Methodological Inspiration Research Articles

What Social Research Can Learn from Archaeology: Comparison as Juxtaposition and Conduction

Methodological inspiration from the discipline of archaeology can spur new developments of logic of inquiry in social research beyond contemporary debates among empiricist, rationalist, and pragmatist positions with their corresponding modes of inference: induction, deduction, and abduction. Archaeological methodology pursues comparison not in terms of similarities and differences among cases but through the juxtaposition of heterogeneous yet coexisting finds. On this basis, it pursues inferences by what I call ‘conduction’ about the relationship among finds, understood as their conditions of coexistence. Archaeological methodology will prove especially useful to studies that face uncertainty about the constituting relationships of a phenomenon, surprising coexistences, or a need to transgress established disciplinary or social demarcations. On this background, I particularly discuss the usefulness of archaeological methodology for the broad literature on problems, problematization, issues, and concerns building on the works of Dewey, Callon, and Foucault.

Analysis of geographical origin of solar terms based on the STTMD method

The 24 solar terms are a significant component of traditional Chinese culture. Amid global warming climate change, research on the Solar Terms has gained increasing prominence. Identifying the geographical origins of the Solar Terms not only provides evidence for studies on the origins of Chinese agricultural civilization but also serves as a critical foundation for the innovative utilization of traditional culture in the modern era. Previous research has primarily relied on historical records, literature review, and field investigation, often challenged by the vast and complex data, the difficulty distinguishing authenticity, the time-consuming nature of the work, and the need for direct scientific evidence. The STTMD (Solar Terms Typical Meteorological Day) method was used for typifying solar term meteorological data sequences, supplemented by isothermal estimation and clustering analysis. This approach was further validated using key crop germplasm sites, phenological indicators, and phenological observation contour maps. The results derived from statistical methods are cross-referenced with historical documents to infer the geographical origins of the 24 Solar Terms. The findings indicate that: (1)On a larger spatial scale, the Solar Terms originated in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River; (2)On a smaller spatial scale, the "Luoyang-Zhengzhou-Anyang" triangle is the most probable origin area; (3)The core area of origin is hypothesized to be in present-day Xingyang, Henan Province, or slightly further north. These results are consistent with historical literature and phenological records of crops, offering a novel analysis and transformative insights into the knowledge of Solar Terms. The study provides valuable evidence or methodological inspiration for historical agricultural research in China and offers references for agricultural production and the environmental impacts of global warming.

“This Wall Does More for Mental Health than the Uni Does”: Theorising Toilet Graffiti as Safe House for Students

AbstractDespite sometimes being considered unworthy of scholarly attention, the study of toilet graffiti, also known as latrinalia, has nevertheless garnered increasing interest among researchers. Graffiti writing still suffers from the stigma of being associated with transgression, vandalism, and a deviant subculture. However, findings from this study show that writing on the restroom wall can facilitate a unique form of communication among the writers. Drawing from semiotic linguistic landscaping and serendipity as methodological inspiration, this research explores data collected from a women's restroom at a UK university over a ten-month period. It examines how restroom users utilized the graffiti-covered wall as a safe house and a repository for their anxieties and concerns. The findings illustrate a palpable emotional connection to this specific wall, where writers seek and offer advice, share personal struggles, and provide mutual support to the extent that they see it as contributing more to their mental health than the university does. Through an analysis of the conversational threads present in the graffiti, this study underscores the potential for examining latrinalia within educational institutions to gain valuable and meaningful insights into the student body. The main implication is for educators to consider innovative, non-traditional ways of reaching out to students outside of the formal spaces of learning such as classrooms and libraries. This study, therefore, encourages us to reconsider toilet graffiti as potentially offering an additional or supplementary communication platform for individuals who might otherwise lack the confidence to express themselves openly through traditional means of soliciting feedback.

