Social Science Knowledge Research Articles

Integrating traditional knowledge of non-Western humanities and social sciences: a research agenda through the Chinese lens

ABSTRACT The global knowledge asymmetries, dominated by academic centers in Western societies, have marginalized traditional non-Western knowledge. In line with the call for intellectual pluriversality, non-Western scholars in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) have witnessed a revitalization of traditional knowledge in research. Nonetheless, how they integrate their traditional knowledge into research lacks theoretical grounding and empirical substantiation. This study specifically examines the research agenda of contemporary Chinese HSS academics who are attempting to integrate traditional Chinese and modern Western knowledge. Through interviews, it seeks to understand their reasons, goals, principles, and strategies related to such knowledge integration. It first underscores the rationales stemming from global knowledge disparities and Chinese individuals’ limited exposure to their traditional knowledge. It then reveals guiding principles for understanding traditional Chinese knowledge. Last, it provides strategies for knowledge integration, including comparative analysis and the transformation of traditional Chinese knowledge into modern theories and methodologies. Such a research agenda transcends critical reflection on the hegemonic and inequitable global knowledge system, promoting tangible actions to facilitate HSS research in China and beyond.

Unveiling Global Trends in Reactive and Proactive Aggression: A Cutting-Edge Bibliometric Analysis

This bibliometric mapping discusses the research landscape of proactive and reactive aggression, key authors, collaborative networks, and trends in scholarly publishing for the past two decades. The study, using tools like VOSviewer, shows important patterns in co-authorship, citation networks, and keyword co-occurrence. The leading personalities include Adrian Raine, Paula J. Fite, Richard E. Tremblay, and Paul J. Frick. Heavy contributors to the knowledge about aggression from biological, psychological, and developmental perspectives are identified. Co-authorship is intense, especially on topics dealing with neuro-criminology, childhood and adolescent behavior, and the role of psychopathy in violent behavior. The analysis shows that from the year 2009, the publication of works has grown rapidly to their peak in the year 2022, reflecting an upward spiral of interest and interdisciplinary research on aggression. Dominant keywords like "aggression," "reactive," "proactive," "psychopathy," and "conduct disorder" point to the core themes of research on emotional regulation, developmental trajectories, and clinical interventions. This review has come to a close that studies in the field of aggression have now developed into a multi-disciplinary science, embracing neuroscience, psychology, criminology, and social science knowledge to further advance the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of aggressive behavior and develop various treatments. Future research will have to go on filling in areas of investigation that are underrepresented, including but not limited to aggression at the interface with particular demographic variables and newer approaches to intervention.

The interplay between reproducing stigma and building agency for social change in sports coaching: the lived experiences of lesbian coaches in Spain

ABSTRACT While there are only a few studies analysing the experiences of lesbian coaches in sport worldwide, there is a lack of social scientific knowledge about the experiences of lesbian coaches in Spain. This paper explores a novel conceptual framework that combines stigma and agency to analyse the experiences of lesbian coaches, and the extent to which they reproduce stigma and/or build agency to challenge the status quo and foster social change. Drawing on sixteen semi-structured interviews with lesbian coaches in Spain, four central themes were identified. These are (1) double discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation, (2) feelings of fear, (3) dealing with stigma, and (4) agentic responses and the potential for positive social change. The research highlights a continuum of experiences of lesbian coaches that are multifaceted and complex in nature, and often coexist between the reproduction of stigma and/or transformation through agency. Our research provides new insights into the nature and prevalence of discrimination regarding sexual orientation that aims to help sport organizations develop specific strategies and programmes to foster inclusivity.

The urgent need for social science and humanities knowledge for climate action in Europe

The urgent need for social science and humanities knowledge for climate action in Europe

THE REVIEW OF LITERATURE: ACCEPTANCE OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY

Acceptance is a concept that started in psychology. This concept is widely used to integrate knowledge of other social sciences. Thus, this article attempts to integrate this concept of the principle of acceptance into the policy of acceptance in education. Policy education seemed essential to analyze to prevent uncertain decisions in the future. The process of obtaining a literature review is fundamental to the research. In this article, three approaches are used to generate valuable themes in educational policy acceptance. This study aims to examine the literature review on the acceptance of educational policies using three stages. Stage 1: Simple Systematic Literature Review, Stage 2: Narrative Review, and Stage 3: Evolution Review. The results show that there is still a lack of study on education policy acceptance among researchers. The contribution of this article is to provide valuable themes that can be used as models in the future.

