Is Integration of Ethics in Islam with Social Sciences Viable? Explor-ing the Meaning and Nature of al-Akhlaq from the Qur’anic and Muslim Ethicists’ Perspectives (Adakah Integrasi Ilmu Etika dalam Islam dengan Sains Kemasyarakatan Berdaya Maju? Eksplora)

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-400
Author(s):  
Amilah binti Awang Abd Rahman
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Real Nature ◽  
Major Dimension ◽  
The Social ◽  
Societal Level ◽  
Is Integration ◽  
Science Disciplines

Akhlaq is not only a major dimension of Islam, but also the root of humanity in Islam. However, its relevance to the modern disciplines is yet to be extensively explored. This paper aims at looking into the relevance of akhlaq to the modern life, mainly through the Social Science disciplines. This paper analyzes the meaning of akhlaq with special connotation and expectation from the Qur’anic perspective, and its interpretation from Muslim ethicists. This paper seeks to answer the central problem related to typical perception on religious ethics that hinders its harmonious integration into the realm of human experience. The paper touches the issues on the real nature of Akhlaq and the place of human freedom and objectivity in Akhlaq. The role of Akhlaq in dealing with individual versus societal end is also explored. It is found that Akhlaq acts beyond the typical normative ethics and consistent in its standpoint of human agency with its concepts of motivation and sanction as addressed by the Qur’an. Instead of being abstract and dry, the generic nature of values in Akhlaq is adjustable to different experience, and harmonious to the life needs both at individual as well as societal level of man. Hence, akhlaq opens its door widely to work together with Social Science disciplines which can further enhance a better understanding of humanities in facing the social changes.        Keywords: Akhlaq, Social Sciences, Qur’anic Ethics, Normative, Motivation, Sanction. Abstrak Akhlaq bukan sahaja merupakan satu dimensi Islam yang utama, tetapi juga merupaka akar umbi kepada kemanusiaan dalam Islam. Walau bagaimanapun, hubungannya dengan disiplin-disiplin moden masih belum diteroka dengan mendalam. Makalah ini bertujuan untuk mengkaji tentang hubungkait akhlaq dengan kehidupan moden terutamanya melalui disiplin Sains Kemasyarakatan. Ia menganalisa maksud akhlaq melalui konotasi khusus istilah dalam Bahasa Arab dan apa yang dibayangkan oleh al-Qur’an, berserta pentafsiran daripada ahli ilmu etika. Makalah ini ingin memberikan jawapan kepada permasalahan pokok tentang persepsi tipikal terhadap akhlak agama yang menghalang daripada mempunyai hubungan yang harmoni dengan ruang lingkup pengalaman manusia. Perbincangan menyentuh isu berkenaan sifat sebenar Akhlaq dan kedudukan kebebasan manusia dan ciri-ciri objektiviti Akhlaq. Peranan Akhlaq untuk memenuhi keperluan individu atau masyarakat juga dibincangkan. Dapatan kajian ialah Akhlaq bertindak melampaui persepsi tipikal etika normatif serta ia bergerak seiring dengan peranan manusia yang bertanggung jawab yang lengkap dengan konsep motivasi dan sanksi seperti yang dibawakan oleh al-Qur’an. Nilai-nilai Akhlaq adalah bersifat umum, dan bukannya tidak difahami (abstrak) dan statik, menjadikan ianya boleh dilentur mengikut pengalaman manusia yang berbeza dan harmoni dengan keperluan kehidupan manusia sama ada di peringkat individu mahupun masyarakat. Maka, Akhlaq membuka pintu yang luas kepada kerjasama dengan disiplin Sains Kemasyarakatan yang boleh membantu ke arah pembentukan pemahaman yang lebih baik tentang kemanusiaan ketika menghadapi segala perubahan dalam masyarakat.    Kata Kunci: Akhlaq, Sains Kemasyarakatan, Etika al-Qur’an, Normatif, Motivasi, Sanksi

Comparative Area Studies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Köllner ◽  
Rudra Sil ◽  
Ariel I. Ahram
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Middle Range ◽  
The Social ◽  
Small N ◽  
Scholarly Discourse ◽  
Science Disciplines

Two convictions lie at the heart of this volume. First, area studies scholarship remains indispensable for the social sciences, both as a means to expand our fount of observations and as a source of theoretical ideas. Second, this scholarship risks becoming marginalized without more efforts to demonstrate its broader relevance and utility. Comparative Area Studies (CAS) is one such effort, seeking to balance attention to regional and local contextual attributes with use of the comparative method in search of portable causal links and mechanisms. CAS engages scholarly discourse in relevant area studies communities while employing concepts intelligible to social science disciplines. In practice, CAS encourages a distinctive style of small-N analysis, cross-regional contextualized comparison. As the contributions to this volume show, this approach does not subsume or replace area studies scholarship but creates new pathways to “middle range” theoretical arguments of interest to both area studies and the social sciences.

