Afterword: Struck Dumb? Marilyn Strathern and Social Science

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 283-288
Author(s):  
Nigel Thrift
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Theory Theory ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Social ◽  
Knowledge Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Spatial View

Marilyn Strathern has produced a remarkable body of work that not only demonstrates range and tenacity but also has produced a host of inspirations that have made their way into the world. This Afterword to the special issue ‘Social Theory After Strathern’ dwells on the subject of the modesty of what Strathern is proposing and how it relates to space, noting that her work enables us to forge new practico-theoretical combinations and works of diplomacy between incompatibles which show up the limitations of each party even as they forge new understandings – an approach that chimes with a move towards a more spatial view of knowledge. Theory, to echo Strathern’s gardening metaphor, needs to leave room not just to prune but to grow, the two being inter-related, as she points out. This Afterword also proposes that the extraordinary ability of anthropology to be inside and outside at once might serve as a model for what the social sciences need to become if they are to stay relevant in a world which cannot be reduced to a cipher for theory but still needs to learn from theory – theory which is precarious but spreadable, theory which establishes a rapport, but a rapport with friction built into it.

Cultural Studies/Asian Studies: Alternatives, Intersections, and Contradictions in Asian Social Science

2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Clammer
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
World Religions ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Ancient Civilizations

AbstractThe social sciences in Asia face a peculiar theoretical challenge. Heirs to ancient civilizations and traditions of thought and cradles to all of the great world religions, they nevertheless perceive themselves as suffering from a "theoretical deficit". High theory is almost entirely Western and in fact largely European in provenance. This essay is directed to the possibility of constructing an Asian variety of cultural studies as a response to the hegemony of European social theory, and as an attempt to redress the balance of theory-power in the world intellectual economy.

Discourse Analysis

2021 ◽  
pp. 88-94
Author(s):  
Elisa Narminio ◽  
Caterina Carta
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Entry Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

This chapter describes discourse analysis. In linguistics, discourse is generally defined as a continuous expression of connected written or spoken language that is larger than a sentence. However, as a method in the social sciences, discourse analysis (DA) gave rise to diatribes about where to set the borders of discourse. As language constitutes the very entry point to the world, some discourse analysts argue that all that exists acquires meaning through language. Does this mean that discourse constitutes reality? Is there anything outside text and discourse? Or is discourse one among many means of social construction? The evolution of DA in social science unearths an ontological debate between ‘realists’ and ‘nominalists’, which eventually reverberates in epistemological strategies.

scholarly journals Social Theory after Strathern: An Introduction

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 7-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Street ◽  
Jacob Copeman
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Subject And Object

Taking its cue from the articles in this special issue, this introduction explores what value a critical engagement with Strathern’s work might have for the social sciences by setting such an engagement in motion. It argues that Strathern’s writings are a particularly fruitful starting point for reflecting on our assumptions about what exactly theory might be and how and where it may be made to travel. Through the juxtaposition of articles published in this special issue and Strathern’s writings on Melanesia it explores the theorization of power in the social sciences as one arena in which Strathernian strategies might be harnessed in order to reflect on and extend Euro-American concepts. It also takes Strathern’s own interest in gardening as a metaphoric base for generating novel topologies of subject and object, the particular and the general, and the concrete and the abstract. This introduction does not provide a primer for ‘Strathernian theory’. Instead it reviews some of the original strategies and techniques – differentiation, staging of analogy, surprise, bifurcation, the echo, and an unremitting focus on how we make our familiar categories of analysis known to ourselves – that Strathern has used to ‘garden’ her theory: it can be used, if you like, as a conceptual toolkit.

THE CURIOUS HISTORICAL DETERMINISM OF RANDALL COLLINS

2003 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
BARBARA MISZTAL ◽  
DIETER FREUNDLIEB
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Global Theory ◽  
China And India ◽  
The Social ◽  
Medieval China ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Intellectual Creativity

Randall Collins' The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (1998) examines and compares communities of intellectuals linked as networks in ancient and medieval China and India, medieval and modern Japan, ancient Greece, medieval Islam and Judaism, medieval Christendom and modern Europe. The book has been the subject of many interesting and often positive reflections (for example, European Journal of Social Theory 3 (I), 2000; Review Symposium or reviews in Sociological Theory 19 (I), March 2001). However, it has also attracted a number of critical reviews (for example, reviews in Philosophy of the Social Sciences 30 (2), June 2000). Since not many books achieve such notoriety, it is worthwhile to rethink Collins' controversial approach. The aim of this paper is to encourage further debates of notions and issues presented in Collins' book. We would like, by joining two voices—sociologist and philosopher—to reopen discussion of Collins' attempt to discover a universality of patterns of intellectual change, as we think that more interpretative rather than explanatory versions of our respective disciplines can enrich our understanding of blueprints of intellectual creativity.

scholarly journals Special Issue on New Trends in Agent-Based Simulation

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-165
Author(s):  
Keiki Takadama ◽  
Kiyoshi Izumi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Computer Science ◽  
Mutual Influence ◽  
Real Data ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Agent Based Simulation ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
The Social