Hysterically y-ours: Reclaiming academic writing as a hysterical practice

Yet another hysteric! Can’t bear it anymore? Neither can we! In this text, we reclaim this highly derogatory term, “hysteric,” so often used against us, as women academic writers, to rewrite the gendered architecture of academic membership in organization studies. Performing hysterical writing interweaves affects, poems and reflections with feminist theoretical and methodological inspirations to challenge the masculine norms that marginalize affective, sentient, feminine and/or other, nonconforming, different bodies from academic texts. Specifically, drawing on Irigarayan mimesis as an activist feminist practice, we develop hysteria’s transformative, response-able potentials for writing, researching, relating and eventually knowing differently in organization studies. Our account contributes to burgeoning debates on writing differently particularly by situating the ethico-political potentials of écriture feminine for knowledge creation and resistance against epistemic oppression and violence.

Nanoindentation and scratching behaviors of diamond-like carbon films by coarse-grained molecular dynamics

High-performance coatings such as diamond-like carbon (DLC) films own thin thickness which is in the gap of experiment and molecular dynamics (MD), limiting the measurement of their intrinsic mechanical properties. To achieve the direct comparison between experiment and simulation, modified parameters of Tersoff potential describing the interaction among amorphous carbon accurately are proposed for coarse-grained MD simulations of DLC films. Such parameters are validated in compression and shear loadings compared with all-atom MD. A fitted mathematical contact model of the actual contact depth of indenter in nanoindentation is studied. By using this model, the elastic moduli of DLC films have been computed and the effect of relaxation is discussed. Besides magnified dimensions, the larger mass of coarse-grained beads enables the greater time interval, realizing the friction simulation of DLC films at experimental sliding velocities, and giving a methodological inspiration for the studies of mesoscopic simulations of amorphous materials.

Det relativa ickevalet

The relative non-choice – a critical discourse analysis of freedom of choice in elderly care in Sweden The aim of this study is to reveal how non-choice is represented in a context advocating freedom of choice. This is developed by investigating how the non-choice of a provider in elderly care is represented in national policy documents. The concept “non-choice” refers to the absence or limitation of a choice of provider. The empirical data consist of ten documents on freedom of choice written during the 21st century, a particularly expansive period for freedom of choice in Sweden. Fairclough’s critical discourse theory is used as the primary theoretical framework, and methodological inspiration from Bacchi’s approach to policy analysis is also applied. Prominent features in the findings are that there is a tendency to represent non-choice: 1) as a choice caused by incapacity, 2) as an active choice, 3) as an uninformed choice, and 4) as a predetermined choice. The result also shows that the meaning of non-choice is unclear regarding when family members and care managers have a decisive influence on the outcome of the choice and when a predetermined non-choice is activated as an obvious measure. In the social debate, much attention has been devoted to whether to introduce customer choice in elderly care at municipal level. We are now in a situation when more attention must be devoted to non-choice in the social debate, including its meaning and application.

Una ecología política de minería indígena responsable: Dilemas, disputas y desafíos en la comunidad Shuar de Congüime de la Amazonía ecuatoriana

Desde 2016, la comunidad indígena Shuar de Congüime en la Amazonía ecuatoriana tiene la concesión para extraer oro en su territorio mediante su empresa comunitaria Exploken Minera. Con su misión de una minería socio-ecológicamente responsable, invirtiendo los ingresos en la comunidad y sin usar químicos o metales pesados, este modelo único se contrasta con la extracción minera transnacional e ilegal en territorios indígenas. Con inspiración teórica y metodológica de la ecología política, justicia ambiental y el post-desarrollo, así como la conceptualización de utopías reales, este estudio etnográfico trata de las experiencias de gobernanza y justicia socioambiental de la empresa comunitaria y los dilemas, disputas y desafíos que emergen en la comunidad con esta nueva situación. El resultado indica que varios desafíos estructurales siguen sin resolverse. Si bien las experiencias de responsabilidad socioecológica de Exploken constituyen una opción ante el extractivismo destructivo y considerando la mejora de las condiciones de vida de muchas familias Shuar, surgieron nuevas tensiones sociales en Congüime, incluso transformaciones de las estructuras de poder social

