scholarly journals Computer-aided text analysis: an open-aired laboratory for social sciences

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (02) ◽  
pp. C04 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuri Castelfranchi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Computational Tools ◽  
Statistical Correlations ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
The Universe

Thanks, on the one hand, to the extraordinary availability of colossal textual archives and, on the other hand, to advances in computational possibilities, today the social scientist has at their disposal an extraordinary laboratory, made of millions of interacting subjects and billions of texts. An unprecedented, yet challenging, opportunity for science. How to test, corroborate models? How to control, interpret and validate Big Data? What is the role of theory in the universe of patterns and statistical correlations? In this article, we will show some general characteristics of the use of computational tools for the analysis of texts, and some applications in the areas of public communication of S&T and Science and Technology Studies (STS), also showing some of their limitations and pitfalls.

scholarly journals Pragmatisme og "practice turn"

2018 ◽  
pp. 43-61
Author(s):  
Antje Gimmler
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
John Dewey ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
The Other ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
Practice Turn ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
The One ◽  
Philosophical Pragmatism

Practices are of central relevance both to philosophical pragmatism and to the recent ‘Practice Turn’ in social sciences and philosophy. However, what counts as practices and how practices and knowledge are combined or intertwine varies in the different approaches of pragmatism and those theories that are covered by the umbrella term ‘Practice Turn’. The paper tries to show that the pragmatism of John Dewey is able to offer both a more precise and a more radical understanding of practices than the recent ‘Practice Turn’ allows for. The paper on the one hand highlights what pragmatism has to offer to the practice turn in order to clarify the notion of practice. On the other hand the paper claims that a pragmatism inspired by Dewey actually interprets ‘practices’ more radically than most of the other approaches and furthermore promotes an understanding of science that combines nonrepresentationalism and anti-foundationalism with an involvement of the philosopher or the social scientist in the production of knowledge, things and technologies.

scholarly journals Doing things with description: practices, politics, and the art of attentiveness

2020 ◽  
pp. 146879412097597
Author(s):  
Nicole Vitellone ◽  
Michael Mair ◽  
Ciara Kierans
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Research Practices ◽  
The Social

In a number of linked articles and monographs over the last decade (e.g. Love, 2010, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017), literary scholar and critic Heather Love has called for a descriptive (re)turn in the humanities, repeatedly taking up examples of descriptive methods in the social sciences as exemplifying what that (re)turn might look like and achieve. Those of us working as sociologists, anthropologists, science and technology studies scholars and researchers in allied social science fields thus find ourselves reflected back in Love’s work, encountering our own research practices in an unfamiliar light through it. In a period where our established methods and analytical priorities are subject to challenges on many fronts from within our own disciplines, it is hard not be struck by Love’s provocative invocation of the social sciences as interlocutors and see in it an invitation to contribute to the debate she has sought to initiate by revisiting our own approaches to the problem of description. Inspired by Love’s intervention, the eight papers that form this Special Issue demonstrate that by re-engaging with description we stand to learn a great deal. While the articles themselves are topically distinct and geographically varied, they are all based on empirical research and written to facilitate a reorientation to the role of description in our research practices. What exactly is going on when we describe an ancient papyrus as present or missing, a machine as intelligent, noise as music, a disease as undiagnosable, a death as good or bad, deserved or undeserved, care as appropriate or inappropriate, policies as failing or effective? As the papers show, these are important questions to ask. By asking them, we find ourselves in positions to better understand what goes into ‘indexing and making visible forms of material and social reality’ (Love, 2013: 412) as well as what is involved, more troublingly, in erasing, making invisible and dematerialising those realities or even, indeed, in uncovering those erasures and the means by which they were effected. As this special issue underlines, thinking with Love by thinking with descriptions is a rewarding exercise precisely because it opens these matters up to view. We hope others take up Love’s invitation to re-engage with description for that very reason.

Waiting

2021 ◽  
pp. 342-368
Author(s):  
Anne Storch
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Spirit Possession ◽  
The Other ◽  
Special Interests ◽  
The Social ◽  
Getting Lost ◽  
Epistemic Approach ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The One

This chapter explores the dialectics of walking and resting, and of mobility and waiting, with regards to creativity in language. It thereby focuses on the interruption and unintended break as an opportunity for interactions and encounters across linguistic epistemes, boundaries and norms. Walking as a methodology and epistemic approach has been discussed in anthropology, the social sciences and literary critique, but met very little interest in linguistics. This chapter on the one hand consequently attempts to address walking as a substantial approach to the study of multilingualism and improvisation, but on the other aims at highlighting disruption and stillness as creating the very liminal space and practice through which language creativity can emerge and be realized. It touches upon various practices that are crucial: being stuck, passing time, getting lost. Points of special interests interest include the role of language in the love songs and other genres, especially in the context of the Mediterranean, disruptions associated with migrations and peoples’ movements, the context of tourism, and the linguistic effects of spirit possession.

