University of East Africa Social Science Conference

1966 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 538-540
Author(s):  
Martin Lowenkopf

This conference brought together over 70 social scientists from the Kenyan, Tanzanian, and Ugandan constituent Colleges of the University of East Africa (with visitors from Zambia, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, and Rhodesia) for their annual inter-disciplinary, or rather trans-disciplinary, deliberations. Why ‘trans-disciplinary’? Because the historians discussed nationalism, politics, and church movements; political scientists discoursed on economics, rural settlement, agriculture, and education; sociologists criticised political decisions and economic criteria which hampered their investigations into resettlement programmes; and the economists, while speaking mostly about economics, were represented at virtually all panels, apparently to guard their disciplinary preserve against intrusions, presumptions and, in one case, elision with political science.

1968 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-106
Author(s):  
John Lonsdale

This year it was the turn of Dar es Salaam to act as host to the social scientists, now numbering nearly 200, from the three constituent colleges of the University of East Africa, together with visitors from the Universities of Malawi and Zambia, from Tanzanian government ministries, and places as widely separated as Kinshasa and Leeds. As at last year's conference (reported by Martin Lowenkopf in The Journal of Modern African Studies, IV, 4, 1966), the discussions were trans-disciplinary, even if the tight timetable of parallel disciplinary panels prevented delegates from taking full advantage of this. This reporter was unable to range far beyond the history meeting-room.


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-119
Author(s):  
Emily Hauptmann

ArgumentMost social scientists today think of data sharing as an ethical imperative essential to making social science more transparent, verifiable, and replicable. But what moved the architects of some of the U.S.’s first university-based social scientific research institutions, the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research (ISR), and its spin-off, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), to share their data? Relying primarily on archived records, unpublished personal papers, and oral histories, I show that Angus Campbell, Warren Miller, Philip Converse, and others understood sharing data not as an ethical imperative intrinsic to social science but as a useful means to the diverse ends of financial stability, scholarly and institutional autonomy, and epistemological reproduction. I conclude that data sharing must be evaluated not only on the basis of the scientific ideals its supporters affirm, but also on the professional objectives it serves.


1974 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  

The term “social sciences” (‘ulūm-i-ijtimā’ī) has gained currency in Iran only during the last fifteen years or so, but some of the disciplines falling within its purview have been in existence for a longer period. Thus the first institution for teaching political science was established in 1899, and the first chair of sociology was created in 19 35 in the University of Tehran. Besides, iike Molière’s bourgeois gentillhomme who belatedly realized that he had been making prose all his life without being aware of it, some Iranian scholars too have long been engaged in writing, translating and conducting research on social problems or using sociological concepts without being conscious of themselves as social scientists.Since from a chronological viewpoint, political science appeared in Iran prior to other disciplines of social sciences and its studies involve problems of a distinct nature, the present paper is divided into two parts: the first dealing with political science, and the second with sociology and related disciplines.


1969 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 1233-1246
Author(s):  
John G. Gunnell

The purpose here is to explore certain aspects of the philosophy of science which have serious implications both for the practice of social and political science and for understanding that practice. The current relationship between social science and the philosophy of science (or the philosophy of the social sciences) is a curious one. Despite the emergence of a considerable body of literature in philosophy which is pertinent to the methodological problems of social science, there has been a lack of osteusive ties between the two areas. A justified concern with the independence of social scientific research has contributed to a tendency toward isolation which is unfortunate in view of the proliferation of philosophical problems which necessarily attends the rapid expansion of any empirical discipline. Although in the literature of contemporary social science there are frequent references to certain works in the philosophy of science and to philosophical issues relating to methodology, these are most often in the context of bald pronouncements and shibboleths relating to the nature of science, its goals, and the character of its reasoning. But what is most disturbing about the fact that social scientists have little direct and thorough acquaintance with the philosophy of science is not merely that there has been a failure to carefully examine the many logical and epistemological assumptions which are implicit in social scientific inquiry, since this task might normally and properly be considered to be within the province of the philospher of science.


