scholarly journals The anthropology of human-environment relations

Focaal ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (82) ◽  
pp. 64-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penny McCall Howard
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Human Intentionality ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ecological Relations

What are Marxists to make of the new wave of materialism that has become influential in anthropology and across the social sciences and humanities? An ethnography of fishing in coastal Scotland and an analysis of Tim Ingold’s ecological anthropology demonstrates both the usefulness and gaps in contemporary ecological and materialist anthropology. It finds that the reduced role for political economy, human intentionality, and material results in this literature significantly reduces their explanatory power. Efforts to unite analysis of humans and nonhumans have led to a lack of attention to the divisions within human societies, particularly the alienation of labor and therefore of ecological relations in capitalism. Understanding these dynamics is essential to contending with the current planetary ecological crisis.

scholarly journals Preface

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Milla Tiainen ◽  
Katve-Kaisa Kontturi ◽  
Ilona Hongisto
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Special Section ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Materialisms ◽  
Race And Sexuality ◽  
Analytical Approaches

This preface to the special section Movement, Aesthetics, Ontology: Generating New Materialisms in Arts and Humanities introduces the articles and provides the context for their inclusion. It shows how across the social sciences and humanities, new materialism and neomaterialism are increasingly being used as labels for analytical approaches that seek to reclaim the indispensable and transforming involvement of materialities in everything from political economy to everyday life and the constitution of gender, race and sexuality.

scholarly journals When we can trust computers (and when we can't)

2021 ◽  
Vol 379 (2197) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter V. Coveney ◽  
Roger R. Highfield
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Uncertainty Quantification ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Computational Modelling ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Building Trust ◽  
The Social

With the relentless rise of computer power, there is a widespread expectation that computers can solve the most pressing problems of science, and even more besides. We explore the limits of computational modelling and conclude that, in the domains of science and engineering which are relatively simple and firmly grounded in theory, these methods are indeed powerful. Even so, the availability of code, data and documentation, along with a range of techniques for validation, verification and uncertainty quantification, are essential for building trust in computer-generated findings. When it comes to complex systems in domains of science that are less firmly grounded in theory, notably biology and medicine, to say nothing of the social sciences and humanities, computers can create the illusion of objectivity, not least because the rise of big data and machine-learning pose new challenges to reproducibility, while lacking true explanatory power. We also discuss important aspects of the natural world which cannot be solved by digital means. In the long term, renewed emphasis on analogue methods will be necessary to temper the excessive faith currently placed in digital computation. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Reliability and reproducibility in computational science: implementing verification, validation and uncertainty quantification in silico ’.

scholarly journals The Philosophy of Perceiving the Human Environment from the Perspective of Environmental Social Psychology and Environmental Sociology (Implications for Sustainable Environmental and Health Security)

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-222
Author(s):  
Mariusz Ciszek ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Psychology ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Environmental Sociology ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Health Security ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health And Well Being

Environmental issues constitute more and more eagerly undertaken scientific issues. It is probably due to the contemporary situation, in which the threats to the environment inhabited by people are increasing. Importantly, the problems of this type are not only examined within the framework of environmental or ecological sciences but also the social sciences and humanities. There is nothing strange about it; after all, the society in which a person lives is a crucial element of the human environment. Every person’s life takes place in a particular environment, the state of which affects people, their psychophysical health and well-being, the fulfillment of life necessities, behavior, and functioning in society. Such issues are discussed within the framework of environmental social psychology and environmental sociology. This article is devoted precisely to these disciplines. The publication briefly presents the essence of these environmental social sciences (starting from the characteristics of environmental social psychology, and then moving to environmental sociology). However, their essence was shown from the perspective of a specific, concise philosophy (vision) of perceiving the human environment that can be found in these social sciences. The human environment can be understood in various ways, not necessarily coinciding with what is considered the environment in natural sciences. This vision of perception of the human environment in the publication is a useful criterion for the interpretation and division of these disciplines into two basic variants – traditional (typical humanistic and social, currently applicable) and postulated model (socio-natural). It is also able to guarantee sustainable environmental (ecological and health) security.

