scholarly journals Narrating the Digital Turn: data deluge, technomethodology, and other likely tales

2022 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-65
Author(s):  
John Given

In this paper it is argued that digital technologies will have a transformative effect in the social sciences in general and in the fast developing field of narrative studies in particular. It is argued that the integrative and interdisciplinary nature of narrative approaches are further enhanced by the development of digital technologies and that the collection of digital data will also drive theoretical and methodological developments in narrative studies. Biographical Sociology will also need to take account of lives lived in, and transformed by, the digital domain. How these technologies may influence data collection methods, how they might influence thinking about what constitutes data, and what effects this might have on the remodeling of theoretical approaches are all pressing questions for the development of a Twenty First Century narratology. As Marshall McLuhan once put it “First we shape our tools and then our tools shape us”.

2018 ◽  
Vol 108 ◽  
pp. 228-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland G. Fryer

Police use of force, particularly lethal force, is one of the most divisive issues of the twenty-first century. To understand the nexus of race, criminal justice, and police brutality, academics and journalists have begun to amass impressive datasets on officer-involved-shootings (OIS). I compare the data and methods of three investigative journalism articles and two publications in the social sciences on a set of five rubrics and conclude that the stark differences between their findings are due to differences in what qualifies for a valid research design and not underlying differences in the datasets.


Author(s):  
Kylie Sago

Revisioning French Culture brings together a striking group of leading intellectuals and scholars to explore new avenues of research in French and Francophone Studies. Covering the medieval period through the twenty-first century, this volume presents investigations into a vast array of subjects. Revisioning French Culture grapples with topics vital to the contemporary cultural landscape, including universalism, globalization, the idea of Francophonie, and religious and secular identity. This essay collection furthermore transcends and illuminates the contemporary by exploring matters that have long resonated in the humanities and letters, such as death, war, trauma, power and politics, notions of the truth, conceptions of the self, and modes of reading and writing. With contributions by a number of figures known across the humanities and the social sciences, Revisioning French Culture explores the foundations of the French and Francophone world, providing cultural, political, and historical context for the crisis facing democracy and liberalism around the world today.


2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-441
Author(s):  
Herbert S. Klein

Economic inequality has become one of the most important themes in the social sciences. The debate has revolved around two basic models. Was Kuznets correct in his prediction that inequality declines with economic growth, or was Piketty, along with others in the Berkeley/Paris/Oxford group, correct to counter that capitalism without severe constraints inevitably leads to increasing inequality? The resolution will depend on long-term historical analysis. In Global Inequality, Milanovic proposed new models to analyze the social, economic, political, and historical factors that influence changes in inequality over time and space. In Capitalism, Alone, he changes direction to examine what patterns of capitalism and inequality will look like in the twenty-first century and beyond, as well as how inequality might be reduced without violence.


Author(s):  
Wolfgang Merkel ◽  
Hans-Jürgen Wagener

Methodological individualism is widely accepted in the social sciences as a fundamental theoretical paradigm. In this context, it means attributing collective decisions or societal acceptance to individual behaviour. From the perspective of action theory, the outcome of transformation processes therefore depends less on objective circumstances (structures) or power configurations than on the subjective assessments, strategies, and actions of the relevant actors. As a rule, elites are the predominant actors in political and in economic system change. Since in the transformation process the basic institutions of society are generally reformulated at the negotiating table, much of the attention is centred on negotiation theories that use game-theoretical tools. By contrast to modernization, culturalist, and structuralist theories, actor theories set out from the micro and meso levels of the actors. Different approaches can be discerned. Historical-empirical approaches do not go beyond the description of transformation processes. Economic public choice approaches assume rather simplistic motivational structures of actors. In actor-centred institutionalism, the social sciences find a typical fusion of paradigms: action- and structure-theoretical approaches are combined.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-114
Author(s):  
Maren Freudenberg ◽  
Tim Weitzel

The introduction to the special issue on ‘charisma’ offers a very brief overview of the development of the concept in the social sciences and various critiques and intersecting debates. It casts a close look at Max Weber’s sometimes contradictory use of the concept and the different ways he conceptualized it in his sociology of religion and his sociology of domination. It then examines alternative theoretical approaches to ‘charisma’ that emerge in the course of the twentieth century before outlining this special issue’s contribution to the conceptual debate and the individual articles’ operationalization of the term by viewing charisma as relational, communicative, procedural, as well as related to ideas, practices, and objects.