scholarly journals Bourdieu: El impacto de una palabra en la investigación de las juventudes / Bourdieu: The impact of a word on youth research

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (25) ◽  
pp. 170-178
Author(s):  
Ernesto Israel Santillán-Anguiano ◽  
Emilia Cristina González-Machado
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
The Social ◽  
Youth Research ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
School Space

Este trabajo ofrece una serie de reflexiones sobre el texto La juventud no es más que una palabra presentada por Pierre Bourdieu en 1978. El principal objetivo de este documento es hacer evidente la vigencia de las ideas del sociólogo francés respecto a la construcción del concepto de juventud como categoría en las ciencias sociales. Para ello, se realizó un análisis de textos para profundizar las ideas asociadas a las desigualdades, el capital cultural, el habitus y el papel del espacio escolar. Como resultados más relevantes se pueden mencionar que: 1) La definición de la juventud es producto de la lucha intergeneracional y por lo tanto arbitraria; 2) el habitus juvenil garantiza la permanencia de la estructura social; 3) el capital cultural incorporado de los jóvenes se encuentra garantizado por el tiempo liberado; 4) el espacio escolar es un campo de privilegios que naturaliza las condiciones de ser joven. This work offers some reflections on the text Youth’ is Just a Word presented by Pierre Bourdieu in 1978. The objective of this document is to make evident the validity of the ideas of the French sociologist regarding the construction of the concept of youth as a category in the social sciences. For this, a text analysis was carried out to deepen the ideas associated with inequalities, cultural capital, habitus and the role of school space. As the most relevant results, it can be mentioned that: 1) The definition of youth is the product of intergenerational struggle and therefore arbitrary; 2) juvenile habitus guarantees the permanence of the social structure; 3) the incorporated cultural capital of young people is guaranteed by time released; 4) the school space is a field of privileges that naturalizes the conditions of being young.

scholarly journals Family, Boundaries and Transformation. The International Mobility of Professionals and Their Families

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Flavia Cangia' ◽  
Déborah Levitan ◽  
Tania Zittoun
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sociological Perspective ◽  
International Mobility ◽  
The Social ◽  
Family Boundaries ◽  
The One

Two dominant images of migrant professionals, also known as “expats”, have long been common, in the social sciences: on the one hand, they were described as super-mobile individuals, who easily move between places with no time frame in mind, with the openness to engage with diversity; on the other hand, more recent studies challenged the idea of “expat” cosmopolitanism, and investigated the boundaries constituted by these people in the course of their everyday life. The present paper brings to the fore the complexity of these individuals’ and their families’ experiences of international mobility from a combined socio-cultural psychological and sociological perspective. We draw on qualitative research conducted in Switzerland in order to reflect on the role of family in the way these people make sense of diversity across time and space, make and un-make symbolic boundaries between themselves and others, and understand their own and their familiars' transformation. 

scholarly journals Social description or social-scientific interpretation? A survey of modern scholarship

1991 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Van Staden ◽  
A. G. Van Aarde
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
First Century ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Recent Interest ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The One

Recent interest in the social aspects of the first-century Mediterranean world reflected in the texts of the New Testament has taken primarily two directions. The one approach concentrates on social description, and the oth er on social-scientific interp re tatio n . This article surveys the major works of several of the leading exponents of this type of study in terms of the extent to which they make use of the social sciences. It differs from existing surveys by having an in-depth look at the elements of social-scientific theory and method actually employed, and by making a comparative assessment of the importance allocated by different authors to the role of the text as a deliberate construction.

scholarly journals ISLAM MITOS INDONESIA (KAJIAN ANTROPOLOGI-SOSIOLOGI)

Kodifikasia ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Sardjuningsih Sardjuningsih
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Traditional Religion ◽  
Community Group ◽  
The Social ◽  
Islamic Religion ◽  
The One ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Holy Book ◽  
The Invisible

