Beyond Theory: The Cumbersome Materiality of Shock

1993 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
U Strohmayer
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Social World ◽  
It Use ◽  
Rigorous Analysis ◽  
Fatal Flaw ◽  
The Social ◽  
Abstract Formulation

We all practice it, use its presumed power of explanation, and never seem to get tired of it: theory, only recently introduced to geography at large, appears to be indispensable for any truly rigorous analysis of the social world. But is it really? In this paper it is argued that even the most sophisticated of attempts at ‘theorizing the social’ can claim success only by abandoning reason where reason is needed most: in the abstract formulation of particularity. In the pursuit of this ultimately fatal flaw of any theoretical endeavour, the author ultimately asks what it is about society and space that seems to require a theoretical approach, and what precisely we stand to lose if we opt for a theoretically informed abandonment of theory. With reference to Walter Benjamin, whose work is read as an embodiment of the most crucial conflict between reason and justification, an attempt will be made towards a genuinely material social science that does not rely on external guarantees to achieve a modest goal in the possibility of cognizance.

Reflexivity and Sociological Practice

1999 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 184-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim May
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Social World ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Sociological Practice ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
The Social

Attention to reflexivity is often assumed to be the means through which the assumptions and values of social scientists may be uncovered. Researchers are thus called upon to position themselves explicitly in terms of their place within the research process in order that their interpretations may be assessed according to situated aspects of their social selves. Taking a reconstructive social science as one whose aim is to examine our pre-theoretical knowledge in the spirit of producing more adequate accounts of the social world, this article seeks to make sense of these ideas in relation to their consequences for producing an engaged practice and body of knowledge.

scholarly journals A Dialogue on Social Inquiry: Expanding Our Understanding of Sociological Thinking

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Rebat Kumar Dhakal
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Social World ◽  
Sociological Perspective ◽  
Philosophy Of Social Science ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Core ◽  
Social Inquiry ◽  
The Social

Highlights Social inquiry is much more than the study of society. It further excavates historical facts, critically reflects on everyday happenings, and envisions the future we wish to create. The intent of initiating this dialogue on social inquiry is two-fold: a) to offer a sociological perspective (i.e. ‘thinking sociologically’), and b) to expand our understanding of sociological thinking. Sociological thinking can be developed by examining the periphery of the core. Context matters in understanding any phenomenon under the sociological microscope. Sociological thinking allows many different viewpoints to coexist within a larger structure and that it respects pluralism. Sociological thinking is about developing or providing a perspective to examine social nuances. Sociological thinking should act as a means for social transformation.  Social inquiry serves as a methodology for the social sciences and humanities. It deals with the philosophy of social science and the workings of the social world – giving a way for understanding both the biosphere and the sociosphere.

scholarly journals Recovering critique in an age of datafication

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (7) ◽  
pp. 1135-1151
Author(s):  
Nick Couldry
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Questions

This article starts out from the need for critical work on processes of datafication and their consequences for the constitution of social knowledge and the social world. Current social science work on datafication has been greatly shaped by the theoretical approach of Bruno Latour, as reflected in the work of Actor Network Theory and Science and Technology Studies (ANT/STS). The article asks whether this approach, given its philosophical underpinnings, provides sufficient resources for the critical work that is required in relation to datafication. Drawing on Latour’s own reflections about the flatness of the social, it concludes that it does not, since key questions, in particular about the nature of social order cannot be asked or answered within ANT. In the article’s final section, three approaches from earlier social theory are considered as possible supplements to ANT/STS for a social science serious about addressing the challenges that datafication poses for society.

Predictive Success and Non-Individualist Models in Social Science

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Lauer
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Theory Of The Firm ◽  
Social World ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Predictive Success ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Diagnosis ◽  
Resource Based Theory

The predictive inadequacy of the social sciences is well documented, and philosophers have sought to diagnose it. This paper examines Brian Epstein’s recent diagnosis. He argues that the social sciences treat the social world as entirely composed of individual people. Instead, social scientists should recognize that material, non-individualistic entities determine the social world, as well. First, I argue that Epstein’s argument both begs the question against his opponents and is not sufficiently charitable. Second, I present doubts that his proposal will improve predictive success for the social sciences, which I support with Edith Penrose’s resource-based theory of the firm.

scholarly journals Zygmunt Bauman and the Task of theTranslator

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (13-14) ◽  
Author(s):  
Szymon Wróbel
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Social World ◽  
Individual Experience ◽  
Zygmunt Bauman ◽  
Language Of Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media

