Analytic Filmmaking: A New Approach to Research and Publication in the Social Sciences

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 663-676
Author(s):  
Roy Germano
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Digital Video ◽  
Systematic Approach ◽  
Publishing Research ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Public ◽  
Causal Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Scientific Standards

New digital video technologies are transforming how people everywhere document, publish, and consume information. As knowledge production becomes increasingly oriented towards digital/visual modes of expression, scholars will need new approaches for conducting and publishing research. The purpose of this article is to advance a systematic approach to scholarship calledanalytic filmmaking.I argue that when filming and editing are guided by rigorous social scientific standards, digital video can be a compelling medium for illustrating causal processes, communicating theory-driven explanations, and presenting new empirical findings. I furthermore argue that analytic films offer policymakers and the public an effective way to glean insights from and engage with scholarly research. Throughout the article I draw on examples from my work to demonstrate the principles of analytic filmmaking in practice and to point out how analytic films complement written scholarship.

scholarly journals The Social Life of the “Forever Chemical”

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-163
Author(s):  
Daniel Renfrew ◽  
Thomas W. Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
Toxic Event ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Polyfluoroalkyl Substances

This article examines the social life of PFAS contamination (a class of several thousand synthetic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) and maps the growing research in the social sciences on the unique conundrums and complex travels of the “forever chemical.” We explore social, political, and cultural dimensions of PFAS toxicity, especially how PFAS move from unseen sites into individual bodies and into the public eye in late industrial contexts; how toxicity is comprehended, experienced, and imagined; the factors shaping regulatory action and ignorance; and how PFAS have been the subject of competing forms of knowledge production. Lastly, we highlight how people mobilize collectively, or become demobilized, in response to PFAS pollution/ toxicity. We argue that PFAS exposure experiences, perceptions, and responses move dynamically through a “toxicity continuum” spanning invisibility, suffering, resignation, and refusal. We off er the concept of the “toxic event” as a way to make sense of the contexts and conditions by which otherwise invisible pollution/toxicity turns into public, mass-mediated, and political episodes. We ground our review in our ongoing multisited ethnographic research on the PFAS exposure experience.

scholarly journals Toxicity testing is evolving!

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ida Fischer ◽  
Catherine Milton ◽  
Heather Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Approach ◽  
Toxicity Testing ◽  
Testing Methods ◽  
Regulatory Requirements ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Chemical Substances ◽  
Experimental Animals ◽  
The Public ◽  
Efficient Management ◽  
Regulatory Decisions

Abstract The efficient management of the continuously increasing number of chemical substances used in today’s society is assuming greater importance than ever before. Toxicity testing plays a key role in the regulatory decisions of agencies and governments that aim to protect the public and the environment from the potentially harmful or adverse effects of these multitudinous chemicals. Therefore, there is a critical need for reliable toxicity-testing methods to identify, assess and interpret the hazardous properties of any substance. Traditionally, toxicity-testing approaches have been based on studies in experimental animals. However, in the last 20 years, there has been increasing concern regarding the sustainability of these methodologies. This has created a real need for the development of new approach methodologies (NAMs) that satisfy the regulatory requirements and are acceptable and affordable to society. Numerous initiatives have been launched worldwide in attempts to address this critical need. However, although the science to support this is now available, the legislation and the pace of NAMs acceptance is lagging behind. This review will consider some of the various initiatives in Europe to identify NAMs to replace or refine the current toxicity-testing methods for pharmaceuticals. This paper also presents a novel systematic approach to support the desired toxicity-testing methodologies that the 21st century deserves.

scholarly journals Mapping our underlying cognitions and emotions about good environmental behavior: Why we fail to act despite the best of intentions

Semiotica ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (215) ◽  
pp. 193-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Power ◽  
Geoffrey Beattie ◽  
Laura McGuire
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Behavior ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Actual Behavior ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Green Behavior ◽  
Level Of Concern ◽  
Global Threat

