Social Scientists and the Point IV Program

1950 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 26-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Omer Stewart

The role of the social scientist in the Point IV Program was discussed at a meeting sponsored jointly by the Society for Applied Anthropology and the American Sociological Society, during the Annual Conference of the Sociological Society in Denver, September 8, 1950. Chairman of the meeting was Carl C. Taylor, Head, Division of Farm Population and Rural Life, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Author(s):  
Richard Swedberg

This chapter examines the role of imagination and the arts in helping social scientists to theorize well. However deep one's basic knowledge of social theory is, and however many concepts, mechanisms, and theories one knows, unless this knowledge is used in an imaginative way, the result will be dull and noncreative. A good research topic should among other things operate as an analogon—that is, it should be able to set off the theoretical imagination of the social scientist. Then, when a social scientist writes, he or she may want to write in such a way that the reader's theoretical imagination is stirred. Besides imagination, the chapter also discusses the relationship of social theory to art. There are a number of reason for this, including the fact that in modern society, art is perceived as the height of imagination and creativity.


1981 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-19

Canada bears some similarities to, and yet in many respects is distinctively different from the United States of America. Composed of two linguistic communities, French and English, and demographically lop-sided, with the majority of its inhabitants living within 200 miles of the U. S. border, the nation presents questions for the social scientist with applied interests which while not unique, are not easily resolved by recourse to American models. Until fairly recently, the social sciences in Canada, and anthropology in particular, were only sparsely represented within and without academia. The 1960s were witness to a rapid growth pattern, with substantial recrutiment of social scientists from the U. S.A, Great Britain and Commonwealth countries such as Australia. The establishment in time of graduate programs led to the present situation, in which positions in Canada are increasingly being filled by persons with Canadian training. Many of these positions are in non-academic settings, such as museums, federal and provincial government agencies, private consulting firms and elsewhere. Many social scientists in Canada find themselves today in applied career patterns.


Author(s):  
Виктор Желтов ◽  
Viktor Zheltov ◽  
Максим Желтов ◽  
Maxim Zheltov

<p>The article reveals the position of the prominent American sociologist in matters of knowledge sociology. It gives the description C. W. Mills’s views on the origin of the pragmatism theory popular in the United States. The article highlights C. W. Mills’s original position in the matter of the attitude to the concepts of structural functionalism and empiricism, which were popular in his lifetime. The work reveals C. W. Mills’s views on the place and role of sociology in the United States, as well as on the social scientists’ role as intellectual craftsmen. C. W. Mills believes that sociology must proceed from the problems formulation in the valuation context of the whole mankind, so a social scientist cannot write only for intellectuals.</p>


Author(s):  
Gulbarshyn Chepurko ◽  
Valerii Pylypenko

The paper examines and compares how the major sociological theories treat axiological issues. Value-driven topics are analysed in view of their relevance to society in times of crisis, when both societal life and the very structure of society undergo dramatic change. Nowadays, social scientists around the world are also witnessing such a change due to the emergence of alternative schools of sociological thought (non-classical, interpretive, postmodern, etc.) and, subsequently, the necessity to revise the paradigms that have been existed in sociology so far. Since the above-mentioned approaches are often used to address value-related issues, building a solid theoretical framework for these studies takes on considerable significance. Furthermore, the paradigm revision has been prompted by technological advances changing all areas of people’s lives, especially social interactions. The global human community, integral in nature, is being formed, and production of human values now matters more than production of things; hence the “expansion” of value-focused perspectives in contemporary sociology. The authors give special attention to collectivities which are higher-order units of the social system. These units are described as well-organised action systems where each individual performs his/her specific role. Just as the role of an individual is distinct from that of the collectivity (because the individual and the collectivity are different as units), so too a distinction is drawn between the value and the norm — because they represent different levels of social relationships. Values are the main connecting element between the society’s cultural system and the social sphere while norms, for the most part, belong to the social system. Values serve primarily to maintain the pattern according to which the society is functioning at a given time; norms are essential to social integration. Apart from being the means of regulating social processes and relationships, norms embody the “principles” that can be applied beyond a particular social system. The authors underline that it is important for Ukrainian sociology to keep abreast of the latest developments in the field of axiology and make good use of those ideas because this is a prerequisite for its successful integration into the global sociological community.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J Madison

