After the cultural turn: For a textural sociology

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 552-567 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo de la Fuente
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Organizational Studies ◽  
Georg Simmel ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
Practice Turn ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Surface Patterns ◽  
Cultural Turn

This article proposes the social sciences consider texture – rather than text − as the important legacy of the ‘cultural turn’ in the social sciences. The article considers texture in the literal sense of surface-patterns, as well as texture as a metaphor for the ‘dynamic’ and hard-to-capture qualities of social life. The article draws on the philosopher Stephen C. Pepper and the anthropologist Tim Ingold, the ‘practice turn’ in organizational studies and recent developments in geography and cultural research to map out different textural frameworks. While sociologists have lagged behind their counterparts in other fields in embracing a textural sensibility, the article considers the writings of Georg Simmel and the Yale School of Cultural Sociology as prominent exceptions to that rule. The article concludes by encouraging sociologists to consider the textural as a way into a ‘theoretical’ – as against a purely ‘methodological’ conception – of the qualitative.

scholarly journals The Social Life of the “Forever Chemical”

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-163
Author(s):  
Daniel Renfrew ◽  
Thomas W. Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
Toxic Event ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Polyfluoroalkyl Substances

This article examines the social life of PFAS contamination (a class of several thousand synthetic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) and maps the growing research in the social sciences on the unique conundrums and complex travels of the “forever chemical.” We explore social, political, and cultural dimensions of PFAS toxicity, especially how PFAS move from unseen sites into individual bodies and into the public eye in late industrial contexts; how toxicity is comprehended, experienced, and imagined; the factors shaping regulatory action and ignorance; and how PFAS have been the subject of competing forms of knowledge production. Lastly, we highlight how people mobilize collectively, or become demobilized, in response to PFAS pollution/ toxicity. We argue that PFAS exposure experiences, perceptions, and responses move dynamically through a “toxicity continuum” spanning invisibility, suffering, resignation, and refusal. We off er the concept of the “toxic event” as a way to make sense of the contexts and conditions by which otherwise invisible pollution/toxicity turns into public, mass-mediated, and political episodes. We ground our review in our ongoing multisited ethnographic research on the PFAS exposure experience.

scholarly journals Pragmatisme og "practice turn"

2018 ◽  
pp. 43-61
Author(s):  
Antje Gimmler
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
John Dewey ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
The Other ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
Practice Turn ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
The One ◽  
Philosophical Pragmatism

Practices are of central relevance both to philosophical pragmatism and to the recent ‘Practice Turn’ in social sciences and philosophy. However, what counts as practices and how practices and knowledge are combined or intertwine varies in the different approaches of pragmatism and those theories that are covered by the umbrella term ‘Practice Turn’. The paper tries to show that the pragmatism of John Dewey is able to offer both a more precise and a more radical understanding of practices than the recent ‘Practice Turn’ allows for. The paper on the one hand highlights what pragmatism has to offer to the practice turn in order to clarify the notion of practice. On the other hand the paper claims that a pragmatism inspired by Dewey actually interprets ‘practices’ more radically than most of the other approaches and furthermore promotes an understanding of science that combines nonrepresentationalism and anti-foundationalism with an involvement of the philosopher or the social scientist in the production of knowledge, things and technologies.

Environment and Health Research in China: The State of the Field

2013 ◽  
Vol 214 ◽  
pp. 255-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Holdaway
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Collaboration ◽  
Health Research ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Environment And Health ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Developments

AbstractIn the context of this symposium, this article reviews social science research in the emerging field of environment and health in China, with a particular focus on the impacts of pollution. It begins with a discussion of the particular nature of China's environment-related health problems, distinguishing the different challenges presented by diseases of poverty, affluence and transition. It then reviews recent developments in policy and civil society with regard to environment and health, and the extent to which work in the social sciences has advanced our knowledge of these and of state–society interactions. The article concludes with some reflections on the need for and challenges of interdisciplinary and international collaboration in this area.

Maximizing, Moralizing, and Dramatizing

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Economic Theory ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Karl Popper ◽  
Crucial Element ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theory Of Democracy

This chapter describes a “dramatistic,” “dramatic,” or “dramaturgical” approach to the study of social interaction. It asks whether the dramaturgical model insists on the theatricality of social life merely in the sense of insisting that people fill roles just as persons act parts in a play. This is the question of whether the crucial element in the dramaturgical picture is that cluster of insights that goes under the general heading of “role distance.” The chapter considers the peculiarities of rational explanation and about the role of reconstructions of “the thing to do” other than the role of explaining an action or series of actions by focusing on voting behavior in the terms proposed by Anthony Downs's An Economic Theory of Democracy. It also examines some recent accounts of the phenomenon of suicide, along with the rationality principle, which Karl Popper calls “false but indispensable” to the social sciences.

