scholarly journals Engaging City Residents in Climate Action: Addressing the Personal and Group Value-Base Behind Residents’ Climate Actions

Urbanisation ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 245574712096519
Author(s):  
Thijs Bouman ◽  
Linda Steg
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Personal Values ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Unique Role ◽  
The Social ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
The Rich

Cities can play a pivotal role in accelerating climate action, that is, climate mitigation and adaption. Yet, the success of cities’ climate strategies strongly depends on the cities’ residents, who often have to accept, adopt, undertake and participate in climate actions. This article discusses how a better understanding of city residents’ motives—particularly the personal and group values that underlie their climate actions—could foster climate action in cities. Importantly, it engages with the rich literature in the social sciences on personal values, which—though typically overlooked by policy makers—highlights the relevance of focussing on personal biospheric values (i.e., caring about nature and the environment) in explaining and promoting residents’ climate actions. Additionally, the article provides novel insights into how perceived biospheric group values (i.e., the extent to which relevant groups are perceived to endorse biospheric values) can strengthen the value-base for climate actions, particularly among those residents who weakly endorse biospheric values. Critically, it provides concrete examples of how cities can strengthen the group value-base for climate actions, thereby showing how cities can play a unique role in engaging residents in climate action.

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.

Cultural Influences on Body Image and Eating Disorders

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen Anderson-Fye
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Eating Disorders ◽  
Body Image ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Levels Of Analysis ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Sociocultural Factors ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Theories ◽  
The Rich

Sociocultural factors have long been implicated in body image and eating disorders. Decades of data, drawn from multiple disciplines, consistently demonstrate the influence of culture on body image and eating disorders across several levels of analysis. This chapter engages the rich empirical literature on this subject to retheorize the role and importance of these contextual factors in light of anthropological and related social theories relevant to contemporary circumstances. Specifically, this chapter first analyzes and operationalizes what we mean by “culture” in body image and eating disorder scholarship, describes trends in salient sociocultural factors, and highlights the varying impacts of globalization where societies are increasingly interconnected. It also urges research that builds on current understandings by increasing collaborations among not only multiple disciplines within the social sciences but also biological and clinical sciences.

The Changing Meaning of Skill

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Payne
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Service Work ◽  
Job Complexity ◽  
Articulation Work ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Worker Autonomy ◽  
Service Jobs ◽  
Interactive Service ◽  
Unrealistic Expectations

‘Skill’ has long been a contested concept within the social sciences. In recent decades, the use of the term by policy makers, employers and academics has broadened considerably, fuelling debate about what skill is and what constitutes skilled work. With ‘skill’ purportedly encompassing behaviours such as discipline and conformity, the concept is said to be in danger of losing its meaning or significance. The growth of interactive service work has also seen the emergence of new and controversial skill concepts such as emotional, aesthetic and articulation work. Are so-called ‘low skilled’ service jobs really low skilled and might recognition of these hidden skills help to achieve better pay, or is there a risk of exaggerating their skill content and raising unrealistic expectations? This chapter charts these controversies, and argues for placing skill in its societal and workplace context and taking seriously issues of power, job complexity and worker autonomy.

scholarly journals A Pragmatist's Guide to Prediction in the Social Sciences

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark D. Verhagen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Simple Technique ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Out Of Sample ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Many

Making out-of-sample predictions is an under-utilised tool in the social sciences, often for the wrong reasons. Many social scientists confuse prediction with unnecessarily complicated methods, or narrowly predicting the future. This is unfortunate, because prediction understood as the simple process of evaluating a model outside of the sample used for estimation is a much more general, and disarmingly simple technique that brings a host of benefits to our empirical workflow. One needn't use complicated methods or be solely concerned with predicting the future to use prediction, nor is it necessary to resolve the centuries-old philosophical debate between prediction and explanation to appreciate its benefits. Prediction can and should be used as a simple complement to the rich methodological tradition in the social sciences, and is equally applicable across a vast multitude of modelling approaches, owing to its simplicity and intuitive nature. For all its simplicity, the value of prediction should not be underestimated. Prediction can address some of the most enduring sources of criticism plaguing the social sciences, like lack of external validity and the use of overly simplistic models to capture social life. In this paper, I illustrate these benefits with a host of empirical examples that merely skim the surface of the many and varied ways in which prediction can be applied, staking the claim that prediction is one of those illustrious `free lunches' that can greatly benefit the empirical social sciences.