Agent-Based Simulation (ABS), an interdisciplinary area embracing both the computer science and the social science, has attracted much attention and aided the understanding of socially complex phenomena. A current important issue in this research area is how to improve ABS effectiveness and comprehension, which makes further mutual influence between the computer science and the social sciences indispensable - e.g., (1) agent modeling involving learning mechanisms in the computer science and (2) social dynamics analysis needed in the social science. Such integration of these two areas would help fulfill the great potential of ABS, first in solving complex engineering problems using agent-based technology and second in developing and testing new theories on socially complex systems. This special issue features ABS papers from both of these important areas exploring new trends in ABS. The 10 papers composing this special issue start with papers by Nobutada Fujii and Hiroyasu Inoue analyzing the relationship between the network structure and system dynamics. In these papers, an agent-based computational economics approach has been active in applying agent-based technologies to financial and economic systems. Papers by Biliana Alexandrova-Kabadjova, Isamu Okada, TomokoOhi, and Nariaki Nishino cover consumer and financial markets using agent-based models. They test economic theory and examine market phenomena for market design. Agent-based simulation is increasingly used in application fields in the social sciences. Papers by Kiyoshi Izumi, Hideki Fujii, Hiromitsu Hattori, and Shigeo Sagai propose solutions for actual social problems such as injury prevention, traffic, and electrical power. Models are created based on behavior data, and the integration of an agent-based model and real data is a hot topic in this area. As the beginning of these technical papers, this issue starts by a position paper to give an ABS overview for understanding important issues in ABS from an overall viewpoint and for understanding state-of-the-art ABS. The information presented is invaluable in helping readers grasp the important features of ABS.

scholarly journals Editorial Foreword

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Giddens
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Online Media ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Southeast Asian Studies ◽  
Industrial Revolutions ◽  
Editorial Foreword

First of all, to begin with I would like to say how much I support this initiative to promote social science. This special issue of IKAT: the Indonesian Journal of Southeast Asian Studies is originated from the symposium held in September where I delivered my recorded speech through online media in September 4th, 2018. We should highlight that the social science is very crucial to understanding the contemporary world, therefore of core important to the trajectory of any country today. The social sciences were born out of transformation in the 17, 18, 19thcenturies in the west of course), firstly the origin of modern states and origin of politics, then the industrial revolutions, then the origin of economics, and in the 19thcentury, those things becoming more widespread to the world that create Sociology and Anthropology.

scholarly journals Doing things with description: practices, politics, and the art of attentiveness

2020 ◽  
pp. 146879412097597
Author(s):  
Nicole Vitellone ◽  
Michael Mair ◽  
Ciara Kierans
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Research Practices ◽  
The Social

In a number of linked articles and monographs over the last decade (e.g. Love, 2010, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017), literary scholar and critic Heather Love has called for a descriptive (re)turn in the humanities, repeatedly taking up examples of descriptive methods in the social sciences as exemplifying what that (re)turn might look like and achieve. Those of us working as sociologists, anthropologists, science and technology studies scholars and researchers in allied social science fields thus find ourselves reflected back in Love’s work, encountering our own research practices in an unfamiliar light through it. In a period where our established methods and analytical priorities are subject to challenges on many fronts from within our own disciplines, it is hard not be struck by Love’s provocative invocation of the social sciences as interlocutors and see in it an invitation to contribute to the debate she has sought to initiate by revisiting our own approaches to the problem of description. Inspired by Love’s intervention, the eight papers that form this Special Issue demonstrate that by re-engaging with description we stand to learn a great deal. While the articles themselves are topically distinct and geographically varied, they are all based on empirical research and written to facilitate a reorientation to the role of description in our research practices. What exactly is going on when we describe an ancient papyrus as present or missing, a machine as intelligent, noise as music, a disease as undiagnosable, a death as good or bad, deserved or undeserved, care as appropriate or inappropriate, policies as failing or effective? As the papers show, these are important questions to ask. By asking them, we find ourselves in positions to better understand what goes into ‘indexing and making visible forms of material and social reality’ (Love, 2013: 412) as well as what is involved, more troublingly, in erasing, making invisible and dematerialising those realities or even, indeed, in uncovering those erasures and the means by which they were effected. As this special issue underlines, thinking with Love by thinking with descriptions is a rewarding exercise precisely because it opens these matters up to view. We hope others take up Love’s invitation to re-engage with description for that very reason.

Africanists and the Challenge of the Mission Veranda

1995 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-34
Author(s):  
Tony Waters
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Graduate Education ◽  
Close Relationships ◽  
The United States ◽  
African Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Field Workers ◽  
Development Workers

I returned to the United States in 1988 in order to get a graduate education in the social sciences. Three years in rural Kasulu, Tanzania, had taught me that how western social science framed development problems was inadequate. I had some hopes that good social science could address how relief and development workers viewed the African society that surrounded them. To me the close relationships that should exist between the two seemed obvious. I had seen enough PhD. students and consultants to know that their Swahili skills and bush savvy were lacking. But I had also seen enough savvy field workers whose inability to generalize beyond their own project, or systematically frame a problem within a broader context meant that their knowledge would never contribute to a broader understanding of anything outside their small corner of the world.

Explanations without causes and causes without reasons

2010 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 539-562
Author(s):  
Hudson Meadwell
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Causal Structure ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Selection Effects ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
State Variable ◽  
The Social ◽  
Intentional Explanations ◽  
The Subject

Action is a central category in the social sciences. It is also commonplace to assume that the social world has a causal structure. Yet standard ways of specifying causal relations in social science lack explanatory force when the subject matter is intentional action. The present article considers this problem. The metaphysics of action are distinguished from the metaphysics of intentional action, and it is argued that the former forces an implausible unity on the actions of inanimate nature and of rational agents. Agency in the metaphysics of action adds nothing to state-variable causation. Agency in the metaphysics of intentional action, in contrast, is argued to have a different structure, not reducible to state-variable causation. Work on endogenous choice in social science suggests that the concept of agency that is on view in literature on selection effects and social generation implies the metaphysics of intentional action. Recent research in the philosophy of action is considered in order to specify the structure of intentional action and the force of intentional explanations.

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