scholarly journals Social Justice in Islam

2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-109
Author(s):  
Sajjad Idris

The dynamics of Islamic revival/activism have been the subject of renewedinterest in the aftermath of the 9/ I I tragedy. Most of this interest has beenconfined to media sound bites that present little or no appreciation for thelinkages between cause and effect, despite appeals by some conscientiouscommentators for balanced analysis. Deina Abdelkader's Social Justice inIslam, therefore, is a fresh contribution to studies on Islamic revivalism inits contemporary context. Even though the study covers the period from1988 to 1993, its examination of revivalist (or, as Abdelkader prefers,activist) sentiment and activities in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey through thedual lens of maqasid al-Shari 'ah (aims of Shari'ah) and the legal doctrineof maslahah (public good) is timely, for it connects popular sentiment toexpression. The legal convention of maslahah and the paradigm of themaqasid serve as baselines from which the author seeks to create a methodto understand the revivalists' thoughts and actions, as well as the feedbackmechanisms created by them to understand how they must function infuture contexts.Abdelkader uses statistical analyses to examine the data in order tostudy the relationship between the maqasid and the levels of activism measuredin each country. This lends her work credibility beyond the use ofanecdotes, which is needed in contemporary social science research. Thework is comprised of seven chapters followed by appendices that presentthe data collected for Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey. The chapters focus ontheories of Islamic activism, the relationship between activism and publicexpectations, and the research methodology used. A glossary of Arabictenns is included, as well as an extensive bibliography. A preface is pr<rvided by Taha Jabir al-Alwani.Abdelkader's first task is to review theories of lslamic activism/revivalin order to provide the reader with an understanding of its real causes. Shereviews three approaches used in the study of l slamic activism/revival: themodernization/economic development approach, which focuses on thedynamics of modernization; the popular discontent approach, which examinesthe sources and degree of mobilization oflslamic activism/revival; andthe cultural studies approach, which emphasizes the customs and traditions ...

1990 ◽  
Vol 15 (01) ◽  
pp. 149-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adelaide H. Villmoare

In reading the essays by David M. Trubek and John Esser and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, I thought about what I call epistemological moments that have provided contexts within which to understand the relationship between social science research and politics. I will sketch four moments and suggest that I find one of them more compelling than the others because it speaks particularly to social scientists with critical, democratic ambitions and to Trubek and Esser's concerns about politics and the intellectual vitality of the law and society movement.


Author(s):  
John Coakley ◽  
Jennifer Todd

This chapter traces the history of the relationship between the two communities in Northern Ireland and the tension between the British and Irish governments within which it was traditionally embedded. It documents the process of incremental—and sometimes radical—societal change that has transformed the nature of the conflict, as the overwhelmingly dominant position of the unionist community has been replaced by a more evenly balanced relationship. Associated with this has been the evolution of institutional machinery designed to facilitate conflict resolution and the emergence of effective channels of communication between British and Irish elites. The chapter describes the manner in which the testimonies of these elites were collected as part of research on the process of negotiation of peace in Northern Ireland. It assesses the value of elite interviews and witness seminars as significant source material for social science research.


2020 ◽  
pp. 123-158
Author(s):  
Sandra Halperin ◽  
Oliver Heath

This chapter shows how to develop an answer to a particular research question. It first considers the requirements and components of an answer to a research question before discussing the role of ‘theory’ in social science research, what a ‘theoretical framework’ is, and what a hypothesis is. It then explores the three components of a hypothesis: an independent variable, a dependent variable, and a proposition (a statement about the relationship between the variables). It also looks at the different types of hypotheses and how they guide various kinds of research. It also explains why conceptual and operational definitions of key terms are important and how they are formulated. Finally, it offers suggestions on how to answer normative questions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 95 ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Doherty ◽  
Kate Brown

AbstractWaste studies brings to labor history a suite of conceptual tools to think about precarious labor, human capital, migration, the material quality of labor in urban and rural infrastructures, and the porosity and interchangeability of workers’ bodies in the toxic environments in which they labor. In this introduction, we explore the conceptual insights that the study of waste offers for the field of labor history, and what, in turn, a focus on labor history affords to social science research on waste. We examine the relationship between surplus populations and surplus materials, the location of waste work at the ambiguous fulcrum of trash and value, and the significance of labor for the understanding of infrastructure.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-81
Author(s):  
Eric Van Giessen

