Nethnography and Social Network Analysis for Studying Online Social Space

This chapter contributes to the current methodological debate on digital, internet-based studies in social research. Based upon an introductive analysis of the research's perspectives, trajectories, and stages that have brought the online social spaces into social research, the chapter focuses on the advantages of combining quanti-quali approaches for approaching online complexity. In particular, the authors offer a deep discussion concerning the value, the methodological, and ethical challenges of netnography and social network analysis (SNA) methods for inquiring online social research by proposing a possible emerging methodological framework guiding further empirical studies.

Transnational online research: recognising multiple contexts in Skype-to-phone interviews

This paper lies at the intersection of discussions surrounding digitally mediated research methods and transnational research projects. It contributes to the current methodological debate surrounding online interviewing by focusing on tensions and affordances involved in Skype-to-phone interviewing in a transnational research context. While the Skype-to-phone facility does indeed increase further access to global participants, complex power hierarchies and ethical concerns continue to exist in relation to technological access/infrastructure, research governance regimes in different places and interpersonal research relations. We, therefore, propose that online researchers involved in transnational research projects using Skype methods move towards consideration of multiple competing constituencies and diverse social and spatial connectivities and power hierarchies in which they are researching. These social differences and spatial registers are not swept away through research conducted in a uniform virtual digital environment; rather transnational researchers must make explicit the multiple place-based contexts of their digitally mediated research, as they shape the research process in distinct ways. Thus, specific consideration must be given to ethical concerns that emanate from transnational online research.

Las representaciones conceptuales en la ciencia cognitiva

Resumen: En el marco de la ciencia cognitiva se ha polemizado acerca de la manera en la que el enfoque enraizado de la cognición pueda compatibilizarse con al enfoque clásico con el fin de explicar nuestras capacidades conceptuales. Sin embargo este debate metodológico no ha sido acompañado de una elucidación de la noción de “representación conceptual” tal como venía siendo entendida al menos en la filosofía y psicología cognitivas. El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar en que consiste una representación conceptual con el fin de aportar claridad al debate sobre las capacidades conceptuales enraizadas. Desarrollaré y evaluaré la idea de que una representación es conceptual si puede combinarse sistemáticamente para formar nuevas estructuras representacionales y si se puede utilizar en tareas psicológicas con independencia del estímulo. Abstract: In cognitive science, it is an open debate whether grounded cognition might be compatible with traditional views of cognition. However, as far as I am aware, this methodological debate has not been accompanied by an elucidation of the notion of “conceptual representation” as it has been understood in philosophy and cognitive psychology. The aim of this paper is to offer an elucidation of this sort. I will develop and evaluate the idea that a representation is conceptual when it can be systematically combined to form new representational structures and when it can be used in psychological tasks regardless of the stimulus. Palabras clave: capacidades conceptuales, sistematicidad, independencia del estímulo, cognición enraizada, psicología cognitiva. Keywords: conceptual abilities, sistematicity, independence of stimulus, grounded cognition, cognitive psychology.

Validation of a Satisfaction Questionnaire on Spa Tourism

The authors’ line of research is within the existing methodological debate around the concepts of quality of services, destinations, and quality measurements methods. The authors consider that the most appropriate way to measure quality is to develop instruments according to the destination and context in question, defining the quality of the tourist destination for practical purposes based on the satisfaction experienced by the tourist or the SERVPERF model, weighted and used to measure the quality of sun and beach tourist destinations. The authors of this work propose the knowledge of spa tourism, its quality and its level of satisfaction as a research gap and consider it as a starting point to validate a questionnaire that would allow the measurement and comparison of parameters with other segments already studied and that can also serve as a measuring instrument for tourist segments with similar characteristics, not as well known in the international literature as inland, ecological or nature tourism. Good internal reliability results were obtained in all items and in all dimensions. The factor analysis distributed the weights of the variables in the theoretical model, and construct validity was obtained with an association between the global evaluation by dimension and the general significance. The score of the main questionnaire was statistically significant.

Long lockdowns and rainy days: Modeling the interactive roles of weather, behavior, and restrictions in COVID-19 transmission in the Netherlands

Extant research on the role of weather in COVID-19 has produced ambiguous results and much methodological debate. Following advice emerging from this methodological debate, we take a step further in modeling effects of weather on COVID-19 spread by including interactions between weather, behavior, baseline cases, and restrictions in our model. Our model was based on secondary infection, hospitalization, restriction, weather, and mobility data per day nested with safety region in the Netherlands. Our findings show significant but inconsistent interactions. The robust effects of weather on COVID-19 spread persisted over and above these interactions, highlighting the need to account for weather with nuance and caution in public policy, communication, and forecasting.