The Muslims in Indonesia, appreciated the tradition’s value so much, remarkably, the one which becomes the part of the religiousity practices and becomes one with it. Therefore, the Islamic religion manifestation in every community group is different, because of the tradition’s differences cover it; the position of tradition and the ancestors precepts which are placed equally with religion, it is toward the invisible matter or supernatural. Their exiatences are worshipped, honored, respected and even considdered cult, treated as the God in religion. Supernatural is often anthropomorphic, it means that the supernatural is often treated as the other creatures which have the ability and characters like human, animals, or plants. The community divinity concept and perception is not purely monotheism, but it is monopluralistic. Tradition which is accomodated in their religious practices is often connected to the myth existence. The myth truth is the community faith matter, emotion and mental. All of the religion processes related to doctrine, history and its development can not be separated from the existence of the myth, included religion which is claimed as the revelation religion. The myth element becomes very important in this contextual Islam, because the myth knowledge is considered as the holy story, the primordialic event about the universe genesis, the past time, and the other life. Frazer described that the myth position in the community religion is like the holy book in the modern religion. In every tribe and group who claim as Muslim, they have the myth practices which become the base in arrenging local Islamic practices. In the study of anthropology and sociology, the function and the role of myth, religion, and tradition can not be substancially distinguished, since every one contains the invisible element. The myth as a story which is considered sacred as like the holy book which is able to describe the transendental primordial event. Myth is related to the traditional religion and the holy book is related to modern religion. The Sociology defines that myth is as the social stucture in creating the community condition. As a belief which is able to strengthen the community mystical side in order to be able to conserve the adhesive social values in the community.

scholarly journals Histories and Historians in Israel & Palestine

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilan Pappe
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Media Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Challenging Tasks ◽  
History Of ◽  
Epistemological Understanding ◽  
The One

One of the most obvious reasons why historians — both professional and academic — find it difficult to challenge hegemonic narratives is psychological. No one wants to be a pariah in their own society by running against the mainstream and finding themselves in an isolated position. But I think there’s a deeper level to why historians have found it so difficult (maybe unlike some of their colleagues in the social sciences) to provide narratives which challenge the one which dominates their society’s media, culture and academia. And that reason, I think, is that challenging historiographical mythology is not just about facts, it’s also about rethinking the role of the historian. It is about being able to update oneself on developments in historiography and even (which is perhaps more difficult I think for historians) in philosophy. This focuses the question on what is reality, what is fiction, what is myth, and what is a fact. I found that one of the most challenging tasks in dealing with the history of my own country, both for Jewish and Palestinian historians, was not just to provide a different narrative to the one that prevails, but also to be able to tie in the concrete discussion with a more epistemological understanding of what history is and how history is received by the public at large.

scholarly journals El habitus que conformó a Bourdieu: entre capitales y campos de poder / The habitus that formed Bourdieu: between capitals and fields of power

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (25) ◽  
pp. 146-155
Author(s):  
Brenda Vivian Rico Rios
Keyword(s):  
Social Scientist ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Social World ◽  
Economic Capital ◽  
The North ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Fields ◽  
Common Problems ◽  
The One

Pierre Bourdieu constantemente señaló que el mundo social es historia acumulada. Por tanto, a partir de esa historia encarnada los agentes se posicionan dentro de un mundo social establecido previamente a su propia existencia. El presente artículo pretende poner en marcha las ideas de Bourdieu a partir de un socio análisis en los puntos nodales de su vida, aquellos que definieron su pensamiento y su mirada al mundo: por un lado las coyunturas políticas y sociales de su contexto social, el Mayo Francés y la Independencia de Argelia; por otro lado, su vida personal, siendo oriundo de una ciudad al norte de Francia, se confrontó a distintos campos sociales al estudiar el liceo en Paris, motivo que lo hace reflexionar sobre el papel de los capitales económicos y culturales dentro de campos sociales. La epistemología de su pensamiento sirve de referencia para la comprensión de los conceptos centrales que formula: el habitus, los campos y los capitales. Para el científico social, el socioanálisis como método, puede servir para transformar problemas de la propia existencia en problemas científicos, generando de esta manera una propia sociología. Pierre Bourdieu constantly pointed out that the social world is accumulated history. Therefore, from that accumulated history we position ourselves within a social world established prior to our own existence. This article aims to launch Bourdieu’s ideas from a socio-analysis at the nodal points of his life, those that defined his thinking and his outlook on the world: on the one hand, the political and social conjunctures of his social context, the May 68 and the Independence of Algeria; On the other hand, his personal life, being a native of a city in the north of France, he confronted different fieldworks when he studied at the Lyceum in Paris, which makes him reflect on the role of economic capital and cultural capital within social fields. The epistemology of his critical thinking serves as a reference for understanding his central concepts: habitus, fields and capitals. For the social scientist, socio-analysis can be used to transform common problems into scientific problems, thus generating an own sociology.

Defending the Difference

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Natural Entities ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Methodological Difference ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One

Dreyfus argues that there is a basic methodological difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences, a difference that derives from the different goals and practices of each. He goes on to argue that being a realist about natural entities is compatible with pluralism or, as he calls it, “plural realism.” If intelligibility is always grounded in our practices, Dreyfus points out, then there is no point of view from which one can ask about or provide an answer to the one true nature of ultimate reality. But that is consistent with believing that the natural sciences can still reveal the way the world is independent of our theories and practices.

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