Interdisciplinary Social Science Research Articles

THE HASHTAG SYLLABUS AS CLASS ASSIGNMENT: FROM CRITICAL INFORMATION LITERACY TO CULTURAL CRITIQUE

In the immediate aftermath of the 2014 murder of 18-year Michael Brown in Missouri, hashtags like #ferguson, #justiceformikebrown, and #handsupdontshoot begin trending on Twitter. At the same time, Marcia Chatelain, Georgetown University Professor of History and American Studies, began crowdsourcing materials for educators trying to address what happened in their classrooms using the hashtag #fergusonsyllabus. What resulted was a list of highly interdisciplinary and multimedia sources including scholarly texts, news stories, songs, poems, films, public addresses, and children’s books. Chatelain’s call spoke both to the present crisis, the murder of a Black teenager by police, and to the historical and cultural context in which this shooting happened. The efforts of Chatelain and the community that came together around this hashtag expanded our understanding of information production and curation and the function of a syllabus beyond the college classroom. In introducing our undergraduate classes to the idea of the hashtag syllabus, we attempt to engage our students in practices of information literacy with the hope of providing them tools to look critically at the inequities that permeate academic and non-academic spaces. Here, we explore the ways in which this format operates in interdisciplinary social science programs and the ways in which it supports unique learning objectives in both introductory and upper-level courses. In doing so, we hope to engage in pedagogical praxis that connects our fields and our students with questions of social justice and to do so in a way that prepares them for meaningful civic engagement.

Short text classification with machine learning in the social sciences: The case of climate change on Twitter.

To analyse large numbers of texts, social science researchers are increasingly confronting the challenge of text classification. When manual labeling is not possible and researchers have to find automatized ways to classify texts, computer science provides a useful toolbox of machine-learning methods whose performance remains understudied in the social sciences. In this article, we compare the performance of the most widely used text classifiers by applying them to a typical research scenario in social science research: a relatively small labeled dataset with infrequent occurrence of categories of interest, which is a part of a large unlabeled dataset. As an example case, we look at Twitter communication regarding climate change, a topic of increasing scholarly interest in interdisciplinary social science research. Using a novel dataset including 5,750 tweets from various international organizations regarding the highly ambiguous concept of climate change, we evaluate the performance of methods in automatically classifying tweets based on whether they are about climate change or not. In this context, we highlight two main findings. First, supervised machine-learning methods perform better than state-of-the-art lexicons, in particular as class balance increases. Second, traditional machine-learning methods, such as logistic regression and random forest, perform similarly to sophisticated deep-learning methods, whilst requiring much less training time and computational resources. The results have important implications for the analysis of short texts in social science research.

Instigating father-inclusive practice interventions with young fathers and multi-agency professionals: the transformative potential of qualitative longitudinal and co-creative methodologies

Interdisciplinary social sciences literature on the value and significance of engaged fatherhood and father-inclusive approaches to practice for enhanced family outcomes have begun to reach a consensus. Yet there has been less attention to how research knowledge about fatherhood, including that which is co-produced with and for fathers, can be more effectively translated and embedded in practice and policy contexts. This article elaborates on a cumulative, empirically driven process that has established new relational ecologies between young fathers, multi-agency professionals and researchers. It illustrates how these ecologies, supported by longitudinal and co-creative research combined, are driving societal transformations through knowledge exchange and the instigation of new father-inclusive practice interventions that address the marginalisation of young fathers. The methodologies, including the co-creation of the Young Dads Collective and its impacts on young fathers and multi-agency professionals, are evaluated, confirming them as powerful and productive mechanisms for embedding father-inclusive practices within existing support and policy systems.

