Knowledge and power: Social science and the social world

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
pp. 697-703
Author(s):  
Göran Therborn
Keyword(s):  
Role Models ◽  
Cognitive Change ◽  
Social World ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The North ◽  
The Social ◽  
Macro Scale ◽  
Cultural Domination ◽  
Four Levels ◽  
Cognitive Challenges

The world’s centre of gravity is changing, from the North Atlantic to Eastern Asia. As world centres of knowledge have correlated historically with world centres of power, this ongoing geopolitical change is likely to bring changes also to the global map of cognition. Knowledge and power are intrinsically related, knowledge is power, it is based on power, and it produces instruments of power. Moreover, the vistas of social scientists and scholars are always circumscribed by the power relations of the social world they are studying. A way of looking into this is to analyse the concepts and the narratives they use and produce. What features do they highlight, and what do they hide? Cognitive change is driven by two kinds of change, change (i.e. new discovery) of evidence, and change of power. On a macro scale, the major forces of power change bearing upon cognitive change have been social mobilizations, for example, of classes, women, and ethnic groups, the rise and decline of states, and, third, economic or ecological crises disrupting the functioning of existing powers. Indigenization and de-Westernization are different programmes. The former is synonymous with nativization and rooting in the particular culture of a population, whereas the latter may be, and often is, an emancipation from Western cultural domination in the name of another universalistic culture. De-Westernization is inherently confrontational, whereas indigenization may range from supplementary to isolationist. Academic indigenization and de-Westernization have in their cognitive challenges similarities with contemporary critical identity movements, such as feminism and ethnic movements. The cognitive challenges mounted by both types of currents proceed across four levels of cognitive depths, claiming canon inclusion of certain thinkers and role models, questioning and rejection of prevailing social narratives, practising new forms of knowledge production, and fourth epistemological or meta-sociological reflections on the old and the new knowledge paradigms. Indigenization should be treated as a limited supplementary project, whereas de-Westernization is likely to advance. It should be an opening of global horizons, not a closure. Pluralism of critique, challenge, and search for other, better ways are decisive for the development of knowledge.

Reflexivity and Sociological Practice

1999 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 184-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim May
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Social World ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Sociological Practice ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
The Social

Attention to reflexivity is often assumed to be the means through which the assumptions and values of social scientists may be uncovered. Researchers are thus called upon to position themselves explicitly in terms of their place within the research process in order that their interpretations may be assessed according to situated aspects of their social selves. Taking a reconstructive social science as one whose aim is to examine our pre-theoretical knowledge in the spirit of producing more adequate accounts of the social world, this article seeks to make sense of these ideas in relation to their consequences for producing an engaged practice and body of knowledge.

scholarly journals What Do ‘We’ Know That ‘They’ Don’t? Sociologists’ versus Non-Sociologists’ Knowledge

2009 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 671-696 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Mesny
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
Public Sociology ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Public ◽  
The People ◽  
Embedded Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Critical Policy ◽  
The Relationship

This paper attempts to clarify or to reposition some of the controversies generated by Burawoy’s defense of public sociology and by his vision of the mutually stimulating relationship between the different forms of sociology. Before arguing if, why, and how, sociology should or could be more ‘public’, it might be useful to reflect upon what it is we think we, as sociologists, know that ‘lay people’ do not. This paper thus explores the public sociology debate’s epistemological core, namely the issue of the relationship between sociologists’ and non-sociologists’ knowledge of the social world. Four positions regarding the status of sociologists’ knowledge versus lay people’s knowledge are explored: superiority (sociologists’ knowledge of the social world is more accurate, objective and reflexive than lay people’s knowledge, thanks to science’s methods and norms), homology (when they are made explicit, lay theories about the social world often parallel social scientists’ theories), complementarity (lay people’s and social scientists’ knowledge complement one another. The former’s local, embedded knowledge is essential to the latter’s general, disembedded knowledge), and circularity (sociologists’ knowledge continuously infuses commonsensical knowledge, and scientific knowledge about the social world is itself rooted in common sense knowledge. Each form of knowledge feeds the other). For each of these positions, implications are drawn regarding the terms, possibilities and conditions of a dialogue between sociologists and their publics, especially if we are to take the circularity thesis seriously. Conclusions point to the accountability we face towards the people we study, and to the idea that sociology is always performative, a point that has, to some extent, been obscured by Burawoy’s distinctions between professional, critical, policy and public sociologies.

