scholarly journals FICTIONING SOCIAL THEORY: THE USE OF FICTION TO ENRICH, INFORM, AND CHALLENGE THE THEORETICAL IMAGINATION. Introduction

Digithum ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olli Pyyhtinen
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Sociological Imagination ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The introduction to the special issue taps into discussions about the inseparability of science and fiction. Commencing from the idea that scientific statements are distinguished from fiction only a posteriori, not a priori, the piece asks, how fiction could be used as a theoretical resource in social scientific thinking. Could it inform, enrich, extend, intensify, and challenge the sociological imagination? Besides rejecting any clear-cut separation of social science and fictional and artistic forms, the text seeks to unsettle our certainty as to what counts as “fact” and what as “fiction” in the first place. It also suggests that examining the relationship of sociology and fictional and artistic forms helps us unsettle the institutionalized disciplinary ways of ordering knowledge and thought and that there may be a poetics or fiction to be uncovered in sociological scholarship, as sociology is also a form of storytelling.

The Relationship of Social Science to Policy: The Case of the President's Crime Commission

1985 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
W F Bengston
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Policy Recommendations ◽  
Crime Commission ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Methods Of Operation

The structure and methods of operation of President Johnson's Crime Commission are described. From the unpublished transcripts of the Commission meetings, the process by which the Commission utilized relevant data, theory, and perspectives in the formulation of its policy recommendations is analyzed. It is concluded that social scientific information and perspectives, although important, were not the significant basis for formulating the recommendations of the Crime Commission. The scientific purposes, methods, and audiences of social science are not readily transferred to the political purposes, methods, and audiences of social policy formulation. Extrascientific political considerations become the significant immediate consideration in policy formulation and implementation.

Feudal Europe, 800–1300: communal discourse and conflictual practices

1992 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 427-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Fischer
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Structural Theory ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Fundamental Significance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Scientific Argument

The discipline of international relations faces a new debate of fundamental significance. After the realist challenge to the pervasive idealism of the interwar years and the social scientific argument against realism in the late 1950s, it is now the turn of critical theorists to dispute the established paradigms of international politics, having been remarkably successful in several other fields of social inquiry. In essence, critical theorists claim that all social reality is subject to historical change, that a normative discourse of understandings and values entails corresponding practices, and that social theory must include interpretation and dialectical critique. In international relations, this approach particularly critiques the ahistorical, scientific, and materialist conceptions offered by neorealists. Traditional realists, by contrast, find a little more sympathy in the eyes of critical theorists because they join them in their rejection of social science and structural theory. With regard to liberal institutionalism, critical theorists are naturally sympathetic to its communitarian component while castigating its utilitarian strand as the accomplice of neorealism. Overall, the advent of critical theory will thus focus the field of international relations on its “interparadigm debate” with neorealism.

scholarly journals VALIDATION OF LIDAR SURVEY DATA BY COMPARISON OF SEVERAL UNCERTAINTY MODELS

2020 ◽  
Vol XLIII-B3-2020 ◽  
pp. 1385-1390
Author(s):  
N. Seube
Keyword(s):  
Point Cloud ◽  
A Priori ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Timing Errors ◽  
Beam Incidence ◽  
A Priori Uncertainty ◽  
Uncertainty Models ◽  
Attitude Uncertainty ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract. This paper introduce a new method for validating the precision of an airborne or a mobile LiDAR data set. The proposed method is based on the knowledge of an a Combined Standard Measurement Uncertainty (CSMU) model which describes LiDAR point covariance matrix and thus uncertainty ellipsoid. The model we consider includes timing errors and most importantly the incidence of the LiDAR beam. After describing the relationship between the beam incidence and other variable uncertainty (especially attitude uncertainty), we show that we can construct a CSMU model giving the covariance of each oint as a function of the relative geometry between the LiDAR beam and the point normal. The validation method we propose consist in comparing the CSMU model (predictive a priori uncertainty) t the Standard Deviation Alog the Surface Normal (SDASN), for all set of quasi planr segments of the point cloud. Whenever the a posteriori (i.e; observed by the SDASN) level of uncertainty is greater than a priori (i.e; expected) level of uncertainty, the point fails the validation test. We illustrate this approach on a dataset acquired by a Microdrones mdLiDAR1000 system.

Imagination and Art

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Swedberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Basic Knowledge ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the role of imagination and the arts in helping social scientists to theorize well. However deep one's basic knowledge of social theory is, and however many concepts, mechanisms, and theories one knows, unless this knowledge is used in an imaginative way, the result will be dull and noncreative. A good research topic should among other things operate as an analogon—that is, it should be able to set off the theoretical imagination of the social scientist. Then, when a social scientist writes, he or she may want to write in such a way that the reader's theoretical imagination is stirred. Besides imagination, the chapter also discusses the relationship of social theory to art. There are a number of reason for this, including the fact that in modern society, art is perceived as the height of imagination and creativity.

scholarly journals Labor Laid Waste: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Waste Work

2019 ◽  
Vol 95 ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Doherty ◽  
Kate Brown
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Labor History ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Material Quality ◽  
Precarious Labor ◽  
The Relationship

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.

James Willard Hurst as Entrepreneur for the Field of Law and Social Science

2000 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryant G. Garth
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Law And Society ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
Professional Identification ◽  
The Law ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Celebrations of the career of Willard Hurst tend to concentrate, quite understandably, on his scholarship in legal history. Most of those who now read and comment on his works are professional legal historians, and they tend to read and define Hurst according to that professional identification. This article takes a different approach, concentrating on Hurst's own role in the more general politics of legal scholarship. Hurst was not content with making a mark in legal history. He sought to challenge the legal establishment. We see the legacy of his efforts in the development of the field of law and social science, institutionalized in the mid 1960s in the Law and Society Association (LSA). Therefore, my focus is on the sociology and politics of scholarship rather than on intellectual history. I will not examine the relationship of Hurst's particular works to those who came before or after him, nor will I go through the exercise of suggesting what was good or lasting or useful about his work for present purposes.

Prediction and Planning in Culture Change

1959 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Steward
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Culture Change ◽  
Applied Anthropology ◽  
Social Planning ◽  
Salient Points ◽  
Native Populations ◽  
The World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This paper is concerned with the relationship of prediction in cultural change to social planning. More specifically, it outlines some salient points regarding prediction of acculturation among contemporary native populations in various parts of the world and suggests the implications of forecasts of such acculturation for applied anthropology and social science in general.

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