What ‘counts’ in international forest policy research? A conference ethnography of valuation practice and habitus in an interdisciplinary social science field

In this paper, we examine implicit values, norms and orientations that guide international forest policy research (FPR). We link Bourdieu's praxeological theory and valuography to empirically grasp disciplinary habitus manifesting in valuation practice at International Forest Policy Meetings. Conferences provide spaces where scholars negotiate ‘what counts’. In presenting and discussing research, they enact values of ‘good’ scholarship that reflect basic orientations of doing science in the field.Based on conference ethnography and reflexive interviews with participants, we identify two dispositions characterising dominant habitus in FPR: an objectivistic understanding of scientificity, and an affective orientation towards forest practice. They reflect in the set of values enacted, including methodical rigour, representativeness, innovativeness, responsiveness and usability/applicability, along with an attachment to forests as shared and connective subject of concern.We explain the prevalence of these values through field-habitus theory with the socio-historical conditions from which FPR in the Global North emerged. Accounts of its history emphasise the emancipation from scientific forestry, and its distinctive identity as a forest-focused field encompassing a wide range of social sciences. However, our findings suggest that FPR has not yet achieved full autonomy, as the value characteristics of ‘good’ science are still aligned with those of the ‘mother disciplines’ and oriented at expectations of external actors.FPR has not yet developed a regime of valuation that does justice to its interdisciplinarity, which prevents the field from utilising its full potential. Prevailing habitus lowers the relevance of normative scholarship that expresses more radical or transformative visions challenging orthodox paradigms. It entrenches an inequality between different strands of research within the field, without anyone intending this. Our study gives input for reflecting values, norms and orientations underlying FPR, and seeks to inform the on-going discourse on its nature, purpose and future in science and society.

The Hashtag Syllabus as Class Assignment: From Information Literacy to Cultural Critique

In recent years, scholar-activists have used hashtag syllabus movements to organize and share curricular resources related to pressing social and cultural issues in a widely accessible format. These collaboratively designed readings lists have provided many classroom-based educators with diverse and far-reaching texts with which to engage students on issues of social injustice and structural inequality. In this paper, we argue that having students develop hashtag syllabi in the context of interdisciplinary social science courses not only provides access to a breadth and depth of content knowledge and a range of perspectives on these topics but creates the conditions in which students can develop and strengthen critical information literacy skills. Using example assignments from introductory and upper-level undergraduate courses, we demonstrate the potential of these assignments to promote deep learning, challenge hegemonic knowledge production, address the personal and affective components of research, and connect our students’ work in the classroom to problems that exist outside of it.

(Practical) Theology: A story of doubt and imagination

Theology as a story of doubt and imagination is to be understood against the background of interdisciplinary social science and in contrast to the traditional paradigm of theology as a system of propositional certainty. The concepts of doubt and imagination are part and parcel of narrative research and can also be linked to postfoundational philosophy. The relevancy of this theological paradigm will be discussed on the basis of the following: (1) It is in touch with its own doubt, (2) It is in touch with its own story (tradition), (3) It can therefore interact with other stories, stories of hope and despair, stories of suffering, stories of power and of marginalisation, (4) It can also imagine alternative stories.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The interaction with ‘other stories’, which is one of the important outcomes of this postfoundational approach, makes it possible for theology to be a humble but important participant at the interdisciplinary conversational table.

Contextualizing patterns in short-term disaster recoveries from the 2015 Nepal earthquakes: household vulnerabilities, adaptive capacities, and change

Disaster recovery is multidimensional and requires theoretical and methodological approaches from the interdisciplinary social sciences to illustrate short- and long-term recovery dynamics that can guide more informed and equitable policy and interventions. The 2015 Nepal earthquakes have had catastrophic impacts on historically marginalized ethnic groups and Indigenous households in rural locations, arising in the immediate aftermath and unfolding for years afterward. Analyzing factors that shape household recovery patterns can help identify vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities in addition to signaling potential future changes. We pursue this goal using survey data from 400 randomly selected households in 4 communities over 2 10-week intervals at 9 months and 1.5 years after the earthquakes. Building on previous research that used non-metric multidimensional scaling ordination to identify patterns among multiple indicators of recovery (Spoon et al. 2020a), we investigate associations among these patterns of recovery, hazard exposure, and four domains of household adaptive capacity: institutional participation, livelihood diversity, connectivity, and social memory. Our results suggest: (1) social inequality, high hazard exposure, and disrupted place-based livelihoods (especially for herders, farmers, and forest harvesters on the geographic margins) had strong associations with negative recovery outcomes and displacement; (2) inaccessibility and marginality appeared to stimulate ingenuity despite challenging circumstances through mutual aid and local knowledge; (3) recoveries were non-linear, differing for households displaced from their primary home and agropastoral practice and those displaced to camps; and (4) some households experienced rapid changes while others stagnated. We contribute a temporal dataset with a random sample collected following a disaster that uses a theoretically informed quantitative methodology to explore linear and non-linear relationships among multidimensional recovery, adaptive capacity and change and provide an example of how vulnerabilities interact with adaptive capacity.

