scholarly journals TINA Is Dead: Reflecting on Postcapitalist Futures

Humans ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 44-46
Author(s):  
Loris Serafino ◽  
Fabrizia Ghezzo
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Relation ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Theoretical Issue ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The Social ◽  
Work Production ◽  
Market Relations

Social sciences in recent years have clearly proven that TINA—There Is No Alternative (to capitalism)—is no longer tenable. Today, alterity to capitalism comes in many forms and blossoms from inside its borders. Ethnographies of experimentations that span from ecovillages and community economies to alternative forms of work, production, and consumption are now countless. One common denominator of these experiences is that communal forms of social relation take over market relations. The main theoretical issue raised by this empirical work is whether this ferment of scattered, small scale alternative ways of organizing economy and society can coalesce into a fully fledged postcapitalist future or whether it is doomed to be stay marginal and transient at best. Anthropology can be at the forefront of this theoretical challenge. We close this brief commentary by addressing the importance of a future-oriented thinking in Anthropology and for the social science in general.

Beyond the Case

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Case Method ◽  
Singular Case ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Extended Case Method ◽  
History Of ◽  
Comparative Ethnography

The social sciences have seen a substantial increase in comparative and multisited ethnographic projects over the last three decades, yet field research often remains associated with small-scale, in-depth, and singular case studies. The growth of comparative ethnography underscores the need to carefully consider the process, logics, and consequences of comparison. This need is intensified by the fact that ethnography has long encompassed a wide range of traditions with different approaches toward comparative social science. At present, researchers seeking to design comparative field projects have many studies to emulate but few scholarly works detailing the process of comparison in divergent ethnographic approaches. Beyond the Case addresses this by showing how practitioners in contemporary iterations of traditions such as phenomenology, the extended case method, grounded theory, positivism, and interpretivism approach this in their works. It connects the long history of comparative (and anti-comparative) ethnographic approaches to their contemporary uses. Each chapter allows influential scholars to 1) unpack the methodological logics that shape how they use comparison; 2) connect these precepts to the concrete techniques they employ; and 3) articulate the utility of their approach. By honing in on how ethnographers render sites or cases analytically commensurable and comparable, these contributions offer a new lens for examining the assumptions, payoffs, and potential drawbacks of different forms of comparative ethnography. Beyond the Case provides a resource that allows both new and experienced ethnographers to critically evaluate the intellectual merits of various approaches and to strengthen their own research in the process.

scholarly journals RESPONSE FUNCTIONS TO CRITICAL SHOCKS IN SOCIAL SCIENCES: AN EMPIRICAL AND NUMERICAL STUDY

2004 ◽  
Vol 15 (06) ◽  
pp. 809-834 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. M. ROEHNER ◽  
D. SORNETTE ◽  
J. V. ANDERSEN
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Numerical Study ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Large Variability ◽  
Future Evolution ◽  
Damage Spreading ◽  
Exogenous Shocks ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Difference

We show that, provided one focuses on properly selected episodes, one can apply to the social sciences the same observational strategy that has proved successful in natural sciences such as astrophysics or geodynamics. For instance, in order to probe the cohesion of a society, one can, in different countries, study the reactions to some huge and sudden exogenous shocks, which we call Dirac shocks. This approach naturally leads to the notion of structural (as opposed or complementary to temporal) forecast. Although structural predictions are by far the most common way to test theories in the natural sciences, they have been much less used in the social sciences. The Dirac shock approach opens the way to testing structural predictions in the social sciences. The examples reported here suggest that critical events are able to reveal pre-existing "cracks" because they probe the social cohesion which is an indicator and predictor of future evolution of the system, and in some cases they foreshadow a bifurcation. We complement our empirical work with numerical simulations of the response function ("damage spreading") to Dirac shocks in the Sznajd model of consensus build-up. We quantify the slow relaxation of the difference between perturbed and unperturbed systems, the conditions under which the consensus is modified by the shock and the large variability from one realization to another.

scholarly journals Transaction Cost Economics: An Assessment of Empirical Research in the Social Sciences

2008 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey T. Macher ◽  
Barak D. Richman
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Transaction Cost ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Transaction Cost Economics ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Comprehensive Review ◽  
The Social ◽  
Considerable Support

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the empirical literature in transaction cost economics (TCE) across multiple social science disciplines and business fields. We show how TCE has branched out from its economic roots to examine empirical phenomena in several other areas. We find TCE is increasingly being applied not only to business-related fields such as accounting, finance, marketing, and organizational theory, but also to areas outside of business including political science, law, public policy, and agriculture and health. With few exceptions, however, the use of TCE reasoning to inform empirical research in these areas is piecemeal. We find that there is considerable support of many of the central tenets of TCE, but we also observe a number of lingering theoretical and empirical issues that need to be addressed. We conclude by discussing the implications of these issues and outlining directions for future theoretical and empirical work.

