Production In Social Sciences Research Articles

Ethical human participant research in Central Asia: a quantitative analysis of attitudes and practices among social science researchers based in the region

Central Asian researchers are underrepresented in the global research production in social sciences, resulting in a limited Central Asian perspective on many social issues. To stimulate the production of local knowledge, it is important to develop strong research cultures, including knowledge of ethical practices in research with human participants. There is currently scarce evidence about research ethics regulations used by social science researchers working in the Central Asian region. This article reports findings from an online survey conducted in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan ( n = 296) from October 2021 to January 2022. Focusing on three Central Asian countries, this article addresses the following research questions: What are the attitudes and practices of social science researchers based in Central Asia toward research ethics regulations and research ethics committees (RECs)? Is research ethics training associated with improved attitudes and practices in relation to research ethics among social scientists based in Central Asia? Is research experience associated with improved attitudes and practices in relation to research ethics among social scientists based in Central Asia? Regression analyses results demonstrate that locally based social scientists with prior research ethics training implement ethical procedures in their empirical research practice more often compared to researchers without any prior research ethics training. The preliminary findings indicate that research ethics training is positively associated with Central Asia-based social science researchers’ engagement in ethical research, thus potentially increasing the amount and quality of empirical social science research produced in the region.

Interactive experiences in social science research in Mexico: networking and knowledge mobilization

ABSTRACT In the social sciences, a direct relationship with societal actors is an extended practice of conducting research, particularly in fields entailing in-depth empirical fieldwork. This paper analyzes the interactive processes observed in knowledge production in social sciences. The aim is to understand how these relationships are constructed between academic and non-academic actors, which is the goal of researchers in approaching social actors in this way, and the scope of these relationships for generating knowledge and addressing societal problems. Given the modalities of social science research, two frameworks are essential to analyzing these processes. On the one hand, there is the notion of knowledge networks. On the other, knowledge mobilization concerns understanding these processes and their linearity or non-linearity. In this paper, integrating both frameworks helps explain interactive social research. Based on recent empirical information about social sciences research in Mexico, this paper analyzes the dimensions of the interactive character of knowledge generation in these disciplines. The purpose of the paper is to document how the interactions between academic and non-academic actors are built during research; the characteristics of such collaborations; how the mobilization of knowledge occurs emphasizing learning processes and trust generation.

Militant Design Research: A Proposal to Politicize Design Knowledge-making

This work reflects on how design can engage in emancipatory processes of knowledge-making through Militant Design Research. The argument draws on the work of scholars who are engaged in counter-hegemonic design research and practice, and questions the knowledge production structures within academia. ‘Militant research’ is presented as a Latin American theoretical-political approach to knowledge production in social sciences, engaging processes of research, educational, and political actions, and uniting organic intellectuals, researchers, and social movements. Inspired by this perspective, principles for Militant Design Research are outlined to stimulate alliances between designers and social movements for the collective production of knowledge, to overcome situations of oppression in and out of academia.

“When Paradigms Are Out of Place”: Embracing Eclecticism in Legal Scholarship by Academic Turns

As with the progress of social sciences in which the notion of turn has gradually taken a central position in academic discourse, we have often seen the blended application of “paradigm shift talk” and “turn talk” to delineate the construction of progress in legal scholarship. Unlike “paradigm shift talk” that is based on the sufficient intellectual accumulation of understanding Kuhn’s paradigm theory, the connotations, as well as implications, of the notion of turn have been radically ignored in legal scholarship. Therefore, questions tackling turn’s underlying teleology, epistemology, methodology, and ethics are especially significant and indispensable. As a response, this article delves into the notion of turn in legal scholarship by mainly embedding it in a general context of the knowledge production of social sciences. It primarily argues that the notion of turn is more compatible with the construction of socio-legal knowledge than that of paradigm due to its interdisciplinary disposition. Accordingly, rather than maintaining the taken-for-granted status quo, legal scholars should pay heed to this compatibility in question and employ the notion of turn consciously and seriously.

