Perspectivism in the Social Sciences

Philosophy ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 60 (233) ◽  
pp. 373-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Dawson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
General Question ◽  
Power Struggle ◽  
Accurate Representation ◽  
Social Inquiry ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Rational Thought ◽  
The Way

The general question to which this paper is addressed is whether knowledge and rationality carry within themselves the seeds of their own destruction. Some of those who set out in search of knowledge come to believe as a result of their inquiries that the object of their quest is not what they had taken it to be; seeking to discover the way the world actually is, they are led to conclude that all they can hope to find is a reflection of their own needs and interests; the grail is but a beaker. Similarly, some of those whose aim is to formulate the principles of rational thought are led by reason to deny that any beliefs can be rationally justified; reasons are never reasons for believing but mere epiphenomena, produced by but not producing events whose only begetter is the passions; the quest is just another power struggle. The particular question I wish to ask is whether this picture is an accurate representation of social inquiry.

Marxist Historiography Today

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Hobsbawm
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Human Society ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Methodology Of Science ◽  
The Way

This chapter discusses Marxist historiography in the present times. In the interpretation of the world nowadays, there has been a rise in the so-called anti-Rankean reaction in history, of which Marxism is an important but not always fully acknowledged element. This movement challenged the positivist belief that the objective structure of reality was self-explanatory, and that all that was needed was to apply the methodology of science to it and explain why things happened the way they did. This movement also brought together history with the social sciences, therefore turning it into part of a generalizing discipline capable of explaining transformations of human society in the course of its past. This new perspective on the past is a return to ‘total history’, in which the focus is not merely on the ‘history of everything’ but history as an indivisible web wherein all human activities are interconnected.

Effort Appears Inadequate in the Modern World:Our Identities Are Shaped by Our Real- Life Chances

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Willliam Elliott ◽  
Melinda Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
American Dream ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Accurate Representation ◽  
Life Chances ◽  
Unfair Advantage ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

In its simplest form, the American dream is the belief that success should be determined by effort, not unfair advantage. This idea is embedded in the psyche of most Americans and shapes the way we collectively view individuals’ outcomes. It forms the lens through which we judge social policies that undergird opportunities or compound disadvantage. It is powerful enough to influence the way that people see their own success and failure and that of others. It can blind Americans to the structural forces that chart our fates. Indeed, Americans who want so badly to believe that there is a logic to the forces that shape their outcomes and a real path to their promised future may even excuse patently unfair institutions and the injustices they perpetuate. While these system- justifying beliefs can buffer people from the stress of contemplating abject inequity, as evidence mounts that things are not working as they should, defenses slip, doubts rise, and cracks emerge in the American dream. Today, there is a growing sense that this dream is more nostalgic memory than an accurate representation of the way the world works. A 2014 survey found that 48% of Americans believed that the American dream once was true but is not true anymore. These doubts represent more than just whispered anxieties or casual statements of political frustration. Instead, we contend that belief in the American dream is an expression of deeply rooted faith in our institutions and their ability to deliver on their promises, which in turn becomes a covenant in modern governance. This means that Americans’ increasing skepticism about whether institutions will ensure that their efforts pay off threatens the foundation of civil society. In other words, our inclination to rationalize societal arrangements has limits. When we can no longer explain away inequitable outcomes from schools, the labor market, and government policies, the social contract Americans have forged together is broken.

Critical Issues in the Social Sciences and Their Implications for Mission Studies

1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul G. Hiebert
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Global Mission ◽  
The Social ◽  
Age Of Exploration ◽  
The World ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Global Church ◽  
The Way

Missionaries and anthropologists have been at the forefront of the West's encounter with other peoples since the Age of Exploration. In this encounter their views of these people have changed as they learned to know and understand these Others better. The shift from Other as Savage and Pagan to Other as Primitive and Ancestor, and then to Other as Native and Unreached has shaped the way Western scholars and missionaries have theorized about and related to people from other parts of the world. As missiologists, we must move beyond the current views of others that dominate current anthropological and missiological thinking, and recognize that the Scriptures affirm that we are one humanity, that at the deepest level others are not other but us. Only such a change in attitudes will help us lay the foundations for the global mission of the global church.