AbstractDespite the widespread recognition of climate change as the single biggest global threat, the willingness of people to change their behavior to mitigate its effects is limited. Past research, often focusing on specific categories of behavior, has highlighted a very significant gap between people’s intentions to behave more sustainably and their actual behavior. This paper presents a new approach to this issue, by using more open-ended questions to map a much broader range of cognitions and emotions about good environmental behavior. Two key findings emerged. Firstly, participants were aware of the contradiction between their level of concern about the environment and their willingness to act in more sustainable ways. The qualitative analysis further revealed that this discrepancy often hinged on a lack of knowledge about how to act more sustainably; the analysis also revealed a desire for more information about genuinely green behavior. Secondly, pro-environmental behavior was often conceptualized by participants in essentially “social” terms; anticipated emotions relating to sustainable/non-sustainable behavior were as closely tied to the behavior of one’s peers as to one’s own behavior. This finding suggests that we must highlight the social dimension in any interventions to increase sustainable behaviors amongst the public.

scholarly journals Researching the Dynamics of National Social Policy in a Globalized Society. A Proposal for a De-Nationalized Analytical Framework

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-155
Author(s):  
Erica Righard
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Pension Scheme ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social

Abstract Epistemological hierarchies in the social sciences stipulate that sedentarism is naturalised as a normality, and that mobility is viewed as a deviation. This article sets out to propose an analytical framework that takes the analysis beyond this kind of nationalized knowledge production, and to empirically show the gains of de-nationalized frameworks for analysis of social protection and dynamics of in-/equality in the globalised society. I will do this relying on the empirical example of the public old-age pension scheme in Sweden.

scholarly journals Poverty

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Public Intervention ◽  
The Public ◽  
Scientific Experts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Cycle Of Poverty

This paper discusses the role of social scientific expertise in the emergence of poverty as a problem and a priority for public intervention in the United States during the 1960s. That the social scientific experts defined “the poverty problem” narrowly, as a problem of individuals lacking income or otherwise caught in a “cycle of poverty,” can be understood in terms of a series of historical transformations that played out in overlapping processes of disembedding: of social science from social reform; of economic from social and political knowledge; and of poverty from the study of structured patterns and experiences of stratification and inequality. The structurally disembedded, individualized concept of poverty that emerged from these transformations presented Great Society liberal reformers with a legible problem that they could fix without recourse to major reforms. It would eventually be recast by neoliberal reformers to justify a more ideological form of disembedding that shifted the boundaries of responsibility for dealing with poverty from the social and the public to the individual and personal.

Impartiality and the Definition of Corruption

2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 376-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Alan Sparling
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Political Corruption ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Essential Questions ◽  
Social Scientific Research ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Exact Definition

The study of political corruption has been beset by disagreements concerning the exact definition of the term. One definition that has grown increasingly popular in the social-scientific literature in recent years is that proposed by Oskar Kurer and developed by Bo Rothstein: political corruption should be understood as a breach of the norm of impartiality. This article argues that while this definition has intuitive plausibility and while its relative parsimony makes it attractive for cross-cultural social-scientific research, it suffers from a number of the ills attending all attempts to depoliticize inherently political concepts. Not only is the definition insufficient to capture numerous instances of the abuse of the public office for private gain, but it is dangerous insofar as it papers over fundamental disagreements about the nature of the good regime. To insist upon this parsimonious definition of corruption is to foreclose a number of essential questions of political philosophy.

Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia. By Stephen F. Cohen. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000. 320p. $21.95.

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 494-495
Author(s):  
Mark R. Beissinger
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Political Science ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Scientific Enterprise ◽  
Causal Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific

Both of these books seek to explain the failure or shortcom- ings of Russia's postcommunist democratic experiment. Both are critical of much of the transition literature within political science, and both identify certain features that make the prescriptions of that literature problematic within the Rus- sian and Soviet contexts. But they anchor their criticisms in contrasting explanations of the current travails. One is rooted in the importation of inappropriate models of economic and social development under Western prodding; the other points to the weakness of Russia's nascent civil society and the opportunities lost by political leaders to strengthen it. They provide opposing views not only of the causal processes underlying failed or incomplete democratization within Rus- sia but also to some extent of the purposes of the social scientific enterprise itself.