Heterogeneous entrepreneurship and the Sunday Times Rich List

It may appear surprising that economists devote such little attention to the heterogeneity nature of entrepreneurship, however there are several possible explanations. The concept represents a well-known tension between typical economic theory and the concept of entrepreneurship itself. When Baumol (1968) and Kirz-ner (1973) wrote their seminal works they were attempting to respond to a perceived neglect of the entrepreneur within neo classical economics. The explosion of entrepreneurship re search since then has not been comfortably reconciled with for mal mo - dels, and indeed empirical studies have a tendency to lapse into psychological profiling. It might be argued that such profiling (be it in terms of gender, race, age, experience, education, IQ, marital status, employment history, etc) does make entrepreneurs hetero - geneous, however this differs from the way in which we use the term. «Heterogeneity» does not merely mean «differentiated» but ties into a deeper methodological debate about the nature of scientific analysis. In short, heterogeneity is an aspect of the broa - der concept of subjectivism. At a basic level subjectivism implies that individuals can interpret events in different ways, and as a consequence of this we expect a diversity of action that is glossed over when people are modelled as homogenous agents. Having said this, it’s important to recognise the diversity of approaches and methodologies within the economics profession. For example, although the neoclassical system is liable to eschew premises that aren’t tractable, Austrian-school economists do tend to emphasise subjectivism and heterogeneity. But whilst this is strikingly evident in capital theory (see Lachmann 1956) it is cu-rious to note that a similar attitude towards entrepreneurs them - selves is underplayed. In short, since Austrians emphasise the functional qualities of entrepreneurship they treat entrepreneurs as homogenous blobs. This paper intends to strike a middle ground between homogeneity and psychological particularism by de-constructing the entrepreneur (Evans and Baxendale 2008).

Caste and Higher Education in India

Subramanian’s The Caste of Merit addresses the issue of educational inequality in colonial and independent India, focusing on the Indian Institutes of Technology (iits) that have trained the engineering elites since the 1950s. The members of the high caste who initially comprised this group ascribed their personal success to merit, not to background. India’s policy of allowing disadvantaged caste groups to enter the (iits), however, challenged the high castes’ representation of their educational privilege as simply a matter of talent. Subramanian’s view of the upper-caste position as an attempt to forestall progress toward a more egalitarian Indian society opens a methodological debate about the fundamental epistemic demands that scholars must satisfy before they adopt social causes above and beyond the conveying of objective information.

Finding New Ways of “Doing” Socio-Legal Labor Law History in Germany and the UK: Introducing a “Minor Comparativism”

Labor law scholars have been receptive to socio legal methods, going beyond doctrinal legal sources and looking to other disciplines including industrial relations, sociology, and history. This Article revisits the development of socio legal labor law scholarship in Germany and the UK in order to understand the different approaches within the context of two different legal and academic cultures, and considers how a comparison can provide new insights at a time when the discipline is in a state of flux. In particular, this Article focuses on how history can provide an entrée into different ways of comparing labor law and labor relations systems. It seeks to start a methodological debate on “how to do” labor law history within the context of the discipline’s socio legal origins. In a final section, it uses insights from history and comparative law in order to develop a new methodology—a “minor comparativism”—which unearths the processes and influences underpinning the historical development of labor law which have hitherto escaped the legal record. Such an approach enables scholars to reassess traditional narratives—a worthwhile endeavor at a time when the future role of labor law in regulating work is under scrutiny.

Reading History Forward

ABSTRACT Recent decades have seen a productive methodological debate about how political scientists “do history.” However, on one important point, the discussion has been surprisingly thin. This concerns the problem of reading history backward rather than forward. To understand this problem, we need to embed it in broader methodological discussions of how the selection of evidence is shaped (and potentially biased) by all sorts of prior assumptions going into the evidence-collection process. Thus, reading history backward makes scholars refrain from posing certain questions, become blind to certain descriptive developments and explanatory factors, and fail to enlist certain historical data. This article pulls together the fragmentary insights about this problem and devises an alternative, prospective approach centered on an open reading of the work of historians. Although this is a “low-tech” issue, it is one that has huge ramifications for the way we do historical analysis as political scientists.

The Morality of Harm

The methodological debate about the morality of war has tended to confuse different questions. It has led to a polarization, where on the one hand people see the morality of war as a primarily collectivist and institutionalized subject and on the other simply as a matter of questions of individual responsibility. These are not the only options, and we need a more nuanced approach. Rejecting the existence and significance of collective agency, or the authority of the commands of unjust states to go to war, should not incline us to ignore other facts about relationships between individuals that are morally important.