Social Science Research Agenda Research Articles

Ultra‐Processed Food, Depletion, and Social Reproduction: A Conceptual Intervention

AbstractWhat we eat and how we think about food and nutrition are undergoing a momentous change, driven by the rise of ultra‐processed food. There is a growing body of evidence linking the consumption of ultra‐processed food to poor health outcomes. However, the health depleting effects of ultra‐processed food go beyond changes in discrete indicators of nutrition and health. Processes of depletion entail social, economic, and political relations. This paper aims to emphasise the importance of a social science research agenda on ultra‐processed food by establishing the conceptual connections between ultra‐processed food and depletion using a social reproduction approach. To do this, it draws on the notion of depletion through social reproduction elaborated by Shirin Rai, Catherine Hoskyns and Dania Thomas, which provided inspiration to unpack the totality of social reproduction and consider specific resources needed for social reproduction. Such an approach reveals that ultra‐processed food is both an input for social reproduction, through consumption, and a form of social reproduction work, when food work and the associated (health) care work are considered. On this basis, the paper identifies four conceptual dimensions to explore whether and to what extent the expansion of ultra‐processed food can cause depletion and the key methodological principles to use this conceptual approach in empirical research.

A social science research agenda to accelerate public engagement in climate change adaptation.

Recent studies find that people in high-income countries now think of climate change impacts, such as flooding or periods of high temperature, as being of immediate relevance and concern. Individuals and households can take adaptation actions to help limit the severity of harm caused when climate impacts occur, for example, they could make adjustments to their homes such as installing flood gates or sun shades, or they could adapt their behavior such as staying indoors during the hottest part of the day. However, so far adaptation is not yet happening at the speed or scale needed to adequately prepare for the climate impacts already being experienced or those projected for the coming decades. Here, we propose an agenda for future social science research that would further our understanding of how best to increase engagement and action in climate change adaptation.

The Quest for Post-Chineseness Among Chinese Indonesian Intellectuals: An Intellectual History Agenda

Due to the challenge of defining Chineseness, various disciplines can contribute to the subject without a single authority having a monopoly over its scope. Post-Chineseness is an evolving movement that aims to reduce the embarrassment of China scholars at their failure to exchange the methodologies and scopes of their subjects, often rendering them strangers to one another. Recognition is particularly relevant to the study of post-Chineseness. Chineseness is mutually recognized and denied in a variety of ways among both Chinese communities and individuals and in both self-regarded and other-regarded identities. Divergent approaches have created complex behavioral implications and a massive agenda for social science research. An agenda for post-Chineseness can examine these crises in the contemporary social sciences and humanities and has the potential to offer sophistication, recombination, and reconstruction for Chineseness in different contexts. This case study of several Chinese Indonesian intellectuals who have described their identity and connection with China illustrates how an agenda of post-Chineseness can simultaneously explain and deconstruct.

A new critical social science research agenda on pesticides

The global pesticide complex has transformed over the past two decades, but social science research has not kept pace. The rise of an enormous generics sector, shifts in geographies of pesticide production, and dynamics of agrarian change have led to more pesticide use, expanding to farm systems that hitherto used few such inputs. Declining effectiveness due to pesticide resistance and anemic institutional support for non-chemical alternatives also have driven intensification in conventional systems. As an inter-disciplinary network of pesticide scholars, we seek to renew the social science research agenda on pesticides to better understand this suite of contemporary changes. To identify research priorities, challenges, and opportunities, we develop the pesticide complex as a heuristic device to highlight the reciprocal and iterative interactions among agricultural practice, the agrochemical industry, civil society-shaped regulatory actions, and contested knowledge of toxicity. Ultimately, collaborations among social scientists and across the social and biophysical sciences can illuminate recent transformations and their uneven socioecological effects. A reinvigorated critical scholarship that embraces the multifaceted nature of pesticides can identify the social and ecological constraints that drive pesticide use and support alternatives to chemically driven industrial agriculture.

Towards a Global Urban Geopolitics: Inhabiting Violence

ABSTRACT This introduction to the special section explores geopolitical dimensions of conflict and violence in cities, pointing at the need to continue learning from marginal urban settings. It broadens the scope across differentiated approaches, such as the francophone and anglophone urban geopolitical traditions. By opening up a wider perspective, the emphasis is not on cities as part of a matrix of global hierarchies of geographical power but on the multiscalar relational significance of urban geopolitical inquiry. The introduction positions the special section articles within a wider review of urban geopolitical provocations outlining a new political vocabulary of urban conflict and violence. It concludes with a general call for a methodological and empirical broadening of the field of urban geopolitics as part of a broader de-colonial social and spatial science research agenda bridging the disciplines of political geography, urban studies, architecture and planning.

