The endurance of critique

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Didier Fassin
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Critical Sociology ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

Critique in the humanities and the social sciences has recently been under attack and even declared lifeless. Considering the report of its death to be an exaggeration but acknowledging that one should never let a good crisis go to waste, I propose a reflection on the challenges faced by the practice of critical thinking in anthropology based on my own research on AIDS in South Africa, trauma among Palestinians, and policing and punishment in France, while resituating the questions it raises in a broader history of the discipline. More specifically, I discuss two major strands, genealogical critique and critical theory, suggesting how they may be combined, and two opposed views, critical sociology and the sociology of critique, showing that ethnography can surmount their supposed irreconcilability. Affirming that critique, under its multiple forms, is inherent to the anthropological project, I contend that it is more than ever needed in times laden with worrying spectres.

scholarly journals South African Social Science and the Azanian Philosophical Tradition

Theoria ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 68 (168) ◽  
pp. 111-135
Author(s):  
Anjuli Webster
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Social Science ◽  
South African ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Ethical Question ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Material Problem ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

This article discusses the contemporary history of South African social science in relation to the Azanian Philosophical Tradition. It is addressed directly to white scholars, urging introspection with regard to the ethical question of epistemic justice in relation to the evolution of the social sciences in conqueror South Africa. I consider the establishment of the professional social sciences at South African universities in the early twentieth century as a central part of the epistemic project of conqueror South Africa. In contrast, the Azanian Philosophical Tradition is rooted in African philosophy and articulated in resistance against the injustice of conquest and colonialism in southern Africa since the seventeenth century. It understands conquest as the fundamental historical antagonism shaping the philosophical, political, and material problem of ‘South Africa’. The tradition is silenced by and exceeds the political and epistemic strictures of the settler colonial nation state and social science.

The Problem

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mats Alvesson ◽  
Yiannis Gabriel ◽  
Roland Paulsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Research Papers ◽  
Prestigious Journal ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Academic Researchers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Wide Gap

This chapter introduces ‘the problem’ of meaningless research in the social sciences. Over the past twenty years there has been an enormous growth in research publications, but never before in the history of humanity have so many social scientists written so much to so little effect. Academic research in the social sciences is often inward looking, addressed to small tribes of fellow researchers, and its purpose in what is increasingly a game is that of getting published in a prestigious journal. A wide gap has emerged between the esoteric concerns of social science researchers and the pressing issues facing today’s societies. The chapter critiques the inaccessibility of the language used by academic researchers, and the formulaic qualities of most research papers, fostered by the demands of the publishing game. It calls for a radical move from research for the sake of publishing to research that has something meaningful to say.

The Politics of Global Health Inequalities

2019 ◽  
pp. 58-84
Author(s):  
Yusra Ribhi Shawar ◽  
Jennifer Prah Ruger
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Health Inequalities ◽  
Health Inequality ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Of Health ◽  
Political Determinants ◽  
The Social

Careful investigations of the political determinants of health that include the role of power in health inequalities—systematic differences in health achievements among different population groups—are increasing but remain inadequate. Historically, much of the research examining health inequalities has been influenced by biomedical perspectives and focused, as such, on ‘downstream’ factors. More recently, there has been greater recognition of more ‘distal’ and ‘upstream’ drivers of health inequalities, including the impacts of power as expressed by actors, as well as embedded in societal structures, institutions, and processes. The goal of this chapter is to examine how power has been conceptualised and analysed to date in relation to health inequalities. After reviewing the state of health inequality scholarship and the emerging interest in studying power in global health, the chapter presents varied conceptualisations of power and how they are used in the literature to understand health inequalities. The chapter highlights the particular disciplinary influences in studying power across the social sciences, including anthropology, political science, and sociology, as well as cross-cutting perspectives such as critical theory and health capability. It concludes by highlighting strengths and limitations of the existing research in this area and discussing power conceptualisations and frameworks that so far have been underused in health inequalities research. This includes potential areas for future inquiry and approaches that may expand the study of as well as action on addressing health inequality.

Historical Overview of Qualitative Research in the Social Sciences

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-58
Author(s):  
Svend Brinkmann ◽  
Michael Hviid Jacobsen ◽  
Søren Kristiansen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Social History ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Conceptual History ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Technological History

Qualitative research does not represent a monolithic, agreed-on approach to research but is a vibrant and contested field with many contradictions and different perspectives. To respect the multivoicedness of qualitative research, this chapter will approach its history in the plural—as a variety of histories. The chapter will work polyvocally and focus on six histories of qualitative research, which are sometimes overlapping, sometimes in conflict, and sometimes even incommensurable. They can be considered articulations of different discourses about the history of the field, which compete for researchers’ attention. The six histories are: (a) the conceptual history of qualitative research, (b) the internal history of qualitative research, (c) the marginalizing history of qualitative research, (d) the repressed history of qualitative research, (e) the social history of qualitative research, and (f) the technological history of qualitative research.

Women in science: from images to data

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Jami
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Women Scientists ◽  
Working Environment ◽  
Women In Science ◽  
Standing Committee ◽  
Family Responsibilities ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

Abstract In recent decades research in the social sciences, including in the history of science, has shown that women scientists continue to be depicted as exceptions to the rule that a normal scientist is a man. The underlying message is that being an outstanding scientist is incompatible with being an ordinary woman. From women scientists’ reported experiences, we learn that family responsibilities as well as sexism in their working environment are two major hindrances to their careers. This experience is now backed by statistical analysis, so that what used to be regarded as an individual problem for each woman of science can now be identified as a multi-layered social phenomenon, to be analysed and remedied as such. Over the last five years, international scientific unions have come together to address these issues, first through the Gender Gap in Science Project, and recently through the setting up of a Standing Committee for Gender Equality in Science (SCGES) whose task is to foster measures to reduce the barriers that women scientists have to surmount in their working lives.

