Social Science Concepts Research Articles

Reflections on the Idea of Islamic Social Science

When we refer to Islamic social science what do we mean? In what ways can the social sciences be Islamic? There are two such ways. One involves approaching specifically Muslim problems, that is, problems found in Muslim society, in a social scientific manner. An example would be the issue of the relationship between religion and the state. Concepts developed in Western social science would be modified and applied to achieve this aim. The other way in which social science can be Islamic goes beyond the former and involves the idea that social scientific theories, concepts and methodologies can be derived from the history and thought of Islam in order that these social sciences may be based on the Islamic Weltanschauung.

REFLECTIONS ON THE IDEA OF ISLAMIC SOCIAL SCIENCE

When we refer to Islamic social science what do we mean? In what ways can the social sciences be Islamic? There are two such ways. One involves approaching specifically Muslim problems, that is, problems found in Muslim society, in a social scientific manner. An example would be the issue of the relationship between religion and the state. Concepts developed in Western social science would be modified and applied to achieve this aim. The other way in which social science can be Islamic goes beyond the former and involves the idea that social scientific theories, concepts and methodologies can be derived from the history and thought of Islam in order that these social sciences may be based on the Islamic Weltanschauung. The Islamic social sciences should not be confined to the tackling of just Muslim society but are to be extended to the interpretation of the whole world from an Islamic point of view. They are, therefore, juxtaposed to the Western social sciences which involve the interpretation of not only Western civilization but non-Western civilizations as well. What does it mean to say that the writing of history or the social sciences are to be based on a particular Weltanschauung or point of view whether this is Islamic, European, Malay or Asian? In the field of Southeast Asian history something of a debate on this issue took place during the 1960s. Two extremes are discernible in the debate. Bastin gave an extremely dismal picture of the possibility of writing Southeast Asian history from the Southeast Asian point of view.

Toward Inclusive STEM Classrooms: What Personal Role Do Faculty Play?

Private and public policies are increasingly aimed at supporting efforts to broaden participation of a diverse body of students in higher education. Unfortunately, this increase in student diversity does not always occur alongside changes in institutional culture. Unexamined biases in institutional culture can prevent diverse students from thriving and persisting in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Given the daily personal interactions that faculty have with students, we suggest that individual educators have the opportunity, and responsibility, to improve the retention and persistence of diverse students. However, in our experience, faculty professional development programs often limit discussions of diversity to "comfortable" topics (such as learning styles) and miss opportunities to explore deeper issues related to faculty privilege, implicit bias, and cues for stereotype threat that we all bring to the classroom. In this essay, we present a set of social science concepts that we can extend to our STEM courses to inform our efforts at inclusive excellence. We have recommended strategies for meaningful reflection and professional development with respect to diversity and inclusion, and aim to empower faculty to be change agents in their classrooms as a means to broadening participation in STEM fields.

Collaborating for Systems Change: A Social Science Framework for Academic Roles in Community Partnerships.

Environmental health researchers, government agencies, and community groups have endorsed long-term community-academic partnerships as an effective strategy to support science-based improvements in environmental health. Social sciences concepts, approaches, and methods are fundamental to these translational partnerships. However, appropriate roles for academic partners vary throughout the process of changing systems (policies, practices, programs, etc.). This can complicate planning, evaluating, and sustaining such partnerships. We set forth a conceptual framework for academic partners' roles at different stages of systems change. We apply this framework to three longstanding academic-community partnerships involving National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Community Outreach and Engagement Cores. We conclude by discussing how the framework can help academic partners tap appropriate expertise, redefine their roles, and evaluate their contributions to community efforts to improve environmental health.

Imageries of the social world in epistemic governance

To explain why neoinstitutionalist theories have been so successful in explaining global isomorphism and to discuss how they can be extended to describe otherwise inexplicable similarities in the world, the article approaches policy-making from an epistemic governance perspective. Utilizing a constructionist view on language, the article argues that popular and political rhetoric are inextricably bound to social scientific conceptions of reality through the use of root metaphors that are, in turn, woven into convincing imageries of social reality. In addition to the well-known culturally constructed imagery of social change as driven by functional requirements of modernization, two other imageries are identified: society as a hierarchy and the social world as comprising competing blocs. These three imageries are then discussed as key discursive ingredients for both social scientific and political actors seeking to understand and change the world. Finally, the implications of the article for future research are discussed.

