Housing Segregation and School Desegregation

1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Armor
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Residential Segregation ◽  
School Desegregation ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
School Segregation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Housing Segregation ◽  
The Relationship

The issue of residential segregation has had a long history in the development of school desegregation laws and policies. Most social scientists and jurists would agree that school segregation is closely associated with racial segregation in housing, particularly in larger school systems. Residential segregation can give rise to school segregation between school systems, such as that existing between a predominantly minority city school system and its predominantly white suburban systems, and within a single school system when a neighborhood school policy reflects segregated residential patterns. The debate over the relationship between housing and school segregation arises, however, not from the mere fact of association, but from the causal interpretations applied to this association. Two major issues have framed the debates over this relationship. One issue concerns the causes of housing segregation itself, whether it arises primarily from discriminatory actions, either public or private, or from a complex set of social, economic, and demographic forces in which discrimination plays only a secondary role. The second issue focuses on the causal connections between school segregation and housing segregation and the direction of the causal relationship: the extent to which a neighborhood school policy actually contributes to housing segregation (rather than simply reflecting it) and the extent to which school desegregation contributes to integrated housing choices. On these points there is sharp disagreement between and within the social science and legal communities. The debates within the social science and legal communities have had reciprocating influences. On the one hand, a considerable amount of research on housing segregation has been generated by school desegregation litigation. On the other, a number of court decisions about the role of housing in school desegregation cases have been influenced by social science research and expert testimony. Thus the relationship between judicial policy and social science research is well illustrated by the housing segregation issue. The role of residential segregation in school desegregation law has itself passed through several stages during the past thirty years of school desegregation litigation.

scholarly journals Erasing the Social from Social Science: The Intellectual Costs of Boundary-Work and the Canadian Institute of Health Research

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katelin E. Albert
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Health Research ◽  
Research Funding ◽  
Boundary Work ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Canadian Institute ◽  
The Social

In 2009, Canadian social science research funding underwent a transition. Social science health-research was shifted from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR), an agency previously dominated by natural and medical science. This paper examines the role of health-research funding structures in legitimizing and/or delimiting what counts as ‘good’ social science health research. Engaging Gieryn’s (1983) notion of ‘boundary-work’ and interviews with qualitative social science graduate students, it investigates how applicants developed proposals for CIHR. Findings show that despite claiming to be interdisciplinary, the practical mechanisms through which CIHR funding is distributed reinforce rigid boundaries of what counts as legitimate health research. These boundaries are reinforced by applicants who felt pressure to prioritize what they perceived was what funders wanted (accommodating natural-science research culture), resulting in erased, elided, and disguised social science theories and methods common for ‘good social science.’

5. Finding Answers: Theories and How to Apply Them

2020 ◽  
pp. 123-158
Author(s):  
Sandra Halperin ◽  
Oliver Heath
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Independent Variable ◽  
Key Terms ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter shows how to develop an answer to a particular research question. It first considers the requirements and components of an answer to a research question before discussing the role of ‘theory’ in social science research, what a ‘theoretical framework’ is, and what a hypothesis is. It then explores the three components of a hypothesis: an independent variable, a dependent variable, and a proposition (a statement about the relationship between the variables). It also looks at the different types of hypotheses and how they guide various kinds of research. It also explains why conceptual and operational definitions of key terms are important and how they are formulated. Finally, it offers suggestions on how to answer normative questions.

5. Finding Answers

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Halperin ◽  
Oliver Heath
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Independent Variable ◽  
Key Terms ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter shows how to develop an answer to a particular research question. It first considers the requirements and components of an answer to a research question before discussing the role of ‘theory’ in social science research, what a ‘theoretical framework’ is, and what a hypothesis is. It then explores the three components of a hypothesis: an independent variable, a dependent variable, and a proposition (a statement about the relationship between the variables). It also looks at the different types of hypotheses and how they guide various kinds of research. It also explains why conceptual and operational definitions of key terms are important and how they are formulated. Finally, it offers suggestions on how to answer normative questions.

scholarly journals Social Science Research on Technology and the Elderly - Does it Exist?

