‘We Were All Very Sick and Very Stupid’

2020 ◽  
pp. 20-47
Author(s):  
Lise Butler
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
John Bowlby ◽  
Child Psychologist ◽  
Social Importance

This chapter discusses the Conference on the Psychological and Sociological Problems of Modern Socialism held at University College Oxford in 1945. This event featured prominent left-wing policy makers, intellectuals, and social scientists, including the MP Evan Durbin, the political theorist G. D. H. Cole, the writer and politician Margaret Cole, the child psychologist John Bowlby, the historian R. H. Tawney, and Michael Young, who was then the Secretary of the Labour Party Research Department. The conference reflected multiple strands of inter-war and mid-twentieth century political thought and social science which emphasized the political and social importance of small groups, notably through guild socialist arguments for pluralistic forms of political organization, and theories about human attachment drawn from child psychology. The views expressed at the conference reflected a sense that active and participatory democracy was not just morally right but psychologically necessary to prevent popular political radicalization, limit the appeal of totalitarianism, and promote peaceful civil society. The chapter concludes by noting that the events of the conference, and the intellectual influences that it represented, would subsequently shape Michael Young’s project to promote social science within the Labour Party during the later years of the Attlee government.

Who Is Listening? When Scholars Think They Are Talking to Congress

2014 ◽  
Vol 657 (1) ◽  
pp. 265-273
Author(s):  
Kenneth Prewitt
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Science Policy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Public Funds ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

The editors asked for my view on whether, in the current political climate, the recommendations in this volume of The ANNALS are likely to be heeded. The question that precedes this one is whether the volume’s contributors understand why policy-makers make use of science at all. “No” is the obvious answer, though I see this not as a failure particular to their effort but rather as a broader failure of social science. Getting the science right is a necessary but not sufficient step in getting it used. Social scientists have not investigated the use of science in policy in a serious way. They must if science is to have influence in the public sphere. I also comment on the political climate, unhelpfully described by many worried observers as antiscience. It is more informative to say that there is a Congress-led effort to push science policy and federal expenditures toward short-term and narrow national goals. This is harmful to science and consequently to the nation, and scientists should explain why. But they must also respect that science policy and setting priorities for spending public funds are congressional responsibilities.

Social science for hydrologists: considerations when doing fieldwork with human participants

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally Rangecroft ◽  
Eddie Banks ◽  
Rosie Day ◽  
Guiliano Di Baldassarre ◽  
Theresa Frommen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Practice Research ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Ethical Practice ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Research Outcomes ◽  
Interdisciplinary Projects ◽  
Human Participants

<p>Water is at the core of many current and future global challenges, which involve hydrological, technical and social processes. Therefore, successful interdisciplinary research on how water-related issues interact with human activities, actions and responses is increasingly important. Qualitative data and diverse perspectives provide much-needed information to improve our understanding and management of water-related issues. To collect this information, hydrologists are increasingly conducting fieldwork with human participants (e.g. individuals, policy-makers, community leaders, government representatives, etc.) themselves, and collaboratively with others. Although collaboration between hydrologists and social scientists in interdisciplinary projects is becoming more common, several barriers, including lack of understanding and experience, can result in hydrologists and social scientists remaining somewhat separate during research, leading to suboptimal research outcomes. Hydrologists who are planning and undertaking fieldwork involving human participants may be underprepared because they are unfamiliar with key social science approaches and concepts. Therefore, here, we help guide hydrologists to better understand some important issues to consider when working with human participants, to facilitate more collaborative research.</p><p>As a group of social, natural, and interdisciplinary scientists, we discuss a number of important elements of fieldwork involving human participants that hydrologists might be unfamiliar with, or might have different approaches to than social scientists. These elements include good ethical practice, research question frameworks, power dynamics, communication of science (e.g. participatory mapping, photovoice, videography, and interactive graphs), and post-fieldwork reflections. There are also issues to consider when working collaboratively with social scientists, such as vocabulary differences and different methodologies and data collection approaches (e.g. interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, workshops, ethnography).</p><p>We believe that by introducing hydrologists (and natural scientists in general) to some of the key considerations when working with human participants in the field, more holistic, ethical, and successful research outcomes can be achieved. We also want to stress that collaboration with social scientists stays important and research ethics, design, participant involvement, and results, may be compromised without the input and experience of social scientists themselves. Facilitating these collaborations between the natural and social sciences will improve interdisciplinary water research, resulting in a better understanding of the interactions between water and society.</p>

The Utilization of Social Scientists in the Overseas Branch of the Office of War Information

1947 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 649-667 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard W. Doob
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Initial Period ◽  
Government Service ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Total War ◽  
The Government ◽  
Armed Services

Many social scientists employed by the government or in the armed services during the war found their research and scientific wisdom not eagerly accepted, wisely interpreted, or sensibly followed by policy-makers. Unlike some of the old-line departments, the war agencies had no established procedure for utilizing social science. Social scientists had a place on the ever-changing organization charts, sometimes merely because it was somewhat vaguely felt that all kinds of brains, even academic, were necessary to win a total war. Often they had to carve out for themselves the specific rôles they wished to play. They functioned, not in accordance with the charts, but within what Mansfield and Marx call informal organizations of their own making.In many situations, there was a discrepancy between what social scientists thought they could do and what the policy-makers were prepared to let them do. Some sought deliberately to bridge the gap by promoting and marketing their disciplines and themselves. Like their colleagues in the natural sciences, they wished to be consulted when problems involving their own expertness were involved.The informal techniques that social scientists employed in behalf of social science and themselves are worth recording because certainly similar ones must often be utilized whenever social scientist meets policy-maker. They should be mentioned to any social scientist about to enter government service, so that he can at least be aware of the problem and more easily survive the initial period of disillusionment and misery. They belong, it seems, within the purview of the student of public administration.