What went right during the COVID crisis: The capabilities of local actors and lasting innovations in oncology care and research.

This article will elaborate how oncology care and research was adapted during the COVID pandemic in the Metropole of Lyon (France), including the lasting innovations that came out of the crisis. The research method involved 22 semi-structured qualitative interviews of healthcare professionals, managers, and researchers in the Lyon, France region coming from both public and private academic hospitals. The interviews took place from February 2021-December 2022 in order to assess the long-term adaptations and innovations in cancer care organization in the post-COVID era. The main results show adaptations and innovations in 1) new processes and resources to facilitate disciplinary and interdisciplinary work; 2) harmonization and streamlining of patient journeys. In the discussion section, we will mobilize the capabilities approach, an interdisciplinary social sciences approach that focuses on the capabilities of persons to be and to do, to elaborate the conditions by which local actors were able to be agile, to adapt and to innovate in spite of the healthcare emergency and in coherence with their professional and personal values.

Towards the development of source separation and valorization of human excreta? Emerging dynamics and prospects in France

The source separation of human excreta (urine and/or feces) offers an alternative to conventional sanitation systems (flush toilets/public sewers) that is appealing in several respects, especially in environmental terms and for agricultural purposes, as a source of natural fertilizer from local and renewable resources. In France, systems for the separate collection of human excreta have previously been confined to the rural sphere and mainly implemented at the individual scale. However, since the 2010s, experimental projects in excreta source separation have been observed in urban areas, at the scale of individual houses and collective buildings, or even neighborhoods. This article, drawing on interdisciplinary social science research conducted within the French research program OCAPI (on ecological transition in nutrition/excretion systems), investigates these innovative projects for the source separation of human excreta in urban areas. Our work lies on a territorial approach, based on a cross-sectional analysis of experimental projects in three cities (Paris, Bordeaux and Grenoble), complemented by the mobilization of the “multi-level perspective” and the “technological innovation systems” frameworks. We study the trajectory and factors of development of source separation in France, its implementation dynamics and territorialisation pathways. Our analysis shows that source separation is still in an emerging phase in France. It is currently experimented in cities through diversified projects and approaches. This diversity applies both to socio-technical choices and territorial embeddedness’ forms. Adopting a prospective point of view, we then point out main obstacles and drivers to the scaling-up of this innovative practice: beyond technical issues, shared social values, stakeholder alignment issues and organizational challenges are essential. Finally, we consider possible directions for its development, ranging from the spread of a homogeneous solution to the continuation of a diversity of approaches on different territories.

Reframing childhood: an overview of the British Academy Childhood Policy Programme

ABSTRACT The article provides an overview of the conclusions reached by the British Academy Childhood Policy Programme in its final report. The programme explored the role of the state in childhood and how children and childhood are conceptualised in policy-making. The aim was to apply an inter-disciplinary social sciences and humanities lens in order to reframe debates around childhood policies and to encourage a more consistent and integrated approach to them. The article first sets childhood policy in a wider political and policy context, noting the significant variation between different parts of the UK. It then explores three key themes that emerged from the project’s first phase: the tension between conceptualising childhood as a time of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’; children’s rights; and children’s voices and participation. In each case the diversity among children and the inequalities they face is emphasised. The article concludes with a set of principles derived from the analysis of the themes and designed to encourage debate.

