Imagining Social Transformations: Territory Making and the Project of Radical Pragmatism

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 361-381
Author(s):  
Philipp Dorstewitz
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
Hull House ◽  
Social Scientific

Saskia Sassen today and Jane Adams more than 100 years ago are both social scientists and public philosophers of reconstruction. Both offer defining contributions to a philosophical tradition that will be identified here as “radical pragmatism”. Sassen’s theoretical stance “before method” serves as a key to understand Addams’s locally embedded urban activist projects as a form of social scientific inquiry. Sassen introduces the concept of “territory making” as a spark of hope against rampant and destructive global trends of “expulsions”, which her approach reveals. In this article this concept of “territory making” will be explored in various contexts and with particular attention to Addams’s Hull house project. It will be shown how a pragmatist brand of human imagination is critical in “territory making”. This leads to reconsidering the role of art in social transformation projects.

scholarly journals From «Revolution» to «Transformations» and «Changes»? Development of Discourses of Analysis Qualitative Social Change

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-22
Author(s):  
Yury Latov
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
Russian Scientific ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
The One

The popular condemnation of «revolutionaryism» in post-Soviet Russia is seen as contradicting the global trends in scientific analysis of the role of revolutions in the development of society, according to which it is the revolutionary institutional changes that are most important for social progress. These ideas were first comprehensively expressed by the founders of Marxism, and in the twentieth century. in Western sociological thought «completed», on the one hand, with the theories of the scientific and technological revolution, on the other hand, with the concepts of the sociology of revolution. The desire of Russian social scientists to overcome the legacy of Soviet «forced Marxism» led to a conscious alienation from the post-Marxist sociology of revolution. In Russian scientific discourse in the 1990s–2000s. there was a displacement of the discussion of revolutionary changes by using less specific concepts of «social transformation» and «change», and in the 2010s. it joined with the government’s policy of a fundamental rejection of any revolutionary changes. As a result, Russian sociologists lose the ability to distinguish between revolutionary and evolutionary shifts in the development of Russian society, focusing mainly on their traumatic nature.

‘Who Wants to be a Social Engineer? A commentary on David Blunkett's Speech to the ESRC’

2000 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Hodgkinson
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Politics And Government ◽  
The Government ◽  
Education And Employment ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The Uk

This article is a response to a speech addressed to the Economic and Social Research Council which was made, in February this year, by the UK Secretary of State for Education and Employment, David Blunkett. The speech was entitled ‘Influence or Irrelevance: can social science improve government?’ . Blunkett's programme for engaging social science in the policy process is far from unique and many of the arguments have been heard before. However, the curiosity of the speech lies in the fact that the conception of social science which Blunkett advocates mirrors the approach New Labour itself has to politics and government. This raises some rather interesting difficulties for social scientists. How do we engage in a debate about the role of social scientific research in the policy process when our own conception of the discipline may be radically at odds with that of the government? Furthermore, New Labour's particular conception of the relationship between social and policy-making means that we not only have to contest their notion of what it is we do, but also challenge their conception of the policy process. We cannot ignore this engagement, even if we wanted to. The challenge is to address it and to do so, moreover, in terms which Blunkett might understand. This article is an attempt to start this process.

Symposium on Scientific Explanation in Political Science: Deduction, Explanation, and Social Scientific Inquiry

1969 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 1233-1246
Author(s):  
John G. Gunnell
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The Many

The purpose here is to explore certain aspects of the philosophy of science which have serious implications both for the practice of social and political science and for understanding that practice. The current relationship between social science and the philosophy of science (or the philosophy of the social sciences) is a curious one. Despite the emergence of a considerable body of literature in philosophy which is pertinent to the methodological problems of social science, there has been a lack of osteusive ties between the two areas. A justified concern with the independence of social scientific research has contributed to a tendency toward isolation which is unfortunate in view of the proliferation of philosophical problems which necessarily attends the rapid expansion of any empirical discipline. Although in the literature of contemporary social science there are frequent references to certain works in the philosophy of science and to philosophical issues relating to methodology, these are most often in the context of bald pronouncements and shibboleths relating to the nature of science, its goals, and the character of its reasoning. But what is most disturbing about the fact that social scientists have little direct and thorough acquaintance with the philosophy of science is not merely that there has been a failure to carefully examine the many logical and epistemological assumptions which are implicit in social scientific inquiry, since this task might normally and properly be considered to be within the province of the philospher of science.