scholarly journals A “We” Problem for Bioethics and the Social Sciences

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bob Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Informed Consent ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

In her article “The ‘We’ in the Me: Solidarity in the Era of Personalized Medicine,” Barbara Prainsack develops an earlier interest in the relationship between solidarity and autonomy and the way that these notions operate once passed through the lens of bioethical thought and practice. In his response to this article, Simpson introduces the perspective of two South Asian physicians on these issues. The piece highlights issues of personhood upon which the informed consent transaction is based and draws attention to the culturally specific versions of how people conceive of relationality, duty, care, and the obligations they feel they owe to others. The piece highlights the pronomial shifts between the “we” and the “me” and the way that these dispositions emerge in sociopolitically configured spaces. By paying careful attention to the settings and situations in which the movements between different positions actually take place, the ways in which the fabric of ethical life is made rather than simply given is revealed. Ethnographic inquiry is seen as crucial in understanding this process because it points to disjunctions between the categories that we are provided to apprehend the world and what it is actually like to live in that world.

Defending the Difference

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Natural Entities ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Methodological Difference ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One

Dreyfus argues that there is a basic methodological difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences, a difference that derives from the different goals and practices of each. He goes on to argue that being a realist about natural entities is compatible with pluralism or, as he calls it, “plural realism.” If intelligibility is always grounded in our practices, Dreyfus points out, then there is no point of view from which one can ask about or provide an answer to the one true nature of ultimate reality. But that is consistent with believing that the natural sciences can still reveal the way the world is independent of our theories and practices.

Benson and Miller in Perspective

1979 ◽  
Vol 3 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 242-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Kuklick
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Applied Science ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Knowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Stock Of Knowledge

Despite differences in coloration Miller and Benson are birds of a feather. Although he is no Pollyanna, Miller believes that there has been a modest and decent series of advances in the social sciences and that the most conscientious, diligent, and intelligent researchers will continue to add to this stock of knowledge. Benson is much more pessimistic about the achievements of yesterday and today but, in turn, offers us the hope of a far brighter tomorrow. Miller explains Benson’s hyperbolic views about the past and future by distinguishing between pure and applied science and by pointing out Benson’s naivete about politics: the itch to understand the world is different from the one to make it better; and, Miller says, because Benson sees that we have not made things better, he should not assume we do not know more about them; Benson ought to realize, Miller adds, that the way politicians translate basic social knowledge into social policy need not bring about rational or desirable results. On the other side, Benson sees more clearly than Miller that the development of science has always been intimately intertwined with the control of the environment and the amelioration of the human estate.

Book Reviews: Studies in Sociology, Race Mixture, Hunger and Work in a Savage Tribe, Interpretations, 1931–1932, Faith, Hope and Charity in Primitive Religion, Genetic Principles in Medicine and Social Science, The Reorganisation of Education in China, Social Decay and Eugenical Reform, The Social and Political Ideas of Some Representative Thinkers of the Revolutionary Era, L. T. Hobhouse, His Life and Work, Corner of England, World Agriculture—An International Study, Small-Town Stuff, Methods of Social Study, Does History Repeat Itself? The New Morality, Culture and Progress, Language and Languages: An Introduction to Linguistics, The Theory of Wages, The Santa Clara Valley, California, Social Psychology, A History of Fire and Flame, Sin and New Psychology, Sociology and Education, Mental Subnormality and the Local Community: Am Outline or a Practical Program, Tyneside Council op Social Service, Reconstruction and Education in Rural India, The Contribution of the English Le Play School to Rural Sociology, Kagami Kenkyu Hokoku, President's, Pioneer Settlement: Co-Operative Studies, Birth Control and Public Health, Pioneer Settlement: Co-Operative Studies, Ourselves and the World: The Making of an American Citizen, The Emergence of the Social Sciences from Moral Philosophy, The Comparable Interests of the Old Moral Philosophy and the Modern Social Sciences, The World in Agony, Sheffield Social Survey Committee, Housing Problems in Liverpool, Council for the Preservation of Rural England, Forest Land Use in Wisconsin, The Growth Cycle of the Farm Family, The Farmer's Guide to Agricultural Research in 1931, A History of the Public Library Movement in Great Britain and Ireland, The Retirement of National Debts, Public and Private Operation of Railways in Brazil, The Indian Minorities Problem, The Meaning of the Manchurian Crisis, The Drama of the Kingdom, Social Psychology, Competition in the American Tobacco Industry, New York School Centers and Their Community Policy, Desertion of Alabama Troops from the Confederate Army, Plans for City Police Jails and Village Lockups