Evidence-Based Policy Making in the Social Sciences

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Big Data ◽  
Fuzzy Set ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Simulation Modelling ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Social

The purpose of this edited book is to make the case for why the social sciences are more relevant than ever before in helping governments solve the wicked problems of public policy. It does this through a critical showcase of new forms of discovery for policy-making drawing on the insights of some of the world’s leading authorities in public policy analysis. The authors have brought together an expert group of social scientists who can showcase their chosen method or approach to policy makers and practitioners. These methods include making more use of Systematic Reviews, Random Controlled Trials, the analysis of Big Data, deliberative tools for decision-making, design thinking, qualitative techniques for comparison using Boolean and fuzzy set logic, citizen science, narrative from policy makers and citizens, policy visualisation, spatial mapping, simulation modelling and various forms of statistical analysis that draw from beyond the established tools. Of course some of the methods the book refers to have been on the shelves for a number of decades but the authors would argue that it is only over the last decade or so that increased efforts have been made to apply these methods across a range of policy arenas. Other methods such as the use of analysis of Big Data or new fuzzy set comparative tools are relatively more novel within social science but again they have been selected for attention as there are growing examples of their application in the context of policy making.

Too Much or Too Little Knowledge?

1989 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 503-516
Author(s):  
Julius Gould
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Think Tanks ◽  
Great Range ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Way

I HAD THE PRIVILEGElTASK OF ‘CONCLUDING’ THE CONFERENCE at which the articles in this issue of Government and Opposition were originally presented. Now, as then, I can take up only a few of the central issues within the presentations and discussions. My comments seek to underscore the great range of ‘classical’ and ‘contemporary’ questions which the authors address. These include, obviously enough, the nature of knowledge in the social sciences, with the word ‘sciences’ being broadly interpreted -not in any narrow, behavioural sense: the way periods of confidence in such knowledge fostered, and have been fostered by, the perspectives of social democracy: how such confidence has waxed and waned in recent years: how political actors act, even have to act, in advance of data: how modern politics is aided or hindered by the pressures that come from sectional interests — which must now be taken to include the ‘media’ and those who work in or near the ‘think-tanks’ that have proliferated in the last two decades. I do not attempt the impossible — namely any detailed exegesis of all the rich and varied topics that emerged.

Sociology and institutional racism1

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karim Murji
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Institutional Racism ◽  
Black Power Movement ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Public ◽  
Internal View ◽  
The Social ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter traces the origins of the term ‘institutional racism’ in the 1960s in the Black Power movement, and its adoption and then rejection by policy makers and the academy. This history reflects the rise and fall of institutional racism over at least four decades from the 1960s. Nevertheless, it is a term and an idea that refuses to go away, as events in 2014–16 show. The chapter then links the public face of institutional racism — in relation to the police — with an ‘internal’ view of how it was utilised to critique the whiteness of sociology, itself something that has been revived to denounce universities and the social sciences through campaigns such as ‘Rhodes must fall’.

Advocating Policy: Initiatives in Mining and Development

2006 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 12-16
Author(s):  
Evelyn Caballero
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Policy Initiatives ◽  
The Social

This paper shares my experience as an anthropologist in affecting policy makers in the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) of the Philippines Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to recognize and institutionalize the term traditional small scale miners. The MGB then and now is predominantly staffed by personnel from technical fields related to mining with minimal staff from the social sciences.

scholarly journals Willingness to Adopt Telemedicine in Major Iraqi Hospitals: A Pilot Study

2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohd Khanapi Abd Ghani ◽  
Mustafa Musa Jaber
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Pilot Study ◽  
Healthcare Services ◽  
Network Services ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Patient Understanding ◽  
The Social ◽  
Willingness To Adopt ◽  
Medical City ◽  
Skilled Health

The Iraqi healthcare services are struggling to regain their lost momentum. Many physicians and nurses left Iraq because of the current situation in the country. Despite plans of calling back the skilled health workforce, they are still worried by the disadvantages of their return. Hence, technology plays a central role in taking advantage of their profession through the use of telemedicine. Studying the factors that affect the implementation of telemedicine is necessary. Telemedicine covers network services, policy makers, and patient understanding. A framework that includes the influencing factors in adopting telemedicine in Iraq was developed in this study. A questionnaire was distributed among physicians in Baghdad Medical City to examine the hypothesis on each factor. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences was utilized to verify the reliability of the questionnaire and Cronbach’s alpha test shows that the factors have values more than 0.7, which are standard.

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