Troubling ambulant research: Disabled people's socio-spatial encounters with urban un/safety and the politics of mobile methods

This paper offers a critical reflection on the use of walking and mobile interviews in the context of research with disabled people whose diverse corporealities and cognitions challenge assumptions about walking as a normative bodily act associated with free, autonomous, mobility. While it has been suggested that mobile methods hold out the potential to open up dialogic and participative spaces of inquiry that capture embodied, affectual, and sensory knowledges in place, there has been less discussion of how social and bodily difference shapes the politics and practices of methods on the move. Drawing on research exploring disabled people's socio-spatial knowledges and experiences of urban un/safety in Ireland, we address this lacuna by reflecting on our use of ‘go-along’ interviews with people with diverse impairments and mobilities. Recognising the barriers that mediate disabled people's use of urban space, we interrogate both what go-along interviews can contribute to our understanding of disabled people's embodied encounters with urban un/safety, but also the limits, challenges and politics of mobile interviews as a form of methodological practice. We suggest there is a need to advance interdisciplinary social science scholarship which troubles ambulant research, and writes social and bodily difference into mobility studies and mobile methods.

The Crisis of Country Studies in Russia amid the Growing Demand for Knowledge about Foreign Countries and Regions

The article concentrates on foreign country studies. Although rooted in geography, this approach is to be treated as an interdisciplinary social science research that allows a comprehensive study of modern societies. In Russia, the contribution of economists, political scientists and historians, especially orientalists, to the study of foreign countries is very significant. At the same time, over the past 100 years, regional studies in the Soviet Union / Russia have been greatly transformed. Solely due to subjective reasons and the general crisis of fundamental research in the country, multi-volume publications that provided a lot of material for comparative studies have become a thing of the past. The theoretical baggage of foreign country studies accumulated in the second half of the XX century is almost not used, while linguistic training has been curtailed in a number of areas. In modern Russia, the “output” of scientific regional products does not meet the existing "demand". There are several explanations: the narrow scale of geographic research, the fascination with global issues by political scientists and economists, as well as the general shortage of specialists in the countries of the post-Soviet space and some other macro-regions. However, the state and big business, which should form a solvent and long term demand, also fail to cope with their social role. As a result, the discipline of country studies has found itself in a deep crisis. A way of this problem should be sought as soon as possible, while the traditions of domestic country studies and oriental studies are still alive. Otherwise Russia will have only recreational regional studies (the publication of guidebooks) and linguistic and regional research of the main nation states (as part of the new-fangled discipline of philologists and political scientists). At the same time, the lack of practical orientation of country studies has a detrimental effect on Russia's positioning in world economy and international relations.

The Education Trap: Schools and the Remaking of Inequality in Boston by Christina Viviana Groeger

