The Problem

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mats Alvesson ◽  
Yiannis Gabriel ◽  
Roland Paulsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Research Papers ◽  
Prestigious Journal ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Academic Researchers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Wide Gap

This chapter introduces ‘the problem’ of meaningless research in the social sciences. Over the past twenty years there has been an enormous growth in research publications, but never before in the history of humanity have so many social scientists written so much to so little effect. Academic research in the social sciences is often inward looking, addressed to small tribes of fellow researchers, and its purpose in what is increasingly a game is that of getting published in a prestigious journal. A wide gap has emerged between the esoteric concerns of social science researchers and the pressing issues facing today’s societies. The chapter critiques the inaccessibility of the language used by academic researchers, and the formulaic qualities of most research papers, fostered by the demands of the publishing game. It calls for a radical move from research for the sake of publishing to research that has something meaningful to say.

Sociology, political science and anthropology: institutionalization, professionalization and internationalization in Argentina

2005 ◽  
Vol 44 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 227-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Murmis
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Political Science ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
National Level ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

Full institutionalization of sociology, anthropology and political science occurred in Argentina in the late 1950s. While sociology started out as an established field having radically broken with the past of the discipline, both anthropology and political science established linkages with traditional versions of their fields. Although there were differences between them, the three disciplines evolved through a process of frequent crises, resulting mostly from military interventions at the national level. Institutionalization brought with it an expansion of the labor market and the opportunities for obtaining research funds, thus generating growing professionalization. This expansion as well as the response of social scientists to repression in universities was strongly related to links with foreign foundations and international organizations. Until 1983, the dramatic history of the social sciences was marked by disappearances (desapariciones) and exile. In recent years the three disciplines have grown and diversified.

Critical Realism for Ethnography

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant Banfield
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Sociological Practice ◽  
Critical Realist ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theoretical Developments ◽  
British Philosopher

While specific applications of critical realism to ethnography are few, theoretical developments are promising and await more widespread development. This is especially the case for progressive and critical forms of ethnography that strive to be, in critical realist terms, an “emancipatory science.” However, the history of ethnography reveals that both the field and its emancipatory potential are limited by methodological tendencies toward “naïve realism” and “relativism.” This is the antimony of ethnography. The conceptual and methodological origins of ethnography are grounded in the historical tensions between anti-naturalist Kantian idealism and hyper-naturalist Humean realism. The resolution of these tensions can be found in the conceptual resources of critical realism. Working from, and building upon, the work of British philosopher Roy Bhaskar, critical realism is a movement in the philosophy of science that transcends the limits of Kantian idealism and Humean realism via an emancipatory anti-positivist naturalism. Critical realism emerged as part of the post-positivist movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. From its Marxian origins, critical realism insists that all science, including the social sciences, must be emancipatory. At its essence, this requires taking ontology seriously. The call of critical realism to ethnographers, like all social scientists, is that while they must hold to epistemological caution this does not warrant ontological shyness. Furthermore, critical realism’s return to ontology implies that ethnographers must be ethically serious. Ethnography, if it is to hold to its progressive inclinations, must be about something. Critical realism for ethnography pushes the field to see itself as more than a sociological practice. Rather, it is to be understood as a social practice for something: the universalizing of human freedom.

Where Is China Headed? New Tendencies in the Humanities and Social Sciences

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-176
Author(s):  
Xuedian Wang
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Traditional Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
Current Practices

China as a whole is facing a marked trend toward indigenization. The past thirty years have seen rapid and profound changes in the social sciences, heralding a new season in the humanities, in which the study of traditional culture has shifted from the sidelines to the center of academic research. Traditional culture, especially Confucianism, with its worldly orientation, is bound to play a central role in deepening and expanding the ongoing conversation with liberalism. At the same time, however, it must still develop values for structuring society and everyday life that are as influential as those of liberalism. The three main challenges to a Confucian revival today are the ruling ideology in China (namely, Marxism), the dominance of Western sociopolitical theory, and the current practices of disciplinary organization.

scholarly journals Mapping the growth and direction of corporate governance research: A broad overview of literature between 1930 and 2014

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-129
Author(s):  
Malla Praveen Bhasa
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Corporate Governance ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Growth And Development ◽  
Research Papers ◽  
Corporate Scandals ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Published Research ◽  
Broad Overview

In the past two decades, corporate governance (CG) literature has grown in leaps and bounds. The quick succession with which some corporate scandals surfaced in the early 2000s and their extensive media coverage have prodded the social science researchers to go back to their story boards and examine the reasons for such scandals. Interestingly, corporate behaviour was no more the exclusive preserve of micro-economists and finance researchers. Instead, researchers from different disciplines like philosophy, psychology, sociology and law too joined in examining issues related to what is today popularly known as corporate governance. Each scholar tested hypothesis and offered explanations in a language native to her own discipline. Given the pervasiveness of the social sciences, very soon corporate governance begun to be explained and understood in an increasingly multi-disciplinary perspective. Each discipline brought in its own unique flavour in picking and explaining the nuances of corporate governance. With so many disciplines contributing to a single overarching theme, it is no surprise that today there is a surfeit of corporate governance literature and more continues to get added every single day. This paper reviews the growth and development of CG literature over the past eight decades. In doing so, it studies 1789 published research papers to track how literature organized itself to build the CG discourse.

scholarly journals The past and future of the social sciences. A Schumpeterian theory of scientific development?

