scholarly journals CANONS AND COLONIES: THE GLOBAL TRAJECTORY OF SOCIOLOGY

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (67) ◽  
pp. 349-367
Author(s):  
Raewyn Connell
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
History Of Sociology ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
Collective Production ◽  
Origin Myth ◽  
Global Trajectory

Abstract The history of sociology as a field of knowledge, especially in the English-speaking world, has been obscured by the discipline’s own origin myth in the form of a canon of “classical theory” concerned with European modernity. Sociology was involved in the world of empire from the start. Making the canon more inclusive, in gender, race, and even global terms, is not an adequate correction. Important types of social knowledge, including movement-based and indigenous knowledges, resist canonization. The turn towards decolonial and Southern perspectives, now happening across the social sciences, opens up new perspectives on the history of knowledge. These can be linked with a more sophisticated view of the collective production of knowledge by the workforces that are increasingly, though unequally, interacting. Potentials for a more effectively engaged sociology emerge.

scholarly journals Wish You Were Here; A Short History of New Zealand Muslims and Integration

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-370
Author(s):  
Abdullah Drury
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Court Case ◽  
Short History ◽  
Muslim Immigrants ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World

The recent court case of the Australian terrorist responsible for murdering 51 worshippers inside two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, has focused attention on this South Pacific nation. Nation-building, with its inherent practices of inclusion and exclusion into the social hierarchy, began here in the nineteenth century and accelerated throughout the twentieth century. History of Muslims in New Zealand, or New Zealand Islam, is a rich narrative illustrative of tendencies and biases that are both common to, as well as divergent from, patterns elsewhere in the English speaking world and Western societies in general. The integration of Muslim immigrants and refugees, and converts to Islam, into this complex social bricolage, however, has been challenging and at times convoluted. This essay will support us to consider why and how this is the case.

Populating Sociology: Carr-Saunders and the Problem of Population

2008 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 552-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Osborne ◽  
Nikolas Rose
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Specific Problem ◽  
History Of Sociology ◽  
History Of Thought ◽  
The Social ◽  
Research Programmes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Different Shapes ◽  
Thought Styles ◽  
British Sociology

Research programmes in the social sciences and elsewhere can be seen as ‘set-ups’ which combine inscription devices and thought styles. The history of inscription devices without consideration of changing and often discontinuous thought styles effectively takes the historical dimension out of the history of thought. Perhaps thought styles are actually more important than the techniques of inscription that arise from them. The social sciences have relied upon multiple modes of inscription, often using, adapting or extending those invented for other purposes, such as the census. But the strategic prioritisation and deployment of specific inscriptions in analysis and argument has inescapably been dependent on particular thought styles; of which by far the most significant over the course of the first half of the twentieth century was eugenics with its specific problem of ‘population’. This paper describes the way that Alexander Carr-Saunders took up the problem of population within early attempts to develop sociology. We ask whether Carr-Saunders can be considered a ‘precursor’ of a sociologist. The history of British sociology takes different shapes – as indeed does the very idea of a history of sociology – depending on how one answers this question.

scholarly journals Towards a reflexive intelligence of emerging sociology in France around 1900 (Tome 142, 7e Série, n°3-4, (2021))

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-64
Author(s):  
Martin Strauss
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social History ◽  
Present Review ◽  
Bibliometric Study ◽  
History Of Sociology ◽  
Social Time ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

Abstract Recent years have seen a proliferation of publications reconsidering the emergence of sociology in France. The present review discusses and compares three of these works: S. Mosbah-Natanson’s bibliometric study on the fashion of sociology around 1900 (2017a); Th. Hirsch’s history of the idea of social time from the Durkheimians to Les Annales (2016a); and M. Joly’s enquiry into a purported sociological revolution in France and Germany at around the same time (2017a). Pushing respectively for a sociological, a historical and an epistemological history of sociology, they represent three distinct ways of renewing the historiography of the social sciences. The article argues that qualities and limitations of these works alike suggest two challenges for the history of sociology: (1) integrating sociological, historical and epistemological competences in a comprehensive intelligence of sociological texts; and (2) accounting for the reflexivity involved in a social history of the social sciences.

scholarly journals Women's Suffrage in Thailand: A Southeast Asian Historiographical Challenge

2010 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 708-741 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Bowie
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Geographical Location ◽  
The United States ◽  
Women's Suffrage ◽  
Sustained Activity ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
Global Trajectory ◽  
Women’S Suffrage

Although much of the history of women's suffrage has focused on the American and British struggles of the early twentieth century, a newer generation of interdisciplinary scholars is exploring its global trajectory. Fundamental to these cross-cultural comparisons is the establishment of an international timeline of women's suffrage; its order at once shapes and is shaped by its historiography. According to the currently dominant chronology, “Female suffrage began with the 1893 legislation in New Zealand” (Ramirez, Soysal, and Shanahan 1997: 738; see also Grimshaw 1987 [1972]: xiv). In this timeline, “Australia was next to act, in 1902” (ibid.). Despite the geographical location of New Zealand and Australia in greater Southeast Asia, the narrative that accompanies this timeline portrays “first world” women as leading the struggle for suffrage and “third world” women as following their example.1As Ramirez, Soysal, and Shanahan write, “A smaller early wave of suffrage extensions between 1900 and 1930 occurred mostly in European states. A second, more dramatic wave occurred after 1930” (ibid.). Similarly, Patricia Grimshaw writes, “It was principally in the English-speaking world, in the United States, in Britain and its colonial dependencies, and in the Scandinavian countries that sustained activity for women's political enfranchisement occurred. Other countries eventually followed suit” (1987: xiv).

A View from Europe

2005 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Talcott Parsons ◽  
History Of Sociology ◽  
Habsburg Empire ◽  
Classical Economics ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Divided Subject ◽  
Good Research

The history of sociology can be likened to the history of the Habsburg Empire, which claimed to have legitimate sovereignty over the whole of Europe but eventually became a discontented jumble of margins. In the same way, Talcott Parsons tried to claim that sociology was the empress of the social sciences; economics, political science, and the others being allocated their places within its realm. But sociology could not match the tougher, tighter theoretical structures of political science, economics, psychology, and even possibly anthropology. It became an internally divided subject, cultivating the margins. There is a field called neo-institutionalism in which an increasing amount of good research is being done and which is challenging some of the orthodoxies of the neo-classical economics and neo-liberal political science which have come to dominate the intellectual world since the decline of Keynesianism in the 1970s.

Dairy Cows: Workers in the Shadows?

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jocelyne Porcher ◽  
Tiphaine Schmitt
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Dairy Cows ◽  
Distinctive Feature ◽  
The Social ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Despite the interest that sociologists, especially in the English-speaking world, show in animals and human-animal relations, we know little about the place that animals actually have in work. The social sciences still see work as a distinctive feature of humans. Based on the hypothesis that animals are actors involved in the process of work, and not simply objects, the relationship of a herd of 60 cows was studied (a) with their farmer, (b) among themselves, and (c) with a milking robot. Our findings show that cows do collaborate in the farmer’s work, and our results raise the question: can cows’ collaboration in work be considered work?

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.

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.

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