Theoretical Research Program Research Articles

An Approach to Evolutionary Sociology and its Implications for Theorizing on Socio-Cultural Evolution

A theoretical research program is outlined that seeks to use the Modern Synthesis in explaining human evolution, but also recognizes its limitations in explaining the evolution of socio-cultural systems. The universe, from a human perspective, is composed of physical, biological, and socio-cultural dimensions, each revealing unique properties and dynamics. In the case of the socio-cultural universe, modern evolutionary theory is relevant for some explanations, but not to the degree assumed by socio-biology, evolutionary psychology, and even co-evolutionary models. The program proposed is built around social network theory, cladistic analysis, and comparative neuro-anatomy, and outlines where biological analysis is appropriate and useful. An understanding of the biological basis of human behavior will allow sociologists to develop theoretical approaches to explaining the emergent properties of the socio-cultural universe. The strategy outlined will allow us to see what a mature evolutionary sociology can do: develop abstract theoretical laws about the dynamics of selection on socio-cultural formations in human societies.

The nature of science: The fundamental role of natural history in ecology, evolution, conservation, and education.

There is a contemporary trend in many major research institutions to de-emphasize the importance of natural history education in favor of theoretical, laboratory, or simulation-based research programs. This may take the form of removing biodiversity and field courses from the curriculum and the sometimes subtle maligning of natural history research as a "lesser" branch of science. Additional threats include massive funding cuts to natural history museums and the maintenance of their collections, the extirpation of taxonomists across disciplines, and a critical under-appreciation of the role that natural history data (and other forms of observational data, including Indigenous knowledge) play in the scientific process. In this paper, we demonstrate that natural history knowledge is integral to any competitive science program through a comprehensive review of the ways in whichthey continue to shape modern theory and the public perception of science. We do so by reviewing how natural history research has guided the disciplines of ecology, evolution, and conservation and how natural history data are crucial for effective education programs and public policy. We underscore these insights with contemporary case studies, including: how understanding the dynamics of evolutionary radiation relies on natural history data; methods for extracting novel data from museum specimens; insights provided by multi-decade natural history programs; and how natural history is the most logical venue for creating an informed and scientifically literate society. We conclude with recommendations aimed at students, university faculty, and administrators for integrating and supporting natural history in their mandates. Fundamentally, we are all interested in understanding the natural world, but we can often fall into the habit of abstracting our research away from its natural contexts and complexities. Doing so risks losing sight of entire vistas of new questions and insights in favor of an over-emphasis on simulated or overly controlled studies.

Theorizing in sociology: postpositivist typology of J. Berger, M. Zelditch Jr. and D. Wagner

The article presents an explication of the post-positivist typology of theoretical activity in sociology. J. Berger, M. Zelditch and D. Wagner argued for this typology in a set of their publications. They distinguished such types: unit theories of social phenomena, theoretical / orienting strategies, working substantive / methodological strategies for theories construction, theoretical research programs, empirical models. The functions of each of these types were determined within the framework of the theoretical research program. Orienting strategies are broad fundamental directives that provide value-ideological assumptions for the justification of working research strategies. Working strategies define what the core ideas of the research program should be, what questions should be raised by researchers and how they should be investigated within the program framework. In particular, substantive working strategies specify how social phenomena should be defined and conceptualized, what theoretical problems should be solved, and what conceptual tools should be used in doing so. Methodological working strategies specify how unit theories should be developed and what methodological tools should be used to test them. Unit theories are the form in which generated conceptual solutions to researched questions are constituted. Empirical models specify various cases of the studied social phenomena, identify methods of observation and procedures for measuring their manifestations. Within a scientific research program, different types of theorizing interact and complement each other. The growth of sociological knowledge is considered a consequence of this interaction and mutual complementation. As a result, Berger, Zelditch and Wagner significantly expanded the meaning of the concept of a scientific research program in the theoretical context of sociological science. The post-positivist typology of sociological theorizing has become a conceptual tool for empirically identifying trends and patterns of theoretical growth in sociology.

