Context Of Social Sciences Research Articles

Ciências sociais e intelectualidade: ciência, educação e política

Resumo O artigo busca compreender as relações entre ciências sociais, análise sociológica e planejamento da educação pública escolar no Brasil, especialmente quanto à atuação de alguns cientistas sociais – Fernando de Azevedo, Anísio Teixeira, Florestan Fernandes e Darcy Ribeiro – visando à constituição e a modernização do país por meio da intervenção racional da intelectualidade na esfera estatal. Para isso, discute a noção de intelectual e a atuação de parte desse grupo social no Brasil, em diferentes momentos históricos, destacando a função social que atribuíam a si em cada contexto e a primazia que conferiam à educação formal como possibilidade de constituição de um novo país. Destaca as ações de Anísio Teixeira e Fernando de Azevedo, suas concepções acerca da sociologia e a educação, seu envolvimento com a Escola Nova e com a legislação educacional, e sua influência no pensamento e no trabalho intelectual e político de Florestan Fernandes e Darcy Ribeiro. Discute a compreensão desses dois autores acerca da função social do intelectual e da sociologia, seu envolvimento com a educação pública por meio de movimentos como a Campanha pela Defesa da Escola Pública, de cargos públicos na área educacional e da atuação político-partidária, e aponta similaridades, como a defesa da obrigatoriedade da escola pública, laica e gratuita, diante da diversidade de projetos e de pontos de vista concebidos por cada um eles. Aborda, por fim, o contexto institucional recente das ciências sociais no Brasil e os limites e possibilidades que essa condição oferece ao seu envolvimento com a questão educacional.

Social philosophy curriculum in social science and humanities structured doctoral programmes

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe an experiment in a non-credit bearing series of social philosophy workshops offered to social science and humanities disciplines in an Australian university. Design/methodology/approach The paper outlines the design rationale and learning objectives for the workshop series. The data set includes qualitative student responses to 501 post-workshop questionnaires and 14 in-depth qualitative responses to a follow-up online questionnaire. Findings The data suggest that social philosophy methodology curriculum offered within a multi-discipline peer context can facilitate an appreciation among students of the centrality of theory and the value of diverse discipline approaches in research. The last part of the paper explores what underpins this – a kind of un-learning or uncertainty regarding the veracity of different philosophical approaches to research, tied to a de-centring of research subjectivity that allows for the co-existence of multiple voices. Language learning, the inclusion of post-modern perspectives and an unbiased presentation of a wide range of thinkers within a challenging intellectual context are central to this. Research limitations/implications The emerging trend towards university-wide doctoral training offers opportunities for useful innovations in research education. University-wide social philosophy curriculum can play a role in facilitating constructive negotiation of theoretical complexity both within and across social science and humanities disciplines. Originality/value The contemporary social science and humanities research context is a challenging space, characterised by intra-discipline methodological plurality, and the risk of marginalisation by more dominant instrumentalist, end-user and science-driven perspectives. The trend towards bringing different methodological perspectives together within inter-disciplinary research and team supervision of doctoral students can lead to conceptual misunderstanding and research delays. The capacity to negotiate and translate conceptual perspectives, often within complex research relationships, has then become an increasingly important academic skill. Within this context, university-wide doctoral training has emerged, but there has been little discussion of doctoral curricula beyond that devised for professional doctorates within the discipline in the non-US higher education literature. This paper contributes to emerging scholarship on research education by describing the sorts of relational, textual and conceptual processes that might be created in the multi-discipline social science and humanities context to produce an appreciation for the different philosophical foundations of research knowledge.

Damaging the Case for Improving Social Science Methodology through Misrepresentation: Re-Asserting Confidence in Hypothesis Testing as a Valid Scientific Process