Bruno Latour, when we were young

The passing of Bruno Latour has elicited a flood of tributes in France. This is somewhat comforting since his work, while among the most innovative in the field of social science anywhere in the world, has long remained underappreciated, if not entirely ignored, by the great academic institutions of his home country—whose authority and judgments play an important role in shaping the social science research agenda and philosophical thought in France. Thus, while the autumn of 2022 resounded with a chorus of praise for Latour the person, much of the prodigiously rich and diverse oeuvre he produced over the course of the past 50 years, straddling philosophy and the social sciences, remains to be discovered. The recent spate of excellent books about him1 approach his work from a philosophical perspective, rather than for his essential contributions to sociology, and deal primarily with his later work on the climate crisis and the risks to which the earth and its beings are exposed in the age of the Anthropocene, rather than on the link he developed in the final decades of the 20th century. And this despite the fact that the latter have had a profound impact on the practice of sociology, both in its theories and methods and in the constitution of its very object—in a kind of reconstruction of the scientific object that is, as we know since Thomas Kuhn, the surest sign of a scientific revolution.2

Degrowth and agri-food systems: a research agenda for the critical social sciences

Degrowth has become a recognised paradigm for identifying and critiquing systemic unsustainability rooted in the capitalist, growth-compelled economy. Increasingly, degrowth is discussed in relation to specific economic sectors such as the agri-food system. This paper builds on the foundational work of Gerber (2020) and Nelson and Edwards (2021). While both publications take a rather specific analytical or disciplinary focus—the former specifically connects critical agrarian studies and degrowth, the latter explores the contributions of the recent volume ‘Food for degrowth’—this paper takes stock of the emerging body of literature on degrowth and agri-food systems more broadly. It proposes research avenues that deepen, expand and diversify degrowth research on agri-food systems in four areas: (i) degrowth conceptualisations; (ii) theorisation of transformations towards sustainability; (iii) the political economy of degrowth agri-food systems; and (iv) rurality and degrowth. Together, these avenues devote due attention to a variety of agents (ranging from translocal networks to non-humans), spaces (e.g. the rural), theories (e.g. sustainability transitions and transformations towards sustainability) and policies (of the agricultural sector and beyond) that thus far have received limited attention within the degrowth literature. The critical social science perspective on degrowth agri-food systems, which is advanced in this paper, illuminates that the present unsustainability and injustice of hegemonic agri-food systems are not merely a problem of that sector alone, but rather are ingrained in the social imaginaries of how economies and societies should work as well as in the political–economic structures that uphold and reproduce these imaginaries.

Out of steam? A social science and humanities research agenda for geothermal energy

The potential of geothermal energy for energy transition is increasingly recognized by governments around the world. Whether geothermal energy is a sustainable source of heat and/or electricity depends on how it is deployed in specific contexts. Therefore, it is striking that there is only limited attention to geothermal energy from a social science and humanities (SSH) perspective. Geothermal energy is largely conceptualized as a technological and/or geological issue in both science and practice. This perspective article aims to go beyond such conceptualizations by positioning social science research as an important lens to explore the promises and pitfalls of geothermal energy. We first provide an overview of the current state of geothermal energy as a decarbonization strategy. Second, we move on to review the existing literature. This review shows that studies that do address geothermal energy from an SSH perspective tend to be of a descriptive nature and lack analytical diversity. Third, we discuss three complementary theoretical approaches that are used in the social sciences to observe and address other forms of energy and energy transition. We believe that socio-technical assemblages, systems, and imaginaries can provide fruitful analytical lenses to study the promises, pitfalls and spatialization of geothermal energy. We conclude the paper with a research agenda and call for further engagement with this topic in SSH research, with attention to specificities of global South and North contexts.

Soil carbon sequestration as a climate strategy: what do farmers think?

