scholarly journals Digital Social Futures Research

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-48
Author(s):  
Sarah Pink
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Strong Base ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Digital Material ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Interdisciplinary Interventions

Social research is almost inevitably digital: in its subject matter because the digital, social and material dimensions of our worlds and lives are now inseparably entangled; and in its methods as our research techniques and encounters are, even if indirectly, implicated with digital technologies, platforms and practices. Social scientific renderings of digital technologies and media and everyday life propose a range of discipline-specific ways of understanding this relationship between the online/offline and digital/material, and a large and growing literature about digital methods and practice for research and its dissemination. The new challenge is to advance from this strong base of critical research and scholarship within the social sciences and humanities, in two ways. First towards interdisciplinary interventions that will bring theory, methods and concepts into dialogue with technology and design disciplines, and policy and industry agendas; and second to engage with emerging digital technologies and communication, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, and Automated Decision Making (ADM), and the new socialities, everyday life practices and business models associated with these technological possibilities.

School Notes: Committee on Historical Studies

1987 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-236
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Processes Of Change ◽  
Graduate Faculty ◽  
New School ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Historical Moment

The Committee on Historical Studies was established in the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in 1984. The Graduate Faculty has long emphasized the contribution of history to the social sciences. Committee on Historical Studies (CHS) courses offer students the opportunity to utilize social scientific concepts and theories in the study of the past. The program is based on the conviction that the world changes constantly but changes systematically, with each historical moment setting the opportunities and limiting the potentialities of the next. Systematic historical analysis, however, is not merely a diverting luxury. Nor is it simply a means of assembling cases for present-oriented models of human behavior. It is a prerequisite to any sound understanding of processes of change and of structures large or small.

Social research and state planning

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Murray ◽  
Maria Feeney
Keyword(s):  
Social Research ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
State Planning ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Government ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Crisis Conditions ◽  
The 1960S

Chapter 6 examines the relationship between the programming state and social research. Initial crisis conditions had enabled increased social spending to be left off the government programmers’ agenda. The changed politics of increasing prosperity, as well as their own expanding ambitions, meant that this could no longer be sustained during the 1960s. Ireland’s social security provision became an object of both political debate and social scientific analysis in this period. The official response to this ferment was a Social Development Programme to which the ESRI was initially seen as a vital provider of inputs. During the 1960s a Save the West movement challenged both programmers and governing politicians. The official response to this challenge involved new structures for rural development with which the social sciences interacted as well as expanded social welfare provision to a class of smallholders whose resilience would later become an object of significant sociological study. As the 1960s proceeded, however, Irish state plans and programmes had to contend with an increasingly difficult external environment with which they ultimately failed to cope.

scholarly journals The theory of dynamic chaos in the socio-philosophical and social studies

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 40-47
Author(s):  
Anna Seliverstova
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Turbulent Flows ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Dynamic Chaos ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Non Linear ◽  
First Time

The article discusses the application of the theory of dynamic chaos to the study of social phenomena. Appeal to the origins of the creation of the theory of dynamic chaos in natural science (A. Poincaré, I. Prigogine, E. Lorenz, and others) revealed nonlinear dynamic systems in the natural environment (turbulent flows, atmosphere, biological populations, etc.). The category of “chaos” is now firmly established in the arsenal of the social sciences and humanities, although only recently it referred exclusively to natural science knowledge (the theory of chaos in mathematics, physics, biology, etc.). In synergetics, for the first time, the description of self-organization processes as a mutual transition of order and chaos was proposed by I.R. Prigogine.But in the social sciences such systems are society, its economic, political and other spheres, which have the properties of non-closure, instability and non-linear development. In Ukrainian philosophical thought, one of the first works in which the problem of the development of nonlinear self-developing systems was highlighted was the work of I.S. Dobronravova (1991). Scientific monograph I.V. Yershova-Babenko (1992) also had a significant impact on the development of studies of complex non-linear systems, since for the first time the system of the human psyche was considered as a non-linear self-organized system. The psycho-synergetic model of social reality is based on the fact that social reality is a psychomeric environment, i.e. a complex nonlinear system consisting of other complex nonlinear integrity, which are determined by phase transitions between different states of chaos and order. The application of chaos theory is also possible at the micro and macro levels of social research, which is presented by Ukrainian researchers in synergetics (I. S. Dobronravova, L. Finkel) and in psychosynergetics (I.V. Yershova-Babenko), L. Bevzenko and others.

