Peace Methods and Methodologies

2021 ◽  
pp. 151-163
Author(s):  
Pamina Firchow
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Multidisciplinary Teams ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
Multidisciplinary Study ◽  
Peace Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
Holistic Understanding ◽  
Peace And Conflict ◽  
The Many

This chapter gives an overview of the many methods and epistemological approaches in the multidisciplinary study of peace and conflict that encompasses disciplines in the social sciences as well as the humanities. It argues that there is a rift in the field that reflects the differences in these approaches and proposes three possible avenues for conciliation. First, peace scientists need to acknowledge the conceptual and ethical concerns about the measurement of peace outlined by critical peace researchers. Second, the potential of participatory statistics should be taken more seriously and integrated widely in peace research. Third, multidisciplinary teams should be encouraged to work together on problems of peace and conflict in order to address critical unanswered questions from different viewpoints using a variety of methods in order to gain a greater holistic understanding of the challenges of building peace after war.

scholarly journals Has the Credibility of the Social Sciences Been Credibly Destroyed? Reanalyzing the “Many Analysts, One Data Set” Project

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 237802312110244
Author(s):  
Katrin Auspurg ◽  
Josef Brüderl
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Causal Reasoning ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Skin Tone ◽  
Data Set ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Many ◽  
Definition Of

In 2018, Silberzahn, Uhlmann, Nosek, and colleagues published an article in which 29 teams analyzed the same research question with the same data: Are soccer referees more likely to give red cards to players with dark skin tone than light skin tone? The results obtained by the teams differed extensively. Many concluded from this widely noted exercise that the social sciences are not rigorous enough to provide definitive answers. In this article, we investigate why results diverged so much. We argue that the main reason was an unclear research question: Teams differed in their interpretation of the research question and therefore used diverse research designs and model specifications. We show by reanalyzing the data that with a clear research question, a precise definition of the parameter of interest, and theory-guided causal reasoning, results vary only within a narrow range. The broad conclusion of our reanalysis is that social science research needs to be more precise in its “estimands” to become credible.

scholarly journals Big Data: Some Ethical Concerns for the Social Sciences

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Michael Weinhardt
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Big Data ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Online Behavior ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Behaviors ◽  
State Actors

While big data (BD) has been around for a while now, the social sciences have been comparatively cautious in its adoption for research purposes. This article briefly discusses the scope and variety of BD, and its research potential and ethical implications for the social sciences and sociology, which derive from these characteristics. For example, BD allows for the analysis of actual (online) behavior and the analysis of networks on a grand scale. The sheer volume and variety of data allow for the detection of rare patterns and behaviors that would otherwise go unnoticed. However, there are also a range of ethical issues of BD that need consideration. These entail, amongst others, the imperative for documentation and dissemination of methods, data, and results, the problems of anonymization and re-identification, and the questions surrounding the ability of stakeholders in big data research and institutionalized bodies to handle ethical issues. There are also grave risks involved in the (mis)use of BD, as it holds great value for companies, criminals, and state actors alike. The article concludes that BD holds great potential for the social sciences, but that there are still a range of practical and ethical issues that need addressing.

scholarly journals Inayatullah, Rubina Saigol, and Pervez Tahir (eds). Social Sciences in Pakistan: A Profile. Islamabad: Council of Social Sciences, 2005. 512 pages. Hardbound. Rs 500.00.

2004 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faiz Bilquees
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
Public Universities ◽  
The State ◽  
Educational Discourse ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Peace And Conflict ◽  
Peace And Conflict Resolution ◽  
And Linguistics

Commissioned by the Council of Social Sciences (COSS), this volume evaluates the seventeen social sciences departments in the public universities in Pakistan for a given set of parameters. The social sciences departments or the topics covered in this volume and their respective authors include: Teaching of International Relations in Pakistani Universities (Rasul Bakhsh Rais); Development of the Discipline of Political Science in Pakistan (Inayatullah); The Development of Strategic Studies in Pakistan (Ayesha Siddiqa); The State of Educational Discourse in Pakistan (Rubina Saigol); Development of Philosophy as a Discipline (Mohammad Ashraf Adeel); The State of the Discipline of Psychology in Public Universities in Pakistan: A Review (Muhammad Pervez and Kamran Ahmad); Development of Economics as a Discipline in Pakistan (Karamat Ali); Sociology in Pakistan: A Review of Progress (Muhammad Hafeez); Anthropology in Pakistan: The State of [sic] Discipline (Nadeem Omar Tarar); Development of the Discipline of History in Pakistan (Mubarak Ali); The Discipline of Public Administration in Pakistan (Zafar Iqbal Jadoon and Nasira Jabeen); Journalism and Mass Communication (Mehdi Hasan); Area Studies in Pakistan: An Assessment (Muhammad Islam); Pakistan Studies: A Subject of the State, and the State of the Subject (Syed Jaffar Ahmed); The State of the Discipline of Women’s Studies in Pakistan (Rubina Saigol); Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies (Moonis Ahmar and Farhan H. Siddiqi); and Linguistics in Pakistan: A Survey of the Contemporary Situation (Tariq Rahman).