Predictive Success and Non-Individualist Models in Social Science

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Lauer
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Theory Of The Firm ◽  
Social World ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Predictive Success ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Diagnosis ◽  
Resource Based Theory

The predictive inadequacy of the social sciences is well documented, and philosophers have sought to diagnose it. This paper examines Brian Epstein’s recent diagnosis. He argues that the social sciences treat the social world as entirely composed of individual people. Instead, social scientists should recognize that material, non-individualistic entities determine the social world, as well. First, I argue that Epstein’s argument both begs the question against his opponents and is not sufficiently charitable. Second, I present doubts that his proposal will improve predictive success for the social sciences, which I support with Edith Penrose’s resource-based theory of the firm.

La juste distance? Comment les sciences sociales et historiques pensent la différence

2013 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bastien Bosa
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Sciences Sociales

This article presents three tensions related to the concept of ‘difference’ in the social and historical sciences. The first tension is related to ethnocentrism and anachronism: the author shows that they both represent simultaneously dangers that must be prevented and unavoidable working tools. The second tension is related to the role of conceptualization and to the difficult choice that social scientists have to make between ‘native categories’ and ‘analytical categories’. Finally, the third dilemma is related to the impossibility for the researcher to find a right distance ( juste distance) in relation with the world he studies (be it a familiar or unfamiliar world). The author attempts to show that, although these tensions are often thought of separately, they are in fact closely related, and concern the need for all research projects to be taking the social world as their research object.

scholarly journals Teaching Economic Reasoning to Children

1996 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark C. Schug
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social World ◽  
Economic Perspective ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Classroom Activities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Reasoning ◽  
Future Consequences ◽  
Economic Thinking

The author discusses the differing perspectives which the social sciences offer to young people to analyse problems. Perspectives from history, political science and geography are briefly discussed. The author stresses that the child's perspective of the social world differs from the ones offered by social scientists. Following a summary of the economic thinking of children and adolescents, the author stresses that economics also presents students with an important perspective through the application of economic principles involving choice, costs, incentives, rules, trade, and future consequences. These economic principles are explained by reference to an example of why the buffalo population in the United States nearly became extinct and why it is now recovering. The author concludes with suggestions for how teachers can bring an economic perspective into the classroom. Readers are provided with three ‘economic mysteries' as examples of classroom activities.

Mapping The Thatcherite Legacy: The Human Geography of Social Inequality in Britain Since the 1970s

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danny Dorling
Keyword(s):  
Social Inequality ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Human Geography ◽  
Physical Geography ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The North ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Landscape

Thatcherism has shaped the early lives and subsequent careers of many social scientists in Britain. The human geography of the country can be said to be shaped by Thatcher’s legacy in much the same way as its physical geography still bears the scars of relatively recent glaciation. Thatcherism has transformed the social landscape but, unlike glaciation, its core processes continue to operate in Britain today. Glaciation left dramatic scenery, but was especially damaging to the soil and species in the North of England, Wales and Scotland where the glaciers gouged out great chunks of the ground and left an often far more infertile landscape than previously. This chapter shows how the same social process did not occur in many similar countries during (and after) the late 1970s, then discusses the implications of living in a country that has been so transformed in so short a time, when time is measured politically and space is seen socially.

Social Selection, Agents’ Intentions, and Functional Explanation

2002 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Brad Wray
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Functional Explanation ◽  
Social Selection ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Social ◽  
Functional Explanations ◽  
Mechanism Operative

AbstractJon Elster and Daniel Little have criticized social scientists for appealing to a mechanism of social selection in functional explanations of social practices. Both believe that there is no such mechanism operative in the social world. I develop and defend an account of functional explanation in which a mechanism of social selection figures centrally. In addition to developing an account of social selection, I clarify what functional hypotheses purport to claim, and re-examine the role of agents’ intentions in functional explanations in an effort to show why a mechanism of social selection is indispensable to adequate functional explanations.

