Designing-With/In World Politics

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-154
Author(s):  
Jonathan Luke Austin ◽  
Anna Leander
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Ethical Imperative ◽  
Political Design ◽  
Film Making ◽  
International Social ◽  
Do So

Abstract Why is the praxis of the International Social Sciences (iss) so limited? Why are word counts and abstracts so much more integral to our quotidian workday than datasheets or color palettes? Why do we do little more than write texts and give lectures with – perhaps – the odd foray into photography or film-making? Why are we so reluctant to practically (and so not simply conceptually) engage with the full gamut of material, aesthetic, and technological making? This essay addresses these questions by advocating for the emergence of an International Political Design. It begins from the intuition that conceptual and empirical shifts across iss towards embracing the material-entanglements of world politics, the centrality of affect and emotion to human praxis, and relational ontologies of emergence, prefiguration, and complexity, all logically demand a radical re-thinking of our praxis. Specifically, we argue that limiting our activities to the alphabetical (or visual) mediation of knowledge about world politics constrains our politicality and impoverishes our conceptual and empirical vitality. Considered in conjunction with the contemporary prevalence of global violence, injustice, and oppression, we suggest that integrating a far broader range of material-aesthetic practices into iss is now an ethical imperative. Without taking up that responsibility, we abdicate the possibility of a more worldly and socially-embedded social science. Based on these core contentions, our discussion elaborates on how we might imagine an International Political Design: a conceptually rich, empirically-grounded, and ‘applied’ material-aesthetic approach to iss. We do so in the form of a manifesto or – rather – collage of manifestos that each militates, in one way or another, towards the necessity of designing-with/in world politics.

Cumulativeness in the Social Sciences: Some Counter-Prescriptions

1975 ◽  
Vol 8 (01) ◽  
pp. 19-21
Author(s):  
J. David Singer
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Graduate School ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The Social

In every social science, there tends to be a recurrent and cyclical preoccupation with the lack of cumulativeness. Some attribute this to the familiar “absence of theory,” and lay it at the doorstep of “barefooted empiricism.” Others might see the culprit lurking in the conceptual morass that often passes for theory, and would suggest that grand schemata thatarenot — and usuallycannot — be tested will hardly make for greater cumulativeness.There seems to be more than a germ of truth in both of these suspicions, but let me suggest a third possible source of our disappointment. I refer to certain norms and practices found amongboththe theorizers and the empiricists: those folkways that we pick up in college and graduate school, and are seldom able to shake in the postdoctoral years. On the assumption that an awareness of them and their implications may lead to their gradual extinction, I itemize here a few of what may be our less attractive foibles. While some of them may be peculiar to the field of world politics, most seem to be found all across the discipline.

scholarly journals Crowd-sourced Text Analysis: Reproducible and Agile Production of Political Data

2016 ◽  
Vol 110 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
KENNETH BENOIT ◽  
DREW CONWAY ◽  
BENJAMIN E. LAUDERDALE ◽  
MICHAEL LAVER ◽  
SLAVA MIKHAYLOV
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
Crowd Sourcing ◽  
Scientific Objective ◽  
Political Data ◽  
The Social ◽  
Empirical Social Science ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Do So

Empirical social science often relies on data that are not observed in the field, but are transformed into quantitative variables by expert researchers who analyze and interpret qualitative raw sources. While generally considered the most valid way to produce data, this expert-driven process is inherently difficult to replicate or to assess on grounds of reliability. Using crowd-sourcing to distribute text for reading and interpretation by massive numbers of nonexperts, we generate results comparable to those using experts to read and interpret the same texts, but do so far more quickly and flexibly. Crucially, the data we collect can be reproduced and extended transparently, making crowd-sourced datasets intrinsically reproducible. This focuses researchers’ attention on the fundamental scientific objective of specifying reliable and replicable methods for collecting the data needed, rather than on the content of any particular dataset. We also show that our approach works straightforwardly with different types of political text, written in different languages. While findings reported here concern text analysis, they have far-reaching implications for expert-generated data in the social sciences.

“We Speak the Truth!”

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-80
Author(s):  
Sari Hanafi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Social Science ◽  
The Political ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
The Social ◽  
Academic Qualifications

This study investigates the preachers and their Friday sermons in Lebanon, raising the following questions: What are the profiles of preachers in Lebanon and their academic qualifications? What are the topics evoked in their sermons? In instances where they diagnosis and analyze the political and the social, what kind of arguments are used to persuade their audiences? What kind of contact do they have with the social sciences? It draws on forty-two semi-structured interviews with preachers and content analysis of 210 preachers’ Friday sermons, all conducted between 2012 and 2015 among Sunni and Shia mosques. Drawing from Max Weber’s typology, the analysis of Friday sermons shows that most of the preachers represent both the saint and the traditional, but rarely the scholar. While they are dealing extensively with political and social phenomena, rarely do they have knowledge of social science

Approach to the Social Sciences in Religion Past and Present

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 15-20
Author(s):  
Robert Segal
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
The Social

The social sciences do threaten theology/religious studies even when they do not challenge either the reality of God or the reality of belief in the reality of God. The entries in RPP ignore this threat in the name of some wished-for harmony. The entries neither recognize nor refute the challenge of social science to theology/religious studies. They do, then, stand antithetically both to those whom I call "religionists" and to many theologians, for whom there is nothing but a challenge.

