scholarly journals Building Research Infrastructures to Study Digital Technology and Politics: Lessons from Switzerland

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Fabrizio Gilardi ◽  
Lucien Baumgartner ◽  
Clau Dermont ◽  
Karsten Donnay ◽  
Theresa Gessler ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technology ◽  
Public Outreach ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Building Research ◽  
Structural Problems ◽  
Research Infrastructures ◽  
Share Data ◽  
Data Hoarding ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Adequate Research

ABSTRACT The relationship between digital technology and politics is an important phenomenon that remains poorly understood due to several structural problems. A key issue is the lack of adequate research infrastructures or the lack of access. This article discusses the challenges many social scientists face and presents the infrastructure we built in Switzerland to overcome them, using COVID-19 as an example. We conclude by discussing seven lessons we learned: automatization is key; avoid data hoarding; outsource some parts of the infrastructure but not others; focus on substantive questions; share data in the context of collaborations; engage in targeted public outreach; and collaboration is more promising than competition. We hope that our experience is helpful to other researchers pursuing similar goals.

Researching (with) Major Food Retailers

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 33-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Evans
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Major Food ◽  
Food Retailers ◽  
Food Retailer ◽  
The One ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Opening Up

This paper considers the relationship between social science and the food industry, and it suggests that collaboration can be intellectually productive and morally rewarding. It explores the middle ground that exists between paid consultancy models of collaboration on the one hand and a principled stance of nonengagement on the other. Drawing on recent experiences of researching with a major food retailer in the UK, I discuss the ways in which collaborating with retailers can open up opportunities for accessing data that might not otherwise be available to social scientists. Additionally, I put forward the argument that researchers with an interest in the sustainability—ecological or otherwise—of food systems, especially those of a critical persuasion, ought to be empirically engaging with food businesses. I suggest that this is important in terms of generating better understandings of the objectionable arrangements that they seek to critique, and in terms of opening up conduits through which to affect positive changes. Cutting across these points is the claim that while resistance to commercial engagement might be misguided, it is nevertheless important to acknowledge the power-geometries of collaboration and to find ways of leveling and/or leveraging them. To conclude, I suggest that universities have an important institutional role to play in defining the terms of engagement as well as maintaining the boundaries between scholarship and consultancy—a line that can otherwise become quite fuzzy when the worlds of commerce and academic research collide.

Reflections on Local Population Studies and Social Science History

2018 ◽  
pp. 43-51
Author(s):  
Osamu Saito
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Population Studies ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Local Source ◽  
Personal Reflection ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Source Materials

This personal reflection of more than 40 years' work on the supply of labour in a household context discusses the relationship between social science history (the application to historical phenomena of the tools developed by social scientists) and local population studies. The paper concludes that historians working on local source materials can give something new back to social scientists and social science historians, urging them to remake their tools.

Living with Barren Truths: A Tale of Triumphalism and Tribulations of a Technology

2021 ◽  
pp. 097168582110159
Author(s):  
Sital Mohanty ◽  
Subhasis Sahoo ◽  
Pranay Kumar Swain
Keyword(s):  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Fact ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
The Subject ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Relationship

Science, technology and human values have been the subject of enquiry in the last few years for social scientists and eventually the relationship between science and gender is the subject of an ongoing debate. This is due to the event of globalization which led to the exponential growth of new technologies like assisted reproductive technology (ART). ART, one of the most iconic technological innovations of the twentieth century, has become increasingly a normal social fact of life. Since ART invades multiple human discourses—thereby transforming culture, society and politics—it is important what is sociological about ART as well as what is biological. This article argues in commendation of sociology of technology, which is alert to its democratic potential but does not concurrently conceal the historical and continuing role of technology in legitimizing gender discrimination. The article draws the empirical insights from local articulations (i.e., Odisha state in eastern India) for the understandings of motherhood, freedom and choice, reproductive right and rights over the body to which ART has contributed. Sociologically, the article has been supplemented within the broader perspectives of determinism, compatibilism alongside feminism.

Politics and Research: Epistemological Moments

1990 ◽  
Vol 15 (01) ◽  
pp. 149-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adelaide H. Villmoare
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Law And Society ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Relationship

In reading the essays by David M. Trubek and John Esser and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, I thought about what I call epistemological moments that have provided contexts within which to understand the relationship between social science research and politics. I will sketch four moments and suggest that I find one of them more compelling than the others because it speaks particularly to social scientists with critical, democratic ambitions and to Trubek and Esser's concerns about politics and the intellectual vitality of the law and society movement.

