scholarly journals Sociologiens janushoved(er)

2007 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 7-17
Author(s):  
Erik Allardt
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Social Facts ◽  
Cultural Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
Open Nature ◽  
The Welfare State

The Janus Face(s) of Sociology There exists in sociology a continuous tension between a positivitic and herme¬neutic approach. Sociologists perform many activities in a similar manner as natural scientists do. They try to gather data about observable events in a syste¬matic and painstaking manner, and they try to discover regularities and invariant forms in social action and society. On the other hand sociologists are future¬-oriented and many of their theories and concepts are built on images of a world, that has never yet existed. Concepts such as democracy, the welfare state and eco¬nomic equilibrium are ideal images, ne¬ver fully attained. It is important in socio¬logy to work and generalise on observa¬ble data, but it is also important to reali¬se that there are no simple social facts. In societies and social life unpredictable events and situations will always occur. People have begun to see the world and also act in an entirely new way. This due to the open nature of social reality. It does not make social sciences obsolete, but it contains a warning against confident predictions of social tendencies. The polarity and tension between an atomistic, individualist pole and a com¬munitarian, cultural pole is one of the deepest and most pervasive themes in modern thought. In the social sciences this polarity is represented in a dividing line between a structural and a cultural approach. There are good grounds for maintaining that most social phenome¬na can not be explained and understood properly unless both these two approa¬ches are used. The dichotomy between a structural and a cultural approach or a distinction between Gesellschaft and Ge¬meinschaft has been part of sociology for most of its life as a scientific discipline. The present global and social develop¬ments - globalization - have intensified this conflict between instrumental ra¬tionality and the need for communal and cultural identity. Consequently, it has al¬so led to growing efforts in combining the two approaches mentioned above either within sociology in the attempts of combining positivistic and hermeneu¬tic research traditions in addressing the social problems or in the efforts of socio¬logists forming creative and efficient net¬works between sociology and scholars from other disciplines. Both efforts are presently the fertile path in the social sciences but it makes it necessary to be very open to what is happening within other social and human sciences.

scholarly journals PLACING ACCOUNTING AMONG SCIENCES

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mihai Deju ◽  
Petrică Stoica
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Scientific Field ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Social Facts ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Times

Framing accounting as a science has been carried out in close connection with the development of knowledge in this field and with the meaning given to this concept of “science”. Recognizing accounting as scientific field by specialists is due to the fact that it features a combination of accounting theory and methods for the development and application of these theories. Accounting is a scientific discipline in the social sciences because: it is a creation of the human being in response to practical needs; it reflects phenomena, activities and social facts; it addresses various groups of users (managers, bankers, shareholders, employees, tax bodies, etc.) which are an integral part of society; it offers information necessary to decision-making, most of the times with impact on the behaviour of individuals; it is influenced by the economic, social, legal and political environment, that is by social phenomena.

scholarly journals WHAT SOCIAL SCIENCE MUST LEARN FROM THE HUMANITIES

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey C. Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Social Facts ◽  
Social Actions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Humanistic Approach ◽  
Strong Program

Abstract Identifying a shift away from a more humanistic approach in the sociology and political science practiced in the United States since the 1950s, Jeffrey Alexander seeks to recuperate an intellectual tradition of the social sciences that places the cultural meanings and subjective dimensions of social actions at the very centre of analysis, while simultaneously considering the structure nature of social life. Opposing the ‘great divide’ between social sciences and humanities, therefore, Alexander proposes, via his strong program of cultural sociology, a conception of sociology that considers social facts not as ‘things’ but as ‘texts,’ analysing how cultural meanings are socially rooted and structure social life.

scholarly journals REFLEKSI PARADIGMA ILMU-ILMU SOSIAL

HUMANIKA ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
Sindung Tjahyadi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Objective Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pluralistic Approach ◽  
Main Thing ◽  
Theoretical Paradigms ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
Theory Of Social Action

This article discusses about a paradigm shift in the social sciences based on "the history of science" perspective. The key question is how the recent development of the discourse about the paradigms of the social sciences. The paradigmatic and methodological development forward directed through a post-empirical approach to the exclusion of desire unification cause or structure as the objective theory of social action, and develop a multi-theoretical paradigms on the basis of variations in the structure that can be applied to the various regions and types of action. Furthermore, elaborated further needed is to develop methodological pluralism and theoretical unification in the social sciences are expected to confirm the two sides of the comprehensive-pluralistic approach in the philosophy of social sciences. The main thing about the legitimacy of the methodology underlying the study is to examine the criteria on what should have knowledge of it. Finally, that the dimensions of "ontological" social science should be "liberated" from the illusion of objectivism

scholarly journals The Social Life of the “Forever Chemical”

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-163
Author(s):  
Daniel Renfrew ◽  
Thomas W. Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
Toxic Event ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Polyfluoroalkyl Substances

This article examines the social life of PFAS contamination (a class of several thousand synthetic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) and maps the growing research in the social sciences on the unique conundrums and complex travels of the “forever chemical.” We explore social, political, and cultural dimensions of PFAS toxicity, especially how PFAS move from unseen sites into individual bodies and into the public eye in late industrial contexts; how toxicity is comprehended, experienced, and imagined; the factors shaping regulatory action and ignorance; and how PFAS have been the subject of competing forms of knowledge production. Lastly, we highlight how people mobilize collectively, or become demobilized, in response to PFAS pollution/ toxicity. We argue that PFAS exposure experiences, perceptions, and responses move dynamically through a “toxicity continuum” spanning invisibility, suffering, resignation, and refusal. We off er the concept of the “toxic event” as a way to make sense of the contexts and conditions by which otherwise invisible pollution/toxicity turns into public, mass-mediated, and political episodes. We ground our review in our ongoing multisited ethnographic research on the PFAS exposure experience.

