Counting Confucians through Social Scientific Research

Author(s):  
Anna Sun

This chapter discusses the long-standing problem of identifying Confucians in China (and East Asia in general) through social science research methods—a problem deeply rooted in the nineteenth-century conceptualization of Confucianism and the overall classification of Chinese religions. It investigates different types of empirical data—national censuses and surveys—from Mainland China, as well as from Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, in order to answer two questions. First is about whether “Confucianism” is a category in religious classifications in these East Asian countries and regions; the second asks about how many people are counted as “Confucians” in China.

Author(s):  
Mark Bevir ◽  
Jason Blakely

Readers are introduced to the major philosophical paradigms shaping social science research today, including hermeneutics and naturalism. The pervasive influence of naturalism on social scientific research is explained and the interpretive alternative is sketched. As part of this, readers are offered an account of the philosophical origins of today’s social science disciplines with a special focus on the case of political science. At the beginning of the twentieth century a modern, ahistorical, and formal paradigm for the study of politics was formed as scholars increasingly rejected the developmental historical narratives and Hegelianism of the nineteenth century. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of the argument of the book.


2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 349-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Rausch

This review essay speaks to the crisis of Area Studies, offering a view from the field in the form of a review of Tsugaru Gaku (Tsugaru Studies) as a specific Area Studies research case. After presenting an overview of the work of social science researchers working in Japan, both foreign and Japanese, the essay turns to major questions articulated in the literature of Area Studies regarding the purpose, character and future of Area Studies. By reviewing the multi-dimensional and combinative implications in the process and dissemination of his own social science research work together with consideration of the work of Japanese social scientists conducting research in rural Japan and publishing in Japanese, the author positions such ‘domestic,’ place-based sociological and anthropological research as a vital contribution to the future of Area Studies. Capitalizing on social scientific research that can contribute to Area Studies research requires a view of the ‘plasticity of research.’ Further, recognition of the ‘hybridity of the Area Studies researcher,’ both as the trained Area Studies specialist as well as a ‘domestic social science researcher’ capable of theory, methodology and analysis, as well as dissemination of Area Studies research originating in a specific place and in a specific language, is vital to the future of Area Studies research.


2012 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amos Yong

This article uses the recent work of sociologist Margaret M. Poloma to argue that developments in the sociology of Pentecostalism have the potential to revitalize a classical Pentecostal movement that can be otherwise understood as languishing. In particular, the social scientific study of benevolent service in various segments of the Pentecostal movement provides the springboard for the argument. After locating the interdisciplinary work of Poloma and her colleagues on godly love within the broader context of social science research in the last half century, this paper will explore its implications for the future and renewal of especially the classical Pentecostal movement, for Pentecostal theology and self-understanding, and for scholarship on Pentecostalism.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 473-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Murakawa

Racial innocence is the practice of securing blamelessness for the death-dealing realities of racial capitalism. This article reviews the legal, social scientific, and reformist mechanisms that maintain the racial innocence of one particular site: the US carceral state. With its routine dehumanization, violence, and stunning levels of racial disparity, the carceral state should be a hard test case for the willful unknowing of obvious devastation. Nonetheless, the law presumes “no racism,” condones racial profiling, and interprets racial disparity in policing and imprisonment as evidence of true racial difference in criminality, not discrimination. Prominent social science research too often mimics these practices, producing research that aids in the collective erasure of racism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-145
Author(s):  
Jack Martin

This paper offers a defense of Robin Barrow’s main arguments in Giving Teaching Back to Teachers, including additional material concerning the inability of the aggregate data and statistical methods employed in research in education (and research on teaching) to speak to individual teachers and students or to particular classrooms. This defense and extension of Barrow’s position is applied in a critique ofa proposal made by Lorraine Foreman-Peck in her 2004 debate with Barrow, entitled What Use is Educational Research?, published in 2005 by the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain. A central confusion that attends and limits much empirical research in education and social science concerns conflation of two different senses of the concept general, as “common to all” or “on average.” The havoc this confusion plays ought not be ignored or minimized by educational researchers and their advocates who tend to exaggerate the empirical regularity in social scientific data and therefore the generalizability of social science research in education and elsewhere.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 381-396 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa L. Miller

This article reviews classic and contemporary case study research in law and social science. Taking as its starting point that legal scholars engaged in case studies generally have a set of questions distinct from those using other research approaches, the essay offers a detailed discussion of three primary contributions of case studies in legal scholarship: theory building, concept formation, and processes/mechanisms. The essay describes the role of case studies in social scientific work and their express value to legal scholars, and offers specific descriptions from classic and contemporary works.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Lin Zhang ◽  
Yuanyuan Shang ◽  
Ying Huang ◽  
Gunnar Sivertsen

The past 40 years have witnessed profound changes in the international competitiveness of Mainland China’s scientific research. Based on publication data from Chinese researchers in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) from the Web of Science (WoS), this study aims to provide a bird’s-eye view of how social science research in Mainland China has internationalized over the past four decades. The findings show that the number of social science articles published by Chinese authors in international journals has experienced a noticeable increase, and the collaboration networks of researchers from Mainland China have broadened, with the number of articles with a Chinese first author showing a strong upward trend. In addition, findings show that Chinese scholars are published in a wider range of journals, and there has been a steady increase in their appearance in higher impact journals (influenced in part by certain journals). Finally, different social science disciplines show various degrees of internationalization . This study provides a broad view from which to examine the internationalization process in Mainland China’s social science landscape in the last four decades, while also noting some of the possible explanations for these changes, thereby deepening our understanding of social science research stemming from the region.


Author(s):  
William Wells ◽  
Bradley Campbell ◽  
Yudu Li ◽  
Stryker Swindle

Purpose Social scientific research is having a substantial impact on eyewitness identification procedural reforms. Police agencies in the USA have changed their eyewitness practices based on the results of social scientific research. The purpose of this paper is to contribute new knowledge by using a unique set of data to describe detailed aspects of eyewitness identification procedures conducted as part of robbery investigations in Houston, TX. Design/methodology/approach Robbery investigators completed surveys following identification procedures conducted during a six-month period of time. The sample includes 975 identification procedures. The analysis describes important features of identification procedures and places results in the context of existing research. Findings Results show that photo spreads were the most frequently used lineup procedure and selection outcomes were similar to recent field studies conducted in the USA. Results also show that the type of procedure, presence of a weapon, cross-race identifications, and viewing opportunity were significantly correlated with selection outcomes. Originality/value Police are reforming their eyewitness identification procedures based on findings from social science research. The study measures and describe the characteristics of a large sample eyewitness procedures conducted by investigators in the field.


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