Politics and Research: Epistemological Moments

1990 ◽  
Vol 15 (01) ◽  
pp. 149-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adelaide H. Villmoare
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Law And Society ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Relationship

In reading the essays by David M. Trubek and John Esser and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, I thought about what I call epistemological moments that have provided contexts within which to understand the relationship between social science research and politics. I will sketch four moments and suggest that I find one of them more compelling than the others because it speaks particularly to social scientists with critical, democratic ambitions and to Trubek and Esser's concerns about politics and the intellectual vitality of the law and society movement.

Second Annual Conference of the “ASEAN Muslim Social Scientists’ Forum”

1988 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-306
Author(s):  
Hussain Mutalib
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Annual Conference ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Asian Region ◽  
Select Group ◽  
Islamic Resurgence ◽  
Closed Door

The Muslim Social Science Scholars’ Forum of ASEAN (Associationof Southeast Asian Nations) held its Second Meeting in Bangkok, Thailandfrom Mubrram 20-23, 1409lSeptember 1-4, 1988, under the auspices of theFoundation for Democracy and Development Studies. The theme for themeeting was “Muslim Scholars and Social Science Research,” aimed atdocumenting, discussing and analyzing the types of scholarship or researchthat have been done about Muslims in the Southeast Asian region, particularlywithin the ASEAN countries.A select group of Muslim social science scholars (together with someMuslim politicians) from the countries within ASEAN, except Brunei, wereinvited to the “Forum.” They included: Drs. Dawan Raharjo and NurcholisMajid, and Professor Moeslim (Indonesia), Drs. Surin Pitsuwan, SeneeMadmarn and Chaiwat (Thailand), Drs. Yusof Talib and Hussain Mutalib(Singapore), Professors Taib Osman and Wan Hashim and Umar Farouq(Malaysia), and Drs. Carmen Abubakar, Madale and Mastura (Philippines).All participants were either presenters of papers or discussants.Throughout the four-day deliberations, participants discussed the typesof studies and research that have been the focus of scholars studying Muslimcommunities in the ASEAN region. Some titles of papers included: “MuslimStudies in the Phillipines;” “Social Science Research in Thailand;” and “SocialScience Research in Malaysia: the Case of Islamic Resurgence.”Given the “closed-door” ‘nature of the meeting (participation was byinvitation only), there was adequate time for a more intensive, frank andthorough discussions of the papers. Problems and issues were aired and posed,and alternative options offered by participants. For every paper, there wasa discussant; hence, the issues that came out of the papers managed to beseen, discussed and appreciated from a more complete and balancedperspective.By and large, the Bangkok meeting was a successful one. Theapproximately twenty participants were generally pleased with the high qualityof papers presented and the sense of brotherhood that prevailed. The warmhospitality of the hosts from Thailand was also appreciated ...

scholarly journals The Inference Engine: A Grand Challenge to Address the Context Sensitivity Problem in Social Science Research

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel L. Goroff ◽  
Neil Anthony Lewis ◽  
Anne M. Scheel ◽  
Laura Danielle Scherer ◽  
Joshua A Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Inference Engine ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Grand Challenge ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The People ◽  
Working Together ◽  
Sensitivity Problem

Social science has a ‘context sensitivity’ problem: the people that we study, and the situations they engage in, are so complex and variable that predicting how they will think, feel, and behave in a given situation is very challenging. Even when we are able to make such predictions, it is often unclear how accurate they will be if some feature of the studied subjects and/or situation changes. This limits the utility of our research for application and policy, as the ‘contextual factors’ that might change our conclusions are often unknown. It is time to address this context sensitivity problem in social science research. While do not yet know how to solve it, we believe social scientists can make great progress by working together to build an inference engine.

Introduction: Defining Moments in the British-Irish Relationship

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-47
Author(s):  
John Coakley ◽  
Jennifer Todd
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
Defining Moments ◽  
History Of ◽  
Elite Interviews ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter traces the history of the relationship between the two communities in Northern Ireland and the tension between the British and Irish governments within which it was traditionally embedded. It documents the process of incremental—and sometimes radical—societal change that has transformed the nature of the conflict, as the overwhelmingly dominant position of the unionist community has been replaced by a more evenly balanced relationship. Associated with this has been the evolution of institutional machinery designed to facilitate conflict resolution and the emergence of effective channels of communication between British and Irish elites. The chapter describes the manner in which the testimonies of these elites were collected as part of research on the process of negotiation of peace in Northern Ireland. It assesses the value of elite interviews and witness seminars as significant source material for social science research.