scholarly journals Four transversal principles for putting Bourdieu to work

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loïc Wacquant
Keyword(s):  
Social Space ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Social World ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
En Bloc ◽  
Symbolic Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

This article spotlights four transversal principles that animate Pierre Bourdieu’s research practice and can fruitfully guide inquiry on any empirical front: the Bachelardian imperative of epistemological rupture and vigilance; the Weberian command to effect the triple historicization of the agent (habitus), the world (social space, of which field is but a subtype), and the categories of the analyst (epistemic reflexivity); the Leibnizian–Durkheimian invitation to deploy the topological mode of reasoning to track the mutual correspondences between symbolic space, social space, and physical space; and the Cassirer moment urging us to recognize the constitutive efficacy of symbolic structures. I also flag three traps that Bourdieusian explorers of the social world should exercise special care to avoid: the fetishization of concepts, the seductions of “speaking Bourdieuse” while failing to carry out the research operations Bourdieu’s notions stipulate, and the forced imposition of his theoretical framework en bloc when it is more productively used in kit through transposition. These principles guiding the construction of the object are not theoretical slogans but practical blueprints for anthropological inquiry. This implies that mimesis and not exegesis should guide those social scientists who wish to build on, revise, or challenge the scientific machinery and legacy of Pierre Bourdieu.

scholarly journals Sociologiens tredje

2007 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 69-92
Author(s):  
Henning Bech
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social

The third field of sociology It is generally agreed that politics and the economy are essential parts of con¬temporary societies; and indeed, most social social scientists work with topics related to these fields. There is much more debate about the nature of the rest of the social world, and how it should be con¬ceptualized. Some speak of „civil socie¬ty“, others of „culture“, and yet others of „communication“. In this article, a diffe¬rent view is presented of this „third“ field, focusing on a vital and materially heavy conglomeration of visual media, city, gender problematics, sexuality, ae¬stheticizing, apparatus of self-analysis, sensitivity and parliamentary complex. The article presents an overview of Bechs studies in this field, as well as of the par¬ticular approaches, methods and style of these studies.

scholarly journals El habitus que conformó a Bourdieu: entre capitales y campos de poder / The habitus that formed Bourdieu: between capitals and fields of power

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (25) ◽  
pp. 146-155
Author(s):  
Brenda Vivian Rico Rios
Keyword(s):  
Social Scientist ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Social World ◽  
Economic Capital ◽  
The North ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Fields ◽  
Common Problems ◽  
The One

Pierre Bourdieu constantemente señaló que el mundo social es historia acumulada. Por tanto, a partir de esa historia encarnada los agentes se posicionan dentro de un mundo social establecido previamente a su propia existencia. El presente artículo pretende poner en marcha las ideas de Bourdieu a partir de un socio análisis en los puntos nodales de su vida, aquellos que definieron su pensamiento y su mirada al mundo: por un lado las coyunturas políticas y sociales de su contexto social, el Mayo Francés y la Independencia de Argelia; por otro lado, su vida personal, siendo oriundo de una ciudad al norte de Francia, se confrontó a distintos campos sociales al estudiar el liceo en Paris, motivo que lo hace reflexionar sobre el papel de los capitales económicos y culturales dentro de campos sociales. La epistemología de su pensamiento sirve de referencia para la comprensión de los conceptos centrales que formula: el habitus, los campos y los capitales. Para el científico social, el socioanálisis como método, puede servir para transformar problemas de la propia existencia en problemas científicos, generando de esta manera una propia sociología. Pierre Bourdieu constantly pointed out that the social world is accumulated history. Therefore, from that accumulated history we position ourselves within a social world established prior to our own existence. This article aims to launch Bourdieu’s ideas from a socio-analysis at the nodal points of his life, those that defined his thinking and his outlook on the world: on the one hand, the political and social conjunctures of his social context, the May 68 and the Independence of Algeria; On the other hand, his personal life, being a native of a city in the north of France, he confronted different fieldworks when he studied at the Lyceum in Paris, which makes him reflect on the role of economic capital and cultural capital within social fields. The epistemology of his critical thinking serves as a reference for understanding his central concepts: habitus, fields and capitals. For the social scientist, socio-analysis can be used to transform common problems into scientific problems, thus generating an own sociology.

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