Countries and companies with net-zero emissions targets are considering carbon removal strategies to compensate for remaining greenhouse gas emissions. Soil carbon sequestration is one such carbon removal strategy, and policy and corporate interest is growing in figuring out how to motivate farmers to sequester more carbon. But how do farmers in various cultural and geographic contexts view soil carbon sequestration as a climate mitigation or carbon removal strategy? This article systematically reviews the empirical social science literature on farmer adoption of soil carbon sequestration practices and participation in carbon markets or programs. The article finds thirty-seven studies over the past decade that involve empirical research with soil carbon sequestering practices in a climate context, with just over a quarter of those focusing on the Global South. A central finding is co-benefits are a strong motivator for adoption, especially given minimal carbon policies and low carbon prices. Other themes in the literature include educational and cultural barriers to adoption, the difference between developing and developed world contexts, and policy preferences among farmers for soil carbon sequestration incentives. However, we argue that given the rising profile of technical potentials and carbon credits, this peer-reviewed literature on the social aspects of scaling soil carbon sequestration is quite limited. We discuss why the social science literature is so small, and what this research gap means for efforts to achieve higher levels of soil carbon sequestration. We conclude with a ten-point social science research agenda for social science on soil carbon—and some cautions about centering carbon too strongly in research and policy.

Beyond technology: A research agenda for social sciences and humanities research on renewable energy in Europe

This article enriches the existing literature on the importance and role of the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in renewable energy sources research by providing a novel approach to instigating the future research agenda in this field. Employing a series of in-depth interviews, deliberative focus group workshops and a systematic horizon scanning process, which utilised the expert knowledge of 85 researchers from the field with diverse disciplinary backgrounds and expertise, the paper develops a set of 100 priority questions for future research within SSH scholarship on renewable energy sources. These questions were aggregated into four main directions: (i) deep transformations and connections to the broader economic system (i.e. radical ways of (re)arranging socio-technical, political and economic relations), (ii) cultural and geographical diversity (i.e. contextual cultural, historical, political and socio-economic factors influencing citizen support for energy transitions), (iii) complexifying energy governance (i.e. understanding energy systems from a systems dynamics perspective) and (iv) shifting from instrumental acceptance to value-based objectives (i.e. public support for energy transitions as a normative notion linked to trust-building and citizen engagement). While this agenda is not intended to be—and cannot be—exhaustive or exclusive, we argue that it advances the understanding of SSH research on renewable energy sources and may have important value in the prioritisation of SSH themes needed to enrich dialogues between policymakers, funding institutions and researchers. SSH scholarship should not be treated as instrumental to other research on renewable energy but as intrinsic and of the same hierarchical importance.

A 10-Year Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Agenda for ADRD: Reflection on a New National Academies Report

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) was charged with developing a ten-year agenda for research in the behavioral and social sciences that would substantially contribute to reducing the impact of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD). The report, expected to be publicly released in June 2021, has been developed by a committee of individuals with expertise across a range of disciplines and fields, including dementia research. The committee was charged with assessing the role of the social and behavioral sciences in reducing the impact of dementia. The committee held several evidence-gathering sessions, reviewed published literature, commissioned several papers, and engaged individuals living with dementia and caregivers as a part of an Advisory Panel to the committee. This presentation will engage attendees in a discussion about the ten-year behavioral and social science research agenda related to dementia produced by this NASEM committee.

Opening the black box of conservation philanthropy: A co-produced research agenda on private foundations in marine conservation

In the ‘new Gilded Age’ of mega-wealth and big philanthropy, academics are not paying enough attention to private foundations. Mirroring upward trends in philanthropy broadly, marine conservation philanthropy has more than doubled in recent years, reaching virtually every globally salient marine conservation issue in all corners of the planet. This paper argues that marine conservation philanthropy warrants a dedicated research agenda because private foundations are prominent, unique, and under-studied actors seeking to shape the future of a “frontier” space. We present a co-produced social science research agenda on marine conservation philanthropy that reflects the priorities of 106 marine conservation donors, practitioners, and stakeholders who participated in a research co-design process in 2018. These “research co-designers” raised 137 unique research questions, which we grouped into five thematic research priorities: outcomes, governance roles, exits, internal foundation governance, and funding landscape. We identify issues of legitimacy, justice, and applied best practice as cross-cutting research priorities that came up throughout the five themes. Participants from the NGO, foundation, and government sectors identified questions within all five themes and three cross-cutting issues, underscoring shared interest in this work from diverse groups. The research we call for herein can inform the practice of conservation philanthropy at a time when foundations are increasingly reckoning with their role as institutions of power in society. This paper is broadly relevant for social and natural scientists, practitioners, donors, and policy-makers interested in better understanding private philanthropy in any environmental context globally.