These four poems are excerpts from a multifaceted project entitled Queerly Faithful: A Queer-Poet Community Autoethnography on Identity and Belonging in Faith Communities. This project attempts to bolster and critique contemporary studies of queer and faith identities as they manifest in the lives of queer people of faith by approaching the subject with a queer sensibility (Holman Jones & Adams 2010: 204). One facet of this approach involved my use of poetry as a personal reflexive medium on the research process itself. The poems invite the reader into my experience as I wrestle with articulating methodology, theory framing, data presentation, and the questions and challenges of producing a fixed document to present the findings of a queer project that resists fixedness. By blurring the lines between poetry/narrative/storytelling and social science writing, I invite the readers “to become coparticipants, engaging the storyline morally, emotionally, aesthetically, and intellectually” (Ellis & Bochner 2000: 745). The poems, which are scattered throughout the research paper, nuance the traditional academic language and prose analysis in the paper and serve to challenge conceptions of ‘proper’ social science writing and position the writing itself as a method of inquiry (Prendergast, Leggo & Sameshima 2009; Richardson & St. Pierre 2005; Richardson 1993). The poems in isolation, as presented here, invite the reader to consider the strengths and challenges of social science research and articulate my struggle to honour the sacred stories of my participants through fixed language. The poems play with the questions: what does it mean to be a social justice researcher and how might our work, methodologically as well as topically, critique and undermine oppressive epistemologies that elevate and prioritize certain voices over others?


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 60-64
Author(s):  
Raflis Raflis ◽  
Arozato Lase

The problem in this journal is gerund, verbal ending -ing and serves as a noun. Gerund differs from grammar construction in English because it is able to convert a verb into a noun by adding -ing at the end of the verb. At the same time, there is also a continuous tense form that adds -ing at the end of the verb. For students who start learning English will be confused with the form -ing that can be a noun and also a verb in the same sentence. The method used is the method of distribution, the method of data analysis into object analysis is part of the language itself. Objects in the distribution method are always part or element of the language being observed. In analyzing the data, the authors use qualitative methods. Qualitative research is a type of social science research that collects and works with non-numerical data and which seeks to interpret the meaning of the data being analyzed. In this study, researchers used descriptive design with the aim to analyze gerund as subject, direct object, complement of subject, and object of preposition at Tempo magazine in 2015. The author finds gerund formulation as follows: Gerund as Subject (Main + Main Verb + Complement), gerund as Direct Object (Subject + Main Verb + Gerund), gerund as Subject Complement (Subject + to be + Gerund), and gerund as Object of Preposition (Subject + Primary Keyword + Preposition + Gerund). The study found that Tempo magazine used gerund in magazines with higher gerund percentages as the preposition object. There are 8 gerunds as the subject, 5 gerund as a direct object, 6 gerund as complementary subject, and 23 gerund as the preposition object.


1996 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raquel Pinderhughes

The toxic pollution problem is composed of several interrelated parts which are involved in the process of production, use, and disposal of chemicals and products considered necessary for society. Each day, millions of pounds of toxic chemicals are used, stored, disposed of, and transported in and out of communities throughout the United States. Most Americans assume that pollution and other environmental hazards are problems faced equally by everyone in our society. But a growing body of research shows that the most common victims of environmental hazards and pollution are minorities and the poor. Disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards is part of the complex cycle of discrimination and deprivation faced by minorities in the United States. This article examines social science empirical research on the relationship between race, class, and the distribution of environmental hazards and the theoretical perspectives which have emerged to explain environmental inequities. The article also discusses the link between the environmental justice movement, which seeks to confront the causes and consequences of environmental inequities, and social science research on environmental inequity.


Author(s):  
Gary Goertz ◽  
James Mahoney

This chapter focuses on scope conditions in qualitative and quantitative research. It begins with a simple example, Hooke's law from physics, to illustrate the concept of “scope.” It then considers some of the most popular “within-model” responses to causal heterogeneity problems, showing that the option of changing the causal model to address causal heterogeneity issues is more attractive to quantitative researchers than to qualitative researchers. It also examines how the existence of causal complexity and concerns about fit with data can lead scholars to use scope conditions. Finally, it discusses the relationship between empirical testing and the proposed scope of theories and suggests that issues of scope raise Fundamental Tradeoffs in social science research, including tradeoffs concerning the tension between generality and parsimony, and between generality and issues of model fit.


2014 ◽  
Vol 63 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 2-14
Author(s):  
Julie Still ◽  
Zara Wilkinson

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address the use of librarians as a study population in social science research outside of the field of library and information science. Additionally, it aims to make general claims about how frequently librarians have been studied compared to other occupations, as well as to identify and describe existing research that has used librarians as a study population. Design/methodology/approach – The described study had two parts. Two social science databases were searched using the subject headings “librarians” and eight additional occupations, and the results for all nine occupations were analyzed. The peer-reviewed results for “librarians” were then coded by content. The articles that used librarians as a study population were identified, reviewed and described. Findings – Although librarians, as an occupational group, possess many characteristics that should make them an ideal choice for social science research, they seem to be studied less frequently than other occupations. Research limitations/implications – Other occupational groups, such as mathematicians, were also studied infrequently. Further research might consider, more broadly, why some occupations are studied more frequently than others. Future studies might also compare librarianship to other female-dominated professions, such as nursing and education. Additionally, the subject heading “librarians” was applied to articles that studied non-professional library employees, making it difficult to isolate only articles with a focus on degreed librarians. Originality/value – Few other studies have examined social science research in which librarians are used as the study population. By focusing on how librarians are studied and written about in other fields, this paper will add to the body of literature on the professional image of librarians.


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