This paper is a response to Gorard's article, ‘Damaging real lives through obstinacy: re-emphasising why significance testing is wrong’ in Sociological Research Online 21(1). For many years Gorard has criticised the way hypothesis tests are used in social science, but recently he has gone much further and argued that the logical basis for hypothesis testing is flawed: that hypothesis testing does not work, even when used properly. We have sympathy with the view that hypothesis testing is often carried out in social science contexts when it should not be, and that outcomes are often described in inappropriate terms, but this does not mean the theory of hypothesis testing, or its use, is flawed per se. There needs to be evidence to support such a contention. Gorard claims that: ‘Anyone knowing the problems, as described over one hundred years, who continues to teach, use or publish significance tests is acting unethically, and knowingly risking the damage that ensues.’ This is a very strong statement which impugns the integrity, not just the competence, of a large number of highly respected academics. We argue that the evidence he puts forward in this paper does not stand up to scrutiny: that the paper misrepresents what hypothesis tests claim to do, and uses a sample size which is far too small to discriminate properly a 10% difference in means in a simulation he constructs. He then claims that this simulates emotive contexts in which a 10% difference would be important to detect, implicitly misrepresenting the simulation as a reasonable model of those contexts.

Accounting, identity, autopoiesis + sustainability

Purpose This paper is prompted by an analysis of accounting and accounting education by Lawrence et al. (2013) in this journal. In that paper, the authors use the theory of autopoiesis to articulate and explore, what they argue is, an inappropriate conservatism in accounting. This aims to develop the insights offered by Lawrence et al., to advance the understanding of autopoiesis and to use the insights from the theory of autopoiesis to try and confront (what we see as) the resistance shown in business and accounting to the possibilities of a more substantive sustainability agenda. Design/methodology/approach The essay takes its departure point as the paper by Lawrence et al. and uses the theory of autopoiesis as a metaphorical lens through which to re-examine accounting, business and educational practice with respect to sustainability. Findings This paper depart somewhat from Lawrence et al.’s arguments and inferences but broadly supports their contentions that accounting and accounting education are autopoietic. Some advances are offered to the theory and some issues for future research are briefly speculated upon. The analysis succeeds in highlighting that the accounting, business and educational systems may well be protecting their “cores” but are doing so by ignoring crucial and life-threatening information. In autopoietic terms, the sub-systems are behaving as closed systems that are causing self-harm and are being psychopathic. It is speculate that accounting educators may be, themselves, acting as autopoietic persons. Research limitations/implications The essay, in identifying some of the empirical weaknesses inherent in the theory of autopoiesis in a social science context, suggests that the persuasiveness or otherwise of the theory will probably lie in the extent to which a reader finds the heuristic plausible and not in any easily testable propositions. The implications, if this limitation is accepted, are, broadly, that accounting and accounting education are acting psychopathically in the face of (arguably) life-threatening data. Practical Implications There are extensive implications for research and policy but only those for education are explored here. Social Implications If the analysis is persuasive, the implication for engagement with the exigencies of sustainability is profound and disturbing. Originality/value The paper has two primary purposes: to challenge and develop debate around Lawrence et al.’s arguments and to use autopoiesis as one explanation for the inertia around sustainability, business and accounting. The paper extends the theory of autopoiesis as articulated in accounting to embrace both the issue of nesting systems and the autopoietic person. The combination of these contributions is combined with Lawrence et al., in offering a substantive challenge to accounting educators: albeit a substantively different one than those authors offered. It is these matters of difference that ultimately challenge the authors’ roles as educators, researchers and accountants.

Crowdsourcing a Collective Sense of Place.

Place can be generally defined as a location that has been assigned meaning through human experience, and as such it is of multidisciplinary scientific interest. Up to this point place has been studied primarily within the context of social sciences as a theoretical construct. The availability of large amounts of user-generated content, e.g. in the form of social media feeds or Wikipedia contributions, allows us for the first time to computationally analyze and quantify the shared meaning of place. By aggregating references to human activities within urban spaces we can observe the emergence of unique themes that characterize different locations, thus identifying places through their discernible sociocultural signatures. In this paper we present results from a novel quantitative approach to derive such sociocultural signatures from Twitter contributions and also from corresponding Wikipedia entries. By contrasting the two we show how particular thematic characteristics of places (referred to herein as platial themes) are emerging from such crowd-contributed content, allowing us to observe the meaning that the general public, either individually or collectively, is assigning to specific locations. Our approach leverages probabilistic topic modelling, semantic association, and spatial clustering to find locations are conveying a collective sense of place. Deriving and quantifying such meaning allows us to observe how people transform a location to a place and shape its characteristics.

Groups, information theory, and Einstein's likelihood principle.

