scholarly journals Thinking like a State - Embodied intelligence in the deep history of our collective minds

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avel GUÉNIN--CARLUT
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Life Form ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Active Inference ◽  
Minimal Form ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Embodied Intelligence

This article aims to show how the deep history of early State societies entails the development of a collective form of cognitive agency. It relates classical works in the anthropology of States (in particular Scott’s Seeing like a State) with the enactive account of biological and cognitive organisation, thanks to the unified ontology for self-organisation dynamics across scales offered by the Active Inference framework. Active Inference conceives of cognition as synchronisation across individuated sensorimotor states. It entails that biological or sociocultural constraints display a minimal form of cognition by shaping the behaviour of faster dynamics in a certain way. When such constraints collectively define a basic life form (an integrated, operationally closed system), they can therefore be said to embody adaptive knowledge properly speaking.The (en)Active Inference account I articulate here strongly motivates and methodologically grounds a holist approach in the social sciences. Indeed, it grounds the study of human societies in the role of structural constraints, whose “meaning” depends both on the broader system’s activity and in the historical context of their emergence. The present account of the dynamics of early urbanisation and State genesis aims to illustrate this approach.

scholarly journals Historiography within the structure of history of political and legal doctrines: subject field, objectives, tasks, and functions

2020 ◽  
pp. 126-137
Author(s):  
Sergei Vladimirovich Kodan
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Historical Science ◽  
Subject Field ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scientific Context

The scientific context of studying the historiography of the history of political and legal doctrines is associated with its positioning within the structure of the indicated historical legal science, and represents a challenging problematic that orients the researcher towards understanding the processes of development of this science through the prism of historiography as a reflection of its history. This necessitates to determine the subject field, objectives, tasks, and functions of historiography within the structure of the indicated science, which is the key vector of this research. At the same time, the analysis of these questions leans on universal vision of the development of historiography in the social sciences and humanities. The scientific novelty is defined by the fact that the historiographical problematic in the history of political and legal doctrines is studied insufficiently; therefore, this article is the first attempt to position historiography as a scientific discipline of historical legal trend, and present an original perspective on the topic. Emphasis is placed on examination of the key characteristics of historiography as part of history of political and legal doctrines: subject matter, objectives, tasks, and functions. At the same time, the author relies on the historiographical developments in social sciences and humanities, namely in the historical science, based on which presents an original perspective on the role of historiography as a part of history of political and legal doctrines is.

scholarly journals Introduction

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Nathan Bracher
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Wide Spectrum ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Family Stories ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Cultural Networks ◽  
Literary Techniques

This introduction outlines Ivan Jablonka’s theory and practice of writing the social sciences as foregrounded in three of his most noted, recent books, A History of the Grandparents I Never Had, History is a Contemorary Literature, and Laëtitia. As he outlines in his own contribution here, Jablonka advances rigorous, methodical research that nevertheless details the subjective investment of the researcher while at the same time utilizing creative “literary” techniques to engage a wide spectrum of readers well beyond the habitual circles of academic specialists. The essays contributed by Julie Fette, Sarah Fishman, Melanie Hawthorne, Don Reid, and Nathan Bracher explore various facets of Jablonka’s approach, including, respectively: writing history with family stories, resisting the erosion of factual reasoning in the Trump years, pursuing biographies of supposedly non-descript lives, appreciating the importance of Communist cultural networks in postwar France, and revisiting the role of the subject in the social sciences.

Social Science and Ideological Critiques of Ecclesiology

2018 ◽  
pp. 552-572
Author(s):  
Neil Ormerod
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Dietrich Bonhoeffer ◽  
Problematic Relationship ◽  
The Social ◽  
Edward Schillebeeckx ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Human Condition

Theology has long engaged philosophy as a dialogue partner, but the social sciences raise a new set of issues as both theology and the social sciences reflect concretely on the human condition. The problematic relationship between theology and the social sciences is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the area of ecclesiology. Whenever ecclesiology turns from more idealistic ahistorical forms of discourse to deal with the actual context and constitution of historical communities, the role of the social sciences in providing insights into those contexts and constitutions becomes difficult to deny. This chapter seeks to map out some of the history of the engagement with the social sciences by ecclesiologists such as Clodovis Boff, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Edward Schillebeeckx, John Milbank, and Roger Haight, and the challenges that this engagement poses. Underlying this debate are profound theological issues concerning grace and nature.

