Differences between Feminist and Mainstream Approaches to Social Science, Most Notably in Sociology, Political Science, Anthropology and History

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-50
Author(s):  
Senka Ena Majetic
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
Feminist Methodology ◽  
Feminist Writing

Abstract - It is widely accepted among feminists that feminism implies a distinctive approach to inquiry. And for some this is not just a matter of the grounds on which topics are selected for investigation, or even of the theoretical ideas that are treated as relevant. Rather, feminism is taken to carry distinctive methodological and epistemological implications (Hammersley, 1995: 45). In this paper I want to assess the arguments for a distinctively feminist methodology. My first task, though, is to provide some detail about what this is taken to entail. There are, of course, important differences among feminists who have written on this topic, and in the course of the discussion I will highlight some of these. I certainly do not want to suggest that what I am assessing is a single position, nor am I claiming to represent the basis on which most feminists actually do research. My main concern here is solely with feminist writing about methodology.

Discussion of Erik Martinez Kuhonta, Dan Slater, and Tuong Vu's Southeast Asia in Political Science: Theory, Region, and Qualitative Analysis

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-208
Author(s):  
Thomas B. Pepinsky ◽  
Barbara Geddes ◽  
Duncan McCargo ◽  
Richard Robison ◽  
Erik Martinez Kuhonta ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Sensitive Area ◽  
Theoretical Orientations ◽  
Social Science Knowledge ◽  
Science Theory

Comparative politics has witnessed periodic debates between proponents of contextually sensitive area studies research and others who view such work as unscientific, noncumulative, or of limited relevance for advancing broader social science knowledge. In Southeast Asia in Political Science: Theory, Region, and Qualitative Analysis, edited by Erik Martinez Kuhonta, Dan Slater, and Tuong Vu, a group of bright, young Southeast Asianists argue that contextually sensitive research in Southeast Asia using qualitative research methods has made fundamental and lasting contributions to comparative politics. They challenge other Southeast Asianists to assert proudly the contributions that their work has made and urge the rest of the comparative politics discipline to take these contributions seriously. This symposium includes four short critical reviews of Southeast Asia in Political Science by political scientists representing diverse scholarly traditions. The reviews address both the methodological and the theoretical orientations of the book and are followed by a response from the editors.

scholarly journals Historical Disparities and Gendered Citation Patterns

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 338-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. M. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Citation Data ◽  
Science Methodology ◽  
Social Science Methodology ◽  
Over Time

In this comment on Dion, Sumner, and Mitchell’s article “Gendered Citation Patterns across Political Science and Social Science Methodology Fields,” I explore the role of changes in the disparities of citations to work written by women over time. Breaking down their citation data by era, I find that some of the patterns in citations are the result of the legacy of disparity in the field. Citations to more recent work come closer to matching the distribution of the gender of authors of published work. Although the need for more equitable practices of citation remains, the overall patterns are not quite as bad as Dion, Sumner, and Mitchell conclude.

University of East Africa Social Science Conference

1966 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 538-540
Author(s):  
Martin Lowenkopf
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Rural Settlement ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Science Conference ◽  
The University ◽  
Political Decisions ◽  
Economic Criteria

This conference brought together over 70 social scientists from the Kenyan, Tanzanian, and Ugandan constituent Colleges of the University of East Africa (with visitors from Zambia, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, and Rhodesia) for their annual inter-disciplinary, or rather trans-disciplinary, deliberations. Why ‘trans-disciplinary’? Because the historians discussed nationalism, politics, and church movements; political scientists discoursed on economics, rural settlement, agriculture, and education; sociologists criticised political decisions and economic criteria which hampered their investigations into resettlement programmes; and the economists, while speaking mostly about economics, were represented at virtually all panels, apparently to guard their disciplinary preserve against intrusions, presumptions and, in one case, elision with political science.