We propose a unifying picture where the notion of generalized entropy is related to information theory by means of a group-theoretical approach. The group structure comes from the requirement that an entropy be well defined with respect to the composition of independent systems, in the context of a recently proposed generalization of the Shannon-Khinchin axioms. We associate to each member of a large class of entropies a generalized information measure, satisfying the additivity property on a set of independent systems as a consequence of the underlying group law. At the same time, we also show that Einstein's likelihood function naturally emerges as a byproduct of our informational interpretation of (generally nonadditive) entropies. These results confirm the adequacy of composable entropies both in physical and social science contexts.

Hegemonía y Economía Política Internacional: Aportes de la Teoría Crítica

In the Social Sciences and the IR fields, hegemony is one of the concepts that implies the most theoretical difficulties for its construction and apprehension. The reason may lie on the extensive and diverse senses in which hegemony might be understood, or how this concept has been filled with a diversity of meanings. Such a lack of a concrete definition, especially in the IR field, turns hegemony into a term that might confer the idea of homogeneous totality, meanwhile explaining the different and particular relationships and degrees of power, in a diffuse and imprecise way. Thus, this paper proposes a general approach about the concept hegemony, and the relationship between hegemony, power and domination, as it might be understood in the Social Sciences and IPE context; therefore, it proposes to develop this theme under the critical theory perspective; and finally, it evaluates the specificity of the use of the concept hegemony, within the problem of power.

О неравенстве исходов. Рецензия на книгу: Пикетти Т. 2015. Капитал в XXI веке. М.: Ad Marginem

The much awaited appearance of the Russian translation of Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Tomas Piketty marks a milestone, and also brings an occasion to discuss the book’s main arguments as well as the arguments of its critics. Piketty charts the evolution of income and capital inequality in developed nations through the last two centuries. He states that despite what has been said in previous literature, inequality evolves in a U-shaped pattern with the bottom of the U being the three postwar decades. Piketty suggests that capitalism is hardwired to increase inequality due to what he calls three fundamental laws of capitalism. The most important third law states that inequality will grow as long as return on capital (r) is greater than output growth rate (g). While Piketty’s data seems like an accurate description of what occurs, Piketty’s theory had been met in a most unwelcome manner. Critics claimed that Piketty’s laws are not laws at all, and are actually either accounting identities or plainly incorrect statements. In this review, I also trace Piketty’s work to two particular traditions in social sciences: cliometrics - particularly the version known as series history - and to analytical Marxism. Seeing both of these traditions will help us to place Piketty’s book within the context of twentieth-century social science rather than isolated phenomena.

Two types of potential functions and their use in the modeling of information: two applications from the social sciences.

In this paper we consider how two types of potential functions, the real and quantum potential can be shown to be of use in a social science context. The real potential function is a key ingredient in the Hamiltonian framework used in both classical and quantum mechanics. The quantum potential however emerges in a different way in quantum mechanics. In this paper we consider both potentials and we attempt to give them a social science interpretation within the setting of two applications.

Using History of Science to Teach Nature of Science to Elementary Students

Science lessons using inquiry only or history of science with inquiry were used for explicit reflective nature of science (NOS) instruction for second-, third-, and fourth-grade students randomly assigned to receive one of the treatments. Students in both groups improved in their understanding of creative NOS, tentative NOS, empirical NOS, and subjective NOS as measured using VNOS-D as pre- and post-test surveys. Social and cultural context of science was not accessible for the students. Students in second, third, and fourth grades were able to attain adequate views of empirical NOS, the role of observation and inference, creative and imaginative NOS, and subjective NOS. Students were not able to express adequate views of socially and culturally embedded NOS. Most gains in NOS eroded by the next school year, except for tentative NOS for both groups and creative NOS for the inquiry group.

Book Review: Encyclopedia of Education Economics & Finance

Comprehensive studies of educational systems in an economic and social sciences context are relatively recent. The 1966 Equality of Educational Opportunity report (also known as the Coleman Report) addressed the availability of equal educational opportunities to children of different races, religions, and national origins in response to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This was an early example of social science research being used to influence national policy. Since then, educational finance research has blossomed into an area of study that influences decision makers at the national, state and local levels in resource allocation, assessment, and school organizational and restructuring policies.

