scholarly journals Editorial: The Future of Social Sciences

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bulent Tarman

We have been facing with several challenges in all over the World. Global and local economies are facing threats as well as the increasing numbers of migrants that have not been seen for several decades. Resources are becoming scarcer and more expensive as we consume more. Technology and especially the internet and social networking are changing the way we work, interact and communicate. The question of "Why is the study of social sciences so critical to our future?" has been asked number of times in the past! To speak of the future of the social sciences is not an easy task especially nowadays where the dynamics of the World has been dramatically changing which brings lots of crisis with pain at every level from local to global.  The name of this change has been called as the "New Order of the World" as some of the players lose their power and importance while new players comes in to show themselves and claim that they are also important and cannot be ignored!

1979 ◽  
Vol 3 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 242-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Kuklick

Despite differences in coloration Miller and Benson are birds of a feather. Although he is no Pollyanna, Miller believes that there has been a modest and decent series of advances in the social sciences and that the most conscientious, diligent, and intelligent researchers will continue to add to this stock of knowledge. Benson is much more pessimistic about the achievements of yesterday and today but, in turn, offers us the hope of a far brighter tomorrow. Miller explains Benson’s hyperbolic views about the past and future by distinguishing between pure and applied science and by pointing out Benson’s naivete about politics: the itch to understand the world is different from the one to make it better; and, Miller says, because Benson sees that we have not made things better, he should not assume we do not know more about them; Benson ought to realize, Miller adds, that the way politicians translate basic social knowledge into social policy need not bring about rational or desirable results. On the other side, Benson sees more clearly than Miller that the development of science has always been intimately intertwined with the control of the environment and the amelioration of the human estate.


Futures ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 118-134
Author(s):  
Barbara Adam

This chapter comprises an interview between Barbara Adam and the editors, and is followed by Adam’s ‘Honing Futures’, which is presented in four short verses of distilled theory. In the interview Adam reflects on thirty-five years of futures-thinking rooted in her deeply original work on time and temporality, and her innovative response to qualitative and linear definitions of time within the social sciences. The interview continues with a discussion of the way Adam’s thinking on futures intersects in her work with ideas of ethics and collective responsibility politics and concludes with a brief rationale for writing theory in verse form. In ‘Honing Futures’, a piece of futures theory verse form, Adam charts the movements and moments in considerations of the Not Yet and futurity’s active creation: from pluralized imaginings of the future, to an increasingly tangible and narrower anticipated future, to future-making as designing and reality-creating performance. Collectively, the verses identify the varied complex interdependencies of time, space, and matter with the past and future in all iterations of honing and making futures.


Author(s):  
Ahmet Sarıtaş ◽  
Elif Esra Aydın

Today, using of the internet extended social media by individuals habitually enables both the business firms and politicians to reach their target mass at any time. In this context, internet has become a popular place recently where political communication and campaigns are realized by ensuring a new dimension to political campaigns. When we examine the posts and discussions in the social media, we can say that they are converted into open political sessions. As there are no censorship in such channels, individuals have a freedom to reach to any partial/impartial information and obtain transparent and fast feedback, and with this regard, political parties, leaders and candidates have a chance to be closer to electors. In this study, it is aimed to give information about the social media, present what medium has been used for election campaigns from the past until today and besides, by considering the effects of effective and efficient use of social media and new trends related to the internet by politicians, together with their applications in the world, to make suggestions about its situation and application in Turkey.


Author(s):  
Eric Hobsbawm

This chapter discusses Marxist historiography in the present times. In the interpretation of the world nowadays, there has been a rise in the so-called anti-Rankean reaction in history, of which Marxism is an important but not always fully acknowledged element. This movement challenged the positivist belief that the objective structure of reality was self-explanatory, and that all that was needed was to apply the methodology of science to it and explain why things happened the way they did. This movement also brought together history with the social sciences, therefore turning it into part of a generalizing discipline capable of explaining transformations of human society in the course of its past. This new perspective on the past is a return to ‘total history’, in which the focus is not merely on the ‘history of everything’ but history as an indivisible web wherein all human activities are interconnected.


2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-338
Author(s):  
Russell Earl Phillips ◽  
Michael Kitchens

Religious fundamentalism (RF) is a relevant topic in the world today. Over the past two decades there is an increase in definitions, theories, and measures of RF in the social sciences. The present publication reviews and integrates this information into an overarching definition and provides suggestions for future research.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 519-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vlad Petre Glăveanu

In this editorial I introduce the possible as an emerging field of inquiry in psychology and related disciplines. Over the past decades, significant advances have been made in connected areas – counterfactual thinking, anticipation, prospection, imagination and creativity, etc. – and several calls have been formulated in the social sciences to study human beings and societies as systems that are open to possibility and to the future. However, engaging with the possible, in the sense of both becoming aware of it and actively exploring it, represents a subject in need of further theoretical elaboration. In this paper, I review several existing approaches to the possible before briefly outlining a new, sociocultural account. While the former are focused on cognitive processes and uphold the old dichotomy between the possible and the actual or real, the latter grows out of a social ontology grounded in notions of difference, positions, perspectives, reflexivity, and dialogue. In the end, I argue that a better understanding of the possible can help us cultivate it in both mind and society.


2009 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 330-342
Author(s):  
Jean-Luc Migué

Long term forecasting, as popularized by some recent models of the world, appears to be a-scientific from the standpoint of the social scientists. The basis for this radical judgment is threefold: First, structural relations incorporated into these models of the world seldom go further than stating rigid relations between some physical variables and world output. Second, the factual basis on which these relations are built is often not validated by past trends. Finally, the framework within which these models are cast rules out all possibly for the social sciences to contribute to our understanding of the future. Political and economic adaptation mechanisms are excluded. Futurology as developed by some models is based on poor measurement and poor theory.


2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Muhammad Amin Abdullah

The trend of Islamic sciences in the future, especially kalam Science/Islamic philosophy is a religion sciences that haveto interact and dialogue with modern science, the social sciences and humanities. If scientific Kalam and IslamicPhilosophy felt enough with himself (al-muhafadzah ala al-qadim al-shlih), refusing to touch and connect with otherscientific (wa al-akhdz bi al- jadid al-ashlah), then there is no future can be expected, morever their contribution to thedevelopment of the nations character. This paper describes the themes of what is required to form the new religious(Islamic) worldview that can contribute to the development of the nations character. Islamic sciences requires freshijtihad to deal with the contemporary of life, it is not enough just to repeating the experience of the past without lookinghow the development of the present and the future. Past (al-turts) is still needed, but also needed a paradigm shifttowards the present (al-hadtsah) in view of the contemporary religious and solve problems, especially those related tothe issue of character development in the format state of the nation (nation-states).


Over the past two decades, the internet has exponentially expanded to every part of the world. It has made every single individual as its either consumer or even a producer. And with the evolution of different social networking sites, it has even made individuals upload their personal content over the internet. This personal information compromises information ranging from even the smallest detail ranging from his birthdate to even the place he is traveling to. Uploading personal information over the internet has leveraged various opportunities, it could either be business intelligence or even for the purpose of overseeing a person with antisocial behavior.


Kybernetes ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 35 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 385-402
Author(s):  
Cor van Dijkum ◽  
Johannes J.F. Schroots

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