5. Finding Answers: Theories and How to Apply Them

2020 ◽  
pp. 123-158
Author(s):  
Sandra Halperin ◽  
Oliver Heath
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Independent Variable ◽  
Key Terms ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter shows how to develop an answer to a particular research question. It first considers the requirements and components of an answer to a research question before discussing the role of ‘theory’ in social science research, what a ‘theoretical framework’ is, and what a hypothesis is. It then explores the three components of a hypothesis: an independent variable, a dependent variable, and a proposition (a statement about the relationship between the variables). It also looks at the different types of hypotheses and how they guide various kinds of research. It also explains why conceptual and operational definitions of key terms are important and how they are formulated. Finally, it offers suggestions on how to answer normative questions.

scholarly journals Labor Laid Waste: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Waste Work

2019 ◽  
Vol 95 ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Doherty ◽  
Kate Brown
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Labor History ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Material Quality ◽  
Precarious Labor ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractWaste studies brings to labor history a suite of conceptual tools to think about precarious labor, human capital, migration, the material quality of labor in urban and rural infrastructures, and the porosity and interchangeability of workers’ bodies in the toxic environments in which they labor. In this introduction, we explore the conceptual insights that the study of waste offers for the field of labor history, and what, in turn, a focus on labor history affords to social science research on waste. We examine the relationship between surplus populations and surplus materials, the location of waste work at the ambiguous fulcrum of trash and value, and the significance of labor for the understanding of infrastructure.

Conference on Social Science Research in Liberia

1970 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-138
Author(s):  
L. P. Hartzler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
West African ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
African Studies ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The West

This two-day conference, sponsored by Stanford's Committee on African Studies, was possibly the first gathering of its kind outside Liberia since the American Colonisation Society ceased sending emigrants to the West African Republic at the turn of the century. It was organised by Dr Martin Lowenkopf, and was attended by over 40 social scientists, including six Liberians at present studying in the United States.

Three Questions for Historians of Science in the Modern Middle East and North Africa

2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 588-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cyrus Schayegh
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Social Science ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Rockefeller Foundation ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Biomedical Sciences ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Subsequent Work ◽  
Societal Relevance

What was science, who was involved in it, and where did it unfold in the modern Middle East and North Africa? These are the three questions raised in this piece. The following notes echo my past research on the growth and societal relevance of biomedical sciences in Iran, and are also informed by a new interest in social sciences and, more particularly, in the establishment in 1927 of the Social Science Research Section at the American University of Beirut (AUB; called Syrian Protestant College until 1920) and its subsequent work. A handful of social scientists led by the American Stuart Dodd and financed by the US Rockefeller Foundation, which was active worldwide, helped turn AUB into a hub not only of education, but more than before, of research too. Covering wide swathes of the “Near East,” these social scientists framed that region as an extraordinary “laboratory” for social science research.

James Willard Hurst as Entrepreneur for the Field of Law and Social Science

2000 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryant G. Garth
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Law And Society ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
Professional Identification ◽  
The Law ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Celebrations of the career of Willard Hurst tend to concentrate, quite understandably, on his scholarship in legal history. Most of those who now read and comment on his works are professional legal historians, and they tend to read and define Hurst according to that professional identification. This article takes a different approach, concentrating on Hurst's own role in the more general politics of legal scholarship. Hurst was not content with making a mark in legal history. He sought to challenge the legal establishment. We see the legacy of his efforts in the development of the field of law and social science, institutionalized in the mid 1960s in the Law and Society Association (LSA). Therefore, my focus is on the sociology and politics of scholarship rather than on intellectual history. I will not examine the relationship of Hurst's particular works to those who came before or after him, nor will I go through the exercise of suggesting what was good or lasting or useful about his work for present purposes.

scholarly journals Gatekeepers in Agricultural Extension Research: A Retrospective Analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 94-110
Author(s):  
Fallys Masambuka-Kanchewa ◽  
Kevan Lamm ◽  
Alexa Lamm
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Research Subjects ◽  
Social Scientists

Social science research plays an important role in transforming agriculture as it provides an invaluable source of information for policy formulation and implementation. Social scientists collecting data in rural communities, where the majority of agricultural production occurs, around the globe frequently pass through a layer of gatekeepers to access research communities and subjects. Gatekeepers serve a critical role in access to subjects but their influence on the research process in many countries and contexts has not been examined thoroughly. The findings of this phenomenology study, conducted in four Sub-Saharan Africa countries, indicated gatekeepers provide invaluable access to individuals and perspectives that may otherwise be inaccessible. However, the findings indicated gatekeepers may also have a vested interests in the research being conducted. Among others, gatekeepers may introduce selection bias to the research process. Therefore, it is important for social scientists working in countries where gatekeepers are involved in the research process to understand the limitations gatekeepers introduce when conducting social science research. Having such knowledge is necessary when interpreting research results and will help researchers be cognizant of the power dynamics that may exist between gatekeepers and those they represent as well as implications on the research process. Keywords: Gatekeepers, social science research, objectivity, power structures, extension, access, research subjects

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