Localization of social science research in selected academic disciplines in South Korea

Social science contributes to social development when theory and research topic are linked to its social context. However, in practice most social scientists in South Korea tend to explain their social issues and problems through mainstream theoretical perspectives that were primarily developed in the West. This study investigates how much social science research is localized in four selected social science disciplines (sociology, political science, public administration, and education) in South Korea. The study analyzes articles published in one representative domestic journal in each discipline to assess the localization of knowledge production during the last three decades (1988–2017). It was found that the local knowledge-base of Korean social science research is relatively weak though it has been continuously increasing during the last three decades. It was also found that knowledge production in social sciences is reliant on Western theory even though the research topics are locally embedded. In addition, the findings revealed that there are noticeable differences between the applied fields (public administration and education) and the pure fields (sociology and political science). Applied fields of public administration and education are more locally embedded than pure fields of sociology and political science. This study proposes that social science research in South Korea should draw more on indigenous knowledge and be less reliant on Western theory in the future.

The Theoretical Construction ofPobladoresandFaveladosas Social Movements in Latin America

How did the social sciences theoretically contribute to producing the movements of Chileanpobladoresand Brazilianfaveladosduring the twentieth century? Through a critical review of the main theories that seek to understand the political actions of the urban poor in Santiago de Chile and Rio de Janeiro, this article shows the close relationship between these movements and the production of social sciences, in which a double hermeneutic operates—a mutually influential reflexive process that eventually contributed to the constitution and recognition of the movements as such. This research analyzes how social sciences perform the same social struggles that they attempt to describe, in other words, how certain academic contexts interact positively or negatively with the political and social disputes generated from the movements in question. I review theories of marginality and dependent urbanization, urban social movements, utilitarian views, and new social movements, showing how these interpretations alternated between requiem, rediscovery, and denial of the favelados and pobladores as social movements.

Critical Disability Studies at the Edge of Global Development: Why Do We Need to Engage with Southern Theory?

This paper examines critical disability studies through the lens of Southern theory–a theoretical perspective on the process of knowledge production in social sciences which embodies intellectual projects from the global South (Connell, 2007). Building on Helen Meekosha’s question on decolonizing disability (2011), I critique the domination of Northern disability studies by proposing an engagement with Southern theory. My argument is three-fold: First, the use of Southern theory enables us to interrogate the domination of Northern epistemologies in Southern contexts; second, this theory unveils how colonialism has continued to manifest itself through the knowledge practices which have made the experiences of disabled people in the global South invisible; and finally, situated within the context of global development, this theory enables critical disability studies to act as a project of decolonization that engages with Indigenous ways of knowing about disability experiences.

Knowledge circulation in urban geography/urban studies, 1990–2010: Testing the discourse of Anglo-American hegemony through publication and citation patterns

This article approaches the question of Anglo-American hegemony in urban studies by examining publication and citation patterns. The past one or two decades have witnessed critical arguments about how knowledge production in social sciences is characterised by centre–periphery relations, and risks universalising US–American and European knowledge and epistemology. While not much systematic analysis has been done to address the extent to which urban knowledge has been shaped by Anglo-American centrism, it is not difficult to tell that the field is dominated by the Anglophone world in terms of authorship, institutional affiliation, the cities under scrutiny, and the urban theories arising. This article undertakes systematic analysis by collecting papers published between 1990 and 2010, in journals indexed by the categories ‘Geography’ and ‘Urban Studies’ in the ISI Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) database. We develop a series of analyses by examining the sites of knowledge production, contributors, key research interests, and the circulation/impact of works. We also single out research on urban China to explore questions such as the place of research on non-Anglo-American contexts in international forums. In all, this article argues that the dominant position of the Anglophone world in the production and circulation of urban knowledge is clearly discernible. But the Anglophone dominance does not necessarily mean that other research interests and orientations have not found a footing. Instead, we suggest that the growing but still small niche of urban China research presents tremendous opportunities for generating cross-context dialogues. The potential has not been fully delivered, as yet.

Transformations of Religious Affiliation in Contemporary Latin America: an Approach from Quantitative Data

Over the last three decades, the production of social sciences regarding religion in Latin America has focused on the transformations of religious beliefs, practices, and identities in the region, with ethnographic studies being the prevailing methodological approach. This work aims at measuring the magnitude of the mutations in religious belonging and commitment to religious institutions in Latin America, identifying convergent and divergent profiles among the different countries of the region. For that purpose, the available statistical data both from official institutions and from research centers has been compiled and analyzed. The text further reflects on the epistemological assumptions underlying the construction of statistical information, on the contribution of quantitative studies to the sociology of religion and on their complementarity with qualitative approaches. It also explores the scope and implications of the secularization process in the region, based on changes in religious belonging and commitment. The existing surveys coincide in highlighting a declining tendency of Catholicism, with different intensities according to each country, a growth of evangelical adherents, and of those denominated “without religion,” a category that was unknown decades ago. It refers to those Latin American who consider themselves believers, although they do not feel identified with any religious framework, within the setting of a strong process of individuation of beliefs and religious deinstitutionalization.

