scholarly journals The construction of scientific knowledge in Food and Nutrition: Analysis of dissertations and theses in the Brazilian post-graduation programs in Nutrition

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco de Assis Guedes de Vasconcelos

Objective: To analyze dissertations and theses produced by graduate programs in nutrition in Brazil from 2003 to 2012. We sought to identify: a) The number of studies produced per year b) the scientific approach (quantitative, qualitative, or mixed), and c) the area of knowledge in the scientific field of nutrition. Methods: This is a descriptive study. We investigated seven graduate programs linked to the area of nutrition of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel, which had the web pages listing the studies. The analysis procedures included reading the titles, identifying the advisor's lines of research, reading the summaries, and reading the methods section. Results: In the study period 758 dissertations and 204 theses were defended, signifying an increase of 229.0% for the all programs. The hegemony of the quantitative approach shows the influence of the philosophical trends linked to positivism and the biological sciences, attracting interest from 92.5% of researchers. The qualitative and mixed approaches contributed only to 7.3% of the studies, expressing the influence of the social sciences and humanities and of the philosophical trends' dialectics and phenomenology about a small group of researchers. Conclusion: The distribution of dissertations and theses in the six areas of knowledge reaffirms the complexity, breadth, epistemological, and methodological heterogeneity; and the configuration of the field of knowledge production in food and nutrition, requiring the construction of collective political projects, seeking the interdisciplinarity of the different areas that structure the field.

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ligia Amparo-Santos ◽  
Micheli Dantas Soares

This paper discusses theoretical and methodological challenges in the production of knowledge located in the interface between the Social Sciences and the Sciences of Food and Nutrition, mediated by Health Sciences. We recognize that the discussion on the intersections between these scientific fields arises from the need to expand the understanding of the phenomena surrounding the field of Food and Nutrition from other theoretical frameworks beyond the biomedical paradigm. The discussion will guide a reflection on the following issues: a) how to establish Brazilian academic-scientific output at the interface between the Nutritional Sciences and Social Sciences, mediated by Health Sciences; b) considering that there is a 'field' of the socio-anthropology of food developed historically within the Social Sciences and Humanities, which distinguishes the production of knowledge in the field of health; c) the main theoretical and methodological challenges of academic-scientific output today. We also discuss challenges related to the practical consequences of this output, considering the interventionist legacy in the field of health. Lastly, we highlight that such reflections also face another important challenge, namely the urgent need to reinvent ways of thinking and doing science which, articulated with demands inherent to a new field shaped by the search for production of knowledge and practices, is more important to issues raised by health care.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharmla Rama ◽  
Thereso O T Mathonsi

The interdisciplinary “spatial turn” (and “mobilities turn”) within sociology and the social sciences and humanities has given rise to renewed interest in the conceptual frameworks and theorisation of place, space and locality (localities). In contemporary child (childhood) and youth research, immediate place, space and localities are powerful frameworks for understanding and examining young people’s everyday lives, realities, biographies as well as meaning making, construction of their identities and sense of belonging or exclusion. The emplaced hierarchies, inequalities, power relations and differentiations—in combination with innate, biographical, proximal and distal influences—will shape and direct young people’s interactions, activities and networks within and across different places, spaces and localities. There remains a lacuna regarding such research in developing countries, including South Africa post-1994. This paper examines how and why the concepts of space, place, and locality are of significance and contribute to an understanding of urban young people’s diverse everyday lives, challenges, needs and experiences. This paper focuses, firstly, on a discussion of the contested, conflicting and varying constructions of the concepts place, space and locality. Secondly, there is a discussion on some of the themes, debates and discourses shaping knowledge production in this area.


Author(s):  
John W. Meyer ◽  
Mathias Risse

In recent decades the world has grown together in some unprecedented ways. This integration is linked to a greatly expanded public and collective awareness of global integration and interdependence. Academics across the social sciences and humanities have been trying to make sense of this expanded world within the confines of their disciplines. In sociology, since the 1970s, notions of the world as a society have become more and more prominent. John Meyer, among others, has put forward, theoretically and empirically, a general world society approach. In philosophy, much more recently, Mathias Risse has proposed the grounds-of-justice approach. Even though one is a social scientific approach and the other a philosophical one, the approaches of Meyer and Risse have much in common. Both call attention to the expanded array of injustice claims arising from unregulated globalization. This chapter brings these two approaches into a conversation.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quan-Hoang Vuong

Valian rightly made a case for better recognition of women in science during the Nobel week in October 2018 (Valian, 2018). However, it seems most published views about gender inequality in Nature focused on the West. This correspondence shifts the focus to women in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in a low- and middle-income country (LMIC).


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Mohamed Amine Brahimi ◽  
Houssem Ben Lazreg

The advent of the 1990s marked, among other things, the restructuring of the Muslim world in its relation to Islam. This new context has proved to be extremely favorable to the emergence of scholars who define themselves as reformists or modernists. They have dedicated themselves to reform in Islam based on the values of peace, human rights, and secular governance. One can find an example of this approach in the works of renowned intellectuals such as Farid Esack, Mohamed Talbi, or Mohamed Arkoun, to name a few. However, the question of Islamic reform has been debated during the 19th and 20th centuries. This article aims to comprehend the historical evolution of contemporary reformist thinkers in the scientific field. The literature surrounding these intellectuals is based primarily on content analysis. These approaches share a type of reading that focuses on the interaction and codetermination of religious interpretations rather than on the relationships and social dynamics that constitute them. Despite these contributions, it seems vital to question this contemporary thinking differently: what influence does the context of post-Islamism have on the emergence of this intellectual trend? What connections does it have with the social sciences and humanities? How did it evolve historically? In this context, the researchers will analyze co-citations in representative samples to illustrate the theoretical framework in which these intellectuals are located, and its evolution. Using selected cases, this process will help us to both underline the empowerment of contemporary Islamic thought and the formation of a real corpus of works seeking to reform Islam.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Beatriz Marín-Aguilera

Archaeologists, like many other scholars in the Social Sciences and Humanities, are particularly concerned with the study of past and present subalterns. Yet the very concept of ‘the subaltern’ is elusive and rarely theorized in archaeological literature, or it is only mentioned in passing. This article engages with the work of Gramsci and Patricia Hill Collins to map a more comprehensive definition of subalternity, and to develop a methodology to chart the different ways in which subalternity is manifested and reproduced.


Author(s):  
Robert N. Spengler

AbstractOver the past decade, niche construction theory (NCT) has been one of the fastest-growing theories or scholarly approaches in the social sciences, especially within archaeology. It was proposed in the biological sciences 25 years ago and is often referred to as a neglected evolutionary mechanism. Given its rapid acceptance by the archaeological community, it is important that scholars consider how it is being applied and look for discrepancies between applications of the concept. Many critical discussions of NCT have already been published, but most of them are in biology journals and may be overlooked by scholars in the social sciences. In this manuscript, my goal is to synthesis the criticisms of NCT, better allowing archaeologists to independently evaluate its usefulness. I focus on the claims of novelty and differences between NCT and other approaches to conceptualizing anthropogenic ecosystem impacts and culture-evolution feedbacks. I argue that the diverse concepts currently included in the wide-reaching purview of NCT are not new, but the terminology is and may be useful to some scholars. If proponents of the concept are able to unify their ideas, it may serve a descriptive function, but given that lack of a testable explanatory mechanism, it does not have a clear heuristic function.


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