The Social Worlds of Biblical Narrative

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda A. Dietch
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Religious Ritual ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sacred And Profane ◽  
Social Scientific

This chapter briefly reviews the rise of social-scientific criticism—a subfield of biblical criticism that uses social-scientific theory to ascertain how social forces, institutions, and practices impacted the origin and development of biblical religions and texts and the peoples and communities behind both—and demonstrates the method’s usefulness through application to Judges 3:12–30. Since biblical narratives provide partial and fragmentary glimpses into ancient lives, this essay recommends the careful use of the social sciences to extrapolate encoded social values, systems, and relations. Émile Durkheim’s conceptions of sacred and profane and the function of religious ritual highlight the Ehud narrative’s cultic interests, which underscore the interdependence between deity and collective. Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptions of social field, habitus, and doxa permit one to hypothesize the effect of field and habitus on the text’s ancient producers and distinguish between their explicit views and doxic assumptions.

Sentencing Policy as a Force for Social Cohesion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Henham
Keyword(s):  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Normative Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sentencing Policy

This chapter sets out the case for adopting a normative approach to conceptualizing the social reality of sentencing. It argues that policy-makers need to comprehend how sentencing is implicated in realizing state values and take greater account of the social forces that diminish the moral credibility of state sponsored punishment. The chapter reflects on the problems of relating social values to legal processes such as sentencing and argues that crude notions of ‘top down’ or ‘bottom up’ approaches to policy-making should be replaced by a process of contextualized policy-making. Finally, the chapter stresses the need for sentencing policy to reflect those moral attachments that bind citizens together in a relational or communitarian sense. It concludes by exploring these assertions in the light of the sentencing approach taken by the courts following the English riots of 2011.

Stabilizing American Society: Kenneth Boulding and the Integration of the Social Sciences, 1943–1980

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Fontaine
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Main Determinant ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Right

ArgumentFor more than thirty years after World War II, the unconventional economist Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) was a fervent advocate of the integration of the social sciences. Building on common general principles from various fields, notably economics, political science, and sociology, Boulding claimed that an integrated social science in which mental images were recognized as the main determinant of human behavior would allow for a better understanding of society. Boulding's approach culminated in the social triangle, a view of society as comprised of three main social organizers – exchange, threat, and love – combined in varying proportions. According to this view, the problems of American society were caused by an unbalanced combination of these three organizers. The goal of integrated social scientific knowledge was therefore to help policy makers achieve the “right” proportions of exchange, threat, and love that would lead to social stabilization. Though he was hopeful that cross-disciplinary exchanges would overcome the shortcomings of too narrow specialization, Boulding found that rather than being the locus of a peaceful and mutually beneficial exchange, disciplinary boundaries were often the occasion of conflict and miscommunication.

School Notes: Committee on Historical Studies

1987 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-236
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Processes Of Change ◽  
Graduate Faculty ◽  
New School ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Historical Moment

The Committee on Historical Studies was established in the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in 1984. The Graduate Faculty has long emphasized the contribution of history to the social sciences. Committee on Historical Studies (CHS) courses offer students the opportunity to utilize social scientific concepts and theories in the study of the past. The program is based on the conviction that the world changes constantly but changes systematically, with each historical moment setting the opportunities and limiting the potentialities of the next. Systematic historical analysis, however, is not merely a diverting luxury. Nor is it simply a means of assembling cases for present-oriented models of human behavior. It is a prerequisite to any sound understanding of processes of change and of structures large or small.

scholarly journals Political Disagreement and Minimal Epistocracy

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam F. Gibbons
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Political Disagreement ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Crucial Assumption

Despite their many virtues, democracies suffer from well-known problems with high levels of voter ignorance. Such ignorance, one might think, leads democracies to occasionally produce bad outcomes. Proponents of epistocracy claim that allocating comparatively greater amounts of political power to citizens who possess more politically relevant knowledge may help us to mitigate the bad effects of voter ignorance. In a recent paper, Julian Reiss challenges a crucial assumption underlying the case for epistocracy. Central to any defence of epistocracy is the conviction that we can identify a body of political knowledge which, when possessed in greater amounts by voters, leads to substantively better outcomes than when voters lack such knowledge. But it is not possible to identify such a body of knowledge. There is simply far too much controversy in the social sciences, and this controversy prevents us from definitively saying of some citizens that they possess more politically relevant knowledge than others. Call this the Argument from Political Disagreement. In this paper I respond to the Argument from Political Disagreement. First, I argue that Reiss conflates social-scientific knowledge with politically relevant knowledge. Even if there were no uncontroversial social-scientific knowledge, there is much uncontroversial politically relevant knowledge. Second, I argue that there is some uncontroversial social-scientific knowledge. While Reiss correctly notes that there is much controversy in the social sciences, not every issue is controversial. The non-social-scientific politically relevant knowledge and the uncontroversial social-scientific knowledge together constitute the minimal body of knowledge which epistocrats need to make their case. 

