Explanation In Social Sciences Research Articles

The origins, early development and status of Bourdieu's concept of ‘cultural capital’

The paper examines the context of the first introduction of the concept of 'cultural capital' in the sociology of education analyses undertaken in the early 1960s and published by Bourdieu in collaboration with Jean-Claude Passeron in 'Les etudiants et leurs etudes' (1964a) and Les Heritiers (1964b). It first considers the cultural contexts within which Bourdieu's thinking about culture originated--both in relation to his social origins and in relation to his intellectual training. It then examines the extent to which Bourdieu's early anthropological research in Algeria was influenced by his knowledge of American acculturation theory. It concludes that Bourdieu sought to use acculturation theory in a distinctive way--one which he articulated more confidently as he explored the relationship between agency and structural explanation in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The specific educational researches which stimulated the articulation of the concept of 'linguistic' or 'cultural' capital belonged to the period in which Bourdieu was only just beginning to refine his post-structuralist philosophy of social scientific explanation. To use these concepts now involves deploying them reflexively in accordance with Bourdieu's later thinking rather than at face value as they were first developed during the period in which he and Passeron were 'apprentice' researchers.

The transcultural transferability of Bourdieu's sociology of education

As early as 1970, M. S. Archer argued that Bourdieu's sociology of education was the product of the particular conditions of the French educational system within which it was formulated. The same argument was subsequently advanced more generally by Richard Jenkins, who insisted that Bourdieu's sociology of culture, particularly the analysis contained in La Distinction/Distinction (Bourdieu, 1979, 1986), was an expression of the peculiarly French emphasis on taste as a basis for social differentiation. Bourdieu was himself interested in the relations between particular and universal explanation in social science, and in many of his later articles he focused specifically on the question of the transferability of his concepts, such as ‘cultural capital’. The English Preface to Homo Academicus (Bourdieu, 1988) is an explicit discussion of how the analysis presented in the text of French higher education should be read and adopted by English readers, while Practical Reason (Bourdieu, 1994, 1998) contained published lectures in which Bourdieu considered the applicability of La Distinction to Japanese society. The purpose of my proposed contribution is to trace the development of Bourdieu's sociology of education in the context of educational policy developments in France during his lifetime and, equally, to trace the ways in which his work has been used in the British context during the period between the first reception of his educational work in the United Kingdom in Knowledge and Control (Young, 1971) to the reception of his more polemical political interventions of the 1990s, many of which implicitly invoked earlier educational thinking. The intention is that this discussion should revive interest in the relevance of Bourdieu's work to the British situation by reference to many of the later texts that appeared after the emphasis of the British field of reception had shifted from education to cultural studies. La noblesse d'e´tat/State nobility (Bourdieu, 1989, 1996) and La mise`re du monde/The weight of the world (Bourdieu et al., 1993, 1999) have direct implications for British thinking about education that are different from the implications of the texts of the 1960s, and it is important to disrupt the tendency still to see the importance of Bourdieu's educational work primarily in relation to Les he´ritiers/The Inheritors (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1964b; 1977) and La reproduction/Reproduction (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1970, 1977). Finally, the discussion will confront the question of transferability and ask whether the comparative conditions in Britain and France between 1960 and 2002 justify the transfer of his analyses and research methods across the cultures in the future beyond his death.

Practical Rationality in Social Scientific Explanation

Residential segregation according to race remains fairly entrenched in parts of the United States despite the fact that public attitudes toward racial integration have become dramatically more positive. This incongruity is often explained in terms of the irrationality of agents, whereby the agents’ support of integration is undermined by systematic/unconscious racism. The author argues that such accounts present an implausible model of practical rationality and places too great a justificatory burden on the critic/observer perspective. As an alternative, he suggests the problem is a conflict between modes of practical rationality, specifically, between reasons developed from an embedded context and reasons from a general, abstract perspective. Because many whites live in segregated conditions, they develop contextual reasons for preserving that way of life, even if such reasons fly in the face of their sense of justice. This account is more philosophically sound and gives rise to interesting policy recommendations for overcoming segregation.

Erotetic Contextualism, Data-Generating Procedures, and Sociological Explanations of Social Mobility

Critics of the erotetic model of explanation question its ability to discriminate significant from spurious explanations. One response to these criticisms has been to impose contextual restrictions on a case-by-case basis. In this article, the author argues that these approaches have overestimated the role of interests at the expense of other contextual aspects characteristic of social-scientific explanation. For this reason, he shows how procedures of measuring occupational status and social mobility affected different aspects of one explanation that Peter Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan offered in their sociological classic, The American Occupational Structure. He uses the findings from this case study to meet objections to the erotetic model.