Co-creating a social science research agenda for clean sport: An international Delphi study

BackgroundDoping in sport is a significant issue. To date, research informing doping prevention has lacked a framework guiding research priorities. To ensure research is coordinated, sustainable and focused on end-user priorities, this study co-created the first research agenda for doping prevention. MethodsThe Delphi method was used to develop this agenda. Based upon two substantive reviews of the doping literature and 12 focus groups across five countries, a questionnaire was developed assessing the importance of 15 research topics and identifying research questions. Eighty-two anti-doping stakeholders with relevant expertise were invited to be panel members. In Round 1, an expert panel (n = 57; 70% response rate) completed this questionnaire. In Round 2, panel members (n = 33; 58% response rate) ranked for relative importance the eight topic areas rated highest in Round 1, before doing the same for research questions within each topic. Based on these rankings, a draft agenda was created. In Round 3, panel members (n = 26; 79% response rate) rated the degree to which they accepted this agenda, the feasibility of its delivery and identified possible barriers and facilitators to implementation. ResultsThe results of Round 1 and Round 2 were used to create a draft agenda consisting of 18 research questions stratified across eight topic areas. This agenda was either fully (n = 16) or mostly (n = 9) accepted by the panel in Round 3 (96.2%). Research topics included the effectiveness of interventions/education programmes, environmental influences, long-term development of protective and risk factors in athletes and their entourage, athletes' experiences of anti-doping procedures and athletes’ place in the anti-doping system. ConclusionsA rigorous exercise created an agenda for doping prevention research. Adoption and application of this agenda should lead to better coordination, more efficient use of funding, enhanced uptake of research findings and more effective doping prevention education.

Social Science Perspective on Artificial Intelligence

In this article, we discuss and outline a research agenda for social science research on artificial intelligence. We present four overlapping building blocks that we see as keys for developing a perspective on AI able to unpack the rich complexities of sociotechnical settings. First, the interaction between humans and machines must be studied in its broader societal context. Second, technological and human actors must be seen as social actors on equal terms. Third, we must consider the broader discursive settings in which AI is socially constructed as a phenomenon with related hopes and fears. Fourth, we argue that constant and critical reflection is needed over how AI, algorithms and datafication affect social science research objects and methods. This article serves as the introduction to this JDSR special issue about social science perspectives on AI.

Setting the agenda for social science research on the human microbiome

The human microbiome is an important emergent area of cross, multi and transdisciplinary study. The complexity of this topic leads to conflicting narratives and regulatory challenges. It raises questions about the benefits of its commercialisation and drives debates about alternative models for engaging with its publics, patients and other potential beneficiaries. The social sciences and the humanities have begun to explore the microbiome as an object of empirical study and as an opportunity for theoretical innovation. They can play an important role in facilitating the development of research that is socially relevant, that incorporates cultural norms and expectations around microbes and that investigates how social and biological lives intersect. This is a propitious moment to establish lines of collaboration in the study of the microbiome that incorporate the concerns and capabilities of the social sciences and the humanities together with those of the natural sciences and relevant stakeholders outside academia. This paper presents an agenda for the engagement of the social sciences with microbiome research and its implications for public policy and social change. Our methods were informed by existing multidisciplinary science-policy agenda-setting exercises. We recruited 36 academics and stakeholders and asked them to produce a list of important questions about the microbiome that were in need of further social science research. We refined this initial list into an agenda of 32 questions and organised them into eight themes that both complement and extend existing research trajectories. This agenda was further developed through a structured workshop where 21 of our participants refined the agenda and reflected on the challenges and the limitations of the exercise itself. The agenda identifies the need for research that addresses the implications of the human microbiome for human health, public health, public and private sector research and notions of self and identity. It also suggests new lines of research sensitive to the complexity and heterogeneity of human–microbiome relations, and how these intersect with questions of environmental governance, social and spatial inequality and public engagement with science.

Perspectives on person-centred care for borderline personality disorder: a critical research agenda

ABSTRACTBorderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a highly contentious psychiatric diagnosis with ongoing tensions over nomenclature, aetiology and treatment recommendations. This article examines a number of these tensions and assesses how greater attention to the voices of people living with BPD may help inform the delivery of new modes of person-centred care. To this end, we present a critical social science research agenda for investigating the experiences, social contexts and support needs of people living with BPD. We canvass issues pertaining to the diagnosis of BPD (including its name), the strongly gendered dimensions of BPD, and the pressing need to improve support for people living with this condition. Throughout our analysis, we indicate how critical interdisciplinary inquiry may drive new responses to these challenges. Our analysis is illustrated with reference to experiences of BPD recounted in two Australia-wide surveys conducted in 2011 and 2017. We argue that greater progress towards person-centred care requires novel forms of evidence grounded in critical social inquiry into experiences of treatment and support among people living with BPD, and the varied social, cultural and political contexts underpinning these experiences.