Beyond prosumer capitalism: Retaining the original understanding of prosumption

2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (5) ◽  
pp. 663-681 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davide Dusi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Grand Narrative ◽  
Academic World ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The Social ◽  
Analytical Power

The term prosumption, simultaneously production and consumption, is becoming increasingly popular in the academic world. The growing interest in this concept, established by Alvin Toffler in 1980, is the result of several changes that fostered the fading of the classical producer–consumer division. Its increasing importance is especially noticeable in the social sciences. The attention George Ritzer recently devoted to this concept led to the development of a reworked version that raises concerns regarding the expansion of its applicability to all human activities and the proposal of the notion of prosumer capitalism as part of a new grand narrative in social sciences. Embracing the reworked version in preference to the original one seems not only to reduce the analytical power of the concept, but also to affect its ability to effectively describe a heterogeneous range of prosumption manifestations as well as to limit its fruitfulness for future research.

scholarly journals Cold War Sewing Machines: Production and Consumption in 1950s China and Japan

2016 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 755-783 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonia Finnane
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cold War ◽  
English Language ◽  
Chinese Women ◽  
Acting Out ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Point Of Departure

With the “consumption turn” in the humanities and the social sciences, a phenomenon evident in English-language scholarship from the 1980s onward, production ceased to command the attention it had once received from historians. A recent (2012) study of the sewing machine in modern Japan by Harvard historian Andrew Gordon demonstrates the effects: what could feasibly have been published under the title “Making Machinists” was instead marketed as “Fabricating Consumers.” What does it mean to talk about consumers in 1950s Japan, a time and place of hard work, thrift, and restraint? For Gordon an important premise was the role of women in the postwar economy. This provides a point of departure from which to explore the ideologies and practices of production and consumption across the Cold War dividing line between “consumerist” and “productionist” regimes in East Asia. The Cold War was a time of sharp differences between the two societies, but also a time of shared preoccupations with productivity and national growth. In their different political contexts, Japanese and Chinese women were acting out many of the same roles.

scholarly journals MEDIA CONSUMPTION AND SPACE MANAGEMENT IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-17
Author(s):  
Florentina Nina Mocanasu
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Space ◽  
The Other ◽  
Communication Media ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
Space Management ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual

Social actors claim that sociology studies social reality as a whole, but also concerns the parts, phenomena and processes of this reality, in their many and varied relationship to the whole. In the social space there are many groups that interact in this regard, and because of this there are many types of messages to reach one or the other of the groups.Public opinion is the reaction product of people's minds and the thinking sum of individual form groupthink.Management then applies individual problem then it analysis the public thinking. The reaction occurs using communication media between the individual and the mass of people bringing the two stakeholders to a common denominator and creating symbols that public thinking to answer.

Dynamics in Human and Primate Societies

2000 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Computer Science ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Agent Based Modeling ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Recent Advances ◽  
The Social

As part of the SFI series, this book presents the most up-to-date research in the study of human and primate societies, presenting recent advances in software and algorithms for modeling societies. It also addresses case studies that have applied agent-based modeling approaches in archaeology, cultural anthropology, primatology, and sociology. Many things set this book apart from any other on modeling in the social sciences, including the emphasis on small-scale societies and the attempts to maximize realism in the modeling efforts applied to social problems and questions. It is an ideal book for professionals in archaeology or cultural anthropology as well as a valuable tool for those studying primatology or computer science.

Habits of the Heart

2011 ◽  
Vol 637 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica R. Miller ◽  
Ezekiel J. Dixon-Roman
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Moral Force ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Future Work

The landscape of youth religious participation is an underengaged area across both the humanities and social science. While the humanities lack empirical data on the changing religious life worlds of youths, existing empirical work in the social sciences suggests that institutional religion buffers criminality and delinquency—a brand of engagement the authors refer to as “buffering transgression.” This is a process that both conceives and privileges religion as an institutional and a moral force responsible for creating prosocial behavior. While empirical studies on youths and religion keep religion arrested to institutional and moral functions, scholars in the humanities work hard to legitimate youth cultural forms, such as hip hop, by conflating its rugged dimensions with a quest (and hope) for democratic sensibilities—a motif the authors suggest is rooted in ideologies of teleological progress. Using the tropes progress, peril, and change, this article explores the utility (and limitations) of empirical work and the often misguided efforts to moralize religion. Here the authors raise queries regarding youth cultural change and religion and quantitatively model youth religious change over 16 years. The implications of these theoretical and empirical interventions point toward future work at the social scientific intersections of religion in culture.

scholarly journals Has Critique Run Out of Steam?—On Discourse Research as Critical Inquiry

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reiner Keller
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Critical Inquiry ◽  
Critical Sociology ◽  
Present Contribution ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
The Social ◽  
Matters Of Concern ◽  
Critical Perspectives

Is there still a role for discourse research today, some 30 years after Michel Foucault’s death? A decade ago, French actor-network theorist Bruno Latour famously declared the end of critique as ethos and practice in the social sciences. What is more, arguments made about the contingency of historical phenomena even arm “enemy” forces. Empirical work therefore should be replaced by a politics of “matters of concern.” French sociologist Luc Boltanski added to this critique of critical perspectives by suggesting that an investigation into social modes of critique should replace critical sociology. The present contribution discusses both critiques of critique and the problems and limitations of the solutions proposed by both Latour and Boltanski. Against this background, and with a focus on discourse research, it stresses the ongoing need for precise empirical work as a condition for the social unfolding of critical perspectives.

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