Narrating the Non-Nation: Literary Journalism and "Illegal" Border Crossings

Narrating the Non-Nation:Literary Journalism and "Illegal" Border Crossings Marta Caminero-Santangelo (bio) The twenty-first century has been hailed as ushering in a new era of globalization and "post-nationalism," in which the nation-state is becoming an increasingly "obsolete" category (Appadurai 169). Such grand claims are belied, however, by the strong wave of resurgent nativism in the U.S. that has accompanied immigration reform debates of the last decade—most recently manifested in Arizona's notorious SB 1070 and similar legislative efforts in other states1—as well as by the accompanying escalation in "boundary enforcement" at the U.S.-Mexican border (Nevins 158-59). As immigration spiked to ever higher numbers in the 1990s and early 2000s in the wake of NAFTA, policy enforcement "crack-downs" suggested a new level of border policing. Operation Hold-the-Line in 1993 and Operation Gatekeeper in 1994 implemented more rigorous enforcement at highly populated points such as San Diego and El Paso, driving border crossers through less populous areas and harsh desert conditions (Eschbach 4, 9). These developments resulted in large numbers of immigrant deaths due to dehydration, suffocation, hypothermia, and hyperthermia. The United States Government Accountability Office reports that border crossing deaths as a whole more than doubled between 1995 and 2005, although this increase was not accompanied by a corresponding rise in illegal entries. In response, the last decade has seen a flurry of books on the subject of undocumented immigrant crossings and deaths including: Dead in their Tracks: Crossing America's Desert Borderlands (1999) by John [End Page 157] Annerino; Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail (2001) by Rubén Martínez; The Devil's Highway (2004) by Luis Alberto Urrea; Dying to Cross: The Worst Immigrant Tragedy in American History (2005) by Jorge Ramos; Enrique's Journey: The Story of a Boy's Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite With His Mother (2006) by Sonia Nazario; and The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona Borderlands (2010) by Margaret Regan. These texts reframe the immigration debate through graphic narrative accounts of the human costs of our border policy, and they emphasize the pressing urgency of this crisis through the haunting leitmotif of border deaths. The title of this essay clearly takes its cue from Homi Bhabha's postulation that "nation" (understood as a sense of collective peoplehood that is geographically bounded and claims the right to sovereignty) is brought into being largely by stories, including shared histories and myths as well as "literature." Because stories of nation generally strive for a sense of homogeneity, they inevitably obscure or leave out elements that do not easily fit into the "imagined community" (Benedict Anderson's famous coinage) of the nation. The now standard labeling of undocumented immigrants as "illegals" in mainstream media suggests the degree to which this population has been narratively constructed as not fitting into the boundaries of the American "nation"—indeed, as fundamentally threatening that nation. Perceptions of Latinos as a national threat, Leo R. Chavez argues, have been shaped by "a history of ideas, laws, narratives, myths, and knowledge production in social sciences, sciences, the media, and the arts" that constitute a powerful set of "discursive formations" (22; Hall 6, qtd. in Chavez). In the wake of 9/11, titles linking immigration to threats to America's national security and even survival have proliferated.2 The authors of the border-crossing texts that I examine here clearly seek to intervene in this strident narrative of immigration as a threat to the existence of the nation by offering alternative narratives in which undocumented people are not imagined, first and foremost, as "aliens." These texts offer counter-discourses, reframing the story of immigration in terms that tend to shift the focus from the borders of "our" imagined community, to construct alternative notions of ethical communities. As works of literary journalism, these accounts capitalize on a culture in which "life narratives" have become not only instrumental in discourses on human rights, but also eminently marketable (Schaffer and Smith 7, 25, 27). [End Page 158] The current popularity of life writing suggests the degree to which these books might be instrumental in advocacy by reaching...

Entre el universalismo y el relativismo: Reposicionamiento de las ciencias sociales latinoamericanas

This paper presents the current conditions of production in social sciences in Latin America, and the expectations regarding this branch of knowledge. It examines some of the barriers that hinder its regional development, and it discusses the arguments that call into question the global nature of social sciences, introducing some examples of local development with global impact. At last, it suggests some strategies that might help our production in social sciences reach a global scale.