A power analysis of a transforming marine community around oil transshipment at St. Eustatius

The strategic location of small islands in the Caribbean, close to the United States of America (USA), and their historical trade roots as former colonies of Europe make them an interesting business environment. Small islands' eagerness for economic development and their limited governance capacity often result in an unequal relationship between multinational private parties and small islands' policy actors, especially in regard to environmental management. This is also observed at St. Eustatius, a small Caribbean island that hosts a crucial oil storage and transshipment terminal that compromises the environmental state of the small island. However, in 2010, St. Eustatius (Statia) became part of the Netherlands, which significantly changed the responsibilities related to environmental management. Bringing the environmental state back in reversed existing power relations. To analyze these changing power dynamics, we apply the new social scientific concept of marine community, which encompasses a user community and a policy community and shows the different interests and power dynamics within and between them. While governance of the oil terminal used to be determined by structural power in the user community on behalf of NuStar, it currently relies on the structural power of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment (I&E) in the policy community. In theory, structural power to bring the environmental state back in would be beneficial for governance. In practice, however, this is challenging because a small island environmental state is different from the environmental state in countries in Western societies. Although the Dutch Ministry has structural power, the way it relates to others (dispositional power) and uses resources (relational power) should be better adapted to the needs and characteristics of small island environmental states such as Statia.

Human-cat relationship in an oceanic biosphere reserve: The case of La Palma Island, Canary archipelago

Removal of feral cats from island environments is a useful mechanism by which their ecological impact on endangered species can be reduced or ended. Nevertheless, because cats are anthropogenic in their origins, social perceptions of management practices play a large role in their implementation. Four-hundred questionnaires were delivered (386 were returned) with 100 going to each of the following: local residents; environmental workers; tourists; and, hunters. Questions explored respondents’ knowledge about island biodiversity and invasive species as well as attitudes towards cat population management methods. Habitat destruction and introduction of invasive species were considered the main threats for the conservation of island biodiversity. Most respondents considered cats to have a negative impact on biodiversity and sterilization campaigns were considered most appropriate for cat population control. Several free sterilization campaigns have been conducted in La Palma Island Biosphere Reserve in order to reduce free-ranging cats and were well received by local people. This research, which combined concepts of management, ecology and social sciences, provides valuable insights which may to be applicable on several other islands where cats and people are present and in conflict with conservation priorities.

Altruism: New perspectives of research on a classical theme in sociology of morality

Since coined by Comte, altruism has become one of the most controversial concepts in social and behavioral sciences, although altruistic behavior and related topics have been successfully studied within a number of fields. Oddly, while the theme of altruism was of primary significance in classical sociology of morality, modern sociology seems to have relatively little interest in studying altruism and altruistic behavior (although there are some exceptions) and the field is largely dominated by other social and behavioral sciences. The article aims at reconsidering altruism as a concept and as an area of research in sociology of morality by reviewing the major concepts of altruism in classical sociology and modern behavioral sciences. The article argues that, although for the ‘new’ sociology of morality it is necessary to take into account behavioral and psychological perspectives, a promising sociological approach to the study of altruism in different social contexts can be based on renewing the classical focus on the normative components of moral behavior.

The effects of corporate brand symbolism on consumer satisfaction and loyalty

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test the effects of corporate brand symbolism on consumer satisfaction and loyalty on a sample of Australian automobile consumers. Design/methodology/approach – Survey research was employed to test the study hypotheses. The regression analysis was used to evaluate the relationships between an independent variable (corporate brand symbolism) and dependent variables (consumer satisfaction and loyalty). Findings – Support was found for all hypotheses formulated in this study. Regression results reveal consistent favourable and significant effects of corporate brand symbolism on both consumer satisfaction and loyalty. Research limitations/implications – Although this paper makes contributions in international marketing, the cross-sectional nature of the data collection method limits the information gained to the single point in time. This research studied the impact of corporate brand symbolism on consumers of one original equipment manufacturers (OEM). Having a larger number of participating car manufacturers/OEMs would have provided a wider insight. However, time and resources limitation did not allow to study a larger sample. In the future, practitioners are recommended to further understand the relationship between self and social aspects of brand symbolism in order to formulate more targeted communication strategies. Practical implications – The findings of this study point to the strategic role of the brand in generating both satisfaction and loyalty. In the light of increasing advertising costs and decreasing consumer loyalty, strengthening corporate brand symbolism makes a lot of economic sense. The findings suggest that managers need to take into account consumer need for identity expression and consider this in their branding strategies. Social implications – Humans are social beings by nature. However, international brand research has paid relatively little attention to how products are used by consumers in everyday life, including their social life. Consumer behaviours increasingly depend on social meanings they imbue brands with beyond products’ functional utility. It is argued the focus of symbolic consumption needs to be broadened and integrated more with social science concepts. Originality/value – This study captures a construct of corporate brand symbolism by including self and social aspects of symbolism. The current study also comprehensively measures consumer loyalty, including cognitive, affective and behavioural types of loyalty.