Narratives of the Night: The Use of Audio Diaries in Researching Sleep

2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 13-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Hislop ◽  
Sara Arber ◽  
Rob Meadows ◽  
Sue Venn
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Private Domain ◽  
Depth Interviews

This article draws on data from two major empirical studies of sleep to examine the use of audio diaries as an approach to researching sleep. Sleep has only recently emerged as a topic of interest to the sociologist, providing a valuable resource through which to examine the roles and relationships and gender inequalities which underpin everyday life. Yet accessing individual experiences of sleep is problematic. Considered a non-conscious activity, sleep takes place in most cases at night within the private domain of the home and is thus generally inaccessible to the social researcher and outside the conscious reality of the sleeper. In exploring the social aspects of sleep, we rely primarily on respondents’ interpretations of the sleep period given retrospectively in focus groups and in-depth interviews, distanced from the temporal, spatial and relational dimensions of the sleep event. This article also focuses on the use of audio diaries as a method designed to help bridge the gap between events in real time and retrospective accounts. We examine the narrative structure of audio diaries, discuss the principles and practice of using audio diaries in sleep research, illustrate the contribution of audio diary narratives to an understanding of the social context of sleep, and assess the use of audio diaries in social research. We conclude that, used in conjunction with other methods, audio diaries are an effective method of data collection, particularly for understanding experiences of intimate aspects of everyday life.

scholarly journals Data colonialism through accumulation by dispossession: New metaphors for daily data

2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (6) ◽  
pp. 990-1006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Thatcher ◽  
David O’Sullivan ◽  
Dillon Mahmoudi
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Domain Knowledge ◽  
Power Relationship ◽  
Capture Process ◽  
Accumulation By Dispossession ◽  
Daily Data ◽  
The Social ◽  
Asymmetric Power ◽  
Social Scientific

In recent years, much has been written on ‘big data’ in both the popular and academic press. After the hubristic declaration of the ‘end of theory’ more nuanced arguments have emerged, suggesting that increasingly pervasive data collection and quantification may have significant implications for the social sciences, even if the social, scientific, political, and economic agendas behind big data are less new than they are often portrayed. Compared to the boosterish tone of much of its press, academic critiques of big data have been relatively muted, often focusing on the continued importance of more traditional forms of domain knowledge and expertise. Indeed, many academic responses to big data enthusiastically celebrate the availability of new data sources and the potential for new insights and perspectives they may enable. Undermining many of these critiques is a lack of attention to the role of technology in society, particularly with respect to the labor process, the continued extension of labor relations into previously private times and places, and the commoditization of more and more aspects of everyday life. In this article, we parse a variety of big data definitions to argue that it is only when individual datums by the million, billion, or more are linked together algorithmically that ‘big data’ emerges as a commodity. Such decisions do not occur in a vacuum but as part of an asymmetric power relationship in which individuals are dispossessed of the data they generate in their day-to-day lives. We argue that the asymmetry of this data capture process is a means of capitalist ‘accumulation by dispossession’ that colonizes and commodifies everyday life in ways previously impossible. Situating the promises of ‘big data’ within the utopian imaginaries of digital frontierism, we suggest processes of data colonialism are actually unfolding behind these utopic promises. Amid private corporate and academic excitement over new forms of data analysis and visualization, situating big data as a form of capitalist expropriation and dispossession stresses the urgent need for critical, theoretical understandings of data and society.

Unbecoming: The aftereffects of autoethnography

Ethnography ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brent Luvaas
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Research Methodology ◽  
Scientific Training ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Academic Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific

Autoethnography is a research methodology that employs conscious becoming as a strategy for producing academic knowledge. As it grows in popularity across disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, should those who employ the methodology start thinking through the consequences of such becoming for the person engaging in it? This essay draws from the author’s long-term work on street style bloggers to argue that autoethnography is a practice with risks both practical and existential, and it suggests that social scientific training should begin to take into consideration the kinds of people ethnographers have to become in order to do their work.

scholarly journals Social Research about Online Crime: Global Range of Topics and a Systematic Analysis of Research in Lithuania

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 8-46
Author(s):  
Maryja Šupa
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The Social ◽  
Disciplinary Field ◽  
Crime Types ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Topic Map