Evolutionary Psychology and the Explanation of Ethnic Phenomena

In a recent series of articles, Hislope (1998, 2000) and Harvey (2000a, 2000b) have raised questions about the usefulness of “evolutionary theory” especially for any purpose other than identifying “distal” causes of ethnic phenomena. This article responds to those views and argues that evolutionary psychology shows great promise in contributing to the explanation of contemporary ethnic identities and ethnic conflict. The authors argue that an evolutionary psychology approach embraces research conducted through conventional social science approaches, helps to complete explanations of the proximate causes of ethnic conflict, and can recast thought and encourage new areas of research about important issues in the ethnic conflict field. Illustrations are provided in support of each of these points. Some of these arguments have been heard before with respect to the general role of evolutionary theory in explaining social phenomena but they are arguments we think bear repeating and illustrating in the context of the study of ethnic phenomena. Before examining the ways that evolutionary psychology can contribute to social science explanation of ethnic phenomena, we summarize the general evolutionary psychology approach to the study of social behavior.

Amalgams and Mosaics, Syncretisms and Reinterpretations: Reading Herskovits and Contemporary Creolists for Metaphors of Creolization

Creolists employ metaphor from a variety of semantic domains to render the processes through which cultures combine and to characterize new forms that emerge from their contact. Melville J. Herskovits, viewed as a proto-creolist, explored the retention and transformation of African cultural elements in the Americas. He used both metaphor and schematic, social-scientific explanations to create a conceptual framework for the study of acculturation and cultural change. Syncretism and reinterpretation, two key Herskovitsian terms of significance for creolization studies, refer to the reconciliation of cultural elements and beliefs from different cultures in contact, and to processes that give old meanings to new forms and retain old forms with new meanings.

Amalgams and Mosaics, Syncretisms and Reinterpretations: Reading Herskovits and Contemporary Creolists for Metaphors of Creolization

Abstract Creolists employ metaphor from a variety of semantic domains to render the processes through which cultures combine and to characterize new forms that emerge from their contact. Melville J. Herskovits, viewed as a proto-creolist, explored the retention and transformation of African cultural elements in the Americas. He used both metaphor and schematic, social-scientific explanations to create a conceptual framework for the study of acculturation and cultural change. Syncretism and reinterpretation, two key Herskovitsian terms of significance for creolization studies, refer to the reconciliation of cultural elements and beliefs from different cultures in contact, and to processes that give old meanings to new forms and retain old forms with new meanings.

Rape and evolution: A Reply to our critics

(2002). Rape and evolution: A Reply to our critics. Psychology, Evolution & Gender: Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 283-296.

Symposium on explanations and social ontology 2: explanatory ecumenism and economics imperialism

In a series of insightful publications, Philip Pettit and Frank Jackson have argued for an explanatory ecumenism that is designed to justify a variety of types of social scientific explanation of different “grains”, including structural and rational choice explanations. Their arguments are put in terms of different kinds of explanatory information; the distinction between causal efficacy, causal relevance and explanatory relevance within their program model of explanation; and virtual reality and resilience explanation. The arguments are here assessed from the point of view of the illumination they are able to cast on the issue of economics imperialism, the project of privileging rational choice as a unifying basis for explanations. While the Jackson–Pettit arguments turn out to be helpful in specifying some of the ontological and pragmatic constraints on economics imperialism, they are also shown to conflate distinct dimensions in the purported explanantia (such as small grain and particular grain, and the macro and the existentially quantified) and thereby to miss an important class of individualist causal process explanations of social phenomena.

Collective Mental State and Individual Agency: Qualitative Factors in Social Science Explanation

In der jungsten Vergangenheit kam es zu gewalttatigen Vorfallen in Form von Angriffen auf zivile Ziele und zu politischen Attentaten in Landern, in denen es gewohnlich nicht erwartet wird. Dies hat es notwendig erscheinen lassen, das Interesse an dem alten Konzept des "kollektiven Bewusstseins" wieder zu beleben. In diesem Artikel werden das Konzept in seiner gegenwartigen Reformulierung als "kollektiver Geisteszustand" und Versuche individueller Akteure, diesen Zustand zu kontrollieren, zu verandern und anderweitig zu nutzen, diskutiert. Es wird gefolgert, dass die Berucksichtigung "kollektiver Geisteszustande" und deren Effekt auf und Nutzbarkeit durch individuelle Akteure essenziell fur Erklarungen in den Sozialwissenschaften ist. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs020317

The Changing Face of Methodological Individualism

▪ Abstract It is common to categorize social scientific theories as either individualistic or holistic, and to assume that they are opposites. This neat picture is not so much wrong as too simple. There are different versions of both doctrines, and some versions combine elements from both. In this article I distinguish a number of versions of methodological individualism that differ significantly in strength. The main divide is between strong versions of methodological individualism, which suggest that all social phenomena should be explained only in terms of individuals and their interaction, and weak versions of methodological individualism, which also assign an important role to social institutions and/or social structure in social science explanations.