Western academic discourse on the post-Soviet de facto state phenomenon

This article examines how the so-called post-Soviet de facto states are conceptualized and discussed within the wider context of Western English-language social and political sciences, including inter-disciplinary Russian, Slavonic, East European and Eurasian area studies. It outlines the main theoretical models and methodologies utilized in the analysis of this phenomenon, and identifies their respective benefits and shortcomings. The article posits that there is considerable unevenness between various theoretical paradigms in terms of their explanatory clarity and their relationship with empirical reality. I argue that Western academic discourse on the post-Soviet de facto states, and on post-Soviet politics more generally, has been increasingly shaped by mono-theoretical determinist models with heavy reliance on deductive quantitative research methods and secondary sources in English language and non-academic analytical reports. A corollary has been a considerable deterioration in the epistemological quality of the discourse on de facto states, and on occasion its politicization.

Designing social living labs in urban research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a more socially centred understanding of living labs for urban research questions by reflecting on current technologically centred and innovation-driven approaches. Design/methodology/approach – The paper takes the form of literature review complemented by conceptual knowledge from practical experiences. Findings – Urban living labs, as they were introduced from a technological and economic point of view, have to be translated into the context of social sciences. By doing so, they may be a promising tool to stimulate co-creation and collaboration also in urban research projects that focus on social research questions and include diverse target groups. Socially centred living labs take into account the local context by developing a space of encounter for the participants in the urban living lab and by implementing a set of living methods that suit both the research design and the local requirements. Originality/value – This paper argues that urban living labs can be a valuable tool in urban research to include researchers, politicians, local stakeholders and residents in an open concept of co-creation. It argues that a locally contextualised design in terms of space and methods is necessary to create an environment of trust and collaboration.

Patrones de realización de la proyección en la Discusión de artículos de investigación producidos en español

El objetivo del presente trabajo fue explorar los diferentes patrones de realización de la proyección de diferentes voces en la sección Discusión de artículos de investigación producidos en español, en dos disciplinas científicas: Microbiología y Sociología. En la Lingüística Sistémico-Funcional, la proyección ha sido considerada como 'motivo semántico' (Halliday, 1994: 219), fenómeno de 'dominio semántico' (Halliday y Matthiessen, 2004: 603-4) o fenómeno discursivo-semántico (Martin 1992:17-19; Martin & White, 2005: 11), dado que puede realizarse en la léxico-gramática mediante diferentes recursos: de manera congruente, a través de nexus clausales, o de manera no congruente o metafórica, a través de otras opciones. En consecuencia, en este trabajo se analizaron los diferentes y variados patrones de realización en español de la proyección en un breve corpus a fin de ser aplicados en estudios futuros en el análisis de la heteroglosia discursiva en el contexto social de las ciencias. El análisis de la Transitividad y el de las relaciones tácticas y lógico-semánticas permitió reconocer en los textos de cada disciplina: a) los recursos que realizan las fuentes de proyección, b) los medios de realización de la proyección y c) el estatus de lo proyectado, ya sea como cláusula proyectada en nexus clausales o como elemento con alguna función en la configuración de la cláusula como representación.

Are Students Ready to Adopt E-Portfolio? Social Science and Humanities Context

This paper presents the learners readiness towards the implementation of E-Portfolio as means of solving the persistent problems in educational setting. The purpose of the study was to examine the learner’s readiness towards the implementation E-Portfolio in higher education. Initially, this paper was conducted a study with a total number of 300 students form Social Sciences and Humanites cluster and then practicing portfolio in their coursework. The pilot study was conducted and showed the reliability coefficient with Cronbach’s alpha () is 0.825. The instrument was divided into five components which involved (1) technology accessibility (2) online skills and relationship (3) motivation (4) internet discussion and (5) importance to success, to measure the learners’ readiness. The findings were reported that students are ready to have an E-Portfolio as a learning tool in constructing their knowledge and experience of learning. The E-Portfolio will extend the opportunity from paper-based into the electronic based with a variety of online learning features in gaining students interest and motivation in learning. At the end of the day, the E-Portfolio will not only benefit the students and the faculty but also towards the employability.