Social Ontology and Model-Building: A Response to Epstein

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-192
Author(s):  
Nadia Ruiz
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Model Building ◽  
Social Ontology ◽  
Model Construction ◽  
Ontological Commitments ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social

Brian Epstein has recently argued that a thoroughly microfoundationalist approach towards economics is unconvincing for metaphysical reasons. Generally, Epstein argues that for an improvement in the methodology of social science we must adopt social ontology as the foundation of social sciences; that is, the standing microfoundationalist debate could be solved by fixing economics’ ontology. However, as I show in this paper, fixing the social ontology prior to the process of model construction is optional instead of necessary and that metaphysical-ontological commitments are often the outcome of model construction, not its starting point. By focusing on the practice of modeling in economics the paper provides a useful inroad into the debate about the role of metaphysics in the natural and social sciences more generally.

Social science, methodology of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Physical Science ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Special Importance ◽  
The Social

Each of the sciences, the physical, biological, social and behavioural, have emerged from philosophy in a process that began in the time of Euclid and Plato. These sciences have left a legacy to philosophy of problems that they have been unable to deal with, either as nascent or as mature disciplines. Some of these problems are common to all sciences, some restricted to one of the four general divisions mentioned above, and some of these philosophical problems bear on only one or another of the special sciences. If the natural sciences have been of concern to philosophers longer than the social sciences, this is simply because the former are older disciplines. It is only in the last century that the social sciences have emerged as distinct subjects in their currently recognizable state. Some of the problems in the philosophy of social science are older than these disciplines, in part because these problems have their origins in nineteenth-century philosophy of history. Of course the full flowering of the philosophy of science dates from the emergence of the logical positivists in the 1920s. Although the logical positivists’ philosophy of science has often been accused of being satisfied with a one-sided diet of physics, in fact their interest in the social sciences was at least as great as their interest in physical science. Indeed, as the pre-eminent arena for the application of prescriptions drawn from the study of physics, social science always held a place of special importance for philosophers of science. Even those who reject the role of prescription from the philosophy of physics, cannot deny the relevance of epistemology and metaphysics for the social sciences. Scientific change may be the result of many factors, only some of them cognitive. However, scientific advance is driven by the interaction of data and theory. Data controls the theories we adopt and the direction in which we refine them. Theory directs and constrains both the sort of experiments that are done to collect data and the apparatus with which they are undertaken: research design is driven by theory, and so is methodological prescription. But what drives research design in disciplines that are only in their infancy, or in which for some other reason, there is a theoretical vacuum? In the absence of theory how does the scientist decide on what the discipline is trying to explain, what its standards of explanatory adequacy are, and what counts as the data that will help decide between theories? In such cases there are only two things scientists have to go on: successful theories and methods in other disciplines which are thought to be relevant to the nascent discipline, and the epistemology and metaphysics which underwrites the relevance of these theories and methods. This makes philosophy of special importance to the social sciences. The role of philosophy in guiding research in a theoretical vacuum makes the most fundamental question of the philosophy of science whether the social sciences can, do, or should employ to a greater or lesser degree the same methods as those of the natural sciences? Note that this question presupposes that we have already accurately identified the methods of natural science. If we have not yet done so, the question becomes largely academic. For many philosophers of social science the question of what the methods of natural science are was long answered by the logical positivist philosophy of physical science. And the increasing adoption of such methods by empirical, mathematical, and experimental social scientists raised a second central question for philosophers: why had these methods so apparently successful in natural science been apparently far less successful when self-consciously adapted to the research agendas of the several social sciences? One traditional answer begins with the assumption that human behaviour or action and its consequences are simply not amenable to scientific study, because they are the results of free will, or less radically, because the significant kinds or categories into which social events must be classed are unique in a way that makes non-trivial general theories about them impossible. These answers immediately raise some of the most difficult problems of metaphysics and epistemology: the nature of the mind, the thesis of determinism, and the analysis of causation. Even less radical explanations for the differences between social and natural sciences raise these fundamental questions of philosophy. Once the consensus on the adequacy of a positivist philosophy of natural science gave way in the late 1960s, these central questions of the philosophy of social science became far more difficult ones to answer. Not only was the benchmark of what counts as science lost, but the measure of progress became so obscure that it was no longer uncontroversial to claim that the social sciences’ rate of progress was any different from that of natural science.

