Logics of History as a Framework for an Integrated Social Science

2008 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-553 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Steinmetz
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Traumatic Event ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Event History ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
The Social ◽  
Historical Social Science ◽  
The Relationship

This essay surveys the contributions of William H. Sewell Jr.'sLogics of History and concludes that the book sketches a compelling agenda for an integrated historical social science. The author first summarizes Sewell's ontological and epistemological claims concerning social structure and event, history and temporality, and sociohistorical causality. The author then discusses five main areas in which ambiguities in Sewell's approach might be clarified or his arguments pushed farther. These concern (1) the relationship between historical event and traumatic event; (2) the idea of the unprecedented event or “antistructure”; (3) the theory of semiosis underlying Sewell's notion of a multiplicity of structures; and (4) the compatibilities and differences between the concepts of structure and mechanism (here the author argues that social structures are the distinctive “mechanisms” of the human or social sciences). Finally, (5) Sewell's call for “a more robust sense of the social” in historical writing locates the “social” mainly at the level of the metafield of power, or what regulation theory calls the mode of regulation; the author suggests a possible integration of this society-level concept with Pierre Bourdieu's theory of semiautonomous fields.

Historicism Now: Historiographic Ontology, Epistemology and Methodology Out of Bounds

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Aviezer Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Ultimate Reality ◽  
Empirical Science ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Applied Psychology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Transmission Of Information ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Five Senses

Abstract This article examines historicism as the expansion of historiography beyond its bounds, analogous to Physicalism, Naturalism, Psychologism, and Scientism. Five senses of historicism are distinguished: Ontological Historicism claims ultimate reality is, and only is, historical. Idiographic historicism considers historiography an empirical science that results in observational descriptions of unique singular events. Introspective historicism considers the epistemology of historiography to be founded on self-knowledge. Scientistic historicism considers historiography an applied psychology or social science that can expand to overtake the social sciences. Methodological historicism extends the use of historiographic methodologies to unreliable or dependent evidence. The first four historicisms are inconsistent with historiography within bounds and implode. Methodological historicism describes proper historiographic methodologies that are applied out of their proper bounds, but are used in historiography based on the epistemology of testimony and the tracing of the transmission of information from historical event to historiographic evidence.

History and Social Science in the West

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Passmore
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
External Force ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The West ◽  
Grand Theory ◽  
Academic History ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter analyzes the relationship between history and various disciplines within the social sciences. Historians and social scientists shared two related sets of assumptions. The first supposition was of a world-historical shift from a traditional, hierarchical, religious society to a modern egalitarian, rational one. Second, history and social science assumed that progress occurred within nations possessed of unique ‘characters’, and that patriotism provided the social cement without which society could not function. Nevertheless, academic history seemingly differed from social science in that it was untheoretical and predominantly political. Yet historians focused on the nation’s attainment of self-consciousness, homogeneity, and independence through struggle against internal and external enemies—a history in which great men were prominent. Historians and sociologists unwittingly shared versions of grand theory, in which change was an external ‘force’ driven by the functional needs of the system, and in which meaning derived from measurement against theory, rather than from protagonists’ actions and beliefs.

Alfred Schutz and ethnomethodology: Origins and departures

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martyn Hammersley
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Alfred Schutz ◽  
Theory Formation ◽  
Harold Garfinkel ◽  
Social Inquiry ◽  
The Social ◽  
Early Influence ◽  
Alfred Schütz ◽  
The Relationship

The work of Alfred Schutz was an important early influence on Harold Garfinkel and therefore on the development of ethnomethodology. In this article, I try to clarify what Garfinkel drew from Schutz, as well as what he did not take from him, specifically as regards the task of social inquiry. This is done by focusing in detail on one of Schutz’s key articles: ‘Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences’. The aim is thereby to illuminate the relationship between Schutz’s views on the character of social science and Garfinkel’s radical proposal for a re-specified focus of investigation. This is further pursued by examining an important debate about the link between Schutz and ethnomethodology.

The Revival of Political Science in China

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (04) ◽  
pp. 745-757 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhao Baoxu ◽  
David Chu
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Science Teaching ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Teaching And Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
Important Position ◽  
The Way

As an independent basic social science, the study of politics occupies an important position among all the social sciences. In 1952, however, China abolished political science teaching and research. This was a mistake which is now being corrected. China has reestablished the field of political science in recent years.When a historical event is shown to be mistaken, people often like to describe the reasons for its having taken place as very absurd and unimaginable, as though to demonstrate how confused people were at that time compared with how smart we are now. Such a simple attitude, however, will not help us in understanding the realities scientifically nor will it help us in learning from the lessons of history, and is therefore to be avoided.This essay describes both objective conditions and the way people thought, both in the early 1950s and after 1976. It deals with two opposite events: first, the abolition of political science in China three decades ago, and second, its current revival.

scholarly journals Symbol Systems and Social Structures

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanina Leschziner ◽  
Gordon Brett
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Field Theory ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Social Origins ◽  
Symbol Systems ◽  
Culture And Cognition ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Historical Legacies

Symbol systems and social structures are prominent concepts with long historical legacies in the social sciences. This chapter traces how symbol systems and social structures have been theorized independently of each other in the social sciences during the 20th century, before elaborating the ways in which sociologists have theorized the relationship between the two. Marx, Weber, and Simmel offered important ideas about this relationship, but Durkheim’s account of the social origins of mental structures provides the most direct and elaborated theory about the relationship between mental and social structures within the classical sociological period. Subsequently, we trace Durkheim’s legacy through three contemporary perspectives: field theory, neo-institutionalism, and culture and cognition. While maintaining analytical continuity with the Durkheimian tradition, these perspectives also represent new theoretical, analytical, and methodological advances in locating and specifying correspondences between symbol systems and social structures. Nevertheless, we find that pressing questions remain pertaining to how symbol systems and social structures interrelate, and how exactly this relationship shapes both cognition and action.

