Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Lise Butler
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
British Society ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Scientific

The introduction outlines Michael Young’s biography and numerous contributions to British politics, social science, and social activism. It explains how historians have frequently used the concept of an ‘ethical socialist’ tradition to describe aspects of British progressive politics concerned with fellowship, community, and quality of life, and argues that in the period after the Second World War this ethical tradition was expressed through the social sciences. While Young’s ideas have received attention from political historians and policy makers, the introduction argues that they have not been properly understood in the context of mid-twentieth-century social science. Discussing a recent movement amongst historians of modern Britain to critically re-examine social scientific understandings of twentieth-century British society, I argue that scholars should treat the social sciences as an important influence on the history of the British left.

From political economy to sociology: Francis Galton and the social-scientific origins of eugenics

2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRIS RENWICK
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Biological Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Francis Galton ◽  
Social Scientific

AbstractHaving coined the word ‘eugenics’ and inspired leading biologists and statisticians of the early twentieth century, Francis Galton is often studied for his contributions to modern statistical biology. However, whilst documenting this part of his work, historians have frequently neglected crucial aspects of what motivated Galton to establish his eugenics research programme. Arguing that his work was shaped more by social than by biological science, this paper addresses these oversights by tracing the development of Galton's programme, from its roots in a debate about political economy to his appeals for it to be taken up by sociologists. In so doing, the paper not only returns Galton's ideas to their original context but also provides a reason to reflect on the place of the social sciences in history-of-science scholarship.

Social science as apologia

2021 ◽  
pp. 136843102199096
Author(s):  
Federico Brandmayr
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Scientific

The social sciences are predominantly seen by their practitioners as critical endeavours, which should inform criticism of harmful institutions, beliefs and practices. Accordingly, political attacks on the social sciences are often interpreted as revealing an unwillingness to accept criticism and an acquiescence with the status quo. But this dominant view of the political implications of social scientific knowledge misses the fact that people can also be outraged by what they see as its apologetic potential, namely that it provides excuses or justifications for people doing bad things, preventing them from being rightfully blamed and punished. This introduction to the special issue sketches the long history of debates about the exculpatory and justificatory consequences of social science and lays the foundations for a theory of social scientific apologia by examining three main aspects: what social and cognitive processes motivate this type of accusation, how social theorists respond to it and whether different contexts of circulation of ideas affect how these controversies unfold.

Die Macht der Institution

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
The State ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War

This volume examines Arnold Gehlen’s theory of the state from his philosophy of the state in the 1920s via his political and cultural anthropology to his impressive critique of the post-war welfare state. The systematic analyses the book contains by leading scholars in the social sciences and the humanities examine the interplay between the theory and history of the state with reference to the broader context of the history of ideas. Students and researchers as well as other readers interested in this subject will find this book offers an informative overview of how one of the most wide-ranging and profound thinkers of the twentieth century understands the state. With contributions by Oliver Agard, Heike Delitz, Joachim Fischer, Andreas Höntsch, Tim Huyeng, Rastko Jovanov, Frank Kannetzky, Christine Magerski, Zeljko Radinkovic, Karl-Siegbert Rehberg and Christian Steuerwald.

Situating Tribes in History: Lessons from the Archives and the Social Sciences

2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-476
Author(s):  
Nadav Samin
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Know How ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Official Records

The tribe presents a problem for the historian of the modern Middle East, particularly one interested in personalities, subtleties of culture and society, and other such “useless” things. By and large, tribes did not leave their own written records. The tribal author is a phenomenon of the present or the recent past. There are few twentieth century tribal figures comparable to the urban personalities to whose writings and influence we owe our understanding of the social, intellectual, and political history of the modern Middle East. There is next a larger problem of record keeping to contend with: the almost complete inaccessibility of official records on the postcolonial Middle East. It is no wonder that political scientists and anthropologists are among the best regarded custodians of the region's twentieth century history; they know how to make creative and often eloquent use of drastically limited tools. For many decades, suspicious governments have inhibited historians from carrying out the duties of their vocation. This is one reason why the many rich and original new monographs on Saddam Hussein's Iraq are so important. If tribes are on the margins of the records, and the records themselves are off limits, then one might imagine why modern Middle Eastern tribes are so poorly conceived in the scholarly imagination.