Addressing the Zeros Problem: Regression Models for Outcomes with a Large Proportion of Zeros, with an Application to Trial Outcomes

In law‐related and other social science contexts, researchers need to account for data with an excess number of zeros. In addition, dollar damages in legal cases also often are skewed. This article reviews various strategies for dealing with this data type. Tobit models are often applied to deal with the excess number of zeros, but these are more appropriate in cases of true censoring (e.g., when all negative values are recorded as zeros) and less appropriate when zeros are in fact often observed as the amount awarded. Heckman selection models are another methodology that is applied in this setting, yet they were developed for potential outcomes rather than actual ones. Two‐part models account for actual outcomes and avoid the collinearity problems that often attend selection models. A two‐part hierarchical model is developed here that accounts for both the skewed, zero‐inflated nature of damages data and the fact that punitive damage awards may be correlated within case type, jurisdiction, or time. Inference is conducted using a Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling scheme. Tobit models, selection models, and two‐part models are fit to two punitive damage awards data sets and the results are compared. We illustrate that the nonsignificance of coefficients in a selection model can be a consequence of collinearity, whereas that does not occur with two‐part models.

Conceptual Model of Smart Region

Political, technological, institutional and other reforms of the last decade encouraged communities of cities, regions and states to search for new ways to enhance their competitive advantage in the global marketplace. One of the most popular responses to the fast-changing conditions is their effort to become “smart”. Smartness, a feature characterizing, first of all, an individual, nowadays is widely attributed to almost all phenomena of life. Smart regions are considered as one of the essential preconditions for the success of the EU Cohesion policy and development strategies of many EU member states, regions or cities. However, discussions about the content of the “smart region” concept, and, in particular, its qualitative characteristics, still receive very little attention of scholars and practitioners. This paper presents the results of the theoretical research that defines the “smart region” concept in the social sciences context. The authors of the research highlight the main elements of the “smart region” concept as well as its qualitative characteristics. A theoretical model of a smart region is proposed. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ppaa.13.3.8305

Discourse analysis in German-language human geography: integrating theory and method

In the context of various conceptual turns in German-language human geography over the past decades (e.g., linguistic, cultural, and material turns), which have been adopted largely via writings from English-language human geography, theoretical perspectives in these two academic communities have been converging. However, there are still aspects that are quite distinctive for debates in the German-language context. We argue that, for example, in the case of poststructuralist approaches, a distinct development has taken place, which emphasizes the links between theoretical, methodological, and methods-oriented empirical research, e.g., through the operationalization of linguistic methods. Following Michel Foucault's notion of ‘discourse’, these empirical analyses are often referred to as ‘discourse analyses’. This paper gives an overview of the field of discourse analysis in German-language human geography and discusses possible reasons for the different ways in which discourse theories have been emerged and developed in English-language and German-language geography. We argue that there are three developments which make ‘discourse analyses’ in the German context distinct: (1) the significance of theoretical debates on the role of the subject, (2) the intensive interdisciplinary networks within the wider context of German-language social sciences and linguistics, and (3) closely related to the second point, the strong emphasis on questions of methodical implementation.

Stochastic geometric network models for groups of functional and structural connectomes

Structural and functional connectomes are emerging as important instruments in the study of normal brain function and in the development of new biomarkers for a variety of brain disorders. In contrast to single-network studies that presently dominate the (non-connectome) network literature, connectome analyses typically examine groups of empirical networks and then compare these against standard (stochastic) network models. The current practice in connectome studies is to employ stochastic network models derived from social science and engineering contexts as the basis for the comparison. However, these are not necessarily best suited for the analysis of connectomes, which often contain groups of very closely related networks, such as occurs with a set of controls or a set of patients with a specific disorder. This paper studies important extensions of standard stochastic models that make them better adapted for analysis of connectomes, and develops new statistical fitting methodologies that account for inter-subject variations. The extensions explicitly incorporate geometric information about a network based on distances and inter/intra hemispherical asymmetries (to supplement ordinary degree-distribution information), and utilize a stochastic choice of network density levels (for fixed threshold networks) to better capture the variance in average connectivity among subjects. The new statistical tools introduced here allow one to compare groups of networks by matching both their average characteristics and the variations among them. A notable finding is that connectomes have high “smallworldness” beyond that arising from geometric and degree considerations alone.

The role of conservation partnerships between scientists and nonprofit agencies in freshwater science and management

The role of conservation partnerships between scientists and nonprofit agencies in freshwater science and management