 Social research about online crime is a multi-disciplinary field addressing a wide array of topics since its inception in the 1980s. Based on a broad review of state-of-the-art literature and gaps identified in review publications (Holt, Bossler 2014; Stratton, Powell, Cameron 2017; Maimon, Louderback 2019, and others), in this paper I outline 41 key topic in social research about online crime, classified into four broad categories: 1) research focusing on specific types of online crime, 2) research about perpetrators, victims, and law enforcement, 3) research about online crime discourses and public perceptions, 4) research putting the local and global specifics of online crime into perspective. Based on the topic map, I undertook a systematic review of literature on research about online crime published in Lithuania from the empirical social scientific perspective. The results show that very few such studies are carried out in Lithuania. From 2004 to 2020, 26 publications have been found in total. 10 of them were theoretical briefs, while 16 were based on empirical data. Out of the 41 key topic, 14 were covered in the publications, while 29 or roughly two thirds remained unaddressed. The dominant contributors were legal scholars writing about the social aspects of online crime across a variety of topics, and mostly focusing on specific crime types. The most developed topic was cyberbullying, with contributions by scholars mostly from the fields of psychology and education. To fill in these glaring gaps, it is vital to develop this field of research with an emphasis on both wider and deeper research agendas, complex, valid and reliable research data and critical theoretical approaches, inviting systematic contributions from criminology, sociology, communication and media studies, and political science.

scholarly journals Online matters: Future visions of digital making and materiality in hobby crafting

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Kouhia
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Past ◽  
Digital World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Digital Material ◽  
Leisure Pursuit ◽  
Craft Community

Over the past twenty years, hobby crafting has experienced a revival of interest, as people have started to seek new ways to engage with crafts as creative leisure in an increasingly digital world. Along the way, emerging, digital technologies have provided new tools and ways to engage in hobby crafting. Indeed, today’s hobby crafts are frequently concerned with material mediated via the internet and accomplished with the aid of software, which also affects our understanding of maker identities in online communities. This article argues that digitalization has not only revolutionized hobbyist craft making with new tools and technologies, but has also paved new ways for practising creative skills, which has had a significant impact on makers’ engagements with craft materials, objects and communities of practices. This is demonstrated through netnographic explorations on Facebook’s leisure craft community where digital material practices are increasingly prevalent in hobbyists’ everyday life. As a conclusion, the article speculates on visions of the future of hobby crafts and its relevance as a leisure pursuit.

scholarly journals Thick Concepts in Social Research: What, Why, and How?

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 160940692110661
Author(s):  
Simon van der Weele
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Qualitative Social Research ◽  
Thick Concepts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Epistemological Challenge ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Practical Recommendations ◽  
Methodological Difficulties

Thick concepts are concepts that describe and evaluate at once. Academic discussion on thick concepts originated in meta-ethics, but thick concepts increasingly draw attention from qualitative researchers working in the social sciences, too. However, these scholars work in relative isolation from each other, and an overview of their ideas is missing. This article has two aims. The first is to provide such an overview, by bringing together these disparate voices on why thick concepts matter for the social sciences and how to work with them in qualitative social research. The second aim is to reflect on the methodological difficulties of working with thick concepts, by thinking through the example of my research on a specific thick concept—the concept of dependency. The article argues that thick concepts are invoked by social researchers for either epistemological or methodological purposes. It then goes on to claim that if we want to take thick concepts as our sensitizing concepts or as our objects of research, these two purposes really ought to be considered in unison: any methodological approach involving thick concepts must factor in the epistemological challenge thick concepts pose to social-scientific research. To show why—and to consider what this requires from qualitative researchers—I draw on insights acquired during my study on dependency. I end with practical recommendations for working with thick concepts in social research.

Qualitative research and scientific knowledge: Social science in post-totalitarian academia

Human Affairs ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Juraj Podoba
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Academic Institutions ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Qualitative Social Research ◽  
Qualitative Approaches ◽  
The Social ◽  
Analytical Category

AbstractThe paper presents a critical analysis of the current state of qualitative research approaches in the social sciences and humanities within Slovak academic institutions. The author has been inspired by the metaphor of academic “barbaricum”. This analytical category is based on a model of the relationship between core and periphery, which has no clear function or organisational logic. From the scientific point of view, the core/centre should produce and innovate the theory, whereas the periphery should apply it. In Slovakia—contrary to the situation in Western academia—, the last two decades have seen a growth in the numbers of academic institutions dealing with the humanities (and partly with the social sciences), and stagnation in qualitative social research. The author suggests that if the Slovak social sciences aspire is to becoming part of the so-called European academic space, then this will certainly not be possible without much stronger and extensive support for social research based on qualitative approaches and methods.

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