1994 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 527-543 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard N. Adams

Recent years have seen a significant increase in the use of history by social scientists. It is less and less common that studies in anthropology, sociology, and political science evaluate variables without attention to their antecedents. There still survive, however, concepts and theories built originally on synchronic assumptions. One of these theories, ladinization, has been the subject of considerable contention.“Ladinization” derives from “Ladino,” a term used in Guatemala and adjacent areas of Mexico, El Salvador, and Honduras to refer to the non-Indian natives of those countries. I am not sure when “ladinization” entered the social science vocabulary, but it may have been with the work of North American anthropologists in the 1930s and 1940s. It described what observers thought of as a process whereby Indians were becoming Ladinos or more Ladino-like. The term was not favored by Guatemalan Ladinos, who generally spoke of “civilizing” the Indians, by which they meant that Indian customs should be discarded in favor of Ladino. In espousing this theme, Guatemalan indigenistas of the “generation of the 20s” often blurred the relation of race to culture; some argued that Indians were capable of being “civilized,” others that such changes could only be secured by introducing Europeans to interbreeding.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 7-20
Author(s):  
Leszek Sobkowiak ◽  
Andrzej W. Jabłoński

Political theory in the research of professor Andrzej Czajowski   Professor Andrzej Czajowski, an academic scholar and lecturer at the University of Wroclaw, conducted interdisciplinary scientific research in many fields of political science. His main field of interest was political theory. The subjects of his research were, inter alia, the nature of politics and political aspects of other social phenomena, the relations between political power, decisions, actions, agents and structures. Professor Czajowski conducted interdisciplinary research from the perspectives of political theory, political psychology and law. His main contribution to empirical and analytical political theory was the development of a new understanding of different academic concepts in political science, such as politics, power, political decisions and political activity. In the published books and research papers professor Czajowski has developed new meanings of key political science concepts, such as politics, power, political action, political decisions, political attitudes, political conflicts and political thought. His academic works have enriched the language of political science and political theory by adding new classifications and typologies, and contributed to a better understanding of the complexity of politics.


2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 549-551
Author(s):  
C. Fred Alford

Man Is by Nature a Political Animal: Evolution, Biology, and Politics. Edited by Peter K. Hatemi and Rose McDermott. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011. 352p. $80.00 cloth, $27.50 paper.Peter K. Hatemi and Rose McDermott's Man Is by Nature a Political Animal brings together some of the most important social scientists working at the intersection of political science, psychology, biology, and cognitive neuroscience. Given recent advances in cognitive neuroscience and given the proliferation of work in political science that draws on these advances, we have decided to invite a range of political scientists to comment on the promise and the limits of this line of inquiry. What can scientific developments in psychology, biology, and neuroscience tell us about “human nature”? Can these discourses reckon with the variation in time and space that has traditionally been at the heart of political science, perhaps even going back to the classic text from which Hatemi and McDermott derive their title, Aristotle's Politics?—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor


Author(s):  
Mark Bevir ◽  
Jason Blakely

Concept formation is inescapable because social scientists cannot study political reality without making tacit assumptions about the basic relevant concepts. An anti-naturalist approach offers a distinctive form of concept formation, one that avoids naturalist distortions like essentialism, reification, and instrumentalism. In order to make this case, this chapter draws on some of the most influential political science methodology literature as well as top research programs of empirical political science (including critical discussions of voter behavior, the study of so-called “contentious politics,” democratic peace, and selectorate theory, to name a few). The chapter concludes by elaborating on the way that an interpretive social science forges concepts that are sensitive to meanings and human agency.


1969 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 495-511
Author(s):  
William G. Fleming

Within the past few years military coups have ended civil rule in ten African nations. These events, and similar earlier upheavals in the Sudan and East Africa, indicate the intense strain which their politics are enduring. Should social scientists remain mute while this process continues throughout the continent? Are there no general principles of political science and comparative political history which can be utilised to assist the new states to adjust, to control their social environments, and to avoid the abyss of authoritarianism? A potential alliance of military and bureaucratic élites in guiding the political destiny of much of Africa must now be viewed as probable.


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