The author presents the figure of Zygmunt Bauman as a public intellectualand a translator. Following Walter Benjamin and his essay“The Task of the Translator” and Jacques Derrida and his text“What Is a ‘Relevant’ Translation,” the author concludes that a publicintellectual as a translator is persistently confrontedwith the taskof translatingstatements and postulates from the “language of politics”into “language of practice” and “individual experience”, fromthe “language of science” into the “language of collective action”, andfrom the “language of sociology” into the “language of the media.”The author claims that the key category in Bauman’s thinking wasneither “liquidity” nor “modernity”, but “socialism as active utopia”.For Bauman, socialism is impossible without a socialist culture, butculture is a practice, i.e. it is anattempt to attune our collective goalsaimed at improving the social world. This alignment comes withoutresorting to the idea of a collective conductor (a program), but bymeans of resorting to the idea of a translator.

Interview data: a qualified defence against the radical critique

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martyn Hammersley
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social World ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Interview Data ◽  
Important Contributor ◽  
Discourse Practices ◽  
Radical Critique ◽  
The Social ◽  
Opening Section

This article focuses on what has been referred to as the ‘radical critique’ of interview data, to which Paul Atkinson has been an important contributor. This critique challenges the two main uses of such data in qualitative research, and in other forms of social science: to tap the knowledge of informants; and to draw inferences about the typical beliefs, attitudes, etc. of some group or category of actor to which the informant belongs. I argue that this radical critique relies upon a constructionist attitude towards the social world, and I examine one source of this: the influence of ethnomethodology. However, I suggest that a naturalistic stance can take account of the features of interviews to which the radical critique properly draws attention, without undercutting the normal uses of interview data. I emphasise that this does not obviate the need for careful consideration of how such data are produced, and particularly of the discourse practices involved. I illustrate my argument by briefly examining the opening section of an interview.

No “Mean” Solution

2020 ◽  
pp. 89-124
Author(s):  
Arunabh Ghosh
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Social World ◽  
Mathematical Statistics ◽  
Statistical Education ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Anglo American

This chapter explores how this new understanding of statistics became dominant in the 1950s and how it affected the valuation of key concepts and methods. It first unpacks attempts at demarcation by focusing on the nearly decade-long sequence of publications that sought to criticize Anglo-American “bourgeois” statistics and its practitioners. The chapter then shifts to the changes in statistical education and to the debates over the content of statistics. In broad terms, the consequences of this transition are well known: as a social science, statistics dealt with the social world rather than the natural world. As a result, it was bifurcated from what was seen as the abstract and formal theorizing of mathematical statistics, which was, in turn, banished to departments of mathematics.

One More Phenomenology of the Social World?

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 103-119
Author(s):  
Ingeborg K. Helling ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Social World ◽  
Alfred Schutz ◽  
Subjective Meaning ◽  
The Social ◽  
Alfred Schütz ◽  
Similarities And Differences

In his “Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt” (1932; engl. tr. 1967) Alfred Schutz refers frequently and mostly positively to the author Fritz Sander. In contrast to other members of the Viennese social science milieus in interwar Vienna, Sander has been neglected in the abundant literature on Schutz. Following Henrich’s (1991) Konstellationsforschung approach, Schutz and Sander are placed in the setting of interwar Viennese social science. Explicit references to Sander made by Schutz will be described, similarities and differences in their treatments of Max Weber’s concepts of social action and subjective meaning will be examined, and their respective views of a phenomenological grounding of social science will be discussed.

Instrumentalizing and Naturalizing Social Ontology: Replies to Lohse and Little

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-39
Author(s):  
Richard Lauer
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Ontology ◽  
Social World ◽  
Scientific Methodology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Science Methodology ◽  
Social Science Methodology ◽  
Made In

This article addresses Simon Lohse’s and Daniel Little’s responses to my article “Is Social Ontology Prior to Social Scientific Methodology?.” In that article, I present a pragmatic and deflationary view of the priority of social ontology to social science methodology where social ontology is valued for its ability to promote empirical success and not because it yields knowledge of what furnishes the social world. First, in response to Lohse, I argue that my view is compatible with a role for ontological theorizing in the social sciences. However, the view that results instrumentalizes social ontology. Second, in my response to Little, I argue that the same considerations I made in my article apply to naturalistic attempts to motivate a non-deflationary view, repeating some of the central issues of that article.

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