Anomalies and Continuities: Positivism and Historicism on Inequality

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-295
Author(s):  
Gabriel Winant

AbstractThe idea of a “new gilded age” depends on a model of history in which the tension between inequality and solidarity takes the form of a binary oscillation (often resting on a positivist social scientific form of reasoning), in turn creating the appearance of basic similarity between separate unequal periods. Under this view, however, it is difficult to make sense of the fundamentally different origins of inequality prevailing in 1890 and 2010. Instead, this article argues, historians ought to treat history cumulatively—that is, historically—finding the origins of inequality not in the previous unequal period, but in the previous solidaristic period, and tracing the connections between one period and another rather than viewing them as ideal-typical opposites.

1961 ◽  
Vol 154 (957) ◽  
pp. 571-578 ◽  

Streptomycin-resistant strains of Bact . lactis aerogenes have been obtained by ( a ) direct selection in a minimal salt-glucose medium containing 1 unit/ml. streptomycin (strain R s 1 ). ( b ) indirect selection in the absence of streptomycin with the replica plating technique (strain R rp ). ( c ) irradiation with ultra-violet light (strain R uv ). The rate at which colonies develop when these three strains respectively are inoculated on to minimal agar plates containing 1000 u/ml. streptomycin has been subjected to statistical comparison. The results suggest that a basic similarity exists between the strains. Experiments designed to investigate the possible specific induction of resistance by low concentrations of streptomycin in phosphate buffer suspensions of the organism yielded negative results.


Author(s):  
K. Izui ◽  
S. Furuno ◽  
H. Otsu ◽  
T. Nishida ◽  
H. Maeta

Anisotropy of damage productions in crystals due to high energy electron bombardment are caused from two different origins. One is an anisotropic displacement threshold energy, and the other is an anisotropic distribution of electron flux near the atomic rows in crystals due to the electron channeling effect. By the n-beam dynamical calculations for germanium and molybdenum we have shown that electron flux at the atomic positions are from ∽4 to ∽7 times larger than the mean incident flux for the principal zone axis directions of incident 1 MeV electron beams, and concluded that such a locally increased electron flux results in an enhanced damage production. The present paper reports the experimental evidence for the enhanced damage production due to the locally increased electron flux and also the results of measurements of the displacement threshold energies for the <100>,<110> and <111> directions in molybdenum crystals by using a high voltage electron microscope.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 737-750 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Gess ◽  
Christoph Geiger ◽  
Matthias Ziegler

Abstract. Although the development of research competency is an important goal of higher education in social sciences, instruments to measure this outcome often depend on the students’ self-ratings. To provide empirical evidence for the utility of a newly developed instrument for the objective measurement of social-scientific research competency, two validation studies across two independent samples were conducted. Study 1 ( n = 675) provided evidence for unidimensionality, expected differences in test scores between differently advanced groups of students as well as incremental validities over and above self-perceived research self-efficacy. In Study 2 ( n = 82) it was demonstrated that the competency measured indeed is social-scientific and relations to facets of fluid and crystallized intelligence were analyzed. Overall, the results indicate that the test scores reflected a trainable, social-scientific, knowledge-related construct relevant to research performance. These are promising results for the application of the instrument in the evaluation of research education courses in higher education.


2008 ◽  
Vol 35 (S 01) ◽  
Author(s):  
K Kollewe ◽  
S Baloush ◽  
K Krampfl ◽  
H Bigalke ◽  
R Dengler ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanne Boersma

This article scrutinizes how ‘immigrant’ characters of perpetual arrival are enacted in the social scientific work of immigrant integration monitoring. Immigrant integration research produces narratives in which characters—classified in highly specific, contingent ways as ‘immigrants’—are portrayed as arriving and never as having arrived. On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork at social scientific institutions and networks in four Western European countries, this article analyzes three practices that enact the characters of arrival narratives: negotiating, naturalizing, and forgetting. First, it shows how negotiating constitutes objects of research while at the same time a process of hybridization is observed among negotiating scientific and governmental actors. Second, a naturalization process is analyzed in which slippery categories become fixed and self-evident. Third, the practice of forgetting involves the fading away of contingent and historical circumstances of the research and specifically a dispensation of ‘native’ or ‘autochthonous’ populations. Consequently, the article states how some people are considered rightful occupants of ‘society’ and others are enacted to travel an infinite road toward an occupied societal space. Moreover, it shows how enactments of arriving ‘immigrant’ characters have performative effects in racially differentiating national populations and hence in narrating society. This article is part of the Global Perspectives, Media and Communication special issue on “Media, Migration, and Nationalism,” guest-edited by Koen Leurs and Tomohisa Hirata.


Author(s):  
Justin Farrell

This introductory chapter briefly presents the conflict in Yellowstone, elaborates on the book's theoretical argument, and specifies its substantive and theoretical contributions to the social scientific study of environment, culture, religion, and morality. The chapter argues that the environmental conflict in Yellowstone is not—as it would appear on the surface—ultimately all about scientific, economic, legal, or other technical evidence and arguments, but an underlying struggle over deeply held “faith” commitments, feelings, and desires that define what people find sacred, good, and meaningful in life at a most basic level. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.


Fachsprache ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 187-204
Author(s):  
Nina Janich ◽  
Ekaterina Zakharova

goal of the present discourse analysis is to report on the initial results of a DFG project on communication in interdisciplinary projects. Based on a case study, the following questions were investigated: 1) at what times or phases of a project communication problems occur, 2) what kinds of problems occur as a result of knowledge asymmetries, and 3) which interactive and discourse roles do participants take on when facing such problems? Three main conclusions can be drawn from the findings; first, that linguistic-communicative problems occurring in interdisciplinary projects are not simply a result of attempts to find a “common language”, but are grounded in issues of contextual, methodological, organisitory, and socio-pragmatic agreements. Second, these communication problems arise during the initial, preparatory phases of a project, earlier than social scientific process models suggest, i. e. as early as the writing and submission of the project proposal, as opposed to when the project work actually begins. Third, that these problems, induced by the inevitable presence of knowledge asymmetries among participants, must be resolved not only through active and consistent meta-communication, but also through meta-meta-communication. Evidence for these findings was gathered by means of interviews with project participants in which they reflected on the phase of jointly writing their project proposal from the perspective of their respective disciplines.


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