Geography and Librarianship

2011 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
John Abresch ◽  
Ardis Hanson ◽  
Susan Jane Heron ◽  
Peter J. Reehling
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Information Science ◽  
Computer Applications ◽  
Library And Information Science ◽  
Remotely Sensed Data ◽  
Geographic Space ◽  
Geographic Thought ◽  
Multidisciplinary Nature ◽  
Methods And Techniques

There are many definitions of the study of geography. Most scholars define the discipline of geography as broadly concerned with the study of the earth’s environment and interpretation of the different natural and man-made phenomena that occur across it. Geographers are interested in the interrelationships between phenomena across the earth’s landscape in individual locations and across different regions. Though considered a social science by scholars, the field of geography incorporates methods and techniques that relate the study of geography to a variety of disciplines, such as anthropology, geology, ecology, political science, transportation, health, engineering, and library and information science. The multidisciplinary nature of geography provides opportunities for scholars in the discipline to apply these geographic concepts to many areas of study. The application of geographic techniques to new areas of study has provided the impetus for proposing new hypotheses and testing theories in different disciplines. The research has advanced geographic thought beyond established paradigms, as scholars use computer applications and remotely sensed data to redefine concepts of geographic space and to study the phenomena that occur in them.

What, If Anything, is the Philosophy of Political Science?

2020 ◽  
pp. 004839312097682
Author(s):  
Gianluca Pozzoni
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Philosophical Study ◽  
Philosophy Of Social Science ◽  
Special Sciences ◽  
Definition Of

Compared to other philosophies of special sciences, the scope, object, and definition of the philosophy of political science remain vague. This article traces this vagueness to the changing subject matter of political science throughout its history, but argues that all social sciences are subject to radical changes in what count as their defining characteristics. Accordingly, the only legitimate definition of “philosophy of political science” is “the philosophical study of whatever happens to conventionally fall within the scope of political science at a given moment.” Moving from this assumption, this article makes the case for a unified philosophy of social science.

Institutional Logics and the Limits of Social Science Knowledge

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-213
Author(s):  
Jessica Blatt
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Institutional Logics ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science Knowledge ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
Disciplinary History ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender

As someone whose training is in political science and who writes about the history of my own discipline, I admit to some hesitation in recommending future avenues of research for historians of education. For that reason, the following thoughts are directed toward disciplinary history broadly and social science history specifically. Moreover, the three articles that contributors to this forum were asked to use as inspiration suggest that any future I would recommend has been under way in one form or another for a while. For those reasons, I want to reframe my contribution as a reflection on a particular mode of analysis all three authors employed and how it may be particularly useful for exploring the questions of power, exclusion, and race- and gender-making in the academy that are present in all three articles and that explicitly animate two of them.

Private Government, Property, and Professionalism

1976 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 668-681 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn J. Tuohy
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Fundamental Question ◽  
Major Theme ◽  
Specialized Knowledge ◽  
Future Evolution ◽  
Private Government

For over a decade, a major theme in the literature of social science has been the recognition of the increasing importance of specialized knowledge as a basis of power and wealth in modern societies. A fundamental question for political science hence becomes: how can we best understand the nature of the institutions which govern the acquisition and the application of specialized knowledge? What conceptual tools allow us to analyse the functioning of these institutions at present and to predict their future evolution?

Political Science in the International Field

1923 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pitman B. Potter
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Common Knowledge ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Inductive Method ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
State Organization ◽  
Speculative Thought

Political science, like all other branches of social science, has, in the past century, become increasingly inductive in method. Attempts to deduce conclusions regarding the details of political organization and practice by speculative thought concerning the nature of man, of liberty, of authority, of society, and so on, have now largely ceased. In their place we have efforts to collect as much data as possible concerning actual forms of state organization and governmental methods, and efforts to analyze that data and discover therein the main lines of causation and the fundamental principles of politics.This is all a matter of common knowledge. It is, moreover, a change which most of us regard with approval. The reason for calling attention to it here, therefore, is principally to point out its effect upon the study of the international field by political scientists.There are several consequences which flow from the placing of political science upon the basis of inductive method. The consequence of which we think most frequently is that of rendering our conclusions more certain and secure, and of reducing as much as possible the element of subjective personal judgment therein.

Offensive Political Theory

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 465-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Rehfeld
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Music Theory ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Defensive Responses ◽  
The Status ◽  
Social Scientific

Penn State's decision to eliminate political theory set off existential angst about the status of political theory in the discipline. The organized, defensive responses to that decision failed to answer the central question it posed: Is “political theory” social science, and if not, why does it belong? I argue that social scientific political theory is political science and its many strains—conceptual, normative, and explanatory—belong in the discipline on their own terms. Humanistic research, like dermatology or music theory, is not political science and as such it should find another home. By explaining why (and what kinds of) political theory is political science this article may wind up being offensive in both senses of the word. But it is meant to be in service to a more secure, stable, and productive interdisciplinary future for all kinds of political theory going forward.

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