Author(s):  
Martha E. Gimenez

This entry will look at Marx’s theoretical contributions to social reproduction in relationship to critical assessments of his alleged “neglect” of reproduction and to the development of the social sciences, particularly the “radical” social sciences that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and continued to develop ever since. Marx, as well as Engels, offered important insights for understanding social reproduction as an abstract feature of human societies that, however, can only be fully understood in its historically specific context (i.e., in the context of the interface between modes of production and social formations). Social reproduction in the twenty-first century is capitalist social reproduction, inherently contradictory, as successful struggles for the reproduction of the working classes, for example, do not necessarily challenge capitalism. Finally, this article argues that radical social scientists, because they identify the capitalist foundations of the social phenomena they study, have made important contributions to the study of capitalist reproduction.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (20) ◽  
pp. 7-25
Author(s):  
José Eduardo Leon Szwako ◽  
Monika Dowbor ◽  
Matheus Mazzilli Pereira

O adensamento da produção acadêmica sobre movimentos sociais na última década no Brasil, quer nas Ciências Sociais ou ao redor delas, se expressa hoje na consolidação de redes de pesquisa e espaços de debate acadêmico em fóruns como, por exemplo, as últimas edições do Congresso Brasileiro de Sociologia e os encontros anuais da Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Sociais (Anpocs). Junto a tais redes e fóruns, é possível destacar como evidência robusta desse mesmo processo o volume crescente de dossiês temáticos, bem como de artigos publicados em diálogo constante e crítico com abordagens teóricas e autores internacionais. O dossiê ora apresentado se insere nesse ritmo de adensamento, explorando, nesta apresentação e nos artigos a seguir, debates sobre fenômenos e abordagens que, há algum tempo, têm recebido crescente atenção de pesquisas de movimentos sociais, expandindo as fronteiras analítico-conceituais desse campo de estudos e, assim, desafiando-o. AbstractThe intensification in academic production on social movements in the last decade in Brazil, whether within or around the Social Sciences, is expressed today in the consolidation of research networks and spaces for academic debate in forums such as, for example, the latest editions of the Brazilian Congress of Sociology and the annual meetings of the National Association of Graduate Studies in Social Sciences (Anpocs). Along with such networks and forums, it is possible to highlight as robust evidence of this same process the growing volume of thematic dossiers, as well as articles published in constant and critical dialogue with theoretical approaches and international authors. The dossier presented here falls within this pace of intensification, exploring, in this presentation and in the following articles, debates on phenomena and approaches that, for some time, have received increasing attention from research on social movements, expanding the analytical-conceptual frontiers of this field of studies and, thus, challenging it.


2020 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 4-7
Author(s):  
Editorial Board ◽  
Andressa Liegi Vieira Costa ◽  
Max Steuer

This Editorial Note contains a summary of the IAPSS Politikon webinar on 'Research and Education in Times of Pandemic' that focused on elucidation of online qualitative data collection methods and online education via using Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). It also announces the acceptance of the journal to ERIH PLUS database for the social sciences and humanities. 


Transfers ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Georgine Clarsen ◽  
Gijs Mom

This is the twelfth issue of Transfers, and perhaps it is time to stop calling it a “new” journal! Our “baby” is growing up, thriving in an expanding landscape of interdisciplinary mobilities research. Transfers is maturing into a robust vehicle for global conversations.Our rather ambitious mission has been both conceptual and empirical: to “rethink mobilities” and provide publishing opportunities for innovative research. For us, that has been exemplified in our commitment in several areas. Most importantly, we fly the flag for the new theoretical approaches that continue to move the field beyond the social sciences, where the “new mobilities paradigm” was first articulated. We position ourselves as part of a vibrant intellectual project that bridges theoretical developments and research agendas in the humanities and the social sciences.


1994 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
P. F. Craffert

Redefining Paul’s conflict in Galatia: The letter to the Galatians through the lense of the social sciences Traditional attempts at identifying Paul’s oppponents in the letter to the Galatians are methodologically stamped by a history-of-ideas approach; this is accompanied by at least two interpretive traditions (one focusing on the Reformation question of righteousness by works or by faith, and the second by the inclusion of Gentiles in the people of God). After a social- scientific methodology is introduced, three facets of Paul’s social realities are discussed: communication in a predominantly oral culture, Judaism as a first-century religious phenomenon, and the household institution. It is suggested that these provide us with an opportunity for redefining the conflict as a conflict on Paul’s honour and authority.


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