3. The Status of the Social Sciences, 1950: A Tale of Two Reports

1986 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Riley
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status

Mixed Methods

2021 ◽  
pp. 169-174
Author(s):  
Manfredi Valeriani ◽  
Vicki L. Plano Clark
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Mixed Methods Research ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Methods

This chapter examines mixed-methods research, which is an approach that involves the integration of quantitative and qualitative methods at one or more stages of a research study. The central idea behind mixed-methods research is that the intentional combination of numeric-based methods with narrative-based methods can best provide answers to some research questions. The ongoing attempts to construct a simple and common conceptualization of mixed-methods provide a good indicator of the status of mixed-methods itself. mixed-methods research has emerged as a formalized methodology well suited to addressing complex problems, and is currently applied throughout the social sciences and beyond. Nowadays, researchers interested in combining quantitative and qualitative methods can benefit from the growing knowledge about the epistemological foundations, essential considerations, and rigorous designs that have been advanced for mixed-methods research.

Why Thomas Reid Matters to the Epistemology of the Social Sciences

2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (279) ◽  
pp. 282-301
Author(s):  
Laurent Jaffro ◽  
Vinícius França Freitas
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Action ◽  
First Principles ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Reasoning ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Mind

Abstract Little attention has been paid to the fact that Thomas Reid's epistemology applies to ‘political reasoning’ as well as to various operations of the mind. Reid was interested in identifying the ‘first principles’ of political science as he did with other domains of human knowledge. This raises the question of the extent to which the study of human action falls within the competence of ‘common sense’. Our aim is to reconstruct and assess Reid's epistemology of the sciences of social action and to determine how it connects with the fundamental tenets of his general epistemology. In the first part, we portray Reid as a methodological individualist and focus on the status of the first principles of political reasoning. The second part examines Reid's views on the explanatory power of the principles of human action. Finally, we draw a parallel between Reid's epistemology and the methodology of Weberian sociology.

scholarly journals Whither development studies? Reflections on its relationship with social policy

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Copestake
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
International Development ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Development Studies ◽  
Academic Fields ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Evolving System ◽  
The Uk

This paper contributes to an ongoing conversation between development studies (DS) and social policy (SP) as academic fields, particularly in the UK. Using Andrew Abbott's analysis of the social sciences as an evolving system of knowledge lineages (KLs), it reflects on the status of DS and its relationship with SP. Defining DS as a distinctive KL centred on critical analysis of ideas and projects for advancing human well-being, I suggest that it has lost coherence even as research into international development thrives. Indeed it is easy to envisage its gradual assimilation into other KLs, including SP. The two increasingly overlap in their analysis of the causes of relative poverty and injustice, and what can be done to address them, within countries and globally. Strengthening links between the two fields can be justified as a political project, even at the risk of some loss of plurality and plenitude across the social sciences.

Feline politics in organization: The nine lives of Olly the cat

Organization ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damian P. O’Doherty
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Emergent Properties ◽  
Human Intentionality ◽  
The Social ◽  
Organization Analysis ◽  
The Status ◽  
Organizational Action ◽  
Ontological Turn ◽  
Ways Of Being

The appearance of ‘Olly the cat’ on the doorsteps of a major UK international airport provides occasion to reconsider the role of the animal in organization and offers suggestive insight into how we might have to learn new ways of being within extended multi-species or interspecies ontologies. Olly is found to lead multiple lives that cannot be reduced to the status of object or media of human intentionality. Her increasing political involvement in the management and organization of the airport challenges orthodox understanding of agency and organizational action. As the ethnography becomes progressively more implicated in the entanglements between human and animal, the concept of ‘feline politics’ is proposed and deployed. This allows research to retain focus on actions and behaviour and modes of thinking that would ordinarily be occluded by conventional modes of organizational representation. In these ways the ethnography moves beyond the interpretative and symbolic treatment of organization analysis and finds resource in the recent ‘ontological turn’ in the social sciences. Embracing what is the inevitable participation of the social sciences in the reflexive and recursive enactment of its phenomena, the ethnography discovers new potentialities and new capacities for action as emergent properties of ‘the human’ and ‘the animal’ were mutually learnt, exchanged and acquired. This article adds to what we know about the limits of management as it confronts a radical undecidability characterized by the co-existence of multiple and interacting ontological becomings.