Translating Japanese Adult Movies in Taiwan: Transcending the Production-Consumption Opposition

This paper is an attempt to reconsider the opposition between consumption and production in social sciences through a detailed analysis of the production of Chinese subtitles for a pirated Japanese adult video (AV) clip in Taiwan. We demonstrate that the way local pirate merchants provide Chinese subtitles is very much guided by the sexual roles of men and women, or what Sahlins calls a cultural code, in Taiwan because this makes Japanese AVs look “natural”, and thus sexually appealing, to Taiwanese viewers. More importantly, the same cultural code also serves as a model for Taiwanese viewers to consume Japanese AVs; otherwise, the reproduction of Japanese AVs will not be sexually appealing to them. Seen in this way, the relation of production and consumption is not as opposed as is commonly thought. It follows that arguments that either production or consumption offers a better mode of investigation of a cultural good are misleading, because they presume that production and consumption entail different lines of logic when in fact both follow the same cultural code.

Comment on Jean-Michel Chapoulie/3

Critical against conventional disciplinary history of social science, this essay presents an analytical framework stemming from historical research of the author on Chicago sociology and french sociology after 1945. The proposed point of departure for research in the history of social sciences is similar to the basic perspective of history (as proposed by Lucien Febvre) or sociology of work in Everett Hughes’ style: social sciences are to be considered as social practices whose primary ends are the production of texts, with historical and thus changing properties. Investigations must looks at every categories concerned directly or indirectly (or even in abstentia) with the production of social sciences: researcher, concurrent researcher of other specialties or disciplines, scolarly and learned institutions, those who finance research, general audiences, etc.). Heterogeneous elements must be taken into account: the documentary sources, the way of processing documentation, the rhetoric, the categories of analyses and questioning, the social contexts in which the research is carried out, the biographical experience of producers, the contexts of publication and reception. As an illustration of the possible extensions of this approach, a rapid presentation is given of the use made in research on the Chicago tradition of certain distinctions to analyze the diffusion of works and the relations between generations of researchers.

O cortiço paulistano entre as ciências sociais e política: The paulista slum tenement between social sciences and politics

The article analyses the complex inter relations between the production of Social Sciences and the processes of establishing State Public Policies related to the Slum Tenement housing in Sao Paulo. I deal with the production of the social scientists that worked with slum tenement housing and at the same time focus on the State policies devoted to the improvement of its inhabitants' life conditions since 1893. The social scientists denounce the precarious conditions of life of the inhabitants of the slum tenement housing, but the responses of the State Policies take a long time and are not satisfactory. What is necessary to mobilize the so well known political will? Despite the reduced impact of academic studies in State Policies, the analyses and conclusions of social scientists' works are able to produce a lasting and cumulative effect, demanding more from the Social Sciences, from inter disciplinary studies and from basic research.

Rhizomes for Understanding the Production of Social Science

This article is about the social processes which produce social science knowledge. It is based on a discourse analysis of DELOS, a European research project into organizational learning in clusters of SMEs (Small to Medium Enterprises). The substantive focus is on the researchers' core theoretical object: the “cluster of SMEs.” This construct remained a highly contested artifact which, for complex reasons, defied singular definition. The analysis draws on, among others, the labyrinthine novels of Franz Kafka and the theoretical musings of Deleuze and Guattari on rhizomic forms of organization in connection with actor-network theory. It is argued that the intrinsic ambiguity and endless processes of social construction and reconstruction which characterized DELOS can be accounted for by seeing the production of social science as a continuous (and continuing) process that drifts along multiple organizational logics, theoretical perspectives, and local agendas. The article demonstrates how the reality of soc...

Research and Policing: The Infrastructure and Political Economy of Federal Funding

Despite major progress in social science helping policeto prevent crime, federal funding for police research is atits lowest level in thirty-five years. Only a majorrestructuring of the political economy of criminology seemslikely to revive research with and for the police. Forabout $1 per American per year, federal funding for“Centers for Crime Prevention” could be established inall sixty-seven cities of more than 250,000 people and ineach of the twenty states with no cities that large. Bycreating much stronger grassroots engagement in research,both the consumption and the production of socialscience could be greatly strengthened to improve theeffectiveness and fairness of police practice.