Scientific realism and social science

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Keat
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Central Issue ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Realist Conception

A central issue in the philosophy of the social sciences is the possibility of naturalism: whether disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, economics and psychology can be ‘scientific’ in broadly the same sense in which this term is applied to physics, chemistry, biology and so on. In the long history of debates about this issue, both naturalists and anti-naturalists have tended to accept a particular view of the natural sciences – the ‘positivist’ conception of science. But the challenges to this previously dominant position in the philosophy of science from around the 1960s made this shared assumption increasingly problematic. It was no longer clear what would be implied by the naturalist requirement that the social sciences should be modelled on the natural sciences. It also became necessary to reconsider the arguments previously employed by anti-naturalists, to see whether these held only on the assumption of a positivist conception of science. If so, a non-positivist naturalism might be defended: a methodological unity of the social and natural sciences based on some alternative to positivism. That this is possible has been argued by scientific realists in the social sciences, drawing on a particular alternative to positivism: the realist conception of science developed in the 1970s by Harré and others.

scholarly journals ’n Herdefiniëring van Paulus se konflik in Galasië: Die brief aan die Galasiërs deur die bril van die sosiale wetenskappe

1994 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
P. F. Craffert
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
First Century ◽  
Scientific Methodology ◽  
People Of God ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Scientific

Redefining Paul’s conflict in Galatia: The letter to the Galatians through the lense of the social sciences Traditional attempts at identifying Paul’s oppponents in the letter to the Galatians are methodologically stamped by a history-of-ideas approach; this is accompanied by at least two interpretive traditions (one focusing on the Reformation question of righteousness by works or by faith, and the second by the inclusion of Gentiles in the people of God). After a social- scientific methodology is introduced, three facets of Paul’s social realities are discussed: communication in a predominantly oral culture, Judaism as a first-century religious phenomenon, and the household institution. It is suggested that these provide us with an opportunity for redefining the conflict as a conflict on Paul’s honour and authority.

Feminism and social science

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Wylie
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Feminist Activism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Contextual Values ◽  
Second Wave

Feminists have two sorts of interest in the social sciences. With the advent of the second-wave women’s movement, they developed wide-ranging critiques of gender bias in the conceptual framework and methodology, as well as in the goals, institutions and practice of virtually all the social sciences; they argue that the social sciences both reflect and contribute to the sexism of the larger societies in which they are embedded. Alongside these critiques feminist practitioners have established constructive programmes of research that are intended to rectify the inadequacies of existing traditions of research and to address questions of concern to women. In this they are committed both to improving the disciplines in which they participate and to establishing a sound empirical and theoretical basis for feminist activism. This engagement of feminists with social science, as commentators and practitioners, raises a number of philosophical issues that have been addressed by feminist social scientists and philosophers. These include questions about ideals of objectivity and the role of contextual values in social scientific inquiry, the goals of feminist research, the forms of practice appropriate to these goals, and the responsibilities of feminist researchers to the subjects of inquiry and to those who may otherwise be affected by its conduct or results.

The History of Sociology in Britain

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. H. Halsey
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
London School ◽  
History Of Sociology ◽  
Literature And Philosophy ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
London School Of Economics

This chapter discusses the battle between literature and science for domination of sociology, a topic that has rather been neglected as a theme in the history of sociology in Britain if also perhaps overheated nowadays in exchanges over relativism between the denizens of ‘cultural studies’ and the proponents of a ‘science of society’. The chapter argues that, traditionally, the social territory belonged to literature and philosophy. A challenge was then raised by science especially in the nineteenth century. Then, especially in the twentieth century, social science developed so as to turn a binary contrast into a triangular one. Sociology had three sources in Western thought: one literary (political philosophy), one quasi-scientific (the philosophy of history), and one scientific (biology). It is no accident that both sociology and social policy were placed first at the London School of Economics, the Fabian institution invented and fostered by Sidney and Beatrice Webb in 1895.

Sharing data: Some examples

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 262-276
Author(s):  
Robert M Hauser
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Medical Research ◽  
Data Sharing ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Scientific Data ◽  
History Of Astronomy ◽  
Contemporary Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Scientific

Shared methods, procedures, documentation, and data are essential features of science. This observation is illustrated by autobiographical examples and, far more important, by the history of astronomy, geography, meteorology, and the social sciences. Unfortunately, though sometimes for understandable reasons, data sharing has been less common in psychological and medical research. The China Family Panel Study is an exemplar of contemporary research that has been designed from the outset to create a well-documented body of shared social-scientific data.

Multiple Regression and Spatial Policy Analysis: George Udny Yule and the Origins of Statistical Social Science

10.1068/d291 ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 385-407 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie W Hepple
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Multiple Regression Analysis ◽  
Multiple Regression ◽  
The Social ◽  
Spatial Policy ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Statistics

Studies on the history of statistics by MacKenzie and on quantitative geography by Barnes have suggested that the lineaments and assumptions of statistical methods such as correlation and regression are closely related to their origin in biometrics and eugenics. This paper challenges that view by examining in detail the work of George Udny Yule. Yule was a colleague of Karl Pearson in the 1890s, but was interested in social science and social policy applications, not eugenics. In the late 1890s he constructed both the theory and application of multiple regression analysis, using geographical data. The paper examines Yule's work and its context, relating it to debates on the history of statistics, and traces the subsequent early diffusion of regression and correlation into the social sciences. The paper concludes by arguing for greater recognition of Yule's pivotal role, and also for further studies on the history of quantitative social science.

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