scholarly journals Networks

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-36
Author(s):  
Heather Lovell
Keyword(s):  
Smart Grid ◽  
Smart Grids ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Policy Networks ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Community Network ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sociotechnical Networks

AbstractSocial scientists study many different types of networks, from policy networks to sociotechnical networks, in order to better understand processes of change. These diverse networks have a number of characteristics in common, including interconnectedness, flows, and fragility. Exploring these characteristics in relation to smart grids helps us to better understand the social nature of energy sector innovation. In this chapter, I use these themes and concepts to assess three examples: international smart grid policy networks; a local community network on Bruny Island, Australia; and a fragile network, the digital metering programme in the State of Victoria, Australia.

Political Change in Guatemalan Indian Communities

1964 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland H. Ebel
Keyword(s):  
Local Community ◽  
Final Analysis ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Broad Area ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Modernization ◽  
Catch Up

The international tensions produced in our world by the drive of the so-called under-developed societies to catch up economically with the industrialized countries of the West have compelled social scientists to focus their attention increasingly upon the social processes which are necessary if this development is to be achieved with a minimum of inefficiency and strife. That aspect of this very broad area which is of greatest concern to political scientists is usually called “political modernization.” One of the most efficient ways to study the process of political modernization is to view it as it operates at the level of the local community. In fact, it might be postulated that in those societies variously called under-developed, traditional, or primitive, it is, in the final analysis, the community and not the nation that most directly participates in this process.

’Tis the Company

2019 ◽  
pp. 174-182
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Electronic Devices ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
Traditional Music ◽  
Personal Style ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
The Social ◽  
Irish Traditional Music

This chapter presents a series of vignettes concerning contemporary uilleann piping, the social nature of tune transmission, the persistence of personal style, and tradition as conversation. It starts from the premise that Irish traditional music offers the possibility of enacting the value of neighbourliness through musical and social grooves, and considers how this plays out in a world of electronic devices, externalized memory, virtual communities, and commodified sound. How do players of Irish traditional music create sustainable local community in the digital age? How does conversation survive being stuffed down a wire?

The Web as a Platform for e-Research in the Social and Behavioral Sciences

2012 ◽  
pp. 34-61
Author(s):  
Pablo Garaizar ◽  
Miguel A. Vadillo ◽  
Diego López-de-Ipiña ◽  
Helena Matute
Keyword(s):  
Rapid Evolution ◽  
Future Internet ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Social And Behavioral Sciences ◽  
Behavioral Sciences ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
The Social ◽  
Client Side ◽  
The Web

As a consequence of the joint and rapid evolution of the Internet and the social and behavioral sciences during the last two decades, the Internet is becoming one of the best possible psychological laboratories and is being used by scientists from all over the world in more and more productive and interesting ways each day. This chapter uses examples from psychology, while reviewing the most recent Web paradigms, like the Social Web, Semantic Web, and Cloud Computing, and their implications for e-research in the social and behavioral sciences, and tries to anticipate the possibilities offered to social science researchers by future Internet proposals. The most recent advancements in the architecture of the Web, both from the server and the client-side, are also discussed in relation to behavioral e-research. Given the increasing social nature of the Web, both social scientists and engineers should benefit from knowledge on how the most recent and future Web developments can provide new and creative ways to advance the understanding of the human nature.

scholarly journals Narratives

2021 ◽  
pp. 53-71
Author(s):  
Heather Lovell
Keyword(s):  
Smart Grid ◽  
Smart Grids ◽  
The State ◽  
Willingness To Participate ◽  
Hydrogen Economy ◽  
Energy Futures ◽  
Global Industry ◽  
Policy Failure

AbstractStories pervade society and play a role in helping us to simplify and make sense of new innovations such as smart grids. Narratives are useful to study not only because of the things, people and organisations that they speak to but also because of the things that are not said—the silences. There are many narratives about smart grids and in this chapter I explore three examples: a global industry narrative about households and their willingness to participate in smart grids; a narrative of policy failure about a smart grid project in the State of Victoria, Australia; and narratives that compete with smart grids, including the hydrogen economy and off-grid energy futures.

