Methodological misconceptions in the social sciences. Rethinking social thought and social processes

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-227
Author(s):  
Carsten Herrmann-Pillath
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
The Social

What Theology Should and Should Not Learn from the Social Sciences About the Common Good

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary L. Hirschfeld
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Catholic Social Thought ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common

There are two ways to answer the question, What can Catholic social thought learn from the social sciences about the common good? A more modern form of Catholic social thought, which primarily thinks of the common good in terms of the equitable distribution of goods like health, education, and opportunity, could benefit from the extensive literature in public policy, economics, and political science, which study the role of institutions and policies in generating desirable social outcomes. A second approach, rooted in pre-Machiavellian Catholic thought, would expand on this modern notion to include concerns about the way the culture shapes our understanding of what genuine human flourishing entails. On that account, the social sciences offer a valuable description of human life; but because they underestimate how human behavior is shaped by institutions, policies, and the discourse of social science itself, their insights need to be treated with caution.

scholarly journals ‘What is infrastructure? What does it do?’: Anthropological perspectives on the workings of infrastructure(s)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lav Kanoi ◽  
Vanessa Koh ◽  
Al Lim ◽  
Shoko Yamada ◽  
Michael R. Dove
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Growing Body

Abstract Infrastructure is often thought of in big material terms: dams, buildings, roads, and so on. This study, instead, draws on literatures in anthropology and the social sciences to analyse infrastructures in relation to society and environment, and so cast current conceptions of infrastructure in a new light. Situating the analysis in context of President Biden’s recent infrastructure bill, the paper expands what is meant by and included in discussions of infrastructure. The study examines what it means for different kinds of material infrastructures to function (and for whom) or not, and also consider how the immaterial infrastructure of human relations are manifested in, for example, labour, as well as how infrastructures may create intended or unintended consequences in enabling or disabling social processes. Further, in this study, we examine concepts embedded in thinking about infrastructure such as often presumed distinctions between the technical and the social, nature and culture, the human and the non-human, and the urban and the rural, and how all of these are actually implicated in thinking about infrastructure. Our analysis, thus, draws from a growing body of work on infrastructure in anthropology and the social sciences, enriches it with ethnographic insights from our own field research, and so extends what it means to study ‘infrastructures’ in the 21st century.

John Lofland's concept of analytical ethnography

2021 ◽  
pp. 87-103
Author(s):  
ANDRII MELNIKOV ◽  
KATERYNA ALEKSENTSEVA-TIMCHENKO
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Analytical Approach ◽  
Basic Research ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Theoretical Interpretation ◽  
Research Directions ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
Methodological Strategy

The paper presents a historical and theoretical interpretation of the ethnographic paradigm in the social sciences, its specificity, general principles of application and main research directions. The sources of analytical ethnography, its founders and the period of formation as an independent approach in the structure of interpretive metaparadigm are briefly considered. An ethnographic perspective is defined as a systematic, integral understanding of social processes and the organization of the collective life in the context of everyday practices. The intellectual heritage of the analytical ethnography’s founder John Lofland is presented by characterizing the basic research principles that constitute the essence of his theoretical and methodological strategy: generic propositions; unfettered inquiry; deep familiarity; emergent analysis; true content; new content; developed treatment. An attempt is made to trace the further connections of Lofland's analytical approach with other areas of the ethnographic paradigm.

Evolutionary social science beyond culture

2006 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 356-356
Author(s):  
Harold Kincaid
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Explanations ◽  
The Common

Mesoudi et al.'s case can be improved by expanding to compelling selectionist explanations elsewhere in the social sciences and by seeing that natural selection is an instance of general selectionist process. Obstacles include the common use of extreme idealizations and optimality evidence, the copresence of nonselectionist social processes, and the fact that selectionist explanations often presuppose other kinds of social explanations.

scholarly journals The Potential of Modeling Process for Social Sciences and Social Work

2021 ◽  
pp. 113-134
Author(s):  
Andrés Lorenzo-Aparicio ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Useful Knowledge ◽  
Agent Based Modelling ◽  
Modeling Process ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human Ecosystems

Simplification and necessary reductionism in a model cannot lead to detailed descriptions of social phenomena with all their complexity, but we can obtain useful knowledge from their application both in specific and generic contexts. Human ecosystems, that perform as adaptative complex systems, have features which make it difficult to generate valid models. Amongst them, the emergency phenomena, that presents new characteristics that cannot be explained by the components of the system itself. But without this knowledge derived from modelling, we, as social workers, cannot suggest answers that ignore the structural causes of social problems. Faced with this challenge we propose Agent Based Modelling, as it allows us to study the social processes of human ecosystems and in turn demonstrates new challenges of knowledge and competences that social workers might have.

scholarly journals Future Anticipation in Sociology

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 333-341
Author(s):  
Carlos Miguel Ferreira ◽  
Sandro Serpa
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Social Situations ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scientific Approach ◽  
The Future ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Scientific Fields

The ability to make forecasts about events is a goal favored by the so-called exact sciences. In sociology and other social sciences, the forecast, although often sought after, is not likely to be realized unconditionally. This article seeks to problematize and discuss the connection between sociology and forecast. The object of study of sociology has particular features that distinguish it from other scientific fields, namely facts and social situations, which deal with trends; the systems of belief of social scientists and policymakers that can influence the attempt to anticipate the future; the dissemination of information and knowledge produced by sociology and other social sciences, which have the potential to change reality and, consequently, to call into question their capacity for the social forecast. These principles pose challenges to sociology’s heuristic potentials, making the reflection on these challenges indispensable in the scientific approach to social processes.

Methode, Statistik und Modell in den Sozialwissenschaften

1983 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Arminger
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Continuous Time ◽  
Ordinal Data ◽  
Linear Models ◽  
Statistical Significance ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Linear Differential ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Basic Similarity

AbstractThe relationship between methods, statistics and models in the social sciences is discussed. New models generalizing commonly used linear models to deal with qualitative and ordinal data are introduced; their basic similarity to linear models is pointed out. Rate models and stochastic linear differential equations to model social processes in continuous time are mentioned. The implications of weak substantial theory and the correct use of statistical significance tests for any kind of model are demonstrated.

Comparative History and the Theory of Modernization

1970 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lester M. Salamon
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Comparative History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Area Of Study

One of the sorest needs in the social sciences is for clear and concise conceptual equipment to give structure to disciplines and order to the range of hypotheses these disciplines purport to explore. Perhaps nowhere is this need for conceptual equipment more pressing, however, than in that amorphous area of study that examines the broad range of social processes gathered under the rubric of “modernization.” Depending on one's perspective, the process of modernization is either primarily economic, or political, or psychological, or social, or technological, or all of the above. Like the elephant in the old tale, the beast is different depending on who touches it and where.

Toward a Keynesian Theory of Social Processes

1969 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-147
Author(s):  
Amitai Etzioni
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Keynesian Theory ◽  
The Social

Increasingly, the present society is coming to be viewed not as a condition but as an alternative, as one possible arrangement of a much larger set. The social sciences help provide an understanding of the factors and mechanisms that allow us to review such a society, propose alternative plans, and transform it in line with these new designs.

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