Women break down the barriers to the Vietnamese social sciences and humanities

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quan-Hoang Vuong
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Middle Income Country ◽  
Women In Science ◽  
Income Country ◽  
The West ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Low And Middle Income

Valian rightly made a case for better recognition of women in science during the Nobel week in October 2018 (Valian, 2018). However, it seems most published views about gender inequality in Nature focused on the West. This correspondence shifts the focus to women in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in a low- and middle-income country (LMIC).

scholarly journals Post-Islamism and Intellectual Production: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Evolution of Contemporary Islamic Thought

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Mohamed Amine Brahimi ◽  
Houssem Ben Lazreg
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Scientific Field ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Islamic Reform ◽  
The Social ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
Thinking Differently ◽  
Intellectual Production ◽  
Representative Samples

The advent of the 1990s marked, among other things, the restructuring of the Muslim world in its relation to Islam. This new context has proved to be extremely favorable to the emergence of scholars who define themselves as reformists or modernists. They have dedicated themselves to reform in Islam based on the values of peace, human rights, and secular governance. One can find an example of this approach in the works of renowned intellectuals such as Farid Esack, Mohamed Talbi, or Mohamed Arkoun, to name a few. However, the question of Islamic reform has been debated during the 19th and 20th centuries. This article aims to comprehend the historical evolution of contemporary reformist thinkers in the scientific field. The literature surrounding these intellectuals is based primarily on content analysis. These approaches share a type of reading that focuses on the interaction and codetermination of religious interpretations rather than on the relationships and social dynamics that constitute them. Despite these contributions, it seems vital to question this contemporary thinking differently: what influence does the context of post-Islamism have on the emergence of this intellectual trend? What connections does it have with the social sciences and humanities? How did it evolve historically? In this context, the researchers will analyze co-citations in representative samples to illustrate the theoretical framework in which these intellectuals are located, and its evolution. Using selected cases, this process will help us to both underline the empowerment of contemporary Islamic thought and the formation of a real corpus of works seeking to reform Islam.

scholarly journals Subaltern Debris: Archaeology and Marginalized Communities

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Beatriz Marín-Aguilera
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Patricia Hill Collins ◽  
Definition Of

Archaeologists, like many other scholars in the Social Sciences and Humanities, are particularly concerned with the study of past and present subalterns. Yet the very concept of ‘the subaltern’ is elusive and rarely theorized in archaeological literature, or it is only mentioned in passing. This article engages with the work of Gramsci and Patricia Hill Collins to map a more comprehensive definition of subalternity, and to develop a methodology to chart the different ways in which subalternity is manifested and reproduced.

The Distribution of Emotions: Affective Politics of Emancipation

Hypatia ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 580-596 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brigitte Bargetz
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Affect Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social

Currently, affect and emotions are a widely discussed political topic. At least since the early 1990s, different disciplines—from the social sciences and humanities to science and technoscience—have increasingly engaged in studying and conceptualizing affect, emotion, feeling, and sensation, evoking yet another turn that is frequently framed as the “affective turn.” Within queer feminist affect theory, two positions have emerged: following Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's well‐known critique, there are either more “paranoid” or more “reparative” approaches toward affect. Whereas the latter emphasize the potentialities of affect, the former argue that one should question the mere idea of affect as liberation and promise. Here, I suggest moving beyond a critique or celebration of affect by embracing the political ambivalence of affect. For this queer feminist theorizing of affective politics, I adapt Jacques Rancière's theory of the political and particularly his understanding of emancipation. Rancière takes emancipation into account without, however, uncritically endorsing or celebrating a politics of liberation. I draw on his famous idea of the “distribution of the sensible” and reframe it as the “distribution of emotions,” by which I develop a multilayered approach toward a nonidentitarian, nondichotomous, and emancipatory queer feminist theory of affective politics.

“*Pseudonyms Are Used Throughout”: A Footnote, Unpacked

2021 ◽  
pp. 107780042110483
Author(s):  
Janet Heaton
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Current Practice ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Textual Data

Pseudonyms are often used to de-identify participants and other people, organizations and places mentioned in interviews and other textual data collected for research purposes. While this is commonplace, the rationale for, and limits of, using pseudonyms or other methods to disguise identifying information are seldom explained in empirical works. Following an illustrated outline of pseudonyms, epithets, codenames and other obscurant techniques used in the social sciences and humanities, this paper considers how they variously frame the identities of, and position the relations between, participants and researchers. It suggests ways in which researchers might improve on current practice.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document