Between fieldwork, methodological inspirations and professional contacts: the stay in the United States and at the London School of Economics of the Rockefeller fellow and ethnologist Günter Wagner (1932–1934)

Between fieldwork, methodological inspirations and professional contacts: the stay in the United States and at the London School of Economics of the Rockefeller fellow and ethnologist Günter Wagner (1932–1934)

What’s Reality Got to Do with It? Wittgenstein, Empirically Informed Philosophy, and a Missing Methodological Link

“Don’t think, but look!” (Wittgenstein 2009: § 66). This insistient advice has served as methodological inspiration for several influential thinkers in the broad range of ‘empirically informed’ philosophy, which has flourished over the last decades. There is, however, a worrisome tension between Wittgenstein’s work and these turns to practices, history, science, field work, and everyday life: Wittgenstein is in general doing something different from what the thinkers who claim to be inspired by him are doing. An argument for the legitimacy of the move from Wittgenstein to empirically informed philosophy is so far missing in the literature. This article shows how this move can be justifiable within a Wittgensteinian frame, philosophically beneficial, and at times even necessary.

A comparative and acceptance study of women’s discourse in Chinese-American online stand-up comedy

As an emerging form of comedy, stand-up comedy has developed rapidly and attracted widespread attention in various countries today through the production and dissemination mode of new media. In order to better understand the cultural characteristics of stand-up comedy and provide methodological inspiration for contemporary feminist public expression, this essay focuses on online stand-up comedy in China and the United States. Drawing on relevant theories from feminism, gender sociology, reception aesthetics, and communication studies, this essay uses textual close reading and comparative analysis to examine the expressive characteristics and reception mechanisms of women’s discourse in these two countries. Through analysis, this essay concludes that the female comedic discourse in China and the United States, which differs in perspective, expressive approach, and offense and its re-speaking, is repeatedly negotiating resistance or compromise at the intersection of the three influencing factors, namely, the diachronic socio-cultural traditions, the synchronic audience acceptance, and the external impact of the market and censorship.

Modelling in Normative Ethics

This is a paper about the methodology of normative ethics. I claim that much work in normative ethics can be interpreted as modelling, the form of inquiry familiar from science, involving idealised representations. I begin with the anti-theory debate in ethics, and note that the debate utilises the vocabulary of scientific theories without recognising the role models play in science. I characterise modelling, and show that work with these characteristics is common in ethics. This establishing the plausibility of my interpretation. Taking methodological inspiration from modelling in science gives us new tools for managing idealisations, and a new perspective on pluralism. I think demonstrate why this interpretation is a fruitful way of interpreting ethics, by looking at three case studies. First, I return to the anti-theory debate and argue that modelling opens up a new middle ground. Second, I argue that a modelling lens offers a new way of understanding impossibility theorems in population ethics, and their bearing on ethics as a whole. Finally, I show how viewing our work as modelling can be deployed in debates within ethics, using the debate over prioritarianism as an example. I close with further methodological suggestions for those who choose to see themselves as modellers. I discuss the role of counterexamples, our responses to moral disagreement, and the training of new ethicists.

Layering the Cultural Archive: A Critical Reading of Gloria Wekker’s White Innocence and Rembrandt’s Painting of Two Black Men

ABSTRACT In this article I take a critical look at the ‘cultural archive’, one of the key concepts in White Innocence (2016), for which Gloria Wekker drew methodological inspiration from Edward Said, who coined the term in Culture and Imperialism (1993), and from Ann Laura Stoler’s observations on the ‘ethnography of the archive’ in Along the Archival Grain (2009). Drawing on debates in history, cultural analysis and memory studies, and using Rembrandt van Rijn’s painting ‘Two African men’ as case study, I wish to elaborate on Wekker’s observations on what the cultural archive as a conceptual tool allows us to see about Dutch history, memory and society, and what it obscures. Despite its obvious advantages for recognizing and acknowledging structures of coloniality still present in Dutch society, I plead for a more historically grounded approach to the cultural archive that may enhance the productivity of future research on, or in, the cultural archive in order to identify further possibilities of change.

