The ‘psychological’ and the ‘spiritual’: an evolutional relationship within an ontological framework. A brief comment on Jung's ‘Self’

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 193-210
Author(s):  
Grigorios Chrysostom Tympas
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Religion And Spirituality ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Cultural Constructs ◽  
Multiple Factors ◽  
The Social ◽  
Holistic Understanding ◽  
Important Position ◽  
Ontological Framework ◽  
Scientific Fields

Despite the prevalence of phenomenological perspectives in most modern scientific fields addressing religion and spirituality, including psychology of religion, ontological inquiries retain an important position in certain fields, such as modern sociology (e.g., Weber, Giddens' concept of ‘ontological security’). Ontological and phenomenological approaches, alongside certain principles that function as interpretative tools in the social sciences (e.g., reductionism, teleology, supervenience), can be synthesised to construct a pluralistic methodology for understanding anew the dynamics between the ‘psychological’ and the ‘spiritual’. This paper attempts to articulate an ‘evolutional’ approach to the spiritual as an ‘emergent’ property arising from multiple factors beyond the psychological and the metaphysical (such as social and cultural constructs). This holistic understanding of the spiritual will be then applied to Jung's notion of the ‘Self’ to understand further its spiritual and/or ontological potential.

Alfred Schutz's conception of relevance and its significances for the social sciences

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-36
Author(s):  
Hisashi Nasu
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Scientific Fields

The conception of relevance has come to be increasingly under discussion in various scientific fields under the recent social-cultural-historical conditions of the globalization, digitalization, and liquidation of society. In my opinion, many of these various discussions are, explicitly or implicitly, founded on Alfred Schutz's ideas about relevance. This essay aims to clarify his sociological conception of relevance founded on phenomenological investigations by inquiries into what he said about the concept and problem of relevance through a comparison between Schutz's ideas on how to deal with the «incomprehensiveness» of the «totality» of the world with M. Weber's and F. von Hayek's with reference to Schutz's ideas as to how human experience proceeds

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.

scholarly journals Attuning to laboratory animals and telling stories: Learning animal geography research skills from animal technologists

2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 367-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth Greenhough ◽  
Emma Roe
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Laboratory Animals ◽  
Research Skills ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Research Environments ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Important Position ◽  
Human Side ◽  
Animal House

Posthumanism has challenged the social sciences and humanities to rethink anthopocentricism within the cultures and societies they study and to take account of more-than-human agencies and perspectives. This poses key methodological challenges, including a tendency for animal geographies to focus very much on the human side of human–animal relations and to fail to acknowledge animals as embodied, lively, articulate political subjects. In this paper, we draw on recent ethnographic work, observing and participating in the care of research animals and interviewing the animal technologists, to contribute to the understandings of life within the animal house. In so doing, the paper makes three key arguments. Firstly, that studying how animal technologists perform everyday care and make sense of their relationships with animals offers useful insights into the specific skills, expertise and relationships required in order to study human–animal relations. Secondly, that animal technologists are keenly aware of the contested moralities which emerge in animal research environments and can offer an important position from which to understand this. Thirdly, that storytelling (exemplified by the stories told by animal technologists) is a useful resource for animal geographers to engage with complexity in human–animal relations.

The Revival of Political Science in China

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (04) ◽  
pp. 745-757 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhao Baoxu ◽  
David Chu
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Science Teaching ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Teaching And Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
Important Position ◽  
The Way

As an independent basic social science, the study of politics occupies an important position among all the social sciences. In 1952, however, China abolished political science teaching and research. This was a mistake which is now being corrected. China has reestablished the field of political science in recent years.When a historical event is shown to be mistaken, people often like to describe the reasons for its having taken place as very absurd and unimaginable, as though to demonstrate how confused people were at that time compared with how smart we are now. Such a simple attitude, however, will not help us in understanding the realities scientifically nor will it help us in learning from the lessons of history, and is therefore to be avoided.This essay describes both objective conditions and the way people thought, both in the early 1950s and after 1976. It deals with two opposite events: first, the abolition of political science in China three decades ago, and second, its current revival.

Riding alone on the elevator

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Anna M. Frank ◽  
Rebecca Froese ◽  
Barbara C. Hof ◽  
Maike I. E. Scheffold ◽  
Felix Schreyer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Real World ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
The Social ◽  
Introductory Class ◽  
Scientific Fields ◽  
Real World Problems

Abstract The ability to conduct interdisciplinary research is crucial to address complex real-world problems that require the collaboration of different scientific fields, with global warming being a case in point. To produce integrated climate-related knowledge, climate researchers should be trained early on to work across boundaries and gain an understanding of diverse disciplinary perspectives. This article argues for social breaching as a methodology to introduce students with a natural science background to the social sciences in the context of integrated climate sciences. The breach of a social norm presented here was to ask people whether the experimenter could ride on an elevator alone. We conclude that the approach is effective in letting students with a natural science background explore and experience the power of social reality, and is especially suitable for a small-sized introductory class.