2004 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 44-62
Author(s):  
Britt Östlund
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Old People ◽  
Scientific Publications ◽  
Natural Place ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
The Relationship

Despite the fact that old people´s technological needs have been given much attention to in the last decennium, especially old users of information- and communication technology, technology has not found its natural place in research on ageing in modern societies. This article examines to what extent social science research exist in the field of ageing and technology and where we can find the interface between technological and social science expertise. Scientific publications during the period 1983-2002 are analysed in terms of theoretical content, the role of the elderly as being regarded as objects or subjects, and if technology is called into question in any respect. Scientific well-grounded knowledge exist besides less well-substantiated assumptions regarding the effects of technology and a premature body of thoughts on the relationship between technology and the elderly.

scholarly journals Hazards, Climates and Cultures: Reflections on Recent Scholarship and Proposals for Further Research

2016 ◽  
Vol 03 (02) ◽  
pp. 1602002
Author(s):  
James M. Jeffers
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Complex Dynamic ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Social

Writing in 2006 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, James K. Mitchell challenged social science researchers of hazards and disasters to broaden their research agenda. He advocated a move beyond simply applying existing social science insights to contemporary events to reflection on the larger project of the production of knowledge through academic research, the application of that knowledge to public policy, and the role of the social sciences in these endeavors. In particular, he urged consideration of the context-dependent nature of scientific knowledge on hazards, the relationships between scientific and non-scientific ways of understanding and responding to disasters, and the complex and often contradictory ways in which hazards can be framed, interpreted and understood. Ten years on from this challenge, this paper reviews scholarship that has addressed some of these concerns and proposes questions for further research. It argues that while social science research has advanced in some of the directions proposed by Mitchell, the challenge of complex, dynamic and contradictory interpretations of hazards and the implications of the provisional nature of knowledge remain understudied. It also suggests that while recent innovations in the co-production of hazards knowledge are welcome, there may be significant challenges to utilizing these approaches on a wider basis.

The Harm and Benefit Thesis

1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Armor
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
School Desegregation ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
School Segregation ◽  
Social Science Theory ◽  
Science Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Judicial Doctrine

Of all the social science theories that have been applied to school desegregation policy, none has a longer or more important history than the harm and benefit thesis. In its simplest form, the thesis holds that school segregation is harmful to the social, psychological, and educational development of children, both minority and white, and that school desegregation is beneficial for undoing or at least ameliorating the damages from segregation and discrimination. While the harm and benefit thesis began as a purely social science theory, its apparent endorsement by the Supreme Court in Brown gave the thesis an enormous boost, elevating it from academic theory to moral authority. From Brown to the present time, the harm and benefit thesis has played a curious and bifurcated role in the evolution of school desegregation policy. Although it began as a social science theory that had apparently found its way into judicial doctrine, its role in the courts soon parted from its role among educators, social scientists, and civil rights groups. On the judicial front, a number of lower court decisions in the early 1970s stressed the harms of school segregation and the benefits of integration remedies. The Supreme Court itself never again explicitly addressed the harm and benefit thesis after Brown, however, and its judicial relevance diminished over the next three decades as the high Court majority restricted the application of Brown to government-enforced school segregation. For this reason many constitutional scholars have long maintained that the psychological harm finding in Brown is not an essential part of constitutional law. To the extent that a harm thesis can be inferred from current judicial doctrine, then, harm arises only if school (or other) segregation is sanctioned by law or official action. For many other actors on the desegregation stage, however, the harm and benefit thesis has had a far broader applicability. During the periods when the earliest formulations began to appear, such as that by Gunnar Myrdal in 1944 or the famous doll studies of Kenneth and Mamie Clark in the late 1930s, most existing segregation was in fact sanctioned by law, and thus most social science research on this issue of necessity reflected the effects of official segregation.

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