Theory and observation in social sciences

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Outhwaite
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Psychology ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
Philosophy Of Social Science ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual

The concept of observation has received relatively little systematic attention in the social sciences, with the important exceptions of social psychology, social anthropology and some areas of sociological methodology such as ‘participant observation’. In a broader sense, however, concern with the relation between theory and ‘reality’, ‘data’, ‘empirical research’ and so on, has been a pervasive theme in the philosophy of social science and in the methodological self-reflection of the individual social sciences.

scholarly journals A Dialogue on Social Inquiry: Expanding Our Understanding of Sociological Thinking

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Rebat Kumar Dhakal
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Social World ◽  
Sociological Perspective ◽  
Philosophy Of Social Science ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Core ◽  
Social Inquiry ◽  
The Social

Highlights Social inquiry is much more than the study of society. It further excavates historical facts, critically reflects on everyday happenings, and envisions the future we wish to create. The intent of initiating this dialogue on social inquiry is two-fold: a) to offer a sociological perspective (i.e. ‘thinking sociologically’), and b) to expand our understanding of sociological thinking. Sociological thinking can be developed by examining the periphery of the core. Context matters in understanding any phenomenon under the sociological microscope. Sociological thinking allows many different viewpoints to coexist within a larger structure and that it respects pluralism. Sociological thinking is about developing or providing a perspective to examine social nuances. Sociological thinking should act as a means for social transformation.  Social inquiry serves as a methodology for the social sciences and humanities. It deals with the philosophy of social science and the workings of the social world – giving a way for understanding both the biosphere and the sociosphere.

The Social Psychology of Property: Looking Beyond Market Exchange

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 367-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janice Nadler
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Psychology ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Market Exchange ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
The Social ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Individual

Our social norms and moral values shape our beliefs about the propriety of different types of market exchanges. This review considers social and moral influences on beliefs about property and the consequences of these beliefs for the legal regulation of property. The focus is mainly on empirical evidence from social psychology, with additions from related areas like cognitive psychology, behavioral economics, and other social sciences. After briefly reviewing empirical findings on perceptions of property at the level of the individual person, I examine how social relationships shape perceptions about ownership and exchange of property, as well as the boundaries of the broad category of property. Finally, I explore one important type of socially embedded property—the home—and how social psychological conceptions of property as embedded in social relationships have clashed with the development of the legal doctrine of eminent domain.

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.

Social Anthropology and Social Science History

2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
David I. Kertzer
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Clifford Geertz ◽  
Simultaneous Movement

In the 1970s, when the social science history movement emerged in the United States, leading to the founding of the Social Science History Association, a simultaneous movement arose in which historians looked to cultural anthropology for inspiration. Although both movements involved historians turning to social sciences for theory and method, they reflected very different views of the nature of the historical enterprise. Cultural anthropology, most notably as preached by Clifford Geertz, became a means by which historians could find a theoretical basis in the social sciences for rejecting a scientific paradigm. This article examines this development while also exploring the complex ways cultural anthropology has embraced—and shunned—history in recent years.

History of Social Psychology at Mid-20th Century

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas F. Pettigrew
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Psychology ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social

The discipline of psychology has an extremely broad range—from the life sciences to the social sciences, from neuroscience to social psychology. These distinctly different components have varying histories of their own. Social psychology is psychology’s social science wing. The major social sciences—anthropology, economics, sociology, and political science—all had their origins in the 19th century or even earlier. But social psychology is much younger; it developed both in Europe and North America in the 20th century. The field’s enormous growth over the past century began modestly with a few scant locations, several textbooks, and a single journal in the 1920s. Today’s social psychologists would barely recognize their discipline in the years prior to World War II. But trends forming in the 1920s and 1930s would become important years later. With steady growth, especially starting in the 1960s, the discipline gained thousands of new doctorates and multiple journals scattered throughout the world. Social psychology has become a recognized, influential, and often-cited social science. It is the basis, for example, of behavioral economics as well as such key theories as authoritarianism in political science. Central to this extraordinary expansion were the principal events of mid-20th century. World War II, the growth of universities and the social sciences in general, rising prosperity, statistical advances, and other global changes set the stage for the discipline’s rapid development. Together with this growth, social psychology has expanded its topics in both the affective and cognitive domains. Indeed, new theories are so numerous that theoretical integration has become a prime need for the discipline.

The Conquest of Mythos by Logos: Countering Religion without Faith in Irenaeus, Coleridge and Gadamer

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-70
Author(s):  
Alexander J. B. Hampton
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Historical Contingency ◽  
Middle Position ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
The Social ◽  
Moral Freedom ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Historical Periods ◽  
Do So

Irenaeus, Coleridge and Gadamer all wrote about religion in distinct historical periods, however the work that each produced reflects the anthropological condition of the middle position. Furthermore, each thinker provides an opportunity for self-reflection about the motivations of faith without requiring the individual to abandon their religious belief in order to do so. In this manner they present a productive alternative to the required external views of the social sciences. The individual's position in mid-creation, his moral freedom and his historical contingence all require the acceptance, commitment and trust of faith. Gnosticism, Empiricist thought and the desire to overcome historical contingency all reveal intellectual impatience in riposte to this condition. This intellectual impatience seeks the absolute without the need for faith. For Irenaeus, Coleridge and Gadamer such absolute, logocentric, complete systems end up alienating man from the reality of the incomplete condition that permeates his existence and the faith-requiring mythos that ultimate realities necessitate in order to be communicated.

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