scholarly journals Introduction: Taiwan as Epistemic Challenger

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-217
Author(s):  
Chih-Jou Jay Chen ◽  
Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao

Abstract Four articles are included in this topical section on ‘Taiwan as Epistemic Challenger’. Two of the four contributions were originally presented at the 3rd World Congress of Taiwan Studies held on 6–8 September 2018 at Academia Sinica in Taipei. The main theme of this Congress was ‘Taiwan in the Globalized World: The Relevance of Taiwan Studies to the Social Sciences and Humanities’. The other two contributions were accepted through a call for papers. The topical section aims to demonstrate that Taiwanese scholars and foreign researchers of Taiwanese society can transcend the competitive disadvantage of studying a single country and make Taiwan visible in international scholarship. The findings of relevant Taiwan studies research can instead modify the epistemic assumptions and methodology in different disciplines of the social sciences and humanities.

Author(s):  
John W. Meyer ◽  
Mathias Risse

In recent decades the world has grown together in some unprecedented ways. This integration is linked to a greatly expanded public and collective awareness of global integration and interdependence. Academics across the social sciences and humanities have been trying to make sense of this expanded world within the confines of their disciplines. In sociology, since the 1970s, notions of the world as a society have become more and more prominent. John Meyer, among others, has put forward, theoretically and empirically, a general world society approach. In philosophy, much more recently, Mathias Risse has proposed the grounds-of-justice approach. Even though one is a social scientific approach and the other a philosophical one, the approaches of Meyer and Risse have much in common. Both call attention to the expanded array of injustice claims arising from unregulated globalization. This chapter brings these two approaches into a conversation.


Author(s):  
Charlotte Wien ◽  
Bertil Fabricius Dorch

A problematic practice has evolved, which is threatening to undermine research in the social sciences and humanities. Bibliometrics is often claimed to be able to measure researchers’ efficiency. We find this quite problematic and, in this article, we illustrate this point by discussing two different bibliometric practices. One is the so-called h-index, the other the so-called BFI-points (Den bibliometriske Forskningsindikator, The Bibliometric Research Indicator). The BFI was never intended to be used for evaluating individual researchers and their productivity. Yet since its introduction in 2008 especially the social sciences and the humanities experience a pressure to deliver “BFI points” and academic job advertisements within the social sciences and the humanities increasingly mention expectations for people’s past and/or future production of BFI points. The h-index is even more problematic because no one academic database covers all the research publications in the world. The whole thing is completely disorganized, and as many as five different h-indexes exist for each researcher. What makes the h-index even more useless is that it will not let you make comparisons across disciplines. Furthermore, like other simple measurements, it is liable to be manipulated and misinterpreted. On that background, it is remarkable that numbers extracted from incomplete databases are used for describing the quality of researchers and their institutions.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Efnan Dervişoğlu

Almanya’ya işçi göçü, neden ve sonuçları, sosyal boyutlarıyla ele alınmış; göç ve devamındaki süreçte yaşanan sorunlar, konunun uzmanlarınca dile getirilmiştir. Fakir Baykurt’un Almanya öyküleri, sunduğu gerçekler açısından, sosyal bilimlerin ortaya koyduğu verilerle bağdaşan edebiyat ürünleri arasındadır. Yirmi yılını geçirdiği Almanya’da, göçmen işçilerle ve aileleriyle birlikte olup işçi çocuklarının eğitimine yönelik çalışmalarda bulunan yazarın gözlem ve deneyimlerinin ürünü olan bu öyküler, kaynağını yaşanmışlıktan alır; çalışmanın ilk kısmında, Fakir Baykurt’un yaşamına ve Almanya yıllarına dair bilgi verilmesi, bununla ilişkilidir. Öykülere yansıyan çocuk yaşamı ise çalışmanın asıl konusunu oluşturmaktadır. “Ev ve aile yaşamı”, “Eğitim yaşamı ve sorunları”, “Sosyal çevre, arkadaşlık ilişkileri ve Türk-Alman ayrılığı” ile “İki kültür arasında” alt başlıklarında, Türkiye’den göç eden işçi ailelerinde yetişen çocukların Almanya’daki yaşamları, karşılaştıkları sorunlar, öykülerin sunduğu veriler ışığında değerlendirilmiş; örneklemeye gidilmiştir. Bu öyküler, edebiyatın toplumsal gerçekleri en iyi yansıtan sanat olduğu görüşünü doğrular niteliktedir ve sosyolojik değerlendirmelere açıktır. ENGLISH ABSTRACTMigration and Children in Fakir Baykurt’s stories from GermanyThe migration of workers to Germany has been taken up with its causes, consequences and social dimensions; the migration and the problems encountered in subsequent phases have been stated by experts in the subject. Fakir Baykurt’s stories from Germany, regarding the reality they represent, are among the literary forms that coincide with the facts supplied by social sciences. These stories take their sources from true life experiences as the products of observations and experiences with migrant workers and their families in Germany where the writer has passed twenty years of his life and worked for the education of the worker’s children; therefore information related to Fakir Baykurt’s life and his years in Germany are provided in the first part of the study.  The life of children reflected in the stories constitutes the main theme of the study.  Under  the subtitles of “Family and Home Life”, “Education Life and related issues”, “Social environment, friendships and Turkish-German disparity” and “Amidst two cultures”, the lives in Germany of children who have been  raised in working class  families and  who have immigrated from Turkey are  evaluated under the light of facts provided by the stories and examples are given. These stories appear to confirm that literature is an art that reflects the social reality and is open to sociological assessments.KEYWORDS: Fakir Baykurt; Germany; labor migration; child; story