Diplomasi Versi Minangkabau

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-144
Author(s):  
Muhammad Yunis
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Data Analysis ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Pragmatic Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Qualitative Observation

Pasambahan a Minangkabau society how to speak, the speech full of philosophy which delivery indirectly. This turned out to be complicated understood by some people who did not understand the pasambahan. In the present study, the authors sought to express the values of the philosophy contained in pasambahan as how to speak the traditional Minang community. As time goes, these traditions are disappearing from everyday society, for it needs a way to preserve it back. Pariaman is one area that has always practiced this tradition. In this study, the authors attempted to peel pasambahan text in a manner which according to the author deconstruction approach is one approach that is very controversial in the social sciences today. The process of data analysis by using some theories of social science (eclectic). Among the pragmatic theory and semiotics. The method used in the form of qualitative observation, the authors go directly spaciousness and interact with competent informants. From the discussion, the authors found ten diplomatic elementscontained in tradition and pasamabahan text. These elements in them, '' opener, apology, positioning/element of certainty, stringsattached, request (permission), receipt, delivery destination, contracts/agreements/agreements, offers, and resolver ''.

ISLAMIC SOCIAL SCIENCES

1988 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona Abul Fadl
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Foundations ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Human Value ◽  
The Social ◽  
Western Values ◽  
Culture Brokers

The need for a relevant and instrumental body of knowledge that can secure the taskof historical reconstruction in Muslim societies originally inspired the da’wa for the Islamizationof knowledge. The immediate targets for this da’wa were the social sciences for obvious reasons.Their field directly impinges on the organization of human societies and as such carries intothe area of human value and belief systems. The fact that such a body of knowledge alreadyexisted and that the norms for its disciplined pursuit were assumed in the dominant practiceconfronted Muslim scholars with the context for addressing the issues at stake. How relevantwas current social science to Muslim needs and aspirations? Could it, in its present formand emphasis, provide Muslims with the framework for operationalizing their values in theirhistorical present? How instrumental is it in shaping the social foundations vital for the Muslimfuture? Is instrumentality the only criteria for such evaluations? In seeking to answer thesequestions the seeds are sown for a new orientation in the social sciences. This orientationrepresents the legitimate claims and aspirations of a long silent/silenced world culture.In locating the activities of Muslim social scientists today it is important to distinguishbetween two currents. The first is in its formative stages as it sets out to rediscover the worldfrom the perspective of a recovered sense of identity and in terms of its renewed culturalaffinities. Its preoccupations are those of the Muslim revival. The other current is constitutedof the remnants of an earlier generation of modernizers who still retain a faith in the universalityof Western values. Demoralized by the revival, as much as by their own cultural alientation,they seek to deploy their reserves of scholarship and logistics to recover lost ground. Bymodifying their strategy and revalorizing the legacy they hope that, as culture-brokers, theymight be more effective where others have failed. They seek to pre-empt the cultural revivalby appropriating its symbols and reinterpreting the Islamic legacy to make it more tractableto modernity. They blame Orientalism for its inherent fixations and strive to redress its selfimposedlimitations. Their efforts may frequently intersect with those of the Islamizing current,but should clearly not be confused with them. For all the tireless ingenuity, these effortsare more conspicuous for their industry than for their originality. Between the new breadof renovationists and the old guard of ‘modernizers’, the future of an Islamic Social Scienceclearly lies with the efforts of the former.Within the Islamizing current it is possible to distinguish three principal trends. The firstopts for a radical perspective and takes its stand on epistemological grounds. It questionsthe compatibility of the current social sciences on account of their rootedness in the paradigmof the European Enlightenment and its attendant naturalistic and positivist biases. Consistencedemands a concerted e€fort to generate alternative paradigms for a new social science fromIslamic epistemologies. In contrast, the second trend opts for a more pragmatic approachwhich assumes that it is possible to interact within the existing framework of the disciplinesafter adapting them to Islamic values. The problem with modern sciene is ethical, notepistemological, and by recasting it accordingly, it is possible to benefit from its strengthsand curtail its derogatory consequences. The third trend focuses on the Muslim scholar, rather ...

Comparative Area Studies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Köllner ◽  
Rudra Sil ◽  
Ariel I. Ahram
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Middle Range ◽  
The Social ◽  
Small N ◽  
Scholarly Discourse ◽  
Science Disciplines

Two convictions lie at the heart of this volume. First, area studies scholarship remains indispensable for the social sciences, both as a means to expand our fount of observations and as a source of theoretical ideas. Second, this scholarship risks becoming marginalized without more efforts to demonstrate its broader relevance and utility. Comparative Area Studies (CAS) is one such effort, seeking to balance attention to regional and local contextual attributes with use of the comparative method in search of portable causal links and mechanisms. CAS engages scholarly discourse in relevant area studies communities while employing concepts intelligible to social science disciplines. In practice, CAS encourages a distinctive style of small-N analysis, cross-regional contextualized comparison. As the contributions to this volume show, this approach does not subsume or replace area studies scholarship but creates new pathways to “middle range” theoretical arguments of interest to both area studies and the social sciences.

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