Feminism and social science

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Wylie
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Feminist Activism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Contextual Values ◽  
Second Wave

Feminists have two sorts of interest in the social sciences. With the advent of the second-wave women’s movement, they developed wide-ranging critiques of gender bias in the conceptual framework and methodology, as well as in the goals, institutions and practice of virtually all the social sciences; they argue that the social sciences both reflect and contribute to the sexism of the larger societies in which they are embedded. Alongside these critiques feminist practitioners have established constructive programmes of research that are intended to rectify the inadequacies of existing traditions of research and to address questions of concern to women. In this they are committed both to improving the disciplines in which they participate and to establishing a sound empirical and theoretical basis for feminist activism. This engagement of feminists with social science, as commentators and practitioners, raises a number of philosophical issues that have been addressed by feminist social scientists and philosophers. These include questions about ideals of objectivity and the role of contextual values in social scientific inquiry, the goals of feminist research, the forms of practice appropriate to these goals, and the responsibilities of feminist researchers to the subjects of inquiry and to those who may otherwise be affected by its conduct or results.

Commensality: Networks of personal, family, and community social transformation

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 664-680
Author(s):  
Meredith E. Abarca
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
El Paso ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
University Of Texas ◽  
Level I ◽  
The University

Commensality is a term that has been used by social scientists to address the practices that lead people to share a meal at a common table. Recently, food scholars have focused beyond the actual act of sharing a meal to specifically study the networks of relationships that come together to make this sharing of a meal possible. Through the analysis of three food-centered oral histories I gathered in 2018–2019 for El Paso Food Voices digital project, part of the Institute of Oral History at the University of Texas at El Paso, I illustrate how an individual’s evolving relationship with food gives form to everyday commensalities. To understand the kinds of social transformations that emerge at the personal, familial, and community level, I am calling these commensalities ancestral, embodied, and responsible. The stories I present emphasize how each individual reached a turning point that changed them as cooks, infused food with culturally specific symbolism and socio-economic realities, and transformed cooking into an act of social responsibility. The overall goal is to stress that food is transformative and acts of significant social change are experienced through individuals’ everyday culinary practices.

scholarly journals Autoanalysis, with particular reflections on sociology

2021 ◽  
pp. 1468795X2110324
Author(s):  
Bridget Fowler
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Secular Culture ◽  
The North ◽  
Raymond Williams ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Sexuality And Disability

This article aims to contribute to a sociology of knowledge via an autoanalysis of a marginalised member of the British upper-middle class, who moved first from the South to the North of England and then from England to Scottish society as an immigrant: a ‘stranger who stayed’. Written in the first person, Bridget Fowler’s reflections move between different religious and political worlds, focusing especially on her reception of conflicting sociological theories and her own development through these. Influenced by five exceptionally learned and lucid sociologists – John Rex, Herminio Martins, Raymond Williams, Pierre Bourdieu and Terry Lovell – she has spent her sociological career contributing to the demystification of power in various forms. In particular she has focused on the significance of secular culture – notably literature – in creating hegemonic domination. She has also analysed the role of symbolic revolutions in social transformation, avoiding in this respect falling either into idealism or simplistic class reductionism. Arguing that sociological theory still needs to teach Marx, Weber and Durkheim, these founding figures should not be seen as creating – in social scientific terms – a unified architectural construction, but should be read with and against one another; further, they need also to be combined with other, more contemporary, influences. Finally whilst noting the existential salience of movements around identity – nation, gender, sexuality and disability – she argues that the discipline must continue to reach out ‘beyond the fragments’, to address social totalities more broadly, including wider issues of social space and structures of power.

