The Edwards' Report and the International Relations profession

1988 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Nicholson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Science Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
Science Community

The Economic and Social Research Council recently published a Report commissioned from a committee chaired by Professor Edwards, a psychiatrist, so that the Council, and the social science community in general, might know what was good and bad in British social sciences, and where the promising future research opportunities lie over the next decade. Boldly called ‘Horizons and Opportunities in the Social Sciences’, the Report condensed the wisdom of social scientists, both British and foreign, and concludes with a broadly but not uncritically favourable picture of the British scene.

scholarly journals Opening up research in social sciences

Impact ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (9) ◽  
pp. 83-84
Author(s):  
Lucy Annette
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Eligibility Criteria ◽  
High Quality Research ◽  
The Social

The Open Research Area (ORA) for Social Sciences is an international initiative that provides social science research funding and support. It was founded in 2010 by members of the Bonn Group and based on agreement by European social science funding bodies The Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), France, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Germany, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), UK, and the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), the Netherlands. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canada, later joined, as well as the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) as an associate member. ORA facilitates collaborative social sciences research by bringing together researchers from participating countries. Researchers from the partner countries who fulfil the eligibility criteria of their national funding organisation apply to the ORA office handling the year's applications and Japanese researchers submit their applications to JSPS Tokyo. ORA accepts applications from all areas of the social sciences and there is a key focus on supporting young researchers at the beginning of their careers, helping them to extend the reach of their work and network on an international scale. Ultimately, ORA exists to drive forward high-quality research and strengthen international collaboration in social sciences research. So far, five rounds of ORA have been successfully completed, with more than 60 international collaborative proposals funded across diverse social sciences fields, including political science, economics, empirical social science, psychology, geography, urban planning and education science.

scholarly journals Opening up research in social sciences

Impact ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-5
Author(s):  
Lucy Annette
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Eligibility Criteria ◽  
High Quality Research ◽  
The Social

The Open Research Area (ORA) for Social Sciences is an international initiative that provides social science research funding and support. It was founded in 2010 by members of the Bonn Group and based on agreement by European social science funding bodies The Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), France, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Germany, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), UK, and the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), the Netherlands. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canada, later joined, as well as the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) as an associate member. ORA facilitates collaborative social sciences research by bringing together researchers from participating countries. Researchers from the partner countries who fulfil the eligibility criteria of their national funding organisation apply to the ORA office handling the year's applications and Japanese researchers submit their applications to JSPS Tokyo. ORA accepts applications from all areas of the social sciences and there is a key focus on supporting young researchers at the beginning of their careers, helping them to extend the reach of their work and network on an international scale. Ultimately, ORA exists to drive forward high-quality research and strengthen international collaboration in social sciences research. So far, five rounds of ORA have been successfully completed, with more than 60 international collaborative proposals funded across diverse social sciences fields, including political science, economics, empirical social science, psychology, geography, urban planning and education science.

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 ...

International Relations an a World of Revolutionary Change

1949 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Easton Rothwell
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
New York ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Collaborative Research ◽  
Practical Experience ◽  
Revolutionary Change ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Carnegie Corporation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wartime Experience

A PROJECT of collaborative research concerning major world trends affecting international relations has been launched this year at the Hoover Institute and Library. This project has been made possible by a three-year grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.1Beneath the original planning for the project lay the conviction born of wartime experience, that a deeper understanding of the dynamics of international relations could be obtained by pooling the contributions of the social sciences and related disciplines and by taking account of practical experience in the international field. The need for new and more penetrating approaches to international relations had been put by Arnold Toynbee in a few challenging words: “There is nothing to prevent our Western Civilization from following historical precedent, if it chooses, by committing social suicide. But we are not doomed to make history repeat itself; it is open to us through our own efforts, to give history, in our case, some new unprecedented turn.” Natural scientists, as well as social scientists are agreed that any “new unprecedented turn” must be sought in deeper understanding of relations among people and among nations.

scholarly journals The Opportunities and Limitations of Using Artificial Neural Networks in Social Science Research

Politologija ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 56-80
Author(s):  
Lukas Pukelis ◽  
Vilius Stančiauskas
Keyword(s):  
Neural Networks ◽  
Artificial Neural Networks ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Complex Data ◽  
Social Science Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
Science Community ◽  
Artificial Neural

Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are being increasingly used in various disciplines outside computer science, such as bibliometrics, linguistics, and medicine. However, their uptake in the social science community has been relatively slow, because these highly non-linear models are difficult to interpret and cannot be used for hypothesis testing. Despite the existing limitations, this paper argues that the social science community can benefit from using ANNs in a number of ways, especially by outsourcing laborious data coding and pre-processing tasks to machines in the early stages of analysis. Using ANNs would enable small teams of researchers to process larger quantities of data and undertake more ambitious projects. In fact, the complexity of the pre-processing tasks that ANNs are able to perform mean that researchers could obtain rich and complex data typically associated with qualitative research at a large scale, allowing to combine the best from both qualitative and quantitative approaches.

Positivism in the social sciences

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Kincaid
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Social Research ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Methodological Individualism ◽  
Main Function ◽  
Social Convention ◽  
The Social

Positivism originated from separate movements in nineteenth-century social science and early twentieth-century philosophy. Key positivist ideas were that philosophy should be scientific, that metaphysical speculations are meaningless, that there is a universal and a priori scientific method, that a main function of philosophy is to analyse that method, that this basic scientific method is the same in both the natural and social sciences, that the various sciences should be reducible to physics, and that the theoretical parts of good science must be translatable into statements about observations. In the social sciences and the philosophy of the social sciences, positivism has supported the emphasis on quantitative data and precisely formulated theories, the doctrines of behaviourism, operationalism and methodological individualism, the doubts among philosophers that meaning and interpretation can be scientifically adequate, and an approach to the philosophy of social science that focuses on conceptual analysis rather than on the actual practice of social research. Influential criticisms have denied that scientific method is a priori or universal, that theories can or must be translatable into observational terms, and that reduction to physics is the way to unify the sciences. These criticisms have undercut the motivations for behaviourism and methodological individualism in the social sciences. They have also led many to conclude, somewhat implausibly, that any standards of good social science are merely matters of rhetorical persuasion and social convention.

Social Sciences in Contemporary Turkey

1971 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-82
Author(s):  
Walter F. Weiker
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Research ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
Previous Article ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Growing Body

In a previous article I sought to appraise the field of Turkish studies, for the most part among western (predominantly American) scholars (MESA Bulletin, Vol. 3, No. 3, October 15, 1969). To fill out the picture, it is appropriate to also view the state of social research among the rapidly growing body of Turkish teachers and researchers. This article is not, however, a direct parallel to others in the MESA “State of the Art” series, in that it is not basically bibliographical. Such a review would require far more time, space, and knowledge in depth of several other social science disciplines than is currently available to me, because despite the remarks made below about problems of definition, the quantity and technical sophistication of work by Turkish researchers is quite large and is growing rapidly. Furthermore, since most of the research referred to below is in Turkish, the number of persons to whom a bibliographic review might be useful is quite limited. Instead, I think it would be more interesting to MESA members and other American social scientists to examine the characteristics and problems of what is probably one of the most vigorous social science communities in the “developing” countries, with a view (among other things) to helping facilitate increased cooperation between Turkish and American scholars in our common endeavors of advancing the state of knowledge.

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