The Pedagogy of the Oppressed: Education and Consciousness in the Wanderings of the Way. Education and Citizenship: Paulo Freire, the Grail Movement and Public Policies in Portugal (1970/1974)

This is a dialogue walked along the paths of Paulo Freire, having as its thread the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, woven to compose our process of formation, research and sharing. Our “gentification” starts from our ground (Brazil) in webs and experiences involving teaching, research and knowledge production, where the people speak the word and write their life, in a process that intertwines with our narrative of a militant and apprehensive educator, in the Brazil and Portugal, composing our mandala life with the Grail Movement and its relationship with Freire, on the path of Education and Citizenship before the April Revolution (1970/1974). Our biography is composed in the meetings and learning, interconnecting the process of our journey where Paulo Freire is a reference and north, being methodological support and inspiration in training processes in Public School and in spaces within the Social Movement. Composing the “viable unprecedented”, we walk in a question methodology, registered in the life stories told by protagonists who develop an educational process, paths and encounters with Freire here and there, “gentifications”, “weavings”, wanderings, encounters with sociomuseology and the wanderings that allow meetings and sharing in Brasil and Portugal. Key words: Education; Citizenship; Awareness; GRAAL ; Sociomuseology

Making the Paris Agreement: Historical Processes and the Drivers of Institutional Design

After a decade-long search, countries finally agreed on a new climate treaty in 2015. The Paris Agreement has attracted attention both for overcoming years of gridlock and for its novel features. Here, we build on accounts explaining why states reached agreement, arguing that a deeper understanding requires a focus on institutional design. Ultimately, it was this agreement, with its specific provisions, that proved acceptable to states rather than other possible outcomes. Our account is multi-causal and draws methodological inspiration from the public policy and causes of war literatures. Specifically, we distinguish between background, intermediate, and proximate conditions and identify how they relate to one another, jointly producing the ultimate outcome we observe. Our analysis focuses especially on the role of scientific knowledge, non-state actor mobilization, institutional legacies, bargaining, and coalition-building in the final push for agreement. This case-based approach helps to understand the origins of Paris, but also offers a unique, historically grounded way to examine questions of institutional design.

Kossinna, the Nordische Gedanke, and Swedish Archaeology: Discourse and politics in German and Swedish archaeology 1900-1950

This article looks at the relation between Swedish and German archaeology in the first half of the 20th century. In particular, the focus is on the question why Swedish prehistorians came to accept the archaeology of Gustaf Kossinna. Thc methodological inspiration principally comes from Carlo Ginzburg and his idea of clucs. The empirical material mainly consists of books and journals. Newspapers and archives have also been used, but to a much lesser cxtent. Gustaf Kossinna was the dominant archaeologist in Germany in the early 20th ccntury. The Siedliungsarchäologie was to a large extent his creation, and he was instrumental in making a spatial tum in archaeology. Kossinna was part of the Nordische Gedanke movement. Thus, the Nordic/Germanic blood, earth, and soil were paramount to Kossinnian archaeology. It was so important that Kossinna thought only Europe, in particular the Nordic region, which to him included parts of Germany, should be subjectcd to archaeological investigations. At the tum of the 20th ccntury, Swedish archaeology was dominated by Oscar Montelius and his chronological typology. In the 1910s, however, his position was challcngcd by proponents of a more spatially oriented archaeology. Among the opponents werc two young archaeologists, Nils Åberg and Sune Lindquist, who both had participated in the archaeological seminar organiscd by Knut Stjerna. In different ways, Åberg and Lindquist used Kossinna's archaeology in thc struggle against the Montelian dominance.