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.

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.

scholarly journals Correlation study of multifunctional knitted textile structures characteristics

2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (02) ◽  
pp. 131-137
Author(s):  
CĂRPUS EFTALEA ◽  
MIHAI CARMEN ◽  
DOROGAN ANGELA ◽  
BIRLIBA IULIA
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Heuristic Search ◽  
Correlation Study ◽  
Multidisciplinary Teams ◽  
Design Decision ◽  
Research And Innovation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Knitted Structure ◽  
Monitoring Devices

Textile systems used to improve people’s health monitoring abilities are the result of research and innovation of multidisciplinary teams. In this case, the nature of design may involve: solving of the practical problems, execution of decisions; application of science, heuristic search; creativity and imagination, knowledge transfer and transformation; data collection and processing; drawing and calculation. An important/key factor about making of the design decision – providing flexible, interactive textile structures that can be used as attachment element of monitoring devices in known for the linkages potential between product characteristics. Using SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences), the paper shows the correlations that can be taken into account in determining the structure and shape of anatomical knitted structure processed on seamless type knitting system.

scholarly journals A Pragmatist's Guide to Prediction in the Social Sciences

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark D. Verhagen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Simple Technique ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Out Of Sample ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Many

Making out-of-sample predictions is an under-utilised tool in the social sciences, often for the wrong reasons. Many social scientists confuse prediction with unnecessarily complicated methods, or narrowly predicting the future. This is unfortunate, because prediction understood as the simple process of evaluating a model outside of the sample used for estimation is a much more general, and disarmingly simple technique that brings a host of benefits to our empirical workflow. One needn't use complicated methods or be solely concerned with predicting the future to use prediction, nor is it necessary to resolve the centuries-old philosophical debate between prediction and explanation to appreciate its benefits. Prediction can and should be used as a simple complement to the rich methodological tradition in the social sciences, and is equally applicable across a vast multitude of modelling approaches, owing to its simplicity and intuitive nature. For all its simplicity, the value of prediction should not be underestimated. Prediction can address some of the most enduring sources of criticism plaguing the social sciences, like lack of external validity and the use of overly simplistic models to capture social life. In this paper, I illustrate these benefits with a host of empirical examples that merely skim the surface of the many and varied ways in which prediction can be applied, staking the claim that prediction is one of those illustrious `free lunches' that can greatly benefit the empirical social sciences.

Racial reality and unreality1

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karim Murji
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Constructionist Approach ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores the debates on what race is. For some time, the dominant social constructionist approach in the social sciences has insisted that the only proper way to regard race is by refuting any connection with biology. Attention to the many ways in which race is socially constructed has been important; but, while a construction is not ‘unreal’, there is a common further step in which race is thereby deemed to be not valid. The rejection of race tends to treat race as something that would be ‘real’ if it were located in science and biology. The chapter then shows how recent developments in the natural sciences and changing views on the relationship between the natural and social sciences problematise that view. Yet in opposition to post-race views, critical scholars can then be seen to draw on conventional categories of race to show that racialised inequality still matters.

scholarly journals Solar Geoengineering: Social Science, Legal, Ethical, and Economic Frameworks

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 399-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane A. Flegal ◽  
Anna-Maria Hubert ◽  
David R. Morrow ◽  
Juan B. Moreno-Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Social ◽  
Empirical Social Science ◽  
Solar Geoengineering ◽  
Public Views

Solar geoengineering research in the social sciences and humanities has largely evolved in parallel with research in the natural sciences. In this article, we review the current state of the literature on the ethical, legal, economic, and social science aspects of this emerging area. We discuss issues regarding the framing and futures of solar geoengineering, empirical social science on public views and public engagement, the evolution of ethical concerns regarding research and deployment, and the current legal and economic frameworks and emerging proposals for the regulation and governance of solar geoengineering.

Social production of disasters and disaster social constructs

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 623-635 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Sun ◽  
A.J. Faas
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Social Constructs ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Multidisciplinary Study ◽  
Disaster Studies ◽  
The Social

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to determine whether it is useful to tease apart the intimately related propositions of social production and social construction to guide thinking in the multidisciplinary study of disasters. Design/methodology/approach The authors address our question by reviewing literature on disasters in the social sciences to disambiguate the concepts of social production and social construction. Findings The authors have found that entertaining the distinction between social production and social construct can inform both thinking and action on disasters by facilitating critical exercises in reframing that facilitate dialog across difference. The authors present a series of arguments on the social production and construction of disaster and advocate putting these constructs in dialog with vulnerability frameworks of the social production of disasters. Originality/value This commentary contributes to disambiguating important theoretical and practical concepts in disaster studies. The reframing approach can inform both research and more inclusive disaster management and risk reduction efforts.

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