Book Reviews: Studies in Sociology, Race Mixture, Hunger and Work in a Savage Tribe, Interpretations, 1931–1932, Faith, Hope and Charity in Primitive Religion, Genetic Principles in Medicine and Social Science, The Reorganisation of Education in China, Social Decay and Eugenical Reform, The Social and Political Ideas of Some Representative Thinkers of the Revolutionary Era, L. T. Hobhouse, His Life and Work, Corner of England, World Agriculture—An International Study, Small-Town Stuff, Methods of Social Study, Does History Repeat Itself? The New Morality, Culture and Progress, Language and Languages: An Introduction to Linguistics, The Theory of Wages, The Santa Clara Valley, California, Social Psychology, A History of Fire and Flame, Sin and New Psychology, Sociology and Education, Mental Subnormality and the Local Community: Am Outline or a Practical Program, Tyneside Council op Social Service, Reconstruction and Education in Rural India, The Contribution of the English Le Play School to Rural Sociology, Kagami Kenkyu Hokoku, President's, Pioneer Settlement: Co-Operative Studies, Birth Control and Public Health, Pioneer Settlement: Co-Operative Studies, Ourselves and the World: The Making of an American Citizen, The Emergence of the Social Sciences from Moral Philosophy, The Comparable Interests of the Old Moral Philosophy and the Modern Social Sciences, The World in Agony, Sheffield Social Survey Committee, Housing Problems in Liverpool, Council for the Preservation of Rural England, Forest Land Use in Wisconsin, The Growth Cycle of the Farm Family, The Farmer's Guide to Agricultural Research in 1931, A History of the Public Library Movement in Great Britain and Ireland, The Retirement of National Debts, Public and Private Operation of Railways in Brazil, The Indian Minorities Problem, The Meaning of the Manchurian Crisis, The Drama of the Kingdom, Social Psychology, Competition in the American Tobacco Industry, New York School Centers and Their Community Policy, Desertion of Alabama Troops from the Confederate Army, Plans for City Police Jails and Village Lockups

1933 ◽  
Vol a25 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-109
Author(s):  
R. R. Marbtt ◽  
E. E. Evans-Pritchard ◽  
E. O. Jambs ◽  
Florence Ayscough ◽  
C. H. Desch ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Psychology ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Agricultural Research ◽  
Public Library ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pioneer Settlement

Die Macht der Institution

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
The State ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War

This volume examines Arnold Gehlen’s theory of the state from his philosophy of the state in the 1920s via his political and cultural anthropology to his impressive critique of the post-war welfare state. The systematic analyses the book contains by leading scholars in the social sciences and the humanities examine the interplay between the theory and history of the state with reference to the broader context of the history of ideas. Students and researchers as well as other readers interested in this subject will find this book offers an informative overview of how one of the most wide-ranging and profound thinkers of the twentieth century understands the state. With contributions by Oliver Agard, Heike Delitz, Joachim Fischer, Andreas Höntsch, Tim Huyeng, Rastko Jovanov, Frank Kannetzky, Christine Magerski, Zeljko Radinkovic, Karl-Siegbert Rehberg and Christian Steuerwald.

The Everyday in a Time of Transformation: Exploring a Single South African Lifeworld after 20 Years of Democracy

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-54
Author(s):  
P. Conrad Kotze ◽  
Jan K. Coetzee
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Ontological Turn ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Epistemological Framework

Transformation has come to be a defining characteristic of contemporary societies, while it has rarely been studied in a way that gives acknowledgement to both its societal effects and the experience thereof by the individual. This article discusses a recent study that attempts to do just that. The everyday life of a South African is explored within the context of changes that can be linked, more or less directly, to those that have characterized South Africa as a state since the end of apartheid in 1994. The study strives to avoid the pitfalls associated with either an empirical or solely constructivist appreciation of this phenomenon, but rather represents an integral onto-epistemological framework for the practice of sociological research. The illustrated framework is argued to facilitate an analysis of social reality that encompasses all aspects thereof, from the objectively given to the intersubjectively constructed and subjectively constituted. While not requiring extensive development on the theoretical or methodological level, the possibility of carrying out such an integral study is highlighted as being comfortably within the capabilities of sociology as a discipline. While the article sheds light on the experience of transformation, it is also intended to contribute to the contemporary debate surrounding the current “ontological turn” within the social sciences.

scholarly journals REFLEKSI PARADIGMA ILMU-ILMU SOSIAL

HUMANIKA ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
Sindung Tjahyadi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Objective Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pluralistic Approach ◽  
Main Thing ◽  
Theoretical Paradigms ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
Theory Of Social Action

This article discusses about a paradigm shift in the social sciences based on "the history of science" perspective. The key question is how the recent development of the discourse about the paradigms of the social sciences. The paradigmatic and methodological development forward directed through a post-empirical approach to the exclusion of desire unification cause or structure as the objective theory of social action, and develop a multi-theoretical paradigms on the basis of variations in the structure that can be applied to the various regions and types of action. Furthermore, elaborated further needed is to develop methodological pluralism and theoretical unification in the social sciences are expected to confirm the two sides of the comprehensive-pluralistic approach in the philosophy of social sciences. The main thing about the legitimacy of the methodology underlying the study is to examine the criteria on what should have knowledge of it. Finally, that the dimensions of "ontological" social science should be "liberated" from the illusion of objectivism

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