scholarly journals Graphic design and research in social sciences: Jacques Bertin and the Laboratoire de Graphique

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Anne-Lyse Renon

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> The contemporary rise of data visualization and imaging technologies in all areas of knowledge now places design and visuality at the heart of research and its communication, with fundamental implications for scientific epistemology. Jacques Bertin's Laboratoire de Graphique (LG) of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in France, is a privileged entry for this study, since it was a major player in this movement, at the crossroads of graphic innovation and social sciences as they reinvented themselves in the second half of the twentieth century.</p><p>This intervention aims to explore a black box of research in the humanities and social sciences, according to two approaches, that of the interdisciplinary collaborations and that more experimental of the graphic design and formatting of information. By design we mean as all the processes from graphical display of data, to CHI, new methods of scientific representation.</p><p>This laboratory was created and directed by the cartographer and semiologist Jacques Bertin from 1954 to 2000 at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Études and, under the impetus of Fernand Braudel, at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), is considered as a forerunner of productions and reflections on graphic research in the social sciences. His work articulates an unprecedented production of images, visualization of data and scientific research, forming the subject of a fundamental treatise, Graphical Semiology (1967). The intervention will trace the largely unknown history of this laboratory, will pinpoint the contributions and the intellectual trajectory of its graphic experiments and collaborations.</p><p>Indeed, while the activities related to the LG's cartographic research are relatively well known, its interactions with history, statistics, sociology, anthropology, urbanism, literature and the decorative arts remain unexplored.</p><p>Jacques Bertin, in <i>Semiology of graphics</i> (1967), highlighted the concept of « visual variables » to build a general rhetoric of visual representation: background shape orientation grain color, etc.</p><p>The paradox of these visual variables is the desire to achieve an objectivity of representation, while taking into account the ”aesthetic“ part of the data. This graphic rhetoric developed by Bertin has influenced many works and disciplines, becoming almost standard, convention, rules. In this session we propose to discuss the relationship between design and visual variables in the contemporary visual display of information.</p><p>We will start by presenting the two complementary funds of archives of the Laboratoire de Graphique the NAs and the BnF, allowing a genetic analysis of the origin of certain concepts of Bertin to give an account of the process of their elaboration.</p><p>We will present collaborations, content, and processes to produce a story that is at once aesthetic, social, economic, and political. We will measure the evolution of scientific imaginaries, the values and uses of representation methods and graphic communication tools, their epistemological scope into 4 thematics:</p><ol><li>The Life of the Graphic Lab: Pathways, Collaborations and Practices at EHESS. Collaboration Braudel-Bertin,creation of the visual identity of the EHESS, practices and conceptualization of the place of graphic research in the social sciences. Bertin heritage in current research programs</li><li>The graphic semiotics of Jacques Bertin: genesis and effects, including in contemporary digital humanities (statistics,big data, cultural analytics). Visual variable and Display of information as the starting point of a research, fieldworks</li><li>The expressivity and plasticity of graphic work: the representation of geographical and human territory. Contribution of the experimental work of the Graphical Laboratory to cartography; materialization of the instrumental design and graphic knowledge in the uses and materiality of the cards from the point of view of the plastic creation and the patrimonial conservation. Objectivity and visual display: relationships between graphics and fact in scientific demonstration</li><li>Graphical semiology in contemporary research, from graphic semiology to information design; pedagogical and epistemological issues of graphic semiology; dissemination of the work of the Laboratoire de Graphique and impact on the field of design and different disciplines in the international context. « Redesigning » the concepts of Bertin: how new data processing tools can contribute?</li></ol><p>The new convergences between design and research will be mobilized to question the place devolved to design in the visual and instrumental construction of contemporary scientific practices and knowledge. This will stimulate a dynamic and a collective experience of interdisciplinary discovery of uses of these methods and tools in heritage context.</p>

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.


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


1969 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Langrod

Within the development of the studies of religion by the social sciences, a place ought to be given to a scientific approach to the administrative aspect of religious organizations. Yet this is an aspect of the Catholic Church to which very little attention has been paid so far; various lawyers and historians have underlined its importance. An approach from the point of view of the administrative science would make it possible to give the necessary importance to the methods of management and to the administrative proceedings. It would then be possible to envisage the social reality of an institution as an 'administra tive fact'. But this is only feasible if the starting point is a pluridisci plinary approach which would transform the administrative science into a science of synthesis (law, ethics, sociology, social psychology, political science). The study of the functioning of religious organizations and its repercus sion on their internal functions offers great scientific possibilities, especially at a time when the Catholic Church is passing through profound changes. In order to do this, it is necessary to create some adequate concepts which cannot be the same as those used for the study of other institutions. Some steps in this direction have been undertaken both at the level of the universal Church, as well as the diocesan level. The scientific and practical results of the development of such studies can be of great importance. This, for instance, would allow one to situate the Church's efforts for adaptation and reorganization within an appropriate theore tical framework.


2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 107-110
Author(s):  
N. V. Scarfe

Geography, being one of the social studies, has a unique contribution, a particular point of view to bring to bear in understanding Society. Its specific Junction is to train future citizens to imagine the conditions of the great world stage and so help them to think sanely about political and social conditions in the world around. Geography is the only subject that deals directly and fully with the influence of the physical environment upon human action and life. The author stresses the point that History and Geography are equally important and need to be given the same amount of time in the curriculum. But History and Geography are note the same : both are different ways of interpreting facts. In stressing the distinction between History and Geography, the author wishes to improve the teaching of both History and Geography, but as different disciplines. Finally the author points out that Geography progresses in difficulty and sequence, like arithmetic, so that one year is a prerequisite of the geographical concepts to be introduced in the next year of study. Geography is more appealing and more real to children than many other social sciences and so more stimulating to intellectual effort.


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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-192
Author(s):  
Nadia Ruiz

Brian Epstein has recently argued that a thoroughly microfoundationalist approach towards economics is unconvincing for metaphysical reasons. Generally, Epstein argues that for an improvement in the methodology of social science we must adopt social ontology as the foundation of social sciences; that is, the standing microfoundationalist debate could be solved by fixing economics’ ontology. However, as I show in this paper, fixing the social ontology prior to the process of model construction is optional instead of necessary and that metaphysical-ontological commitments are often the outcome of model construction, not its starting point. By focusing on the practice of modeling in economics the paper provides a useful inroad into the debate about the role of metaphysics in the natural and social sciences more generally.


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.


1968 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 199-212

Cette bibliographie a été prépa rée par le Service d'Échange d'Infor mations Scientifiques de la Maison des Sciences de l'Honmme à Paris, sous la responsabilité de Mme M.F. Essyad, et prend la suite de celle qui a été publiée dans le volume 6 (6), décembre 1967. Elle recense les prin cipales études qui traitent explicite ment de concepts utilisés dans les sciences sociales. Ces concepts sont présentés en français et en anglais de manière à faciliter un dépistage dans ces deux langues.


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