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 1701-1722
Author(s):  
Stefano Lucarelli ◽  
Alfonso Giuliani ◽  
Hervé Baron
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Scientific Development ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Japanese Scholar ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Questions

AbstractThe paper argues that Vergangenheit und Zukunft der Sozialwissenschaften (The Past and Future of the Social Sciences), a contribution not always well understood in the literature, is important to an understanding of Schumpeter’s concept of development as applied to the field of the social sciences. To this end, it addresses three key questions. First, can the book be taken as a starting point to reconstruct a Schumpeterian theory of scientific development? Second, is Vergangenheit und Zukunft merely ‘a brief outline of what first became the Epochen [der Dogmen- und Methodengeschichte] and finally the History of Economic Analysis’, as Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter wrote in her Editor’s Introduction (July 1952) to the latter work (p. XXXII), or should it be read as a complement to Epochen and perhaps the History? Third, is the eminent Japanese scholar Shionoya right to claim that Schumpeter’s work pursued the ambitious goal of developing a ‘comprehensive sociology’?

Marxist Historiography Today

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Hobsbawm
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Human Society ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Methodology Of Science ◽  
The Way

This chapter discusses Marxist historiography in the present times. In the interpretation of the world nowadays, there has been a rise in the so-called anti-Rankean reaction in history, of which Marxism is an important but not always fully acknowledged element. This movement challenged the positivist belief that the objective structure of reality was self-explanatory, and that all that was needed was to apply the methodology of science to it and explain why things happened the way they did. This movement also brought together history with the social sciences, therefore turning it into part of a generalizing discipline capable of explaining transformations of human society in the course of its past. This new perspective on the past is a return to ‘total history’, in which the focus is not merely on the ‘history of everything’ but history as an indivisible web wherein all human activities are interconnected.

Polling the Pollsters: A Survey of Academic Survey Organizations

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (04) ◽  
pp. 859-866
Author(s):  
Kenneth E. Fernandez ◽  
Jason A. Husser ◽  
Mary G. Macdonald
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Universities And Colleges ◽  
The Social ◽  
Research Environments ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Original Survey

ABSTRACTOrganizations conducting survey research have remained of vital importance to the social sciences. However, these organizations increasingly face new challenges and opportunities. Survey operations housed in universities and colleges may face special challenges. We present a poll of pollsters, an original survey of leaders of academic survey organizations in the United States. Results explore the various methods used by academic survey organizations and perceptions of challenges in today’s academic and research environments. Responses provide an overview of the career path of academic survey leaders and how those leaders understand the primary missions of their organizations. We conclude with a discussion relevant to social scientists interested in the dynamics of operating these important academic research centers.

scholarly journals Mutual influence of the information and library environment and social sciences. Issue 3

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Communication Networks ◽  
Information Science ◽  
Mutual Influence ◽  
Library Science ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Research Libraries ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Library Support

Trends in information-library support of the social sciences are investi-gated, as well as issues in the use of the latest innovations of the social sci-ences in library science, and the interaction of research libraries in the infra-structure of social sciences; library collections as information resources, technologies for discovering information from sources and communication networks of the scientific communities are analyzed. This work is geared to library and information professionals, social scientists, as well as those who are interested in interdisciplinary research at the intersection of library science and bibliography, and humanities and social sciences, history of science, and information science.

scholarly journals A Brief History of the Future of World Society

2005 ◽  
pp. 159-169
Author(s):  
Mark Herkenrath ◽  
Claudia König ◽  
Hanno Scholtz
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Symposium ◽  
World Society ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Degree Of Certainty ◽  
History Of ◽  
University Of Zurich ◽  
The University

Earlier versions of the articles in this issue were presented and discussed atthe international symposium on “The Future of World Society,” held in June 2004 at the University of Zurich.¹ The theme of the symposium implied two assumptions. One, there is in fact a world society, though still very much in formation. And two, as social scientists we are in a position to predict the future of that society with at least some degree of certainty. The ?rst of these assumptions will be addressed in Alberto Martinelli’s timely contribution, “From World System to World Society?” It is the second assumption which is of interest to us in this introduction. Are the social sciences really able to predict the future of world society?

scholarly journals Where Is This Story Going? A Critical Analysis of the Emerging Field of Narrative Criminology

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shadd Maruna ◽  
Marieke Liem
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Online Publication ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
History Of ◽  
Narrative Scholarship

Over the past decade, a growing body of literature has emerged under the umbrella of narrative criminology. We trace the origins of this field to narrative scholarship in the social sciences more broadly and review the recent history of criminological engagement in this field. We then review contemporary developments, paying particular attention to research around desistance and victimology. Our review highlights the most important critiques and challenges for narrative criminology and suggests fruitful directions in moving forward. We conclude by making a case for the consolidation and integration of narrative criminology, in hopes that this movement becomes more than an isolated clique. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 4 is January 13, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

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