Who owns 'culture'?1

1996 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Thomas Lawson ◽  
Robert N. McCauley
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Early Childhood Development ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Childhood Development ◽  
Cross Cultural Study ◽  
Fieldwork Experience ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cross Cultural Research ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractNo one owns the concept 'culture'. Anthropology's long-standing proprietary claim on the concept rests on three sorts of contentions - none of which are convincing. Anthropology's overwhelmingly interpretive approaches to cultural materials have led to a preoccupation with the details of cultural materials at the expense of formulating explanatory theories. This has, among other things, rendered fieldwork experience sufficient for professional credentials. However, if the details are all that matter, then comparative and cross-cultural research, as well as most of the social sciences, make no sense. Contrary to this view, it is proposed here that theories reveal which details matter. Cognitive accounts of the sort we advanced in Rethinking Religion (1990) offer a firm theoretical basis for cross-cultural study of religious materials. Other types of research concerning non-human primates, early childhood development, and various social and cognitive impairments also offer insight into culture (without relying on fieldwork studies).

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. xxviii-30
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Bloxam ◽  
Ian Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Heritage Management ◽  
Cultural Heritage Management ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
Research Questions

This chapter discusses a range of current debates into the ways in which Egyptologists are engaging with the problems and demands of moving towards greater collaborations across the social sciences if it is to remain a relevant discipline in its own right. Viewpoints from contributing authors are synthesized into a discussion of recent developments in the field from fresh research across both the archaeological and textual arms of the discipline. The volume considers the extent to which scholars need to be revising and re-thinking their research questions and moving towards greater collaborations within the discipline, and crucially outside of it. Moving the discipline forward is also about including voices outside of western discourses and into volumes such as this. The contributions from Chinese and Egyptian scholars therefore bring a fresh perspective to some current problems in Egyptological research particularly in cultural heritage management, museum curation, and investigating archaeological landscapes.

Globalizations

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jürgen Osterhammel
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
World History ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Social ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Characteristic Features

The revival of world history towards the end of the twentieth century was intimately connected with the rise of a new master concept in the social sciences: globalization. Historians and social scientists responded to the same generational experience that the interconnectedness of social life on the planet had arrived at a new level of intensity. The conclusions drawn from this insight in the various academic disciplines diverged considerably. The early theorists of globalization in sociology, political science, and economics disdained a historical perspective. The new concept seemed ideally suited to grasp the characteristic features of contemporary society. It helped to pinpoint the very essence of present-day modernity. Globalization opened up a way towards the social science mainstream, provided elements of a fresh terminology to a field that had suffered for a long time from an excess of descriptive simplicity.

scholarly journals ¿Es posible la mano invisible?

2019 ◽  
pp. 213-247
Author(s):  
Martín Krause
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
Jel Classification ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
Large Field ◽  
Social Cooperation ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Invisible

One of the main contributions of economics to the social sciences, expressed in the famous metaphor of the “invisible hand”, ended up being questioned by a good part of the economists. Based on the assumption of an individual maximizer of monetary utility, the social cooperation in which it con- sists failed, and it was not possible to expect it to succeed. However, recent developments in various areas have provided new elements in favor of its pos- sibility, its sustainability over time, and its extension to larger groups. In this work we will consider the recent contributions related to this topic in Game The- ory, Experimental Economics, Evolutionary Psychology and the analysis of his- torical cases that help to elucidate the theory and confirm its concepts. It will be considered how these areas of the social sciences have contributed with new elements to the understanding of social cooperation and voluntary actions. It concludes by stating that the invisible hand failure should, at least, be ques- tioned, and that there is still a large field to be developed in the analysis of these spontaneous orders, although there have been great contributions in recent decades. Keywords: Invisible hand, social cooperation, Game Theory, Experimental Eco- nomics, Evolutionary Psychology JEL classification: A12, C71, C92, D71, D91, H41 Resumen: Una de las principales contribuciones de la economía a las ciencias sociales, expresada en la famosa metáfora de la “mano invisible”, terminó siendo cuestionada por buena parte de los economistas. En base al supuesto de un individuo maximizador de utilidad monetaria, la cooperación social en que ésta consiste fracasaba, no era posible esperar que tuviera éxito. No obstante, recientes desarrollos en diversas áreas han brindado nuevos elemen- tos en favor de la misma, su posibilidad, su sostenibilidad en el tiempo, su extensión a grupos de mayor tamaño. En este trabajo consideraremos las con- tribuciones recientes relacionadas con este tema en Teoría de los Juegos, Economía Experimental, Psicología Evolutiva y el análisis de casos históricos que contribuyen a dilucidar la teoría y confirmar sus conceptos. Se considerará cómo estas áreas de las ciencias sociales aportan nuevos elementos para la comprensión de la cooperación social y las acciones voluntarias. Se concluye planteando que su fracaso debería, al menos, ser puesto en duda, y que hay un gran campo a desarrollar todavía en el análisis de esos órdenes espontá- neos, aunque ha habido grandes contribuciones en las últimas décadas. Palabras clave: Mano invisible, cooperación social, teoría de juegos, economía experimental, psicología evolutiva Clasificación JEL: A12, C71, C92, D71, D91, H41

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