한국, 핀란드, 노르웨이 교육과정 내 유아사회교육 내용 비교·분석

Objectives This study compared and analyzed the content of social studies in early childhood education within the 2019 Revised Nuri Curriculum and the national curricula of Finland and Norway to explore implications for the content of social studies in Korea. Methods The contents of social studies in early childhood education were extracted from the Nuri Curriculum, Finland's National Core Curriculum for early childhood education and care and Norway's Framework Plan for kindergartens. Each curriculum’s the contents of social studies were compared and analyzed based on the categories of social studies in early childhood education, social education curriculum topics from the American Social Education Association, and learning areas, categories, and contents. Results The contents of social studies in early childhood education can be connected and integrated to a broader range of learning areas. Among the social science knowledge, economics and history can also be included in the curriculum. Self-awareness and self-respect, ethical thinking and philosophical questions, diversity issues, justice or fairness, critical perspectives, and practices and participation in the community will allow the scope and depth of the social studies in early childhood education. Conclusions In comparison with Finland and Norway with a social pedagogy approach, a more integrated interdisciplinary approach to the social studies in early childhood education, balance between social development and social science knowledge, encouragement of young children's thinking processes, and active awareness of diversity, justice and fairness, and practice and participation are needed.

East Asian Social Science: State of the Art or Next Big Thing?

The paper offers a cursory overview of the state of social scientific knowledge production in East Asia. Conceptually, East Asia is strongly anchored in Eurocentric premises. These have been questioned not only by postcolonial critics but also by the globalization of social reality that has made them theoretically untenable. Steeped in epistemological conservatism and an empiricism inherited from the Anglophone world, East Asia does not yet seem ready to let go of the delusionary certainty these premises provide and of the short-term gratifications the construction of more of the same awards. Given its position in the world, the region should be poised to become a genuine social scientific innovator. But this presupposes coming to terms with an intellectual legacy that has run its course.

Process drama as a tool for participation in explorations of ‘wicked problems’ in upper secondary chemistry education

This study targets a special form of educational drama called process drama, as a potential means for enabling student engagement with wicked problems. The overarching aim is to explore how process drama may afford student agency in dealing with wicked problems in upper secondary chemistry education. It is a design-based study with two cycles of intervention in two schools. A process drama plan was designed to focus on the wicked problem of plastic pollution. The interventions were video- and audiotaped and thereafter transcribed. The data were analysed using a combination of qualitative content analysis and a sociocultural framework of the two dialectics agency|structure and margin|centre. The analysis resulted in three themes regarding how plastic pollution and plastic use was explored in the process drama. The students participated in a constant flow between margin and centre where different spaces for students’ agency was afforded. In brief, our main finding is that process drama enables students and teachers to participate in a variety of ways in the exploration of wicked problems, and talk about plastic pollution and plastic use, while drawing on knowledge and perspectives of science as well as values and societal and social science perspectives and knowledge.

Democratization and knowledge in social sciences

Democratization and knowledge in social sciences

Transforming Science Research Through Liberatory Race-conscious Mentorship: The BUILD PODER Professional Development Modules.

BUILD is a NIH initiative designed to retain underrepresented undergraduates in biomedicine. Of the 10 BUILD sites, BUILD PODER is the only space-and-place that approaches this initiative through the framework of critical race theory (CRT). A feature of BUILD PODER's path to student empowerment is liberatory race-conscious mentorship. Researchers developed, implemented, and evaluated a quintipartite CRT-based antiracist-anticolonial online training program for biomedical educators nationwide. We review the social scientific and historical knowledge used to create these novel mentorship training modules. We describe the modular content and activities. We also report evaluation data obtained during beta-testing and outline how this information helped finalize the product. Discussed are the individual- and institutional-level implications of modularizing the developmental process of liberatory race consciousness.

Virtue Ethics and Person-Place Relationships

ABSTRACT Indigenous knowledge and work in social science demonstrates the importance for well-being of people’s relationships with places, but western moral theorists have said little on this topic. This paper argues that there is a neo-Aristotelian virtue associated with forming a relationship with a place or places; that is, human beings can form relationships with places that affect their perceptions, emotions, desires and actions, and such dispositions, when properly developed, increase the chance that people will flourish. As well as discussing the virtue, the paper considers related vices and briefly outlines implications of this virtue for dispossession, pro-environmental action, and education.