scholarly journals Towards a Theory of Constrained Relativism: Comparing and Combining the Work of Pierre Bourdieu, Mary Douglas and Michael Thompson, and Alan Fiske

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 173-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Verweij
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Relational Models ◽  
Theory Of Practice ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
The Social ◽  
Relational Models Theory

In this article, I seek to compare Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice, the cultural theory developed by Mary Douglas and Michael Thompson, and the relational models theory pioneered by Alan Fiske, and attempt to sketch how these theories could possibly be combined. I argue that the three theories are among the most interesting conceptual enterprises in the social sciences of the last few decades, as they all represent –quite similar– syntheses of long-standing social-science dualisms, such as objectivism vs. subjectivism, social structure vs. free will, functionalism vs. social conflict, etc. Besides these commonalities, I spell out the relative strengths and weaknesses of each of these approaches. This allows me to conclude by considering whether, and how, it might be possible to synthesise these syntheses by picking the most interesting features of the three theories, and avoiding their less appealing ones.

Can Law Learn from Social Science?

2001 ◽  
Vol 35 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 205-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Nelken
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Fundamental Problem ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
Political Critique ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Styles Of Reasoning

In this paper I shall be discussing a fundamental problem in the relationship between law and the social sciences. Many social scientists have pointed out that the “pull of the policy audience” in legislative and administrative exercises and the confines of practical decision-making in legal settings can compromise the proper development of academic social science and blunt the edge of political critique. The danger is real enough. But they have given insufficient attention to the opposite concern which will be my topic in this article. Here the charge is that the introduction of social scientific styles of reasoning can have ill effects for legal practice by threatening the integrity of legal processes and the values they embody. How can social scientists be sure that they have properly understood the nature of law or the meaning and point of the legal rules, procedures, and institutions which they attempt to analyze and seek to improve? What warrant can they have that social scientific interpretation, at any level, does not end up creating law in its own image? If this is a genuine risk, what implications follow for the way law should learn from social science? I shall argue that there are no easy answers to these questions even, or especially, where law apparently welcomes contributions from social science.

Education as a Human Science

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Higgs
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Human Science ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Cultural Considerations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Educational Relationships ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Relationship

The debate concerning the nature of education, and more particularly the debate as it is directed toward the discourse and logic of schooling, has customarily taken place within the social science tradition. As a result, educational research has been characterized by a modern positivist science which has tended to privilege knowledge relevant to a technocratic evaluation and control of educational relationships and achievements through a process of socialization. From the relationship between student and teacher to the relationship between school and society, the widespread acceptance of quantitative research findings and behavioristic theory reveals that the evaluation of educational issues has been tied to an understanding of reality as ideological as it is “scientific.” What should constitute a scientific inquiry that effectively counters positivist assumptions and what should characterize the inquirer’s relation to the real are still central questions within educational theory and practice in the philosophy of education. In responding to these questions, the positioning of education in the social science tradition has given rise to the politicization of education in an ideologically directed process of socialization which, in turn, has resulted in education, including schooling, being subjected to the idiosyncratic stranglehold and abuse of ideological and cultural considerations propagated in the name of a pseudo-scientific scientism. Furthermore, the problem concerning the nature of education is more authentically situated within the human science tradition than within the social sciences. This argument is grounded on a fundamental objection to positivism and the influence that this has had on the tradition of the social sciences.

scholarly journals Influence of historical & social events on knowledge & knowledge production: A focus on some selected social theorists

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Abdullahi Muhammad Maigari ◽  
Ibrahim Arafat
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Ibn Khaldun ◽  
Narrative Style ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
Social Events ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

This article examines the relationship between knowledge produced by social theorists and the social events that occurred before and during their lifetime. The aim of the paper is to identify the social events and how they shaped the thoughts and knowledge produced by the selected theorists. This was approached through a review of secondary literature and narrative style to analyse the sourced materials. The paper examined three social theorists, philosophers or thinkers: Ibn Khaldun, Hegel and Comte. The study found that the knowledge produced by these theorists have traversed beyond disciplines classified as social sciences. It shows that the knowledge produced is intertwined with what happened before and during the time they lived which is reflected in their intellectual works. The paper submits that knowledge cannot be separated from the social reality of its producer. Therefore, the paper concludes that social theorists examined thought and wrote based on the social realities they encountered. Keywords: Historical event, influence, social theorists, knowledge production.

scholarly journals Three Voices of Socio-Legal Studies

2001 ◽  
Vol 35 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 175-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm M. Feeley
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Distinct Form ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Traditional Language ◽  
The Relationship

The connection between law and contemporary social science emerged as a consequence of the quest for social reform. As law became more instrumental, it also became more empirical, more concerned with policy. For this process, it turned to social science. Social science complied and has become an adjunct to law in the quest for solving social problems. As this partnership has developed, the relationship between law and social science has matured. Not only has social science sought to educate and influence law, it has also incorporated law into its own disciplinary concerns. Furthermore, the field of socio-legal studies may be on the verge of establishing itself as a separate and distinct discipline, independent of the practical concerns of law.The scholarly intersection of law and social science — or socio-legal studies, as I shall call it — now speaks with at least three voices addressed to at least three audiences. It speaks as policy analysis, a handmaiden to law. It also speaks in the traditional language of the social sciences. Thirdly, it may be gaining a voice of its own, reflecting a belief that law is a distinct form of ordering that merits its own position among the scholarly disciplines, separate from both scholarly fields and the professional concerns of law. At their core, each of these enterprises entails a distinct voice, a distinct audience, and a distinct agenda.

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