William James (1842–1910)

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas C. Powell
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
Edmund Husserl ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Process Philosophy ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Grand Unified Theories ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Static Systems

William James (1842–1910) contributed groundbreaking ideas to empirical philosophy, metaphysics, and psychology, and influenced some of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, including Edmund Husserl, Alfred North Whitehead, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. This chapter explores James’s contributions to management studies. Focusing on James’s first major work, Principles of Psychology (1890), the chapter traces his influence on three major streams of social research––process philosophy, phenomenology, and functionalism––and follows these streams as they flowed into research on organizations and management. James believed that experience could not be forced into static systems or grand unified theories, but was ‘a snowflake caught in the warm hand’. For social scientists, his work shows the virtues of embracing human experience in all its pluralism, and reawakening the mind to forgotten potentialities.

Modern Thought and the Phenomenology of Film

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cleo Hanaway-Oakley
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
Edmund Husserl ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Sergei Eisenstein ◽  
Siegfried Kracauer ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
Franz Brentano ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Film Viewing

This chapter situates Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of film in its historical context through analysing its key insights—the reciprocal and embodied nature of film spectatorship—in the light of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century philosophy and psychology, charting Merleau-Ponty’s indebtedness to thinkers as diverse as Henri Bergson, Max Wertheimer, Hugo Münsterberg, Rudolf Arnheim, Victor Freeburg, Sergei Eisenstein, and Siegfried Kracauer. The historical Bergson is differentiated from the Deleuzian Bergson we ordinarily encounter in film studies, and Merleau-Ponty’s fondness for gestalt models of perception is outlined with reference to the competing ‘persistence of vision’ theory of film viewing. The chapter ends with a consideration of some of the ways in which James Joyce could have encountered early phenomenology, through the work of the aforementioned philosophers and psychologists and the ideas of Gabriel Marcel, Franz Brentano, William James, and Edmund Husserl.

The Science and Art of Interviewing

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Gerson ◽  
Sarah Damaske
Keyword(s):  
Social Research ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interview Guide ◽  
Hidden Patterns ◽  
User Friendly ◽  
Depth Interviews

Qualitative interviewing is one of the most widely used methods in social research, but it is arguably the least well understood. To address that gap, this book offers a theoretically rigorous, empirically rich, and user-friendly set of strategies for conceiving and conducting interview-based research. Much more than a how-to manual, the book shows why depth interviewing is an indispensable method for discovering and explaining the social world—shedding light on the hidden patterns and dynamics that take place within institutions, social contexts, relationships, and individual experiences. It offers a step-by-step guide through every stage in the research process, from initially formulating a question to developing arguments and presenting the results. To do this, the book shows how to develop a research question, decide on and find an appropriate sample, construct an interview guide, conduct probing and theoretically focused interviews, and systematically analyze the complex material that depth interviews provide—all in the service of finding and presenting important new empirical discoveries and theoretical insights. The book also lays out the ever-present but rarely discussed challenges that interviewers routinely encounter and then presents grounded, thoughtful ways to respond to them. By addressing the most heated debates about the scientific status of qualitative methods, the book demonstrates how depth interviewing makes unique and essential contributions to the research enterprise. With an emphasis on the integral relationship between carefully crafted research and theory building, the book offers a compelling vision for what the “interviewing imagination” can and should be.

Why they shared: recovering early arguments for sharing social scientific data

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-119
Author(s):  
Emily Hauptmann
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Data Sharing ◽  
Financial Stability ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Scientific Data ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Ethical Imperative ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The University ◽  
University Consortium

ArgumentMost social scientists today think of data sharing as an ethical imperative essential to making social science more transparent, verifiable, and replicable. But what moved the architects of some of the U.S.’s first university-based social scientific research institutions, the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research (ISR), and its spin-off, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), to share their data? Relying primarily on archived records, unpublished personal papers, and oral histories, I show that Angus Campbell, Warren Miller, Philip Converse, and others understood sharing data not as an ethical imperative intrinsic to social science but as a useful means to the diverse ends of financial stability, scholarly and institutional autonomy, and epistemological reproduction. I conclude that data sharing must be evaluated not only on the basis of the scientific ideals its supporters affirm, but also on the professional objectives it serves.