Reconceptualizing HIV Infection Among Poor Black Adolescent Females: An Urban Poverty Paradigm

Recent research of HIV infection has attributed high rates of infection among heterosexual Black adolescents to multiple sexual partners and inconsistent condom use. Social science explanations emphasize limited family support, poor access to information, and unwillingness to change. This article presents an analysis of the effects of economic inequality and changes in urban areas on sexual risk-taking among poor Black women. Data come from an ongoing ethnographic study involving 53 young women in New Haven, Connecticut. Theoretical frameworks of urban development, economic isolation, and opportunity structures inform the results. Findings show that structural, social, and individual characteristics influence how young Black women define and assess personal risk. The residual and cumulative effects of racial inequality, poverty, and destabilization of communities contribute to risk-taking. Teenagers are more likely to engage in risky behavior when they believe their life options are limited. Recommendations include focusing on the reduction of social inequality as a health-seeking strategy.

Reconceptualizing HIV Infection among Poor Black Adolescent Females: An Urban Poverty Paradigm

Recent research of HIV infection has attributed high rates of infection among heterosexual Black adolescents to multiple sexual partners and inconsistent condom use. Social science explanations emphasize limited family support, poor access to information, and unwillingness to change. This article presents an analysis of the effects of economic inequality and changes in urban areas on sexual risk-taking among poor Black women. Data come from an ongoing ethnographic study involving 53 young women in New Haven, Connecticut. Theoretical frameworks of urban development, economic isolation, and opportunity structures inform the results. Findings show that structural, social, and individual characteristics influence how young Black women define and assess personal risk. The residual and cumulative effects of racial inequality, poverty, and destabilization of communities contribute to risk-taking. Teenagers are more likely to engage in risky behavior when they believe their life options are limited. Recommendations include focusing on the reduction of social inequality as a health-seeking strategy.

Cultural Evolution, Reductionism in the Social Sciences, and Explanatory Pluralism

This article argues that it is possible to bring the social sciences into evolutionary focus without being committed to a thesis the author calls ontological reductionism, which is a widespread predilection for lower-level explanations. After showing why we should reject ontological reductionism, the author argues that there is a way to construe cultural evolution that does justice to the autonomy of social science explanations. This paves the way for a liberal approach to explanation the author calls explanatory pluralism, which allows for the possibility of explaining cultural phenomena in terms of different evolutionary processes.

Is the Case for Social Science Laws Strengthening?

The effectiveness of Kincaid's (1996) and McIntyre’s (1996) cases for the possibility and actual existence of laws in social science is evaluated. The ways in which Kincaid and McIntyre argue against the confounding effects of four long‐recognised barriers to the existence of social science laws are assessed. A brief review is presented first of definitions of causal (rather than regularity) laws. The four obstacles undermining causal laws are the non natural or social kind nature of the entities with which social science deals, the nature of mechanisms in social explanation, domain restrictions applying to causal explanation in social science, and the openness of the human systems encompassing socio‐economic behaviour. Against the arguments of Kincaid and McIntyre, these four issues constitute fundamental a priori problems that continue to undermine the development of laws in social science, beyond those that can be derived by common sense, and that are potentially effective for policy‐making.

Parent mutual aid organizations in child welfare demonstration project: A report of outcomes

This paper reports the outcomes of a mutual aid intervention designed to help child welfare agencies to take advantage of the benefits of informal ways of helping their clientele. The PMAO program model is based on acknowledging the multiple difficulties confronting most families using child welfare services, the characteristics of formal family support programs that seem to be effective with these populations, and social science explanations about the relevance of informal support to coping with stress and maintaining psychological well-being. Data were collected from PMAO and comparison samples over a three year period to assess changes in out-of-home child placement, independence from formal service providers, integration in the community, levels of perceived social support, self-esteem, perceived stress, parental attitudes and cost savings. On all of these measures, the study revealed that PMAO members showed positive gains over the evaluation time period that were not apparent for the comparison group members receiving regular child welfare services. These findings suggest that there is merit in including mutual aid strategies as an integral part of the repertoire for helping families in child welfare.