scholarly journals A place for intelligence studies as a scientific discipline

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Solberg Søilen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Empirical Investigation ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Scientific Field ◽  
Competitive Intelligence ◽  
Scientific Journals ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Area Of Interest ◽  
The Social ◽  
Intelligence Studies

Is the field of Competitive Intelligence (CI) or Intelligence Studies (IS) a proper scientific field of study? The empirical investigation found that academic and professional within CI and IS could not agree upon what dimensions, topics or content are handled by their own area of interest that is not covered by other areas of study. In fact, most topics listed as special for CI and IS are covered by other established scientific journals. Most topics are covered by other disciplines. The data also showed that the same group could not list any analysis that is not used by other areas of study. It shows that a majority of the analyses the respondents think are unique to their study come from the area of strategy and military intelligence. However, this does not mean that CI and IS does not have its own place or niche as a study and discipline. It is suggested here, but further investigation is encouraged, that CI and IS brings a number of unique dimension to the social sciences.

Maximizing, Moralizing, and Dramatizing

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Economic Theory ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Karl Popper ◽  
Crucial Element ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theory Of Democracy

This chapter describes a “dramatistic,” “dramatic,” or “dramaturgical” approach to the study of social interaction. It asks whether the dramaturgical model insists on the theatricality of social life merely in the sense of insisting that people fill roles just as persons act parts in a play. This is the question of whether the crucial element in the dramaturgical picture is that cluster of insights that goes under the general heading of “role distance.” The chapter considers the peculiarities of rational explanation and about the role of reconstructions of “the thing to do” other than the role of explaining an action or series of actions by focusing on voting behavior in the terms proposed by Anthony Downs's An Economic Theory of Democracy. It also examines some recent accounts of the phenomenon of suicide, along with the rationality principle, which Karl Popper calls “false but indispensable” to the social sciences.

The Invention of the Theory

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence A. Scaff
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Talcott Parsons ◽  
Substantial Body ◽  
Political Tradition ◽  
Action Awareness ◽  
Deep Appreciation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Spirit Of Capitalism

This chapter examines how Max Weber's work has been recast as canonical for the social sciences and central to its current agendas. It first considers the substantial body of translations that became the basis for the postwar permeation of Weber's work into the social sciences, and especially into the subfield specializations of sociology, including Talcott Parsons' The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism, before discussing the role played by the interwar émigrés in the struggle over the mastery of Weber. It then explains how Weber achieved an intellectual synthesis through a combination of structural and institutional analysis, notions of rationality, propositions about social action, awareness of cultural particularities, and a deep appreciation for historical inquiry and evidence. It also analyzes the expansion of the horizon for Weber's ideas beyond the boundaries of sociology to the Western philosophical and political tradition.

Durkheim, Émile (1858–1917)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Orru
Keyword(s):  
Human Action ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Social Solidarity ◽  
Emile Durkheim ◽  
Empirical Observation ◽  
Social Facts ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One

Émile Durkheim is generally recognized to be one of the founders of sociology as a distinct scientific discipline. Trained as a philosopher, Durkheim identified the central theme of sociology as the emergence and persistence of morality and social solidarity (along with their pathologies) in modern and traditional human societies. His distinctive approach to sociology was to adopt the positivistic method in identifying and explaining social facts – the facts of the moral life. Sociology was to be, in Durkheim’s own words, a science of ethics. Durkheim’s sociology combined a positivistic methodology of research with an idealistic theory of social solidarity. On the one hand, Durkheim forcefully claimed that the empirical observation and analysis of regularities in the social world must be the starting point of the sociological enterprise; on the other hand, he was equally emphatic in claiming that sociological investigation must deal with the ultimate ends of human action – the moral values and goals that guide human conduct and create the essential conditions for social solidarity. Accordingly, in his scholarly writings on the division of labour, on suicide, on education, and on religion, Durkheim sought to identify through empirical evidence the major sources of social solidarity and of the social pathologies that undermine it.

Why Thomas Reid Matters to the Epistemology of the Social Sciences

2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (279) ◽  
pp. 282-301
Author(s):  
Laurent Jaffro ◽  
Vinícius França Freitas
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Action ◽  
First Principles ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Reasoning ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Mind

Abstract Little attention has been paid to the fact that Thomas Reid's epistemology applies to ‘political reasoning’ as well as to various operations of the mind. Reid was interested in identifying the ‘first principles’ of political science as he did with other domains of human knowledge. This raises the question of the extent to which the study of human action falls within the competence of ‘common sense’. Our aim is to reconstruct and assess Reid's epistemology of the sciences of social action and to determine how it connects with the fundamental tenets of his general epistemology. In the first part, we portray Reid as a methodological individualist and focus on the status of the first principles of political reasoning. The second part examines Reid's views on the explanatory power of the principles of human action. Finally, we draw a parallel between Reid's epistemology and the methodology of Weberian sociology.

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