1933 ◽  
Vol a25 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-109
Author(s):  
R. R. Marbtt ◽  
E. E. Evans-Pritchard ◽  
E. O. Jambs ◽  
Florence Ayscough ◽  
C. H. Desch ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Psychology ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Agricultural Research ◽  
Public Library ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pioneer Settlement

Futures Honed

Futures ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 118-134
Author(s):  
Barbara Adam
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Original Work ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
The Past ◽  
Writing Theory ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Verse Form ◽  
The Way

This chapter comprises an interview between Barbara Adam and the editors, and is followed by Adam’s ‘Honing Futures’, which is presented in four short verses of distilled theory. In the interview Adam reflects on thirty-five years of futures-thinking rooted in her deeply original work on time and temporality, and her innovative response to qualitative and linear definitions of time within the social sciences. The interview continues with a discussion of the way Adam’s thinking on futures intersects in her work with ideas of ethics and collective responsibility politics and concludes with a brief rationale for writing theory in verse form. In ‘Honing Futures’, a piece of futures theory verse form, Adam charts the movements and moments in considerations of the Not Yet and futurity’s active creation: from pluralized imaginings of the future, to an increasingly tangible and narrower anticipated future, to future-making as designing and reality-creating performance. Collectively, the verses identify the varied complex interdependencies of time, space, and matter with the past and future in all iterations of honing and making futures.

Assessing Contemporary Crises: Aligning Safety Science and Security Studies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bibi van den Berg ◽  
Ruth Prins ◽  
Sanneke Kuipers
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Safety Science ◽  
Key Topics

Security and safety are key topics of concern in the globalized and interconnected world. While the terms “safety” and “security” are often used interchangeably in everyday life, in academia, security is mostly studied in the social sciences, while safety is predominantly studied in the natural sciences, engineering, and medicine. However, developments and incidents that negatively affect society increasingly contain both safety and security aspects. Therefore, an integrated perspective on security and safety is beneficial. Such a perspective studies hazardous and harmful events and phenomena in the full breadth of their complexity—including the cause of the event, the target that is harmed, and whether the harm is direct or indirect. This leads to a richer understanding of the nature of incidents and the effects they may have on individuals, collectives, societies, nation-states, and the world at large.

Pluralism in Education and Education in Pluralism

1998 ◽  
Vol 180 (3) ◽  
pp. 67-84
Author(s):  
Stanley L. Jaki
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Trojan Horse ◽  
Religion And Theology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fundamental Understanding ◽  
Rational Thought ◽  
Scientific Ideas ◽  
Theology And Philosophy

The physicist and historian and philosopher of science Stanley L. Jaki first notes that the word “pluralism” has become a euphemism or Trojan horse for relativism. Valid, sound pluralism ought to entail an education in the plurality of subject matters and a respect and understanding for their separate, irreducible integrities and also their rational relatedness to one another. A non-relativist epistemology of universal validity and scope underlies and relates all the great bodies of knowledge and learning—the natural sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, religion and theology, and philosophy itself. Unfortunately the term “pluralism” as now commonly used has confused or obscured this fundamental understanding, the invaluable legacy of rational thought since Plato. The misunderstanding of Einstein's conception of relativity is particularly damaging but typical of the misuse of modern scientific ideas by thinkers in other fields; Einstein's idea of relativity is unfortunately named, as it has nothing to do with epistemological or moral relativism, for neither of which it provides any warrant. All the subsets of rationality—the plurality of subject matters—comprise the universal set of rationality itself, a fact that Plato well understood and that needs to be understood today—perhaps now more than ever. Education need to safeguard and develop the invaluable common-sense human intuitions of the true and good as universal realities.

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