Supporting Research in the Social Sciences

1989 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-27
Author(s):  
M. V. Posner
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Social Research ◽  
International Perspective ◽  
Is Research ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Social ◽  
Short Memory ◽  
Research Councils

WHAT IS RESEARCH IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES FOR? SHOULD (much of) it be financed by the state? How should it be organized? Where should it take place? In the United Kingdom, these questions thud down each morning on the desk of the Chairman of the Economic and Social Research Council, which now has a new home (in Swindon, with its big sister Research Councils) and a new Chairman, Professor Howard Newby. Six years, and more than one chairman, have come and gone since I sat at that desk; I have a short memory, and a full recognition of the duty of a retired bureaucrat — ‘get out, and shut up’. I am not willing or able to bore readers with a description or a critique of recent policies. But my present function gives me a new standpoint; things look different from Strasbourg, and an international perspective helps; above all, my responsibilities now spread widely (although jolly thinly) over the whole range of learning, scholarship, and science. So these are home thoughts from abroad.

Knowledges, resources and legal regimes: the new geopolitics of the polar regions

Polar Record ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 375-376
Author(s):  
Richard Powell ◽  
Klaus Dodds
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Geographical Range ◽  
Polar Regions ◽  
International Polar Year ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Legal Regimes ◽  
International Polar

ABSTRACTThe Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) of the United Kingdom will fund, from January 2010 onwards, a series of four seminars on the theme of ‘Knowledges, resources and legal regimes: the new geopolitics of the polar regions’. Details are provided of the seminars and the outputs including the creation of a database outlining British based expertise in the humanities and social sciences. In the aftermath of the International Polar Year, the series should not only be timely but also strategic in the sense of clarifying the disciplinary and geographical range and extent of that expertise.

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.

scholarly journals Shopping with violence: Black Friday sales in the British context

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 677-694 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Smith ◽  
Thomas Raymen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
Black Friday

This article argues that the 2014 adoption of the US shopping tradition of Black Friday sales to stores and supermarkets in the United Kingdom and beyond represents an important point of enquiry for the social sciences. We claim that the importation of the consumer event, along with the disorder and episodes of violence that accompany it, are indicative of the triumph of liberal capitalist consumer ideology while reflecting an embedded and cultivated form of insecurity and anxiety concomitant with the barbaric individualism, social envy and symbolic competition of consumer culture. Through observation and qualitative interviews, this article presents some initial analyses of the motivations and meanings attached to the conduct of those we begin to understand as ‘extreme shoppers’ and seeks to understand these behaviours against the context of the social harms associated with consumer culture.

scholarly journals The Rising Salience of the Absent: An Interactionist Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 56-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Hillyard
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Rural Sociology ◽  
Theory Method ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Rural Studies ◽  
Case Examples ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Social

The paper uses examples from rural studies to demonstrate the relevance of symbolic interactionism for unlocking the complexity of contemporary society. It does so by making a case for a nonprescriptive theory-method dialectic. Case examples are drawn upon in support of the argumentation, including early interactionism and ethnographic work in the United Kingdom, and, in the second half of the paper, rural sociology and fieldwork. The main argument presented is that the traditional remit of interactionism should be extended to recognize how absence is increasingly influential. It concludes that interactionism is in tune with other new trajectories in the social sciences that take into consideration co-presence proximity both on and off-line.

Information and Communication Technology Policy Research in the United Kingdom: A Perspective

1994 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Mansell
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Technology Policy ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
Information And Communication

Abstract: Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are altering the ways in which time and distance affect productive activities. Such innovative activity is affected by historical factors, the capacity of individuals and institutions to adapt and act, and by decisions of technology producers, users, and government policy-makers. This paper highlights the directions and perspectives in social science research in the United Kingdom that have emerged in the Programme on Information and Communication Technologies (PICT) established by the Economic and Social Research Council. Résumé: Les technologies d'information et de communication sont en train de changer les effets du temps et de la distance sur le travail. De tels changements dépendent en outre des conditions historiques, de la capacité d'individus et d'institutions de s'adapter et d'agir, et des décisions prises par les producteurs de technologies, les usagers et les créateurs de politiques gouvernementales. Cet article met en relief les orientations et les perspectives dominantes en sciences humaines au Royaume-Uni qui ont émergées au "Programme sur les technologies d'information et de communications'' (Programme on Information and Communication Technologies [PICT]) établi par le "Conseil de recherches économiques et sociales'' (Economic and Social Research Council).

A Review of South Asian Studies

1988 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-56
Author(s):  
John Harriss
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
South Asian Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Working Groups

In 1986 the International Activities Committee of the Economic and Social Research Council decided to undertake reviews of progress in ‘area studies’, and to do this by means of small, inter-disciplinary conferences. A review conference on South Asian studies was held in Cambridge, and attended by forty-one scholars from different disciplines and from India, France, Holland and the USA as well as from Britain. The purpose of the review was understood to be a ‘stock-taking’ in different fields of research, intended to identify conceptual, theoretical and substantive issues at the frontiers of enquiry; and to examine the implications and contributions of research on South Asia for historical research and for the social sciences in general. In the pursuit of these objectives the conference had three components. First came sessions in which two economists (Toye and Chaudhuri), two historians (Tomlinson and Washbrook), an anthropologist (Fuller) and a sociologist (Hawthorn) presented views of ‘progress and problems’ in their fields. Then came two pairs of concurrent working groups on broad themes, drawing partly on the earlier papers and discussions; and finally three panelists (Bharadwaj, Breman and Lipton) offered commentary on the proceedings. The review papers by Toye, Tomlinson and Washbrook appear in this issue of Modern Asian Studies. What follows here is a commentary on some of the themes that emerged in the papers and discussions.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document