Whither Campaign Finance Jurisprudence?

2021 ◽  
pp. 133-138
Author(s):  
Daron R. Shaw ◽  
Brian E. Roberts ◽  
Mijeong Baek
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
The Political ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Political Policy ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
And Behavior

Chapter 7 offers a discussion of the main results and a consideration of the political, policy, and jurisprudential implications of the study. It deliberates what happens in instances like this—when the Supreme Court fosters the construction of an entire edifice of laws and regulations that limit a fundamental right (free speech) based on an erroneous set of assumptions about political opinion and behavior. The role of social science in court decisions—particularly in the context of informing behavioral assumptions—is emphasized, along with a particular call for social scientists to investigate further the Buckley Court’s model.

Prentice and the Newham North-East Constituency: The Making of Historical Myths

1981 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul McCormick
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
North East ◽  
Local Party

This article is an essay in political historiography showing how historical myths are created using the political development of Reg Prentice and his relations with the Newham North-East Constituency Labour Party as a case study. It shows how misapprehension about sources of Labour Party information facilitate myth-making and looks at the three central myths involved—the Activists' story, the Establishment's story, and Prentice's story. It examines the options open to Prentice following upon his rejection by his local party and traces his political development and his relations with his constituency between 1970 and 1979. The myths are exposed by reference to the chronology of events and the salient facts. Prentice is shown to be a ‘rebel for position’; and the left-wing takeover of the Newham Party is established. The tactical thinking behind Prentice's moves is also discussed.

Michael Young, Social Science, and the British Left, 1945-1970

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lise Butler
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Community Studies ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War

In the mid-twentieth century the social sciences significantly expanded, and played a major role in shaping British intellectual, political, and cultural life. Central to this shift was the left-wing policy maker and sociologist Michael Young. In the 1940s Young was a key architect of the Labour Party’s 1945 election manifesto, Let Us Face the Future. He became a sociologist in the 1950s, publishing a classic study of the London working class, Family and Kinship in East London, with Peter Willmott in 1957, and the 1958 dystopian satire, The Rise of the Meritocracy, about a future society in which status was determined entirely by intelligence. Young also founded dozens of organizations, including the Institute of Community Studies, the Consumers’ Association, and the Open University. Moving between politics, academia, and activism, Young believed that the social sciences could help policy makers and politicians understand human nature and build better social and political institutions. This book examines the relationship between social science and public policy in left-wing politics between the end of the Second World War and the end of the first Wilson government through the figure of Michael Young. It shows how Young and other researchers and policy makers challenged Labour values like full employment and nationalization, and argued that the Labour Party should put more emphasis on relationships, family, and community. Showing that the social sciences were embedded in the politics of the post-war left, this book argues that historians and scholars should take their role in British politics and political thought seriously.

The Labour Party: Three Unnoticed Changes

1980 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-387
Author(s):  
Paul McCormick
Keyword(s):  
Executive Committee ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Reliable Indication ◽  
Value Judgements

Within the last seven years there have been three important, but largely unnoticed, changes affecting the respective powers of the National Executive Committee (NEC) and the Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs). Assessment of these changes is not facilitated by the fact that they are central to an inner party dispute between left-wing and right-wing factions. The political rhetoric which has accompanied them is not a reliable indication of their true import and nature. This paper aims to describe and analyse the three changes and to assess them in terms of their impact on constitutional structures and their likely consequences for factional struggle – but not to make any value-judgements upon them or upon the inter-factional disputes.

“We Speak the Truth!”

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-80
Author(s):  
Sari Hanafi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Social Science ◽  
The Political ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
The Social ◽  
Academic Qualifications

This study investigates the preachers and their Friday sermons in Lebanon, raising the following questions: What are the profiles of preachers in Lebanon and their academic qualifications? What are the topics evoked in their sermons? In instances where they diagnosis and analyze the political and the social, what kind of arguments are used to persuade their audiences? What kind of contact do they have with the social sciences? It draws on forty-two semi-structured interviews with preachers and content analysis of 210 preachers’ Friday sermons, all conducted between 2012 and 2015 among Sunni and Shia mosques. Drawing from Max Weber’s typology, the analysis of Friday sermons shows that most of the preachers represent both the saint and the traditional, but rarely the scholar. While they are dealing extensively with political and social phenomena, rarely do they have knowledge of social science

Arte ConTexto

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-52
Author(s):  
Antonio Bellisario ◽  
Leslie Prock
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Pictorial Representation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Socialist Government ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Military

The article examines Chilean muralism, looking at its role in articulating political struggles in urban public space through a visual political culture perspective that emphasizes its sociological and ideological context. The analysis characterizes the main themes and functions of left-wing brigade muralism and outlines four subpolitical phases: (i) Chilean mural painting’s beginnings in 1940–1950, especially following the influence of Mexican muralism, (ii) the development of brigade muralism for political persuasion under the context of revolutionary sociopolitical upheaval during the 1960s and in the socialist government of Allende from 1970 to 1973, (iii) the characteristics of muralism during the Pinochet dictatorship in the 1980s as a form of popular protest, and (iv) muralism to express broader social discontent during the return to democracy in the 1990s. How did the progressive popular culture movement represent, through murals, the political hopes during Allende’s government and then the political violence suffered under the military dictatorship? Several online repositories of photographs of left-wing brigade murals provide data for the analysis, which suggests that brigade muralism used murals mostly for political expression and for popular education. Visual art’s inherent political dimension is enmeshed in a field of power constituted by hegemony and confrontation. The muralist brigades executed murals to express their political views and offer them to all spectators because the street wall was within everyone's reach. These murals also suggested ideas that went beyond pictorial representation; thus, muralism was a process of education that invited the audience to decipher its polysemic elements.

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