A broader social science research agenda on sustainability: Nongovernmental influences on climate footprints

Vandenbergh and Gilligan's book Beyond Politics and their essay in this issue open up a broad and under-explored agenda of research to inform efforts to limit climate change. They focused largely on understanding how companies and other non-governmental entities can be important agents of change. We sketch the implications non-governmental action for research as well as how such research can underpin action. A focus on opportunities across the life cycles of goods and services that provide for human needs and wants points to four key questions for research. We also note key challenges for social science research, including involving researchers from areas of social science that have been little involved previously in research on limiting climate change. We hope these arguments can contribute to a more robust and generalizable social science that can make greater contributions to limiting climate change. We encourage fellow social scientists to pursue the research questions we raise.

Towards a new social science research agenda for hydrogen transitions: Social practices, energy justice, and place attachment

In recent years hydrogen has been repositioned as potentially playing an important role in the decarbonisation of global energy consumption, particularly the decarbonisation of heat. Reflecting a recognition that public support will be central to its success or failure, a body of research has emerged investigating public perceptions of hydrogen in a range of different contexts. The majority of this research has followed quantitative, positivist understandings of human behaviour and has attempted to pinpoint specific factors that determine hydrogen acceptance. This article proposes a different research agenda for hydrogen transitions, one that is necessary and urgent due to hydrogen's introduction to domestic gas supplies as a fuel for homes. The article argues that the approaches of current hydrogen perceptions research have a limited ability to understand and interpret the social and economic transformations that may occur as a result of this change. In doing so, it identifies and conceptualises three areas for further research: how hydrogen has the potential to impact gas-energised social practices of heating and cooking in the home; how it may shift lived experiences of fuel poverty and energy injustice; and how it may disrupt or enhance place attachments of the communities within which it will begin to be deployed. To illustrate the argument, the article presents findings from a research project exploring public perceptions of hydrogen blending in the United Kingdom. Drawing on these findings, it is shown how researching the potential impacts of emerging hydrogen transitions will require a broader and deeper engagement with theories of social practice, energy justice, and place attachment. The article concludes by summarising the implications of the argument for hydrogen researchers and pointing towards the challenges and opportunities of a new social science research agenda for hydrogen.

Towards a strategic research agenda for social sciences and humanities in radiological protection

Reflecting a change in funding strategies for European research projects, and a commitment to the idea of responsible research and innovation in radiological protection (RP), a collective of research institutes and universities have developed a prospective Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) for Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) in radiological protection. This is the first time such a research agenda has been proposed. This paper identifies six research lines of interest and concern: (1) Effects of social, psychological and economic aspects on RP behaviour; (2) Holistic approaches to the governance of radiological risks; (3) Responsible research and innovation in RP; (4) Stakeholder engagement and participatory processes in RP research, development, policy and practice; (5) Risk communication; and (6) RP cultures. These topics were developed through broad stakeholder consultation, in conjunction with activities carried out in the framework of various projects and initiatives (EU H2020 CONCERT programme, the EU FP7 projects OPERRA, PREPARE and EAGLE, the 2015–2018 RICOMET series of conferences, and the 2014 and 2016 International Symposia on Ethics of Environmental Health); as well as through dialogues with members of the European radiation protection research communities. The six research lines open opportunities to integrate a range of key social and ethical considerations into RP, thereby expanding research opportunities and programmes and fostering collaborative approaches to research and innovation.

Fisheries as social struggle: A reinvigorated social science research agenda

Many social scientists in the field of fisheries display a strong concern for the social engineering of environmental sustainability, but also a tendency to identify with the concerns of government. This paper posits that social scientists have their own responsibility in the fisheries field, and that this responsibility includes more attention to the realm of social struggle and distributional justice. Social struggles within and over fisheries are argued to be globally intensifying, as a result of four trends: (1) the condition that inshore fisheries have now largely become a zero sum game; (2) the new sets of controls that are occurring in the fish value chain; (3) the incursion of new business interests into marine and coastal space; and (4) the increasing participation, if not interference, by governments in what used to be mainly fisher affairs. Not only does a reinvigorated social science agenda create attention to other, neglected domains of fisher society; the authors argue that addressing distributional justice concerns may be a precondition for achieving sustainable human-nature relations.