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quan-Hoang Vuong

Valian rightly made a case for better recognition of women in science during the Nobel week in October 2018 (Valian, 2018). However, it seems most published views about gender inequality in Nature focused on the West. This correspondence shifts the focus to women in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in a low- and middle-income country (LMIC).


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Mohamed Amine Brahimi ◽  
Houssem Ben Lazreg

The advent of the 1990s marked, among other things, the restructuring of the Muslim world in its relation to Islam. This new context has proved to be extremely favorable to the emergence of scholars who define themselves as reformists or modernists. They have dedicated themselves to reform in Islam based on the values of peace, human rights, and secular governance. One can find an example of this approach in the works of renowned intellectuals such as Farid Esack, Mohamed Talbi, or Mohamed Arkoun, to name a few. However, the question of Islamic reform has been debated during the 19th and 20th centuries. This article aims to comprehend the historical evolution of contemporary reformist thinkers in the scientific field. The literature surrounding these intellectuals is based primarily on content analysis. These approaches share a type of reading that focuses on the interaction and codetermination of religious interpretations rather than on the relationships and social dynamics that constitute them. Despite these contributions, it seems vital to question this contemporary thinking differently: what influence does the context of post-Islamism have on the emergence of this intellectual trend? What connections does it have with the social sciences and humanities? How did it evolve historically? In this context, the researchers will analyze co-citations in representative samples to illustrate the theoretical framework in which these intellectuals are located, and its evolution. Using selected cases, this process will help us to both underline the empowerment of contemporary Islamic thought and the formation of a real corpus of works seeking to reform Islam.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Beatriz Marín-Aguilera

Archaeologists, like many other scholars in the Social Sciences and Humanities, are particularly concerned with the study of past and present subalterns. Yet the very concept of ‘the subaltern’ is elusive and rarely theorized in archaeological literature, or it is only mentioned in passing. This article engages with the work of Gramsci and Patricia Hill Collins to map a more comprehensive definition of subalternity, and to develop a methodology to chart the different ways in which subalternity is manifested and reproduced.


1979 ◽  
Vol 3 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 242-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Kuklick

Despite differences in coloration Miller and Benson are birds of a feather. Although he is no Pollyanna, Miller believes that there has been a modest and decent series of advances in the social sciences and that the most conscientious, diligent, and intelligent researchers will continue to add to this stock of knowledge. Benson is much more pessimistic about the achievements of yesterday and today but, in turn, offers us the hope of a far brighter tomorrow. Miller explains Benson’s hyperbolic views about the past and future by distinguishing between pure and applied science and by pointing out Benson’s naivete about politics: the itch to understand the world is different from the one to make it better; and, Miller says, because Benson sees that we have not made things better, he should not assume we do not know more about them; Benson ought to realize, Miller adds, that the way politicians translate basic social knowledge into social policy need not bring about rational or desirable results. On the other side, Benson sees more clearly than Miller that the development of science has always been intimately intertwined with the control of the environment and the amelioration of the human estate.


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