In The Education Trap, Groeger explores how the modern American education system and corporate economy mutually constituted one another from 1880 through the Great Depression. Using Boston as a case study, she analyzes how schooling expanded and became the primary pathway to work across the employment structure in this period, replacing a wide array of pathways and informal training, including apprenticeships, kinship, and ethnic networks. This transformation took place within, and became part of, political and economic struggles for power in the workplace. Groeger traces these contests and their different outcomes within the fields of low-wage work, trades and craftwork, “pink collar” jobs in stores and offices, the legal and education professions, and corporate management.Whereas human-capital theory and popular narratives about this change equate more education with greater skills, opportunity, and equality, Groeger shows how employers and elites used education to assert control or status within changing workplaces and to impose new hierarchies, inequalities, and exclusions within education. While these education pathways may have opened opportunities for some, they also created and obscured new inequalities under a rhetoric of merit, as defined by those in power, with myriad gender, racial, ethnic, and class discriminations built into it. Groeger argues that education alone did not empower workers or reduce inequality; workers who had the power to control the nature of, and entry to, work fared the best in the new corporate economy. Now and in the past, we have fallen into a persistent “policy trap” when we posit education as the solution to inequality without attending to the larger dynamics of power within the economy.The Education Trap makes too many contributions to history, policy, education, and interdisciplinary social science about the relationship between education and the economy to be described adequately in this limited space. The book engages but challenges human-capital theory in economics and credentialing theory in sociology, exploring their strengths and limitations when subjected to rigorous historical, empirical examination. It offers an important historical interpretation of the corporate reconstruction of the economy and the systematization of education in the early twentieth century, including the development of high schools and relationship between public and private schools. It offers a compelling analysis of how and why myths about merit and mobility through education were constructed through these economic and educational transformations. Most of all, it critiques the way in which social scientists and policymakers assert education as an answer to social inequality without attending to the larger dynamics of power that structure work and education. These contributions are important not only to how we understand the past but also to how we understand the present.Many of these contributions come from Groeger’s innovative use of sources, her deep dive into institutional contexts, and the wide lens that she applies across educational institutions and the economy. The quantitative census data that provide the spine of the book enable her to trace the occupational, educational, household, and demographic characteristics of Boston workers from 1890 to 1940. As she notes in the book and explains in more detail on the book’s website, Groeger made particular use of historical census material from the recently released Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (ipums), with 100 percent samples of individual-level data for the years of her study. She contextualized these data with qualitative sources from seventeen archives, including school and university institutional records, occupational trade journals, employee personnel files, newspapers, personal correspondence, and student testimonials and yearbooks. These integrated data allow Groeger to explore large-scale trends as well as individual stories in the context of workplaces and educational sites. This deep context is essential to understanding how power operates, how it impacts individuals’ lives, and how changes and people are linked across these settings.Another methodological strength of the book is Groeger’s linking of domains usually treated separately—schools and workplaces, K–12 schools and universities, and public and private schools—which brings a holistic perspective to systems and change. The light that The Education Trap’s historical analysis sheds on contemporary theory and policy will interest a wide array of scholars who study the relationship between education and the economy and question the enduring trap of education as a cure for social inequality.

Introduction to the symposium on institutional analysis, market processes, and interdisciplinary social science

Abstract Heterodox economic approaches such as Austrian economics and market process analysis rely upon a less formalistic approach to rationality than neoclassical frameworks. We argue such looser formalism provides a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary engagement to investigating and understanding social institutions, outcomes and complex phenomenon. This introduction briefly summarizes the contents of this invited issue as effective examples of such interdisciplinarity.

Engaging students in education for sustainable development: The benefits of active learning, reflective practices and flipped classroom pedagogies

Effective Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) requires appropriate pedagogies that engage learners in transformative learning. These pedagogies include reflective and active learning, involving experiential, collaborative and learner-centred activities. This paper discusses student experiences and perceptions of an interdisciplinary social science ESD course at a UK university that incorporated reflective and active learning by using a ‘flipped classroom’ (FC) design and innovative assessments. FC creates time in class for reflective and active learning by moving content acquisition to pre-class study. Adoption of the flipped classroom in social sciences is rare and literature on use of FC for ESD is very scarce; hence this paper offers valuable insights into the design of a flipped social science ESD course, and participants' responses.Results of two surveys demonstrate very positive student perceptions of the course, and illustrate several benefits of the FC design. Over 90% of respondents agreed that in-class active learning exercises made the classes more engaging and the material more memorable than usual, offering useful opportunities to put information/learning into practice, with most students expressing strong agreement. In-class mini-lectures were nevertheless also appreciated, as were reflective practices. A large majority of the students considered the workload reasonable. Findings also reveal the importance of incentivising pre-class preparation using graded assessments such as quizzes, which additionally helped students understand/remember content, and gave confidence about contributing in class. It is clear that the active and reflective learning that FC facilitates engages students in ESD. The paper concludes by offering recommendations for successfully implementing this approach.