Cultural expertise and legal pluralism in the United Kingdom, France, and Italy

This paper investigates cultural expertise as a theoretical framework guiding the use of social sciences knowledge as expertise to assess evidence in dispute resolution and rights determination in the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. With a focus on legal pluralism, the study examines whether cultural expertise can effectively reconcile multiple sources of law with state laws, thereby mitigating concerns about legal pluralism undermining the authority of state laws. The first part of the paper highlights challenges associated with recognizing multiple legal sources without a comprehensive understanding of cultural expertise, also including the objections raised against accommodating legal pluralism in diverse societies. In the second part, the paper reviews three potential models for cultural expertise: independent cultural experts with established experience and reputation, experts appointed by decision-making or investigative authorities, and a hybrid system combining both types of expertise. The analysis is informed by global legal pluralism, considering social inequalities and power dynamics as crucial factors in understanding the plurality of law. Drawing upon the perspectives of legal pluralists attentive to social inequalities, the paper concludes by exploring the potential of cultural expertise within the framework of new global legal pluralism. It argues that cultural expertise, when effectively applied, can facilitate the identification of ways in which state and non-state laws can address and alleviate inequalities. By bridging the gap between culture and law, cultural expertise holds promise for contributing to a more equitable and inclusive legal system.

Who Authors Social Science? Demographics and the Production of Knowledge

Author demographics are of key epistemic importance in science—shaping the approaches to and contents of research—especially in social scientific knowledge production, yet we know very little about who produces social scientific publications. We fielded an original demographic survey of nearly 20,000 sociology, economics, and communication authors in the Web of Science from 2016–2020. Our results include not only details about gender and race/ethnicity but also the first descriptive statistics on social science authors’ sexuality, disability, parental education, and employment characteristics. We find authorship in the social sciences looks very different from other measures of disciplinary membership like who holds PhDs or faculty positions. For example, half of the authors in each discipline’s journals say that they are not a member of the discipline in which they published. Moreover, social science authors are considerably less diverse than other measures of disciplinary membership. In sociology, women constitute a majority of PhDs, faculty, and American Sociological Association members; by contrast, men make up a majority of sociology’s authors. Additionally, we include a wide array of descriptive statistics across a range of demographic characteristics, which will be of interest to inequality scholars, science scholars, and social scientists engaged in diversifying their disciplines.

Institutional change for the development of urban sanitation in the Global South: A social science review

This paper analyses knowledge in social sciences about the conditions for and the process of institutional change in the urban sanitation sector in the Global South. We conducted a literature review of 148 papers. This review is organised around the six steps of institutional change proposed by Greenwood et al. (2002). Most studies focus on conditions and barriers to change, on the “legitimacy” of social or technological innovations, and the actors promoting change. The change process is rarely analysed from a long-term perspective, nor at the city scale, calling for further research.

Graphic Design Needs to Take Responsibility: Embedding Social Awareness and Ethics Through Social Science Knowledge and Pedagogical Change

Abstract Graphic design aims to affect human thought or behavior through visual communication. To do so effectively, designers need a robust understanding of why people behave as they do and the appropriate research skills to explore the wider social and cultural landscape. All the principles involved in understanding and affecting behavior are defined in the social sciences, including analyzing their effectiveness. Acquiring this knowledge could allow graphic designers to better reflect on the ethical and social consequences of perpetuating stereotypes and provide a starting point to address the significant issues created by excluding the lived experience of diverse communities. Graphic design has never adopted an industry-wide set of ethical guidelines. To address this lack, the discipline should aim toward incorporating social science knowledge in methodology to help promote social and cultural awareness in practice. In this article, I propose that social science knowledge, particularly social psychology, could become an integral part of graphic design curriculum at the undergraduate level. I also argue that cognition and educational psychology theories contribute important knowledge and research practices to designers’ long-term problem-solving, potentially transforming the discipline's influence and producing more socially aware communication in the future.

Coproductive Capacities Support Implementation of Ecuador’s Sangay-Podocarpus Connectivity Corridor

Despite increasing expertise and resources for planning ecological corridors, initiatives face implementation challenges in integrating science and governance. The coproductive capacities framework identifies normative, cognitive, social, and material factors that support scientifically-informed action. This study asked how coproductive capacities enable transition from planning to implementation in the Sangay-Podocarpus Connectivity Corridor (Corredor de Conectividad Sangay-Podocarpus; CCSP), Ecuador’s first designated corridor, linking multiple national parks with extraordinary biodiversity. We assessed capacities through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with CCSP stakeholders. We find that the CCSP possesses strong normative capacities with a shared vision for social-ecological wellbeing and understanding of threats. Cognitive capacities are supported by biophysical science but lack integration with social science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge. Social capacities vary depending on scale. Material capacities are compromised by insufficient funding and human resources. Corridor implementation depends on strong, diverse, highly interdependent capacities, which highlights the need for targeted capacity-building to sustain effective connectivity conservation.