Bioethics and Social Studies of Medicine: Overlapping Concerns

2009 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
LEIGH TURNER
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Studies ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health And Illness ◽  
Practical Recommendations

Polemicists and disciplinary puritans commonly make a sharp distinction between the normative, “prescriptive,” philosophical work of bioethicists and the empirical, “descriptive” work of anthropologists and sociologists studying medicine, healthcare, and illness. Though few contemporary medical anthropologists and sociologists of health and illness subscribe to positivism, the legacy of positivist thought persists in some areas of the social sciences. It is still quite common for social scientists to insist that their work does not contain explicit normative analysis, offers no practical recommendations for social reform or policy making, and simply interprets social worlds.

Rationality and social norms

1991 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Elster
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Instrumental Rationality ◽  
Emile Durkheim ◽  
Inertial Forces ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Homo Economicus ◽  
The Social

One of the most persisting cleavages in the social sciences is the opposition between two lines of thought conveniently associated with Adam Smith and Émile Durkheim, between homo economicus and homo sociologicus. Of these, the former is supposed to be guided by instrumental rationality, while the behavior of the latter is dictated by social norms. The former is ‘pulled’ by the prospect of future rewards, whereas the latter is ‘pushed’ from behind by quasi-inertial forces (Gambetta 1987). The former adapts to changing circumstances, always on the lookout for improvements. The latter is insensitive to circumstances, adhering to the prescribed behavior even if new and apparently better options become available. The former is easily caricatured as a self-contained, asocial atom, and the latter as the mindless plaything of social forces. In this paper I characterize this contrast more fully, and discuss attempts to reduce norm-oriented action to some type of optimizing behavior.

A Discussion of Dawn Langan Teele’s Field Experiments and Their Critics: Essays on the Uses and Abuses of Experimentation in the Social Sciences

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1130-1131
Author(s):  
Henry E. Brady
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Experimental Research ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
Science Research ◽  
General Question ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
The Social ◽  
Experimental Approaches ◽  
Social Scientific

Experimental approaches to political science research have become increasingly prominent in the discipline. Experimental research is regularly featured in some of the discipline’s top journals, and indeed in 2014 a new Journal of Experimental Political Science was created, published by Cambridge University Press. At the same time, there are disagreements among political scientists about the limits of experimental research, the ethical challenges associated with this research, and the general model of social scientific inquiry underlying much experimental research. Field Experiments and Their Critics: Essays on the Uses and Abuses of Experimentation in the Social Sciences, edited by Dawn Langan Teele (Yale University Press 2015), brings together many interesting perspectives on these issues. And so we have invited a number of political scientists to comment on the book, the issues it raises, and the more general question of “the uses and abuses of experimentation in the social sciences.”

scholarly journals Multi-Method Research in the Social Sciences: A Review of Recent Frameworks and a Way Forward

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Beach
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Large Set ◽  
Causal Process ◽  
Top Down ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Case Based

AbstractThis article reviews recent attempts to develop multi-method social scientific frameworks. The article starts by discussing the ontological and epistemological foundations underlying case studies and variance-based approaches, differentiating approaches into bottom-up, case-based and top-down, variance-based approaches. Case-based approaches aim to learn how a causal process works within a case, whereas variance-based approaches assess mean causal effects across a set of cases. However, because of the different fundamental assumptions, it is very difficult for in-depth studies of individual cases to communicate meaningfully with claims about mean causal effects across a large set of cases. The conclusions discuss the broader challenges this distinction has for the study of comparative politics more broadly.

scholarly journals Pragmatism, Ontology, and Philosophy of the Social Sciences in Practice

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Lohse
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific

In this article, I will discuss two prominent views on the relevance and irrelevance of ontological investigations for the social sciences, namely, ontological foundationalism and anti-ontological pragmatism. I will argue that both views are unsatisfactory. The subsequent part of the article will introduce an alternative role for ontological projects in the philosophy of the social sciences that fares better in this respect by paying attention to the ontological assumptions of actual social scientific theories, models, and related explanatory practices. I will illustrate and support this alternative through discussion of three concrete cases.

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