The Sociological Point of View: The Challenge of the Deep South to Research in the Social Sciences

2017 ◽  
pp. 159-166

Dreyfus argues that there is a basic methodological difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences, a difference that derives from the different goals and practices of each. He goes on to argue that being a realist about natural entities is compatible with pluralism or, as he calls it, “plural realism.” If intelligibility is always grounded in our practices, Dreyfus points out, then there is no point of view from which one can ask about or provide an answer to the one true nature of ultimate reality. But that is consistent with believing that the natural sciences can still reveal the way the world is independent of our theories and practices.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-126
Author(s):  
Drance Elias da Silva

This Article may be situated within the rapport field between Philosophy and Social Sciences, at the search regarding to the concept concerning the Representation. Regarding to Philosophy, under a general view, the concept, concerning Representation, has been, since a long time, understood as a trail which one would get througl reaching to the real and true ones. Representation, as the thought contents expression form had not been known departing from Philosophy as a barrier against the objectivity concerning the knowledge. Representation, in its source, has been constituting itself a cognictive, inmanent reflection, related to the conscience inner subjectivity. But departing from the episthemological point of view, it has been not so easy for the campus concerning the Culture Sciences as a totality. In the theory regarding to knowledge, the Social Sciences campus and, more specifically, in the human life Symbolic dimension constitutive aspects, it has been, often, accepted negatively as an entry door for the histotical social reality. Nowadays, one may conclude that the contents concerning the Culture are deeply rooted within the histotical reality, which may present new dimension the reading regarding to the Symbolical side concerning the human life, under the view regarding to the unseen aspect, such as the intellectualistic Western dominant Culture allows understanding the way which could be in.


Author(s):  
О. О. Стрельнікова

The present article is devoted to the problems of inclusion in modern Ukrainian society. The concept and essence of inclusion are studied from the point of view of the theory of social comprehension (of the essence of inclusive group), dynamics of social structure and social interactions. The inclusion is divided into social and educational forms according to the modern approaches to considering types of inclusion. The main forms of inclusion are analyzed from the point of view of pedagogical and social sciences. Special attention is given to the social inclusion in modern Ukrainian society. The comparative analysis of the categories «integration» and «inclusion» is carried out and the main common and distinctive features of these categories are determined in the article. It is said that social inclusion can be analyzed only in context of social exclusion, because they are both parts of the same social process. The potential of such further analysis are researched. The peculiarities of the process of social inclusion in modern Ukrainian society are analyzed. The main characteristics of social inclusion are described in the article on the basis of analysis of modern scientific literature. Special attention is given to the social inclusion in social work and social science. From the point of view of socio-pedagogical science social inclusion is analyzed as democratic action about comprehension somebody or the whole social group into some activity or cultural process. Social inclusion in modern Ukrainian society becomes social mechanism, some kind of an instrument, aimed at overcoming the barriers and constraints on the path to social well-being, which radically changes the existing state social politics. The results of the research are used in the social work, pedagogical and social sciences.


1986 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick Stoutland

AbstractThe reasons-causes debate concerns whether explanations of human behavior in terms of an agent's reasons presuppose causal laws. This paper considers three approaches to this debate: the covering law model which holds that there are causal laws covering both reasons and behavior, the intentionalist approach which denies any role to causal laws, and Donald Davidson’s point of view which denies that causal laws connect reasons and behavior, but holds that reasons and behavior must be covered by physical laws if reasons explanations are to be valid. I defend the intentionalist approach against the two causalist approaches and conclude with reflections on the significance of the debate for the social sciences.


2019 ◽  
pp. 63-85
Author(s):  
J.P.S. Uberoi

This chapter presents a discussion of international intellectual trends in the social sciences, theoretical and empirical studies in India, the question of independence of mind or home rule in intellectual institutions. Following the swarajist project outlined earlier of viewing Europe and its systems of knowledge and practices from an independent Indian point of view, this chapter is in effect a research outline for a new structural sociology in India. We are introduced to structuralism as it exists in the world, its scope and definition and as a methodology for the social sciences. This is followed by the approach to structuralism as scientific theory, method and as philosophical world view. Finally discusses are the principles of structural analysis, structuralism in language, literature and culture, in social structure, with regard to society and the individual, religion, philosophy, politics, sociology and social-anthropology.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 226-241
Author(s):  
Jordi Planella-Ribera ◽  
Asun Pié-Balaguer ◽  
Eva Patricia Gil-Rodríguez

In this article, we look at educational forms from the point of view of queer theory. We understand educational forms as techno-scientific practices in the sense defined by Donna Haraway (1997, Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse. Routledge). We contemplate the eminently subjugating nature of educational institutions in industrial and post-industrial societies. Our work is based on the introduction of queer theory into the social sciences and its influence on pedagogy, promoting the avoidance of normalising and exclusive subjectivities. We propose a use and understanding of queer that goes beyond the strictly sexual, in order to go as deeply as possible into a critique of bodily abnormality as a form of construction and remission. We also analyse the role that technology plays in building normality and/or making subversions possible, as well as its consequences for bodies and subjectivities in our modernised society.