Global environmental assessments and transformative change: the role of epistemic infrastructures and the inclusion of social sciences

The gap between what is known about climate change and the action taken to prevent it has instigated debates around how to reconfigure global environmental assessment organizations to better inform and foster transformative change. One recurring request involves the need for a broader and better inclusion of social scientific knowledge. However, despite such intentions, the inclusion of social scientific research remains limited. How can this be explained? Through a detailed analysis of the IPCC special report on limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees, this article reveals how the institutional conditions of global environmental assessments condition and shape what knowledge is included in these assessments, as well as how this knowledge is represented. It discusses how and why the understanding of social processes and structures remains underdeveloped, despite such knowledge being critical for transformative change. To integrate such knowledge into environmental assessments would require substantial changes to the current epistemic infrastructure used by global environmental assessments. It is therefore time to think beyond global environmental assessments and consider complementary institutional science–policy relations through which social scientific research can assist policy actions to promote deep transformative change.

Translating interdisciplinary knowledge for gender equity: Quantifying the impact of NSF ADVANCE

AbstractBackgroundInterdisciplinarity is often hailed as a necessity for tackling real‐world challenges. We examine the prevalence and impact of interdisciplinarity in the NSF ADVANCE program, which addresses gender equity in STEM.MethodsThrough a quantitative analysis of authorship, references, and citations in ADVANCE publications, we compare the interdisciplinarity of knowledge produced within the program to traditional disciplinary knowledge. We use Simpon's Diversity Index to test for differences across disciplines, and we use negative binomial regression to capture the potential influences of interdisciplinarity on the long‐term impact of ADVANCE publications.ResultsADVANCE publications exhibit higher levels of interdisciplinarity across three dimensions of knowledge integration, and cross‐disciplinary ties within ADVANCE successfully integrate social science knowledge into diverse disciplines. Additionally, the interdisciplinarity of publication references positively influences the impact of ADVANCE work, while the interdisciplinarity of authorship teams does not.ConclusionsThese findings emphasize the significance of interdisciplinarity in problem‐oriented knowledge production, indicating that specific forms of interdisciplinarity can lead to broader impact. By shedding light on the interplay between interdisciplinary approaches, disciplinary structures, and academic recognition, this article contributes to programmatic design to generate impactful problem‐solving knowledge that also adds to the academic community.

Caracterización ambiental de Agaves nativos para la restauración ecológica en una microcuenca de La Sierra Gorda de Guanajuato

Water erosion has disturbed the structural and functional conditions of productive and forest ecosystems, its restoration requires actions that integrate the participation of social actors, scientific and traditional knowledge that integrate the spatial delimitation of the problem and the most suitable plant species. Agaves have physical and biological characteristics to transfer to ecological restoration, and have already been tested in Mexico and other countries, therefore the objective is to structure a restoration proposal with native Agaves in the El Potrero micro-watershed in San Isidro Corralillos, Victoria, Guanajuato. Supported by the method of functional groups of plants, an interview, participatory cartography and a participatory diagnosis to learn about the traditional uses of the Agaves and a participatory workshop where the restoration proposal was structured. A restoration proposal formed by conservation practices that incorporate three groups of Agaves characterized to favor their environmental adaptation and with traditional uses, perspectives of use are generated in seven places of forestry and productive interest that show ecological disturbance. Ecological skills, traditional uses of native Agaves and the participation of social actors are used for the ecological restoration of the El Potrero micro-watershed.

Perspektif Mahasiswa Prodi Pendidikan Kimia tentang Integrasi

Integration is an attempt to unite Islamic knowledge and general knowledge. This integration with Amin Abdullah's view will likely result in difficulties in balancing Islamic and general studies, which are often not very successful due to the desire of both sides to successfully build a closely related system. The purpose of the research is to know the perspective of students of chemistry education on the integration of social sciences and humanities. This research uses descriptive qualitative methods, the method used in qualitational research is data collection through observations and interviews, and documentation. The results of this research show that the perspective of students of chemistry education, students of State Islamic University Sunan Kalijaga through integration with responsibility, answers to the curriculum of the campus, so that students not only learn about religious sciences but also general sciences. Humanism and social sciences are general sciences that are integrated with religious sciences. Each student has a unique perspective related to the knowledge of social sciences and humanities.