Converging disciplinary understandings of social aspects of resilience

Resilience thinking has developed separately in the bodies of literature on social-ecological systems, and that published principally within developmental psychology and mental health on the resilience of individuals. This paper explores what these bodies of literature might learn from the other towards a more integrated and enriched understanding of both social-ecological systems and social resilience. The psychology-based literature recognises a strong set of factors that enhance the strengths of individuals and communities, but lacks a sophisticated integration of the physical environmental context. The social-ecological systems literature offers an excellent foundation in complex adaptive systems, but tends to superimpose ecological concepts of system function onto the human domain, and needs to include an array of core social science concepts that are important to a full understanding of social-ecological systems. An example on north eastern Australia suggests how a converged understanding of social resilience could assist managers to acknowledge, enhance and foster social resilience in linked social-ecological systems.

When Social Science Concepts Become Neutral Arbiters of Social Conflict: Reading the Ethiopian Federal Elections of 2005 through the Ethiopian Student Movement of the 1960s and 1970s

Abstract This article traces the story of how the intellectual culture and discourses that animated the Ethiopian student movement in the 1960s and 1970s have continued to impact political processes in the country in the generations since. More specifically, it looks at how the legacy of the Ethiopian student movement influenced events during the country’s momentous 2005 elections. The essay further poses the question of how one can characterize and understand the influence of the social sciences on actual social forces in a particular historical context.

Territoriality, map-mindedness, and the politics of place

Political sociologists have paid closer attention of late to the territoriality of political communities, and have even begun theorizing the theme of territoriality’s legitimation. To date, however, the field has mostly overlooked the topic of maps, the quintessential territorial tool. Thus, we know little regarding maps’ crucial role in shaping modern subjects’ relationship to territory. This article argues that “map-mindedness”—i.e., the effects of map imagery on how subjects experience territory—can be productively theorized by working through the social-scientific concept of “place.” Using a range of modern and contemporary examples, I illustrate how maps can draw on and manipulate political subjects’ experience of place. Maps, I submit, allow political communities to render themselves more place-like, thus bridging the phenomenological distance between these abstract, territorially vast units and their “emplaced” subjects. More specifically, maps solve this “problem of distance” through three ideal-typical processes: 1) they render the political community as a proximate “object in the world”; 2) they present the political community as a body-like target for cathexis and identification; and 3) they mediate the traffic of meaning between the local and the national to produce a multi-scalar sense of place that can be harnessed in the service of the political community. Maps are a potent means of “re-personalizing” politics; their study suggests that territoriality is not only a form of “impersonal rule,” as recent works have observed, but always also implicated in the production of political subjects.

О методологическом кризисе общественной науки в контексте вызовов современности

<p>Для общественной науки проблемы методологии всегда представляют чрезвычайно важную задачу. Особенно эта значимость возрастает в современном мире, когда глобализационные вызовы и экономические кризисы не только кардинально меняют общество, но и наглядно демонстрируют слабость объяснительного потенциала многих традиционных теорий. Отсюда чрезвычайно важным представляется анализ теоретико-методологической базы современной общественной науки.</p><p>В статье обосновывается мысль о том, что причины современного системного кризиса объясняются тем, что многие фундаментальные понятия общественной науки не совсем адекватно отражают изменившуюся реальность, в частности кризисные процессы и явления в области мировой экономики, политики, межэтнических отношений. Общественные науки часто не способны не только предсказать, но и объяснить причины и сущность этих процессов.</p><p>Согласно мнению автора слабость объяснительного потенциала общественной науки состоит в том, что она до сих пор основывается на ньютоно-картезианской метапарадигме, которая, в свою очередь, базируется на законах макромира, в то время как современный мир стал фактически похожим на микромир.</p><p>Отсюда необходимы пересмотр и уточнение существующего категориального аппарата и, соответственно, поиск и разработка новой метапарадигмы мышления.</p>

Neglected chronic disease: The WHO framework on non-communicable diseases and implications for the global poor

ABSTRACTThe current global framework on noncommunicable disease (NCD), as exemplified by the WHO Action Plan of 2012, neglects the needs of the global poor. The current framework is rooted in an outdated pseudo-evolutionary theory of epidemiologic transition, which weds NCDs to modernity, and relies on global aggregate data. It is oriented around a simplistic causal model of behaviour, risk and disease, which implicitly locates ‘risk’ within individuals, conveniently drawing attention away from important global drivers of the NCD epidemic. In fact, the epidemiologic realities of the bottom billion reveal a burden of neglected chronic diseases that are associated with ‘alternative’ environmental and infectious risks that are largely structurally determined. In addition, the vertical orientation of the framework fails to centralise health systems and delivery issues that are essential to chronic disease prevention and treatment. A new framework oriented around a global health equity perspective would be able to correct some of the failures of the current model by bringing the needs of the global poor to the forefront, and centralising health systems and delivery. In addition, core social science concepts such as Bordieu's habitus may be useful to re-conceptualising strategies that may address both behavioural and structural determinants of health.