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 Ryle’s “Intellectualist Legend” in Historical Context

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Kremer
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Third Way ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Timothy Williamson ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

Gilbert Ryle’s distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that emerged from his criticism of the “intellectualist legend” that to do something intelligently is “to do a bit of theory and then to do a bit of practice,” and became a philosophical commonplace in the second half of the last century. In this century Jason Stanley (initially with Timothy Williamson) has attacked Ryle’s distinction, arguing that “knowing-how is a species of knowing-that,” and accusing Ryle of setting up a straw man in his critique of “intellectualism.” Examining the use of the terms “intellectualism” and “anti-intellectualism” in the first half of the 20th century, in a wide-ranging debate in the social sciences as well as in philosophy, I show that Ryle was not criticizing a straw man, but a live historical position. In the context of this controversy, Ryle’s position represents a third way between “intellectualism” and “anti-intellectualism,” an option that has largely gone missing in the 21st century discussion. This argument illustrates how history can inform the history of philosophy, and how the history of philosophy can inform contemporary philosophical inquiry.

Information, Knowledge, and the Return of Social Physics

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (9) ◽  
pp. 1238-1258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marian T. Adolf ◽  
Nico Stehr
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Big Data ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Early History ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Comprehensive Investigation ◽  
Social Physics ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

The article discusses two vital aspects of the current debate about the societal importance and future role of data, information, and knowledge in the context of social organization, administration, and government. First, it is argued that the debate concerning Big Data suffers from faulty assumptions regarding the societal significance and power of information which needs to be extended to a more comprehensive investigation about the social role of knowledge. Second, the theoretical positions brought forward are illustrated by revisiting an episode from the early history of the social sciences, arguing that misguided ideas about the possibility of “Social Physics” have failed before and are likely to fail again, due to the complexity of social behavior.

scholarly journals Trabajo social, sociopraxis y metodologías participativas: retos, oportunidades y transiciones de lo local a lo global

2020 ◽  
pp. 64
Author(s):  
Antonio Álvarez-Benavides
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Trabajo Social ◽  
History Of Social Work

La historia del trabajo social (TS) en España está condicionada por el papel de la Iglesia y del catolicismo en la concepción epistemológica y práctica de la asistencia social y del TS. Esta historia ha tenido una serie de consecuencias, como la tardía institucionalización de la profesión, las dificultades de su incorporación a las universidades y su equiparación con otras ciencias sociales. Estos procesos, a su vez, han provocado dos fenómenos que tienen una dimensión interna y externa: el asistencialismo y la protocolización. Sin embargo, un nuevo contexto de equiparación del TS con el resto de estudios universitarios a través del Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior (EEES) y las transformaciones sociales durante y después de la crisis económica invitan al replanteamiento de la profesión y de la ciencia. Este texto pretende ser una reflexión sobre las potencialidades de la sociopraxis y de las metodologías participativas en dicha reformulación, como puntos de partida y herramientas para plantear una nueva relación entre trabajadores/ as sociales y destinarios. Además, se analizarán las posibilidades de transformación social que promueven estas epistemologías y metodologías en la práctica profesional, formativa y académica del trabajador/a social en el ámbito local, comunitario y en la sociedad en su conjunto.The history of Social Work in Spain is conditioned by the role of Catholicism in the epistemological and practical conception of social assistance and social work. This history has had several consequences: late institutionalization and professionalization, and difficult incorporation to the universities compared to other social sciences. These processes have caused internal and external results: assistentialism and protocolization. However, a new context in which Social Work has been equated with university studies through the EHEA and social transformations due to the economic crisis invites us to rethink Social Work as a profession and as a science. This text aims to reflect on the potentialities of sociopraxis and participatory methodologies in such reformulation, as the starting points and tools to pose a new relation between social workers and stakeholders. It will also analyze the capacity of social transformation promoted by these epistemologies and methods in the social worker professional, formative, and academic practice in the local and communitarian sphere and the whole society.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesus Ramirez-Valles
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United States ◽  
Skin Color ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
The United States ◽  
Aids Epidemic ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

