Ecclesiology today and its potential to serve a missionary church

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-36
Author(s):  
Kristin Colberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Missionary Church ◽  
American Society

This article engages the theme of the 2017 meeting of the American Society of Missiology: “Missiology’s Dialogue Partners: Practitioners and Scholars Conversing about the Future of Mission.” It seeks to contribute to that conversation by providing a survey of the discipline of ecclesiology with an eye towards how it might learn from the field of mission and how it might inform it. This exploration begins by defining some of the goals, methods, and boundaries of the field of ecclesiology. It then considers three critical issues at the forefront of ecclesiological work today: 1) questions emanating from the ecumenical sphere; 2) shifting demographics within Christianity and corresponding calls for new ecclesial structures, and 3) the necessity of a more robust engagement between ecclesiology and the social sciences. The concluding section offers some reflections about how the current state of ecclesiology might provide glimpses of the future of ecclesiology and what light it might shine on the future of missiology.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Lewens
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Potential Functions ◽  
Human Psychology ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
The Third ◽  
Current State ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Compare And Contrast

Many evolutionary theorists have enthusiastically embraced human nature, but large numbers of evolutionists have also rejected it. It is also important to recognize the nuanced views on human nature that come from the side of the social sciences. This introduction provides an overview of the current state of the human nature debate, from the anti-essentialist consensus to the possibility of a Gray’s Anatomy of human psychology. Three potential functions for the notion of species nature are identified. The first is diagnostic, assigning an organism to the correct species. The second is species-comparative, allowing us to compare and contrast different species. The third function is contrastive, establishing human nature as a foil for human culture. The Introduction concludes with a brief synopsis of each chapter.

Stabilizing American Society: Kenneth Boulding and the Integration of the Social Sciences, 1943–1980

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Fontaine
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Main Determinant ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Right

ArgumentFor more than thirty years after World War II, the unconventional economist Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) was a fervent advocate of the integration of the social sciences. Building on common general principles from various fields, notably economics, political science, and sociology, Boulding claimed that an integrated social science in which mental images were recognized as the main determinant of human behavior would allow for a better understanding of society. Boulding's approach culminated in the social triangle, a view of society as comprised of three main social organizers – exchange, threat, and love – combined in varying proportions. According to this view, the problems of American society were caused by an unbalanced combination of these three organizers. The goal of integrated social scientific knowledge was therefore to help policy makers achieve the “right” proportions of exchange, threat, and love that would lead to social stabilization. Though he was hopeful that cross-disciplinary exchanges would overcome the shortcomings of too narrow specialization, Boulding found that rather than being the locus of a peaceful and mutually beneficial exchange, disciplinary boundaries were often the occasion of conflict and miscommunication.

Futures Honed

Futures ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 118-134
Author(s):  
Barbara Adam
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Original Work ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
The Past ◽  
Writing Theory ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Verse Form ◽  
The Way

This chapter comprises an interview between Barbara Adam and the editors, and is followed by Adam’s ‘Honing Futures’, which is presented in four short verses of distilled theory. In the interview Adam reflects on thirty-five years of futures-thinking rooted in her deeply original work on time and temporality, and her innovative response to qualitative and linear definitions of time within the social sciences. The interview continues with a discussion of the way Adam’s thinking on futures intersects in her work with ideas of ethics and collective responsibility politics and concludes with a brief rationale for writing theory in verse form. In ‘Honing Futures’, a piece of futures theory verse form, Adam charts the movements and moments in considerations of the Not Yet and futurity’s active creation: from pluralized imaginings of the future, to an increasingly tangible and narrower anticipated future, to future-making as designing and reality-creating performance. Collectively, the verses identify the varied complex interdependencies of time, space, and matter with the past and future in all iterations of honing and making futures.

The Future of the Social Sciences

1992 ◽  
pp. 49-60
Author(s):  
Vera G. Seal ◽  
Philip Bean
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future

scholarly journals Futures Narratives, Possible Worlds, Big Stories: Causal Layered Analysis and the Problems of Youth

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 231-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cate Watson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Levels Of Analysis ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Causal Layered Analysis ◽  
Four Levels ◽  
Alternative Scenarios ◽  
Causal Variables

Narratives of the future can be seen as a form of colonialisation, structuring fields of discourse, in a process which Johan Galtung (cited in Andersson, 2006) refers to as ‘chronological imperialism’. However, futures narratives can also be used to disrupt these attempts at colonialisation through surfacing problematic assumptions in order to explore alternative scenarios. In this paper I first consider modal narratives and possible worlds and their relevance to the social sciences. I then discuss Sohail Inayatullah's ‘Causal Layered Analysis’ (CLA) - a narrative technique for constructing past and present and imagining the future. CLA draws on a ‘poststructural toolbox’ to examine problematic issues using a process which focuses on four levels of analysis: litany (the official public description of the issue); social science analysis (which attempts to articulate causal variables); discourse analysis or prevailing worldview; and myth/metaphor analysis. The aim is to disrupt current discourses which have become sedimented into practice and so open up space for the construction of alternative scenarios. In the third part I demonstrate how this approach can be used to examine ‘big issues’ taking as my example the current preoccupation with troubled and troublesome youth.

Touring the carbon ruins: towards an ethics of speculative decarbonisation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Graham Raven ◽  
Johannes Stripple
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Turn On ◽  
Official Policy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Design Fiction ◽  
Point Of Departure

For many years, questions about the future have been marginalised within the social sciences: asking how we might live in a post-fossil society, or what are the key decisions and events that could take us there, has been seen as outside of the disciplinary scope. In this paper – which takes as its point of departure the ‘speculative turn’ that is increasingly inspiring a range of works, from foresight scenarios to design fiction – we insist on the need to invent methods and practices which provide speculative spaces that allow such questions to be articulated. We use our own speculative initiative, ‘The Museum of Carbon Ruins’, to foreground a series of ethical questions that accompany such speculative endeavours, but which have so far been neglected in contemporary discussions. Working within a critical utopian modality, Carbon Ruins does not foreclose ethical possibilities, but allows citizens to grapple with, evaluate, amend and critique the post-fossil futures that official policy is striving towards.<br /><br />Key messages<br /><ul><li>A pioneering and reflective examination of the ethics of speculative methods in climate policy.</li><br /><li>Presents utopian modes as an analytical lens to turn on sociotechnical and/or climate imaginaries.</li><br /><li>Explores the Museum of Carbon Ruins, a unique co-productive climate communications initiative.</li><br /><li>Openly fictional futures strike a fairer discursive bargain than the masked utopias of ecomodernism.</li></ul>

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