Riding alone on the elevator

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna M. Frank ◽  
Rebecca Froese ◽  
Barbara C. Hof ◽  
Maike I. E. Scheffold ◽  
Felix Schreyer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Real World ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
The Social ◽  
Introductory Class ◽  
Scientific Fields ◽  
Real World Problems

The ability to conduct interdisciplinary research is crucial to address complex real-world problems that require the collaboration of different scientific fields, with global warming being a case in point. To produce integrated climate-related knowledge, climate researchers should be trained early on to work across boundaries and gain an understanding of diverse disciplinary perspectives. This article argues for social breaching as a methodology to introduce students with a natural science background to the social sciences in the context of integrated climate sciences. The breach of a social norm presented here was to ask people whether the experimenter could ride on an elevator alone. We conclude that the approach is effective in letting students with a natural science background explore and experience the power of social reality, and is especially suitable for a small-sized introductory class.

scholarly journals What's it like to be a state? An argument for state consciousness

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam B. Lerner
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Final Section ◽  
International System ◽  
State Level ◽  
Emergent Properties ◽  
Stream Of Consciousness ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Complete Understanding ◽  
The Social

Abstract Questions of consciousness pervade the social sciences. Yet, despite persistent tendencies to anthropomorphize states, most International Relations scholarship implicitly adopts the position that humans are conscious and states are not. Recognizing that scholarly disagreement over fundamental issues prevents answering definitively whether states are truly conscious, I instead demonstrate how scholars of multiple dispositions can incorporate a pragmatic notion of state consciousness into their theorizing. Drawing on recent work from Eric Schwitzgebel and original supplementary arguments, I demonstrate that states are not only complex informationally integrated systems with emergent properties, but they also exhibit seemingly genuine responses to qualia that are irreducible to individuals within them. Though knowing whether states possess an emergent ‘stream’ of consciousness indiscernible to their inhabitants may not yet be possible, I argue that a pragmatic notion of state consciousness can contribute to a more complete understanding of state personhood, as well as a revised model of the international system useful to multiple important theoretical debates. In the article's final section, I apply this model to debate over the levels of analysis at which scholarship applies ontological security theory. I suggest the possibility of emergent state-level ontological insecurity that need not be understood via problematic reduction to individuals.

scholarly journals Towards a Postcolonial Critical Realism

2021 ◽  
pp. 089692052110039
Author(s):  
Meghan Tinsley
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Material Reality ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
Ontological Framework ◽  
The Relationship

This article proposes postcolonial critical realism (PCR) as an ontological framework that explains the structuring relationship between racialized, colonial discourses and the social world. Beginning with the case study of the global climate crisis, it considers how scholars and activists have made sense of the present crisis, and how their discourses reflect and reproduce the climate crisis at large. To theorize the relationship between racialized, power-laden discourses and material reality, it derives five tenets of PCR: first, colonial discourses underlie, and interact with, material structures; second, coloniality is global and made visible through differential events and experiences; third, subaltern lived experiences reveal the nature of reality at large; fourth, coloniality is power-laden, sticky, and often invisible; and finally, decolonization must target all three domains of the social world and their interactions. The article concludes by considering how this framework might enrich anticolonial thought in the social sciences, as well as social movements.

scholarly journals The social topology of science in national and transnational contexts: the case of social sciences

2021 ◽  
pp. 55-63
Author(s):  
Ilona G. Nedelevskaya
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Space ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Scientific Activity ◽  
Scientific Field ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Topology ◽  
Scientific Fields

The article explores the possibilities of application P. Bourdieu’s social topology in the studying of inequality in science in national and transnational contexts. It is argued that in the conditions of globalising science, discussions about its egalitarianism, which began approximately in the middle of the last century, are moving beyond national borders. For the purposes of studying global inequality in science, scholars often apply the theoretical frameworks of world-systems analysis, neo-institutionalism, and the theory of global governance. However, these theories often lead to reductionism which ignores the symbolic dimension of scientific activity. The article suggests reassessing the heuristic potentiality of P. Bourdieu’s social topology, which mitigates the mentioned drawback of other theories. The article aims to demonstrate the relevance of this theoretical framework for the study of inequality in different scales of scientific activity due to the fact that the French sociologist focused mainly on national academic systems. The article defines the general provisions of P. Bourdieu’s topological concept of the field and the units of the social order of the scientific field. It also demonstrates the role of various forms of capital in determining the structure of social space. Based on the case of social sciences, the article explores the formation of scientific fields, their interaction with other fields, and their structure in different scales. The structure of the scientific field on the national scale can be defined as a dichotomy of dominant – dominated or centre – periphery. On the transnational scale, this dichotomy is also relevant but it is represented by national fields. Among them, the dominant position is occupied by the United States and Great Britain, which have the largest amount of symbolic power. The structure of the transnational scientific space, however, is more complex and includes overlapping fields of national, regional and more global dimensions. The article argued that applying the theoretical framework of the field to the study of the transnational scientific field will remain tied to the definition and explanation of the peculiarities and the interaction of national scientific fields as long as national states keep their institutional boundaries in scientific activity.

Making Room for the Missio Dei in Missiological Research

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-77
Author(s):  
Lynne Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Grounded Theory ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Missio Dei ◽  
Significant Advance ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Ontological Framework

Abstract The phrase missio Dei represents a significant advance in contemporary missiology: recognizing that God’s agency and impulse precedes and lies behind human engagement in mission. While missiological research can help Christians discover how God is at work in the world, in order to become involved in the missio Dei, missiology generally borrows its methodology from the social sciences, which focus on human processes: potentially desacralizing faith and discounting the agency of God. This article explores how critical realism offers an ontological framework within which to explore the missio Dei. It further shows that grounded theory provides a rigorous methodology for areas of study that have previously not sought to discern God’s agency. Finally, the article provides an example of research attentive to the missio Dei: exploring why previously secular (unchurched) Australians are becoming Christians today.

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