Resilient Cyborgs

Extrapolation ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-268
Author(s):  
María Ferrández-Sanmiguel
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technology ◽  
Living Conditions ◽  
Trauma Studies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Critical Space ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
The Relationship

This article reads Pat Cadigan’s Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel Synners (1991) from the perspectives of trauma studies and posthumanism to analyze the representation of the cyborged (post)human in cyberspace. My main focus is Cadigan’s depiction of a posttraumatic world whose living conditions invite escape, and how this depiction emphasizes the fact that escape through technological transcendence is not an option, and neither is the rejection of technology altogether. Despite this bleak scenario, the novel leaves some room for optimism in the figuration of a posthuman form of resilience, inspiring reflection about future forms of engagement with technology. As this article attempts to prove, Synners uses the tropes of the cyborg and cyberspace to explore the implications of subjectivity and embodiment within technoscience. In so doing, the novel opens a critical space for interrogation of the relationship between trauma, the posthuman body, and digital technology.

scholarly journals Has fertility increased at very high levels of development?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hampton Gray Gaddy
Keyword(s):  
Human Development Index ◽  
National Level ◽  
Low Fertility ◽  
Clear Relationship ◽  
Fertility Rates ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Past ◽  
Level Data ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Very High

Increasing development is historically associated with fertility declines. However, demographic paradigms disagree about whether that relationship should hold at very high levels of development. Using national-level data through 2005, Myrskylä, Kohler, and Billari (2009) found that very high levels of the Human Development Index (HDI) were associated with increasing total fertility rates (TFR). This paper updates that finding with data up to 2017. It investigates whether the observed association has continued to hold for the countries originally studied and whether it holds for countries that have more recently reached very high HDI. For countries that reached HDI ≥ 0.8 in 2000 or before (n=27), the data indicate no clear relationship between changes in HDI and TFR at HDI ≥ 0.8. There is also no clear relationship for countries that reached HDI ≥ 0.8 between 2001 and 2010 (n=13). For countries that reached HDI ≥ 0.8 in 2000 or before, there appear to have been notable increases in TFR between 2000 and 2010, but those gains appear to have completely reversed between 2010 and 2017. The past finding of TFR increases at very high levels of development has not borne out in recent years. In fact, TFRs declined markedly in very high development countries between 2010 and 2017. This paper contributes to the debate over the relationship between development and fertility. That debate has an important bearing on how low fertility is conceived by social scientists and policymakers.

scholarly journals Are Entrepreneurial Capabilities and Prior Knowledge the Silver Bullet for the Generation of New Digital Venture Ideas in a Digital Context?

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 0-0
Keyword(s):  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Linear Regression Analysis ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
New Venture ◽  
Small Enterprises ◽  
Sample Data ◽  
It Capabilities ◽  
The Relationship

Digital technology has had changed the uncertain nature of the process of new venture idea generation, and it has also brought unprecedented opportunities for the generation of new digital venture ideas. To explore how startups can deal with major challenges brought by digital technology and create new digital venture ideas, this paper focuses on micro level entrepreneurial actions, and constructs a theoretical model of the relationship among networking capabilities, IT capabilities, prior knowledge and new digital venture ideas. Furthermore, through the hierarchical linear regression analysis of 278 sample data, the paper finds that in the context of digitalization, both networking capabilities and IT capabilities have a positive impact on the generation of new digital venture ideas. In addition, prior knowledge plays an moderating role in the relationship between IT capabilities and new digital venture ideas. This paper explore how startups can build new digital venture ideas in the context of digitalization, which guides small enterprises in responding to new challenges.

scholarly journals Study of the Changing Relationship between Religion and the Digital Continent—In the Context of a COVID-19 Pandemic

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 736
Author(s):  
Jean Marc Barreau
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technology ◽  
Digital Environment ◽  
Research Focus ◽  
Research Project ◽  
The Third ◽  
Open Relationship ◽  
The Relationship

This article proposes to study the changing relationship between religion and the digital continent as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. To achieve this objective, the paper is divided into three parts. First, it offers an overview of the connection between religion and the digital environment, outlining four possible paradigms of the open relationship between these two worlds. Second, the article discusses the research project undertaken during the COVID-19 pandemic on behalf of the Corporation of Thanatologists of Quebec, focusing on the relationship between delayed funerals and delayed grief. In particular, this article deals with one of the solutions proposed to thanatologists, i.e., the development of a culture of bimodal ritual, both in person and remote, and therefore partly digital. Using this solution as a pointer, religion’s shift toward digital technology in the COVID-19 period is analyzed in the third part of the article. To this end, the four paradigms drawn from the overview are set against the research focus areas resulting from the solution proposed to the Corporation of Thanatologists.

scholarly journals Intergenerational Income Elasticity in Turkey

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 30-37
Author(s):  
Murat Anıl Mercan ◽  
Hande Barlin
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Variable ◽  
Income Elasticity ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Income Status ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Different Characteristics ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Longitudinal Dataset

Social scientists have been intrigued by the relationship between generations based on different characteristics. Economists, has been especially interested in measuring intergenerational income elasticity, which looks at the relationship of parents and that of their children when they become adults and gives clue on trends of income inequality. Most of the literature concentrates on the experiences of developed countries and measurement issues. Nevertheless, new studies concerning intergenerational income elasticity is being undertaken in developing countries as the data become increasingly available for these countries. In this vein, there is only one previous study that investigates intergenerational income elasticity for Turkey. Mercan (2012) finds that intergenerational income elasticity is around 0.1 in Turkey, which depicts Turkey as a highly mobile country meaning that children of poor parents have a higher likelihood to have a better income status. However, his study does not depend on a longitudinal dataset, which might make Mercan’s (2012) estimate biased. Following Solon (1992) in using OLS for lower bound and instrumental variable (IV) for upper bound, this study puts forth a new estimate, which relies on a nationally representative and longitudinal dataset for Turkey. The study's estimate for intergenerational income elasticity varies between 0.3 and 0.6, which is much higher than the result of Mercan (2012), indicating that Turkey is a less mobile country than previously foreseen.

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