More than 150 years into development of the doctrine of "fair use" in American copyright law, there is no end to legislative, judicial, and academic efforts to rationalize the doctrine. Its codification in the 1976 Copyright Act appears to have contributed to its fragmentation, rather than to its coherence. This Article suggests that fair use is neither badly conceived nor badly applied, but that it is too often badly understood. As did much of copyright law, fair use originated as a judicially-unacknowledged effort via the law to validate certain favored social practices and patterns. In the main, it has continued to be applied as such, though too often courts mask their implicit validation of these patterns in the now-conventional "case-by-case" application of the statutory fair use "factors" to the defendant's use of the copyrighted work in question. A more explicit acknowledgement of the role of these patterns in fair use analysis is consistent with fair use and copyright policy and tradition. Importantly, it helps to bridge the often-difficult conceptual gap between fair use claims asserted by individual defendants and the social implications of accepting or rejecting those claims. Finally, a pattern-oriented approach is normatively appropriate, when viewed in light of recent research by cognitive psychologists and other social scientists on patterns and creativity. In immediate terms, the approach should lead to a more consistent and predictable fair use jurisprudence. In the longer term, it should enhance the ability of copyright law to promote creative expression.


Thesis Eleven ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 072551362110643
Author(s):  
Christopher Houston

Pierre Bourdieu famously dismissed phenomenology as offering anything useful to a critical science of society – even as he drew heavily upon its themes in his own work. This paper makes a case for why Bourdieu’s judgement should not be the last word on phenomenology. To do so it first reanimates phenomenology’s evocative language and concepts to illustrate their continuing centrality to social scientists’ ambitions to apprehend human engagement with the world. Part II shows how two crucial insights of phenomenology, its discovery of both the natural attitude and of the phenomenological epoche, allow an account of perception properly responsive to its intertwined personal and collective aspects. Contra Bourdieu, the paper’s third section asserts that phenomenology’s substantive socio-cultural analysis simultaneously entails methodological consequences for the social scientist, reversing their suspension of disbelief vis-à-vis the life-worlds of interlocutors and inaugurating the suspension of belief vis-à-vis their own natural attitudes.


Author(s):  
Albert O. Hirschman

This chapter attempts to identify the tension between morality and the social sciences and recognize its inescapable centrality—and in that way have social scientists think more openly about their commitments. It turns to questions on the role of moral considerations and concerns in economics, and, more generally, to what can be said about the “problem of morality in the social sciences.” This chapter suggests some ways of reconciling the traditional posture of the economist as a “detached scientist” with their role as a morally concerned person, and shows why there is a contemporary increase of concern with moral values, even within the field of economics.


2013 ◽  
Vol 01 (01) ◽  
pp. 032-036
Author(s):  
Raman Shetty ◽  
Biranchi Jena ◽  
Adibabu Kadithi

Abstract Introduction:Diabetes is an emergency in slow motion in India. There is an urgent need of improving awareness and education on diabetes in the community and the social scientist working in the community health are the important group to make this happen. Objectives:To assess the prevalence of diabetes among the social scientists and measure their knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) on diabetes. Materials and Methods:A delegate of social scientists attending a national conference on social science and health were screened for random blood sugar and a survey was conducted through a structured self-answered questionnaire on KAP in diabetes. Excel Microsoft Office 2010 package was used for descriptive analysis. Results:A total of 245 social scientists attended the conference; of them, 211 (86%) social scientists voluntarily participated in diabetes screening, and among them, 99 (47%) voluntarily responded on KAP questionnaire. Prevalence rate of diabetes among social scientists was found to be 9.5% and the study revealed that the knowledge was fair, attitude was positive, and practice was good among the social scientists working in the field of social health. Conclusion:The social scientists could be the Change Agents for the changing diabetes in the community through appropriate strategies involving them.


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