Virtual Reality

2009 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 95-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Fox ◽  
Dylan Arena ◽  
Jeremy N. Bailenson
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Common Elements ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Fundamental Understanding ◽  
Real World Applications ◽  
Social Scientific Research ◽  
Social Scientific

In this article, we provide the nontechnical reader with a fundamental understanding of the components of virtual reality (VR) and a thorough discussion of the role VR has played in social science. First, we provide a brief overview of the hardware and equipment used to create VR and review common elements found within the virtual environment that may be of interest to social scientists, such as virtual humans and interactive, multisensory feedback. Then, we discuss the role of VR in existing social scientific research. Specifically, we review the literature on the study of VR as an object, wherein we discuss the effects of the technology on human users; VR as an application, wherein we consider real-world applications in areas such as medicine and education; and VR as a method, wherein we provide a comprehensive outline of studies in which VR technologies are used to study phenomena that have traditionally been studied in physical settings, such as nonverbal behavior and social interaction. We then present a content analysis of the literature, tracking the trends for this research over the last two decades. Finally, we present some possibilities for future research for interested social scientists.

scholarly journals Trabajo social, sociopraxis y metodologías participativas: retos, oportunidades y transiciones de lo local a lo global

2020 ◽  
pp. 64
Author(s):  
Antonio Álvarez-Benavides
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Trabajo Social ◽  
History Of Social Work

La historia del trabajo social (TS) en España está condicionada por el papel de la Iglesia y del catolicismo en la concepción epistemológica y práctica de la asistencia social y del TS. Esta historia ha tenido una serie de consecuencias, como la tardía institucionalización de la profesión, las dificultades de su incorporación a las universidades y su equiparación con otras ciencias sociales. Estos procesos, a su vez, han provocado dos fenómenos que tienen una dimensión interna y externa: el asistencialismo y la protocolización. Sin embargo, un nuevo contexto de equiparación del TS con el resto de estudios universitarios a través del Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior (EEES) y las transformaciones sociales durante y después de la crisis económica invitan al replanteamiento de la profesión y de la ciencia. Este texto pretende ser una reflexión sobre las potencialidades de la sociopraxis y de las metodologías participativas en dicha reformulación, como puntos de partida y herramientas para plantear una nueva relación entre trabajadores/ as sociales y destinarios. Además, se analizarán las posibilidades de transformación social que promueven estas epistemologías y metodologías en la práctica profesional, formativa y académica del trabajador/a social en el ámbito local, comunitario y en la sociedad en su conjunto.The history of Social Work in Spain is conditioned by the role of Catholicism in the epistemological and practical conception of social assistance and social work. This history has had several consequences: late institutionalization and professionalization, and difficult incorporation to the universities compared to other social sciences. These processes have caused internal and external results: assistentialism and protocolization. However, a new context in which Social Work has been equated with university studies through the EHEA and social transformations due to the economic crisis invites us to rethink Social Work as a profession and as a science. This text aims to reflect on the potentialities of sociopraxis and participatory methodologies in such reformulation, as the starting points and tools to pose a new relation between social workers and stakeholders. It will also analyze the capacity of social transformation promoted by these epistemologies and methods in the social worker professional, formative, and academic practice in the local and communitarian sphere and the whole society.

Thoughts on the Long-Term Strategy, Science and Democracy

2006 ◽  
pp. 4-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Abalkin
Keyword(s):  
Strategy Development ◽  
Russian Science ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
The World ◽  
World Development ◽  
Crucial Condition

The article covers unified issues of the long-term strategy development, the role of science as well as democracy development in present-day Russia. The problems of budget proficit, the Stabilization Fund issues, implementation of the adopted national projects, an increasing role of regions in strengthening the integrity and prosperity of the country are analyzed. The author reveals that the protection of businessmen and citizens from the all-embracing power of bureaucrats is the crucial condition of democratization of the society. Global trends of the world development and expert functions of the Russian science are presented as well.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document