Les disciplines herméneutiques et la théorie critique sont-elles des formes de la rationalité scientifique?

Dialogue ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-326
Author(s):  
Stéphane Courtois
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Communicative Action ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Scientific Enterprise ◽  
Theory Of Communicative Action ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
First Time ◽  
Critical Social

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.

Philosophy of Social Sciences

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Elster
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Methodological Individualism ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Holistic Approaches ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Methodological Principles ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Causal Laws

This chapter addresses problems and themes in the social sciences. Social sciences are understood specifically as sciences that have (or should have) the following minimal characteristics: their object of study is human behavior and they follow a certain number of methodological principles, including a marked effort towards analytical clarity; the investigation of causal explanations through the formulation of causal laws or at least causal mechanisms; and a subscription to a form of methodological individualism, if an amended one, which puts at the heart of social science the notion of choice. We discuss three principal themes. The first raises the question of the status of laws in the social sciences and, in particular, that of “consequence laws,” otherwise known as functionalist explanations. The second theme takes up methodological individualism, as compared to holistic approaches. The last theme concerns hypotheses of rationality and self-interested motivations, which increasingly figure in social scientific explanations.

Towards an African Qur'anic Hermeneutics

2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-76
Author(s):  
Michael Mumisa
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
Christian Perspective ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Status ◽  
African Perspective

The 20th century has been witness to great developments in theology, philosophy of language and the social sciences. Postmodernism has emerged as an influential philosophical thought. All of these 20th century phenomena have influenced how people approach sacred texts and how they comprehend and interpret them. Muslims have not been immune to these developments, and accordingly there has been a realisation among Muslim theorists that the existing interpretations of the Qur'an and Sunnah (imitado Muhammadi) may be limited and not able to suffice the needs of a changing world. The Islamic world has also been rapidly expanding to incorporate races, cultures and environments of various kinds. Consequently, racial and cultural problems have emerged causing a great need among progressive Muslims, particularly the youth, women, people of colour, and other concerned Muslims for a re-reading of the sacred texts so that they become existentially meaningful in the here and now. Such a reading will have to take into consideration differences of perspective and social location. Although this article proposes an African Qur'anic hermeneutics within the liberative discourse, it is not necessarily proposing an African Muslim perspective of liberation since there can be no such a thing as an ‘African perspective’, ‘feminist perspective’ or even ‘Christian perspective’ of liberation. By confirming the ‘us’ versus ‘them’, or dominant versus ‘other’ in the liberation process, it serves to confirm the status quo which we seek to change.

Habermas, Science and Modernity

1999 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 329-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Friedel Weinert
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
External World ◽  
Paradigm Change ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Western Civilisation ◽  
The Individual

The work of Jürgen Habermas has been described as eclectic. It is also prolific. Fortunately for his readers the prolificacy and eclecticism of the author are mitigated by the recurrence of his themes. These concern the emergence and nature of modern occidental society, both from a sociological and philosophical perspective. On a more philosophical level, there is also a strong plea for a paradigm change. The philosophy of the consciousness made the lone subject, in search of knowledge, face the external world. The dialogic philosophy of Habermas sees interlocutors engaged in dialogue about the material, social and internal world and their many aspects. Furthermore, there are many fruitful sidelines: the nature of language, the personality structure of the individual, socialisation and the status of the social sciences. All these various strands are woven into a coherent model of the nature of western civilisation. In the recombination of the contributory constituents, derived from American pragmatism, German Idealism, Hermeneutics, Marxism, the Frankfurt School of Sociology and Systems Theory, lies the originality and breadth of his work.

WOMEN‘S STUDIES IN SOCIOLOGY: A PERFUMED GHETTO?

1981 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-8
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Women's Studies ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Women’S Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact

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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