This introductory chapter discusses the importance of studying the role of Latino GBT activists in the AIDS movement in the United States. Scholars and the general media have overlooked the work and the voices of Latino GBTs in the AIDS movement, creating a void in the history of the AIDS movement, the social sciences, and public health in the United States. This is troubling because ethnic and sexual minorities are currently more affected by the epidemic than their white counterparts, and because the larger Latino population in the United States is less supportive of civil liberties for homosexuals than for whites and African Americans. Indeed, the absence of Latino GBTs' voices hinders one's understanding of how a group already marginalized because of their ethnicity and skin color confronts adversity, such as the AIDS epidemic.

scholarly journals The Design of Reading Research

1983 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-80
Author(s):  
Robert C. Calfee
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Factorial Design ◽  
Reading Instruction ◽  
Present State ◽  
Experimental Research ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Reading Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Of Affairs

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of factorial design methods for research on reading and reading instruction. I will begin with a brief sketch of the historical context behind the present state of affairs in experimental research on reading. Next comes a section separating the concepts of “experiment” and “design”—the remainder of the paper focuses on the topic of factorial design. While my remarks emphasize applications to reading research, it will be obvious that the issues hold for most areas of the social sciences.

scholarly journals Perubahan Tema dan Perspektif dalam Historiografi Asia Tenggara, 1955-2010

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-66
Author(s):  
Sugeng Prakoso
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
The Social ◽  
Asian Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Asian History ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
External Forces ◽  
Annales School

This article examines the changes in themes and perspectives in the writing of Southeast Asian history in the period 1955 to 2010. The historiography of the 1950s tended to political history and the dominant view of the external influences of India, China, Islam, and the West on Southeast Asian history. In the 1960s the thematic focus shifted to economic and social aspects along with the emergence of the trend of social sciences approaches in historical studies which was influenced by the Annales School. In the 1980s, with the onset of the linguistic and cultural turns in the social sciences, historians in the region turned to diachronic studies of the formation of identity, mentality, representation and discourse of local knowledge. The shift in perspective also occurred with the emergence of the (Southeast) Asian-centric perspective which saw changes in Southeast Asian society as a result of the dynamic interaction between the region's internal and external forces. Since the end of the 1990s, there has been a tendency for the ‘interstices’, that is linking the history of the Southeast Asian region with its global historical context, and on the connectivity of historical disciplines with other social-humanities disciplines to build bridges of trans-disciplinary studies.Artikel ini mengkaji perubahan tema dan perspektif dalam penulisan sejarah Asia Tenggara pada periode 1955 sampai 2010. Historiografi dasawarsa 1950-an cenderung pada sejarah politik dan dominannya pandangan ihwal pengaruh eksternal India, Cina, Islam, dan Barat atas sejarah Asia Tenggara. Pada dasawarsa 1960-an fokus tematis bergeser ke aspek ekonomi dan sosial seiring dengan munculnya tren pendekatan ilmu-ilmu sosial yang dipengaruhi oleh Mazhab Annales. Pada dasawarsa 1980-an, dengan menguatnya kajian linguistik dan budaya, sejarawan di kawasan ini beralih ke studi diakronis tentang pembentukan identitas, mentalitas, representasi, dan wacana pengetahuan lokal. Pergeseran perspektif juga terjadi dengan menguatnya perspektif Asia (Tenggara)-sentris yang melihat perubahan-perubahan di dalam masyarakat Asia Tenggara sebagai hasil interaksi dinamis antara kekuatan internal dan eksternal kawasan itu. Sejak akhir dasawarsa 1990-an, muncul kecenderungan pada ‘interstisi’, yaitu menghubungkan sejarah kawasan lokal Asia Tenggara dengan konteks historis globalnya, dan pada konektivitas disiplin sejarah dengan berbagai disiplin ilmu sosial-humaniora lainnya untuk membangun jembatan kajian transdisipliner.  

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