Advancing the practice of performance measurement in public organizations: Observations from the tennessee municipal benchmarking project

David Farmer suggests that there are multiple ways of looking at social science concepts. No one perspective, or lens, is superior, but taken together, multiple lenses can be enriching and yield a clearer picture of complex ideas. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate Farmerʼs multiple lenses approach by looking at performance measurement in the public organizations that participate in the Tennessee Municipal Benchmarking Project (TMBP). Observations from the TMBP suggests that utilizing only one lens can be detrimental to the decision-making process, while employing multiple lenses acknowledges multiple factors in the decision-making process and aides decision makers in reaching a consensus.

(DIS)EMBODYING SOVEREIGNTY: DIVINE KINGSHIP IN CENTRAL AFRICAN HISTORIOGRAPHY

AbstractIn the aftermath of late nineteenth-century conquests, European intellectuals developed social scientific concepts that compared political and religious institutions. ‘Divine kingship’, one such concept, signified a premodern institution that unified spiritual and secular power in the body of a man who ensured the welfare of land and people. By tracing the development of the concept of divine kingship and its application to the Bemba rulers of Northern Zambia, this article explores Western intellectual engagements with changing African spiritual and secular sovereignties. Divine kingship helped scholars, including Godfrey and Monica Wilson, Audrey Richards, Luc de Heusch, and Jan Vansina construct spatial and temporal models of sovereignty amidst struggles over the nature of sovereignty itself. Tracing its evolution sheds light on the historiography of embodied power. The article demonstrates how divine kingship theory helped historians imagine kingship as a key political institution in Central African historiography as well as inform ideas of political secularization and religious change.

Pendekatan Pembelajaran Pengetahuan Sosial dalam Kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi

In the structure of the competency-based curriculum for junior secondary school (SMP/MTs), Social Science is offerred to grade VII, VIII, and IX, covering Economics, Geography, and History. This indicates that an interdisciplinary approach needs to be implemented. In the 1994 curriculum, social science was taught by a team of teachers, with each still focusing on their own specialization. In contrast, in the competency-based curriculum, social science should be really team taught, with a group of teachers teaching together. Therefore, to make the teaching and learning process run well, it is suggested that social science teachers be trained prior to the implementation of the competency-based curriculum in their classroom. The old approach is incompatible with the social science concept. In order to make the competence-based curriculum run well, especially in the social science course, it is necessary to organize trainings for the social science teachers.

Methodological Rigidity of the Social Science Concepts - Intentional Liquidation of Locality and Contextual Attributes -

Methodological Rigidity of the Social Science Concepts - Intentional Liquidation of Locality and Contextual Attributes -

Wittgenstein and the Context of Rationality

Rationality as a central concept in occidental philosophy and social sciences never seemed to spark the interest of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Here it will be argued that – although “rationality” does not explicitly show up in his works – Wittgenstein not only deals with questions definitively ascribed to the conceptual history of the term, but he also works towards a transformation of the concept. Wittgenstein’s efforts were aimed at showing that there is nothing within human nature that defines what is perceived as rational, irrational, or non-rational, but that the differences are produced in human language and action. The necessity of such a transformative perspective on rationality, however, can only be adequately captured by recognizing the taxonomy of some of Wittgenstein’s best-known concepts. It will be argued that this systematic arrangement has to be completed by another concept: the context.

Tornadoes, Social Science, and the False Alarm Effect

AbstractDespite considerable interest in the weather enterprise, there is little focused research on the “false alarm effect.” Within the body of research that does exist, findings are mixed. Some studies suggest that the false alarm effect is overstated, while several recent efforts have provided evidence that FAR may be a significant determinate of behavior. This effort contributes to the understanding of FAR through a sociological analysis of public perceptions and behavioral responses to tornadoes. This analysis begins by addressing public definitions of FAR and then provides two statistical models, one focused on perception of FAR and one focused on behavioral response to tornado warnings. The authors’ approach incorporates a number of sociological and other social science concepts as predictors in both of these models. Findings provide a number of important insights. Most notably, it is found that 1) there is a wide degree of variation in public definitions of false alarm, 2) actual county FAR rates do not predict perception of FAR, 3) actual county FAR rates do predict behavioral response, and 4) planning and family characteristics are also influential. Another major contribution is to illustrate the significant complexity associated with analysis of false alarms. Conclusions discuss the limits of this analysis and future direction for this type of research.