scholarly journals Scholarly Communication in Biblical Studies

2020 ◽  
pp. 58-78
Author(s):  
Beth M. Sheppard
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Scholarly Communication ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Faculty Members ◽  
Data Set ◽  
The Social ◽  
The University

During a bibliometric analysis of the scholarship of ninety-five social science faculty members at the University of West Georgia (UWG), observations were made concerning potential differences between how scholarly communication is practiced by the disciplines of the social sciences and biblical studies. The fields appear to diverge on the role of book reviews, prevalence of co-authored materials, use of ORCIDs, and adoption of DOIs. In addition to highlighting these points, the data set used for the project is described. Finally, a few theological reflections are offered.

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.

The Role of the Social Sciences in Emerging Civil Society in Thailand

2003 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-161
Author(s):  
Chayan Vaddhanaphuti
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Situated Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
Historical Periods

This paper examines social development as a process and as a historically produced discourse before and during the crisis in Southeast Asia. Using the case of Thai social science in different historical periods — from distanced social science to socially engaged social science — to illustrate its relevance to social development, this paper argues that new modes of knowing is necessary to challenge, rethink, and reconstruct the role of social science based on situated knowledge and contextualised views expressed.

Feminism and social science

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Wylie
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Feminist Activism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Contextual Values ◽  
Second Wave

Feminists have two sorts of interest in the social sciences. With the advent of the second-wave women’s movement, they developed wide-ranging critiques of gender bias in the conceptual framework and methodology, as well as in the goals, institutions and practice of virtually all the social sciences; they argue that the social sciences both reflect and contribute to the sexism of the larger societies in which they are embedded. Alongside these critiques feminist practitioners have established constructive programmes of research that are intended to rectify the inadequacies of existing traditions of research and to address questions of concern to women. In this they are committed both to improving the disciplines in which they participate and to establishing a sound empirical and theoretical basis for feminist activism. This engagement of feminists with social science, as commentators and practitioners, raises a number of philosophical issues that have been addressed by feminist social scientists and philosophers. These include questions about ideals of objectivity and the role of contextual values in social scientific inquiry, the goals of feminist research, the forms of practice appropriate to these goals, and the responsibilities of feminist researchers to the subjects of inquiry and to those who may otherwise be affected by its conduct or results.

scholarly journals The BRICS Countries Grouping: Promise of a New Thematic and Methodological Research Focus in the Social Sciences and the Humanities

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 3-13
Author(s):  
Charl Wolhuter ◽  
Oxana Chigisheva
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Global South ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Brics Countries ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global North ◽  
Science Community

The aim of this research, as part of this Special Issue on the thematic and epistemological foci of social science and humanities research emanating in the BRICS countries, is to investigate and to assess the value of such research— firstly, for the BRICS countries mutually, then for the rest of the Global South as well as for the global humanities and social science community at large. The rationale of this research is that the BRICS countries have come to assume a growing gravitas in the world, not only on strength of geography, demography and economy; but also because of the diversity contained in each of these BRICS countries. These diversities offer opportunities to learn a lot from each other, in addition the rest of the gamut of countries in the Global South as well as the nations of the Global North can benefit much from learning from the experience of the BRICS countries. The research commences with a survey of the most compelling societal trends shaping the 21st Century world, which will form the parameters of the context in which scholarship in the social sciences and humanities are destined to be conducted. The state of scholarship in the humanities and the social sciences and the imperatives of context will be the next topic under discussion. Within this landscape, the potential role of research on BRICS soil is then turned to. The BRICS countries are surveyed, then a conclusion is ventured as to their potential as a fountainhead for social sciences and humanities research.

scholarly journals The Response of the Hermeneutic Social Sciences to a ‘Post Carbon World’

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 155-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Redclift
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Environmental Economics ◽  
Back Seat ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
Low Profile ◽  
The Social

Abstract: Sociology has taken a ‘back seat’ in much of the debate, within policy and social science circles, about ‘post-carbon’ societies, in which our dependence on hydrocarbons is significantly reduced. The low profile of sociology does not reflect a lack of relevance, but rather an inability to follow up on the debates being generated in several congruent areas, including geography, international relations and particularly environmental economics. Sociology has much to contribute to the discussion of societal alternatives, not least in the work being undertaken on utopias and governance. It is suggested that sociologists can enhance the role of the social science disciplines, and that of sociology in particular, by re-engaging in the wider discussions, lending a hermeneutic understanding to the current policy debates about responding to climate change.

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