In Algeria: Pierre Bourdieu's Photographic Fieldwork

2009 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 448-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franz Schultheis ◽  
Patricia Holder ◽  
Constantin Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Visual Anthropology ◽  
Visual Sociology ◽  
Research Strategies ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Analytical Skills ◽  
Algerian Population ◽  
The Status ◽  
Insight Into

Today Pierre Bourdieu is well known as one of the most important social scientists of the 20th century. One of the outstanding qualities of his work has been his innovative combination of different methods and research strategies as well as his analytical skills in interpreting the obtained data (his ‘sociological gaze’). In this paper, we attempt to retrace the development of an extraordinary way of doing social research and show the benefit of Bourdieu's visual sociology for his empirical fieldwork and sociological theory. The article particularly stresses the significance of his photographic archive, which has long been ignored within the appreciation of Bourdieu's work. Studying Bourdieu's photography gives access to his æuvre in several new ways: not only can we understand how Bourdieu became an unconventional sociologist practicing his craft in the midst of a colonial war. Bourdieu's visual anthropology also offers an insight into the status nascendi of Bourdieu's sociology in all its elementary forms and contents. Through his photography Boudieu demonstrated the concepts of ‘ habitat and habitus’, the material and symbolic living conditions of the Algerian population.

William James, the Self, and the Selective Industry of the Mind

1990 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 688-698
Author(s):  
Jerry Suls ◽  
Christine A. Marco
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Mind

The Edwards' Report and the International Relations profession

1988 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Nicholson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Science Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
Science Community

The Economic and Social Research Council recently published a Report commissioned from a committee chaired by Professor Edwards, a psychiatrist, so that the Council, and the social science community in general, might know what was good and bad in British social sciences, and where the promising future research opportunities lie over the next decade. Boldly called ‘Horizons and Opportunities in the Social Sciences’, the Report condensed the wisdom of social scientists, both British and foreign, and concludes with a broadly but not uncritically favourable picture of the British scene.

Podcasting as an Alternative Method of Social Research

MEDIASI ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-252
Author(s):  
Rocky Prasetyo Jati
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Information And Communication Technology ◽  
Communication Technology ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Research Subject ◽  
Qualitative Approaches ◽  
Alternative Method ◽  
Implementation Stages ◽  
Information And Communication

This study examines the use of podcasting as a method in social research. The development of information and communication technology allows the use of various media in the research process. This article introduces podcasting as part of the method and not just as a research subject. Through strategies commonly used in qualitative approaches, such as ethnography, phenomenology, or case studies, podcasts can be used as innovative tools to support researchers in finding research answers and presenting research results. This article uses an example of implementing a “rock cast” podcast to illustrate this method's potential and implementation stages. Thus, this article argues that podcasts can be considered as an alternative method for social research.

scholarly journals Users and Social Science Research: Policy, Problems and Possibilities

1997 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 69-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Rappert
Keyword(s):  
Research Policy ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
User Involvement ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Policy Problems

Recent times have seen a significant reorientation in public funding for academic research across many countries. Public bodies in the UK have been at the forefront of such activities, typically justified in terms of a need to meet the challenges of international competitiveness and improve quality of life. One set of mechanisms advanced for further achieving these goals is the incorporation of users’ needs into various aspects of the research process. This paper examines some of the consequences of greater user involvement in the UK Economic and Social Research Council by drawing on both empirical evidence and more speculative argumentation. In doing so it poses some of the dilemmas for conceptualizing proper user involvement.

Reflexivity and Sociological Practice

1999 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 184-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim May
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Social World ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Sociological Practice ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
The Social

Attention to reflexivity is often assumed to be the means through which the assumptions and values of social scientists may be uncovered. Researchers are thus called upon to position themselves explicitly in terms of their place within the research process in order that their interpretations may be assessed according to situated aspects of their social selves. Taking a reconstructive social science as one whose aim is to examine our pre-theoretical knowledge in the spirit of producing more adequate accounts of the social world, this article seeks to make sense of these ideas in relation to their consequences for producing an engaged practice and body of knowledge.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document