scholarly journals Extensions of schooling environments into the local community, and social construction of democracy in Spain (1931-1939). Contributions made by the Freinet pedagogical movement

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-145
Author(s):  
José Luis Hernández Huerta
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Second Republic ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
The Social ◽  
Schooling Practices ◽  
Schooling System

This article highlights the social nature of the Freinet movement in Spain during the period of the Second Republic (1931-1936) and the Civil War (1936-1939), and investigates the community-based aspect of its schooling practices. To begin with, we examine a number of aspects of Spain’s Freinet movement which help to see it as a social movement as well as a pedagogical one. Then, we study a) the main strategies employed by teachers to facilitate the social building of democracy through the schooling system, and b) the most significant extensions of the school into the local community, which helped break down the physical and symbolic barriers separating schooling institutions from the framework of ordinary citizens’ daily existence.

scholarly journals Nodes

2021 ◽  
pp. 37-52
Author(s):  
Heather Lovell
Keyword(s):  
Smart Grid ◽  
Smart Grids ◽  
Energy Sector ◽  
Energy Market ◽  
Anchor Points ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Stable Points

AbstractNodes within smart grids play an important role in providing stability—keeping things the same—as well as innovating. The theme of nodes is closely related to that of networks, as nodes are fixed, stable points on networks. But whereas the network metaphor encourages us to think about connections and flows, the concept of nodes focuses our attention on the key organisations, people, and technologies that provide stable anchor points and typically act as brokers at crucial intersections within the energy sector. In this chapter, I examine social and technical nodes using three examples: the digital electricity meter, with a focus on household transitions in the UK and Australia, an energy authority (the Australian Energy Market Operator), and islands, specifically looking at the smart grid on King Island, Australia.

Value-driven issues throughout the development of sociological theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 147-160
Author(s):  
Gulbarshyn Chepurko ◽  
Valerii Pylypenko
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social System ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Different Levels

The paper examines and compares how the major sociological theories treat axiological issues. Value-driven topics are analysed in view of their relevance to society in times of crisis, when both societal life and the very structure of society undergo dramatic change. Nowadays, social scientists around the world are also witnessing such a change due to the emergence of alternative schools of sociological thought (non-classical, interpretive, postmodern, etc.) and, subsequently, the necessity to revise the paradigms that have been existed in sociology so far. Since the above-mentioned approaches are often used to address value-related issues, building a solid theoretical framework for these studies takes on considerable significance. Furthermore, the paradigm revision has been prompted by technological advances changing all areas of people’s lives, especially social interactions. The global human community, integral in nature, is being formed, and production of human values now matters more than production of things; hence the “expansion” of value-focused perspectives in contemporary sociology. The authors give special attention to collectivities which are higher-order units of the social system. These units are described as well-organised action systems where each individual performs his/her specific role. Just as the role of an individual is distinct from that of the collectivity (because the individual and the collectivity are different as units), so too a distinction is drawn between the value and the norm — because they represent different levels of social relationships. Values are the main connecting element between the society’s cultural system and the social sphere while norms, for the most part, belong to the social system. Values serve primarily to maintain the pattern according to which the society is functioning at a given time; norms are essential to social integration. Apart from being the means of regulating social processes and relationships, norms embody the “principles” that can be applied beyond a particular social system. The authors underline that it is important for Ukrainian sociology to keep abreast of the latest developments in the field of axiology and make good use of those ideas because this is a prerequisite for its successful integration into the global sociological community.

On diversity in the social sciences: Why homogeneous research groups are an ethical mistake

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Nusbaum ◽  
Toby SantaMaria
Keyword(s):  
Minority Groups ◽  
Academic Science ◽  
Research Groups ◽  
Ethical Perspective ◽  
Scientific Enterprise ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Good ◽  
The Social ◽  
Public Responsibility ◽  
Principles Of Justice

The scientific enterprise reflects society at large, and as such it actively disadvantages minority groups. From an ethical perspective, this system is unacceptable as it actively undermines principles of justice and social good, as well as the research principles of openness and public responsibility. Further, minority social scientists lead to better overall scientific products, meaning a diverse scientific body can also be considered an instrumental good. Thus, centering minority voices in science is an ethical imperative. This paper outlines what can be done to actively center these scientists, including changing the way metrics are used to assess the performance of individual scientists and altering the reward structure within academic science to promote heterogenous research groups.