Understanding COVID-19 Pandemic through Science, Technology and Society (STS) Education: A Textual Analysis of Student Reflection Papers

The COVID-19 pandemic calls for educators to deliver learning experiences that are relevant in order to empower students to adapt to these unprecedented times. Science, Technology and Society (STS) is an interdisciplinary social science course included in the undergraduate general education curriculum in the Philippines that can potentially be designed to help students make sense of the coronavirus crisis. This study aims to describe the insights on the COVID-19 pandemic among undergraduate students enrolled in STS classes through the textual analysis of their reflection papers. A total of 74 reflection papers were qualitatively textually analysed using thematic analysis. Four themes emerged from the data: (1) appreciation of the science and medical community; (2) sensitivity to the barriers of scientific progress during the COVID-19 pandemic; (3) gaining social consciousness about the impacts of the pandemic, and; (4) enrichment of critical thinking and social engagement. Educators are encouraged to incorporate STS approaches in their lessons to foster students’ critical understanding of current socio-scientific issues.

SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE NETWORK ANALYSIS OF THE “INNOVATION POLICY MIX” CONCEPT: EXTENDING LEADERS’ VIEWS ON ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENT

Introduction/Main Objectives: This study aims to depict the scientific landscape for the innovation policy mix (IPM) from 2012 to 2019 since its re-conceptualization by Flanagan, Uyarra, and Laranja (2011).Background Problems: The seminal work has broadened policy mix thinking with social issues impacting innovation. Since every organization is part of the innovation policy system, this study takes the first step to introduce IPM into management fields by identifying and discussing subsequent works in research trajectories.Novelty: This study shows the remarkable progress toward a mature concept through IPM’s definition, characteristics, and boundaries. As a new string of interdisciplinary social science research, some opportunities and challenges are revealed, allowing future studies to be conducted in more theoretically sounding research traditions.Research Methods: This study applies systematic literature network analysis (SLNA) relying on objective measures from keyword co-occurrences and co-citations networks. It includes 60 articles analyzed using open-source software, i.e., Publish or Perish, Google Scholar database, VOSviewer, and the web-based Local Citation Network.Finding/Results: There are three clusters in the main path of research trajectories, i.e., IPM’s conceptualization, its characteristics for evaluation and measurement, and contextualization. Future research directions are proposed to advance our understanding of the organizational environment and its impact on innovation.Conclusion: IPM studies have opened opportunities to test and extend theories in strategic management and organization studies, especially for leaders who make decisions in the face of dynamic and demanding environments. Moreover, contextualization in developing countries would be a worthwhile exercise by considering the institutional and cultural context.

International Association for Interdisciplinary Humanities and Social Sciences Research (IAIHSSR) Founded

International Association for Interdisciplinary Humanities and Social Sciences Research (IAIHSSR) Founded

The political effects of emergency frames in sustainability

Emergency frames are mobilized in contemporary sustainability debates, both in response to specific events and strategically. The strategic deployment of emergency frames by proponents of sustainability action aims to stimulate collective action on issues for which it is lacking. But this is contentious due to a range of possible effects. We critically review interdisciplinary social science literature to examine the political effects of emergency frames in sustainability and develop a typology of five key dimensions of variation. This pinpoints practical areas for evaluating the utility of emergency frames and builds a shared vocabulary for analysis and decision-making. Emergency frames in sustainability debates can stimulate collective action on issues for which it is lacking but can have consequences. This Review examines the political effects of emergency frames in sustainability and develops a typology of different effects to build a shared vocabulary for analysis and decision-making.

A Coherentist Defense of Economics as an Interdisciplinary Social Science

This article provides a normative account to justify why economics should be a more interdisciplinary social science. The philosophy of science we use to ground this defense is Laurence BonJour’s coherentist theory of justification. Through his philosophical framework, we present a justification for economics to be more mindful of its fellow social sciences as a way to understand social phenomena more thoroughly. Our conclusion is that interdisciplinarity may enable economics to represent its own knowledge to itself in new forms. This does not mean economics’ correspondence with reality will eventually become flawless—it simply represents the fact that economic reasoning has plenty of room for improvement.