Insights on Trends of Academic Research into Family Business

The question of family business ranks among the most intensively followed areas of research. At the same time, it is a question with a palpable impact on the economic and social environment; in other words, it is a question with a high degree of social relevance. It is a topic both appropriate and necessary, yet very challenging in terms of its interdisciplinarity and scope. The goal of this article is to summarize the research question of family business via a systematic review of literature primarily in terms of topical areas, scientific methods, and study sample size. To evaluate which methods are suitable for examining the issues of family business. The authors drew methodological inspiration from the bibliography of De Massis et al. (2012), in which the authors gathered and organized information related to the topics of empirical articles, including a short description of the sample, a description of the data collections methods used, and a list of secondary data sources used. They reached the conclusion that the use of qualitative research seems logical for research in the areas of identity, culture, values, and relationships, which is the primary socioemotional wealth of family businesses.

Multi–sited ethnography: methodological inspirations for research in political science

Spatial and social mobility in an increasingly globalized world is associated with new challenges for social sciences, including political science. This also applies to methods and methodology. The article aims to reveal the cognitive potential that lies in the use of multi–sited ethnography for research on politics and on the study of political behaviors (das Politische). The utility of this approach is illustrated on the basis of the research on social and spatial mobility of small town residents conducted with the use of this method.

The Human Person as a Social and Interpersonal Being According to the Most Significant Representatives of the Lublin Personalism

The article constitutes an attempt to present the synthetic understanding of the person as a social and relational being based on the Lublin conception of personalism of late twentieth and early twenty-first century. The analyses of the social horizon of the person cannot be limited to one, however brilliant, perspective. Person needs to be illuminated using cognitive lights of various kinds to approach a broad range of information relevant to it. The personalism of the Lublin School, which is characterised by a multiplicity of methods and forms of the description of a person, while preserving a certain common axiomatic and axiological foundation, is perfectly suited for this. Moreover, in line with the hermeneutic method of a “medium ground,” to describe the personal being personalists from Lublin such as Wincenty Granat, Karol Wojtyła/John Paul II or Czesław Stanisław Bartnik have utilized both philosophical and theological data. Deriving methodological inspiration from the masters mentioned above, the whole inquiry featured in this article is divided into two parts. They include the analyses of philosophical and theological horizons of understanding the social and interpersonal dimension of the person.

“Eu não sou a mulher vermelha. Pode tirar suas próprias calças”: sentidos sobre gênero e sexualidade em disputa em memes de Game of Thrones

Nesta pesquisa, a partir de um acontecimento específico de Game of Thrones (relação sexual entre as personagens Arya Stark e Gendry Baratheon), buscamos, tendo em vista os memes compartilhados por fãs em redes sociais digitais, perceber quais sentidos são então mobilizados acerca de questões de gênero e de sexualidade. Discutimos as noções de acontecimento, ciberacontecimento, meme e gênero e sexualidade. A análise de construção de sentidos em redes digitais é a inspiração metodológica e os estudos feministas/estudos de gênero consistem nos referenciais teóricos e políticos acionados. Em relação às conclusões, foi possível compreender como a elaboração de lugares permitidos e também interditados à personagem Arya passa pelos lugares permitidos e interditados às mulheres. Para além da ficção e para além do caráter humorístico dos memes, observamos uma discussão que é, também, de caráter político.Palavras-chave: Game of Thrones. Meme. Gênero.

Critical Utopian Action Research: Methodological Inspiration for Democratization?

This paper provides an introduction to Critical Utopian Action Research (CUAR) as a methodology with a strong emphasis on combining critical analysis, imaginative thinking, and everyday life-based actions toward societal democratization. First, we situate CUAR in the light of current societal frameworks asking: Why the need for CUAR? We then briefly mark theoretical sources of inspiration before focusing on the Future Creating Workshop as a way to elicit what CUAR is from a methodological point of view. We exemplify how the workshop functions before we finally discuss what kind of contributions CUAR might enable in the context of local communities, workplaces, organizations, and broader societal settings.