Asserting the Capacity to be Free

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Catherine Kramarczuk Voulgarides
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Connective Tissue ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Zero Tolerance ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Community Context ◽  
Northeastern United States ◽  
Suburban School District ◽  
The Social

In this article, I explore how the social contract of schooling and the three functions of schooling (Noguera 2003)—to sort, to socialize, and to control— impact and constrain the freedom and agency of a group of young Black and Latinx men in one suburban school district that was experiencing sociodemographic shifts in the Northeastern United States. I use qualitative data to frame how the young men experience schooling, and I show how the local community context facilitates the institutionalization of discriminatory sorting processes and racially prejudiced norms. I also show how the young men are excessively controlled and monitored via zero tolerance disciplinary practices, which effectively constrains their humanity and capacity to freely exist in their school and which inadvertently strengthens the connective tissue between schools and prisons.

ISLAMIC SOCIAL SCIENCES

1988 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona Abul Fadl
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Foundations ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Human Value ◽  
The Social ◽  
Western Values ◽  
Culture Brokers

The need for a relevant and instrumental body of knowledge that can secure the taskof historical reconstruction in Muslim societies originally inspired the da’wa for the Islamizationof knowledge. The immediate targets for this da’wa were the social sciences for obvious reasons.Their field directly impinges on the organization of human societies and as such carries intothe area of human value and belief systems. The fact that such a body of knowledge alreadyexisted and that the norms for its disciplined pursuit were assumed in the dominant practiceconfronted Muslim scholars with the context for addressing the issues at stake. How relevantwas current social science to Muslim needs and aspirations? Could it, in its present formand emphasis, provide Muslims with the framework for operationalizing their values in theirhistorical present? How instrumental is it in shaping the social foundations vital for the Muslimfuture? Is instrumentality the only criteria for such evaluations? In seeking to answer thesequestions the seeds are sown for a new orientation in the social sciences. This orientationrepresents the legitimate claims and aspirations of a long silent/silenced world culture.In locating the activities of Muslim social scientists today it is important to distinguishbetween two currents. The first is in its formative stages as it sets out to rediscover the worldfrom the perspective of a recovered sense of identity and in terms of its renewed culturalaffinities. Its preoccupations are those of the Muslim revival. The other current is constitutedof the remnants of an earlier generation of modernizers who still retain a faith in the universalityof Western values. Demoralized by the revival, as much as by their own cultural alientation,they seek to deploy their reserves of scholarship and logistics to recover lost ground. Bymodifying their strategy and revalorizing the legacy they hope that, as culture-brokers, theymight be more effective where others have failed. They seek to pre-empt the cultural revivalby appropriating its symbols and reinterpreting the Islamic legacy to make it more tractableto modernity. They blame Orientalism for its inherent fixations and strive to redress its selfimposedlimitations. Their efforts may frequently intersect with those of the Islamizing current,but should clearly not be confused with them. For all the tireless ingenuity, these effortsare more conspicuous for their industry than for their originality. Between the new breadof renovationists and the old guard of ‘modernizers’, the future of an Islamic Social Scienceclearly lies with the efforts of the former.Within the Islamizing current it is possible to distinguish three principal trends. The firstopts for a radical perspective and takes its stand on epistemological grounds. It questionsthe compatibility of the current social sciences on account of their rootedness in the paradigmof the European Enlightenment and its attendant naturalistic and positivist biases. Consistencedemands a concerted e€fort to generate alternative paradigms for a new social science fromIslamic epistemologies. In contrast, the second trend opts for a more pragmatic approachwhich assumes that it is possible to interact within the existing framework of the disciplinesafter adapting them to Islamic values. The problem with modern sciene is ethical, notepistemological, and by recasting it accordingly, it is possible to benefit from its strengthsand curtail its derogatory consequences. The third trend focuses on the Muslim scholar, rather ...

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