The public as a communication system

1993 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 339-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Friedhelm Neidhardt
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Communication System ◽  
Communication Systems ◽  
Public Knowledge ◽  
Social Infrastructure ◽  
Theoretical Reason ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Science Stories

The public can be considered as a communication field with three main actors: speakers, communicators, and the audience. The characteristics of these actors and the features of their interaction constitute the social infrastructure of public knowledge production. There is both theoretical reason and practical evidence to suggest that the mass media tend to construct science stories in terms of spectacular events, simple causes and unambiguous moral positions. These tendencies create some elementary problems where `science meets the public'. By `popularization' the distance between the communication systems of science and of the public can be reduced but not eliminated.

scholarly journals Niewładcze formy działania administracji – potrzeba redefinicji?

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1 (2)) ◽  
pp. 133-142
Author(s):  
Bartłomiej Jaworski
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Systematic Approach ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
Strong Connection ◽  
Full Spectrum ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Legal Forms ◽  
Administrative Actions

The social expectations regarding satisfaction of collective needs, while accounting for individual ones, change, and so do the functions of public administration. Due to the strong connection between public administration tasks and the legal forms of actions used for their implementation, the objective of science of administrative law is to constantly look for new concepts and tools that would enable a proper scientific description and a systematic approach to legal forms of administrative actions. At present, none of the divisions presented in the literature is exhaustive and none can be considered to be offering a full systematization of the legal forms of actions which currently exist in administrative law. One of the most frequently accepted classifications divides the forms of action into imperative and “non-imperative” ones; this classification provides certain antinomy and dśs not conform to the public administration which is legally complex and takes many forms. The existence of imperative administrative actions is unquestionable, but the current doctrinal understanding of “non-imperative” actions needs to be analyzed in more detail. Is the administration really fully imperative or fully “non-imperative”? If we use such an alternative, do we actually deprive ourselves of the possibility of creating a catalogue of legal forms, which reflects the multiformity of contemporary administration, perceives the full spectrum of public administration dominance and diversity of forms, and which assumes a decrease in (or even elimination) of this attribute? Bearing in mind the predilection for the above-mentioned dominance, are we not forced, here and now, to affirm the possibility of full bilateralism in administrative actions?

scholarly journals Do Forms of Knowledge Production Circulate?

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolás José Isola
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
New Approach ◽  
National Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The Right ◽  
Phd Programs ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

Forms of knowledge production adopted by academics in a given national space do not emerge without the right circumstances. Student circulation has a bearing on knowledge import processes. Opening with an overview of the field of Argentinian anthropology in the 1970s and 1980s, this article looks at some of the consequences of the international circulation of Argentinian students through the Social Anthropology Master’s and PhD Programs at the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (PPGAS-MN/UFRJ) from the late 1980s to the present. Based on documents in the PPGAS-MN archives, interviews with lecturers and former students and a review of PPGAS-MN and Argentinian university syllabi, this article: (i) provides a historical description of the agreement between institutions that has facilitated this flow; (ii) describes how this circulation has given these students a new perspective on the ethnographic approach and on classical anthropology; and (iii) describes how, from a student viewpoint, this shift has altered their way of thinking about social anthropology research and given them a new habitus. The results hint at a new approach to classical anthropology and the use of ethnographic data. There were three main drivers: (i) PPGAS-MN lecturers’ emphasis on the relevance of empirical data and the primacy of theory prevailing in Argentina; (ii) the renewed deep reading of classic ethnographical texts; and (iii) the development of a new habitus as a result of socialisation in the ensuing social space.

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