Dialogue ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-326
Author(s):  
Stéphane Courtois

AbstractThe general aim of this paper is to question the idea that hermeneutic and critical social sciences have to be conceived as specific embodiments of the scientific enterprise. This idea is rather implicit in Habermas's work, but has its grounds in his thesis about the argumentative unity of all sciences, upheld for the first time in 1973. Such a point of view turns out to be untenable for two reasons. First, the indiscriminating inclusion of the hermeneutic and critical social sciences in scientific enterprise raises problems of consistency with regard to the systematic guidelines of The Theory of Communicative Action. Moreover, the thesis of argumentative unity of the sciences itself is incompatible with Habermas's methodological conception of the role of Verstehen in the social sciences developed in section 1.4 of the book. Finally, the author argues that this conception calls for another understanding of the status and role of the hermeneutic and critical disciplines, which is outlined in some detail.


1950 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-149
Author(s):  
W. Rex Crawford

The only words in the title of this symposium which do not cause difficulty are “of” and “in,” since even Latin America is a “nomer” that many protest is a “misnomer,” for some parts of the region southeast of the U.S.A., and “pathology” and “democracy” can get into water as hot and deep as any that lies under the thin ice over which the social sciences skate. The very lumping together in our discussion of twenty republics varying as they do in Latin America is a procedure of doubtful accuracy, and one which at first encounter arouses the ire of any good nationalist in these countries. The term “pathological” suggests too strongly a complacent superior attitude on our own part that may befit the propagandist or the naive and uninformed man on the street, but not the social scientist. The world does not fall so neatly into the patterns of perfect democracy and the outer darkness as Mr. Churchill has supposed. Can we not accept a certain relativity in these matters and remember the large-sized mote in our own eye?With the struggle of almost innumerable thinkers to define the direction and goal, we are surely familiar. The writer has no intention of assembling all the definitions available, for if they were all assembled, sociologists might lay the emphasis not upon forms and constitutions so much as upon something broader that earlier theologians would have called men's will and men's love. Since the development of “Mr. Tylor's science,” cultural anthropology, we would be more likely to say that the legal arrangements grow out of and express the culture; that back of them lies a slow secular growth of the idea that personality, the freedom and full development of the individual are ultimate values, not to be sacrificed to the state; that power may be necessary for survival, and that unity or consensus or conformity may be necessary to power, but that something like Albert Schweitzer's “reverence for life” is a deeper principle. These things are no sooner said than we realize that we often sin against the ideals we cherish and fear the freedom to which we give lip-service. The practice falls far short of the preaching.


2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 151-160
Author(s):  
Soledad Balerdi

This paper reflects on the precautions to be taken into account when addressing the study, from the point of view of the social sciences, of cultures and communities. This is done through ethnographic research in a neighbourhood (barrio) of migrants from an indigenous community in the province of Chaco, in northern Argentina, who have migrated to the city of La Plata (in Buenos Aires province) and have settled on its periphery. The article starts from the idea that ethnicity comes into play, situationally, as a resource rather than as a distinct and immutable feature. Even when it is necessary to describe how notions like culture and ethnicity act in practice and what meaning they have for the actors, social researchers should not  historicize them in the specific contexts in which they are brought into play.Keywords: culture, ethnicity, indigenous community, ethnography, ArgentinaRésumé: Cet article met en évidence les précautions et les enjeux à prendre en considération en sciences sociales lorsque l’on aborde les questions culturelles dans les communautés. Cet article met en évidence un travail de terrain de type ethnographique dans un quartier (barrio) de La Plata (province de Buenor Aires) où se trouve une forte concentration de population migrante d’autochtones en provenance de la province de Chaco, dans le nord de l’Argentine. Plutôt que d’approcher l’ethnicité dans une perspective essentialiste et d’en faire une caractéristique immuable de l’identité, cet article s’inspire d’une approche relationnelle. Plutôt que de tenter de figer le sens de notions telles « ethnicité » ou «culture », cet article met en evidence l’importance de reconstruire le sens de ces notions à partir des données contextuelles et du sens qu’elles revêtent pour les acteurs.Mots clé: culture, ethnicité, communauté indigene, ethnographie, Argentine


1981 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-8

One of the fields of sociology which is experiencing a dramatic explosion is that catch‐all area of Women's Studies. Books and articles touching on women's experiences in the labour market or in the home, the education of girls or images of femininity, the impact of the law on women or sexism in the social sciences have been proliferating in the last decade. Much of the impetus has been provided by the renascent Women's Movement, and the various academic concerns echo the diverse attacks on the status quo being made by politically active women. The one thing which holds all this material together is an explicit concern to bring women to the centre of the stage in the social sciences, instead of leaving them (as they so often have been) in the wings or with mere walk‐on parts. Taking the woman's point of view is seen as a legitimate corrective to the tendency to ignore women altogether. But is this sufficient to constitute the nucleus of a new speciality within sociology, which is what seems to be happening to ‘Women's Studies’ and ‘feminist’ social science? More seriously, should sociological discussions of women be ghettoised into special courses on women in society? As a preliminary attempt to redress the balance maybe such separate development can be justified, but if that is all that happens, the enriching potential of feminist social science may well be lost to mainstream sociology. It is not just that feminist social scientists want women to be brought in to complete the picture. It is not just that they claim that half the picture is being left unexposed. The claims are often much more ambitious than that: what much feminist writing is attempting is a demonstration of the distortion in the half image which is exposed. An injection of feminist thinking into practically any sociological speciality could lead to a profound re‐orientation of that field. More than this, a feminist approach can indicate the ways in which traditional boundaries between sociological specialities can obscure women and their special position in society. Feminist social scientists throw down the gauntlet on the way in which the field of sociology has traditionally been carved up. But if women's studies are kept in their ghetto, this challenge will be lost: to me, the explicitly critical stance which feminist research takes with respect to mainstream sociology is one of its most exciting qualities, and such research has important insights to contribute to the development of the discipline.


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