A natural history of rape: biological bases of sexual coercion

A biologist and an anthropologist use evolutionary biology to explain the causes and inform the prevention of rape. In this controversial book, Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer use evolutionary biology to explain the causes of rape and to recommend new approaches to its prevention. According to Thornhill and Palmer, evolved adaptation of some sort gives rise to rape; the main evolutionary question is whether rape is an adaptation itself or a by-product of other adaptations. Regardless of the answer, Thornhill and Palmer note, rape circumvents a central feature of women's reproductive strategy: mate choice. This is a primary reason why rape is devastating to its victims, especially young women. Thornhill and Palmer address, and claim to demolish scientifically, many myths about rape bred by social science theory over the past twenty-five years. The popular contention that rapists are not motivated by sexual desire is, they argue, scientifically inaccurate. Although they argue that rape is biological, Thornhill and Palmer do not view it as inevitable. Their recommendations for rape prevention include teaching young males not to rape, punishing rape more severely, and studying the effectiveness of chemical castration. They also recommend that young women consider the biological causes of rape when making decisions about dress, appearance, and social activities. Rape could cease to exist, they argue, only in a society knowledgeable about its evolutionary causes. The book includes a useful summary of evolutionary theory and a comparison of evolutionary biology's and social science's explanations of human behavior. The authors argue for the greater explanatory power and practical usefulness of evolutionary biology. The book is sure to stir up discussion both on the specific topic of rape and on the larger issues of how we understand and influence human behavior.

Why gods persist: a scientific approach to religion

This work takes a serious look at social scientific explanations for the persistence of religion. Psychologist, Robert Hinde, offers a major study from the perspective of both the social and the biological sciences on the role of religion in human society. He explores why religions have played such a major role in the lives of individuals and in the integration of societies, and probes why it is that if most basic religious beliefs are clearly incompatible with modern scientific knowledge, the majority of people in western countries still see themselves as believers. He demonstrates that answers to these sorts of questions are the ultimate challenge to Darwinism. The text seeks to tackle a complex problem in a straightforward way which students should find understandable. Hinde provides chapter summaries, multiple sections within each chapter, and draws from examples from a wide range of religions. The text offers a holistic approach to understanding the persistence of religion, our relationship and behaviour to religion, and evolutionary theory.

REDUCTION, SUPERVENIENCE, AND THE AUTONOMY OF SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC LAWS

Many have felt that it is impossible to defend autonomous laws of social science: where the regularities upheld are law-like it is argued that they are not at base social scientific, and where the phenomena to be explained would seem to require social descriptions, it is argued that laws governing the phenomena are unavailable at that level. But is it possible to develop an ontology that supports the dependence of the social on the physical, while nonetheless supporting the explanatory power of genuinely autonomous social scientific laws? The aim of this paper is to show that reductive explanation is not a requirement of a `naturalist' ontology, thereby defending an account of supervenience as a suitable framework within which to recognize a metaphysical relationship between the natural and the social that is consistent with the pursuit of autonomous nomological social scientific explanations.

Lessons from the Intersexed

is a brave book. Kessler says things that need to be said, and she says them clearly, concisely, and with respect for the people whose lives are most affected by the questions she confronts. A must read for anyone concerned with intersex issues. --Holly Devor, author of Gender Blending: Confronting the Limits of Duality and FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society. While the physician's response to an infant with genitalia has been to produce categories like the 'successful vagina' and the 'good enough penis,' Kessler takes her cues from intersexuals themselves. This book is a brilliant and long overdue call for the reevaluation of gender variability. --Judith Halberstam, author of Female Masculinity Fascinating in what it tells us not only about situation in which sex assignment is uncertain but about the astonishingly weak empirical foundations on which the medical orthodoxies of binary sex and gender are built. A must for anyone interested in the ways widely accepted social beliefs and scientific explanations generate and reinforce each other. --Ruth Hubbard, author of The Politics of Women's Biology and Exploding the Gene Myth From the moment intersexuality--the condition of having physical markers (genitals, gonads, or chromosomes) that are neither clearly female nor male--is suspected and diagnosed, social institutions are mobilized in order to maintain the two seemingly objective sexual categories. Infants' bodies are altered, and the ambiguous is made normal. As Kessler argues, the way the medical and psychological professions manage intersexuality is guided by our culture's beliefs about gender and genitals rather than by the needs of the child. Interviews with pediatric surgeons and endocrinologists as well as parents of intersexed children and adults who were treated for this condition in childhood lead Kessler to propose several new approaches for physicians in dealing with parents and children. Beyond the medical sphere, the author also evaluates a political vanguard intent on gaining acceptance by physicians and society at large of an intersexed identity. Lessons from the Intersexed explores the possibilities and implications of suspending a commitment to two natural genders. It addresses gender destabilization issues arising from intersexuality and compels a rethinking of the meaning of gender, genitals, and sexuality. Suzanne J. Kessler is professor of psychology at Purchase College, State University of New York. She is coauthor of Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach.