedures for understanding realities guided by some ideologies (Söderlund & Madison, 2017). This article critically evaluates the theoretical debate on ways of upholding the objectivity in this discipline by minimizing the role of subjectivity in the construction of new knowledge. It is concluded that by adopting techniques such as bracketing, triangulation, reflexivity and various other theoretical stands mentioned by scholars, feminists, and social scientists, the struggle of producing objective systematic knowledge can be promoted in gender studies and other social sciences.

scholarly journals Czy socjologowie są w stanie budować maszyny społeczne? Rekonceptualizacja różnicy między przyrodoznawstwem a naukami społecznymi

2009 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-44
Author(s):  
Łukasz Afeltowicz ◽  
Krzysztof Pietrowicz
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Traditional Philosophy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Difference

The last three decades have witnessed a dynamic development of science and technology studies, which have shown science in a way completely different from that presented by the traditional philosophy of science and methodology of social sciences. The authors accept that the findings of those studies concerning the mechanisms of functioning of science are correct and attempt to address again the problem of the difference between those disciplines and the social sciences. Their analysis concerns: the role and importance of laboratories in the social sciences; the “transition” of social phenomena to those laboratories; the possibility of popularization by the social sciences of technological solutions prepared by those laboratories; an incorrect approach to experiment and the acceptance of false ideas of the function of natural sciences by social scientists.

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