O PROGRAMA DE PESQUISA DE MARTIN EGER: PRINCÍPIOS DA HERMENÊUTICA FILOSÓFICA NA EDUCAÇÃO EM CIÊNCIAS

ABSTRACT: This text begins with a theoretical research program that seeks to map the tradition of Philosophical Hermeneutics (PH) in Science Education (SE), producing syntheses of works by different authors who assumed the PH in SE. The objective is to present research programs that articulated PH and SE as we tailored our own research program based on them. We started with the research on the work of Martin Eger, one of the pioneers in this discussion in English, who proposed a Philosophy of Science Education (PSE). The justification for this program is that PH provides arguments for understanding the role of language, which contributes to facing the daily challenges of teachers in Natural Sciences teaching and learning. In this text, based on a brief discussion of PH as developed by Hans-Georg Gadamer, we have studied Martin Eger's work. Some of the concepts proposed by Gadamer, such as the hermeneutic circle and the expansion and fusion of horizons, as well as the triple hermeneutics, proposed by Eger, have supported the understanding of the language of Natural Sciences, thus undoing the separation between subject and object; in this way, students, teachers in training, professors and researchers in Education and Science Education, as well as scientists, can be seen as interpreters of the Natural Sciences. By bringing together the work of Natural Sciences and the work of art in a cascade of interpretations throughout the production of scientific knowledge and its learning by students, Eger's academic production provides arguments to understand the very history of Science Teaching, by rescuing paths and reviews. At the same time, it brings inspiration to think about the present.

COVID, Crime & Criminal Justice: Affirming the Call for System Reform Research.

Early into the COVID-19 pandemic, Miller & Blumstein (2020) outlined a theoretical research program (TRP) oriented around themes of contagion control and containment, legal amnesty, system leniency, nonenforcement, and tele-justice. Here, two and a half years later, these lingering themes are revisited to advocate for empirical research informing criminal justice system reform. The pandemic created rare natural experiment research conditions that enable unique and potentially valuable insights on necessitated innovations that may indicate future justice practices and policies. Given the sweeping effects of the shutdown, examples are numerous ranging from staffing analyses to estimate agencies' personnel needs to ensure that basic public safety functions can be met after early retirements and resignations from virus risk and anti-police sentiment, the use of virtual communication in various legal proceedings at arrest, incarceration, and release junctures, and, especially, the risks versus benefits of early release. In addition to better identifying who should be jailed pre-trial, prioritization of calls for service, triaging of court cases, and hygiene and sanitation issues within facilities are other important examples central to a COVID and crime TRP. Attending research could demonstrate the utility of normative operations and identify shortfalls to be addressed during anomic conditions prior to another shutdown or similar event and present, through comparison of innovative and traditional derived outcomes, system reform and improvement opportunities. By seizing upon rare data made possible by natural experimental COVID generated conditions, researchers can meaningfully investigate the ongoing applicability of justice system adaptations mandated by the pandemic in terms of effectiveness and efficiency toward the interrelated goals of evidence-based practice discovery and justice reform.

Ideas of postpositivism in sociology: the reception by J. Berger, M. Zelditch Jr. and D.G. Wagner

J. Berger, M. Zelditch and D.G. Wagner carried out a long-term reception of the ideas of postpositivism in sociology. In the 1970s, these researchers began to apply the concepts of scientific paradigm and research program to studies of the structure and dynamics of theoretical knowledge. They identified conceptual convergences and possibilities of combining various alternative post-positivist approaches in sociological studies. From the mid-1980s, they analyzed the metatheoretical implications of postpositivist ideas in sociology, defined the metatheoretical functionality of paradigms and research programs. In the early 1990s, the basic principles of postpositivism in sociology were systematized (the presence of non-empirical elements in empirical sociological knowledge, all facts are theory-laden, all theories are metatheory-laden). In the 2010s, the functional analogy of paradigms and research programs in sociology was discovered. Theoretical research programs at their local subject level function as universally accepted scientific paradigms and contribute to the theoretical growth of sociology.

Theoretical research program of transculturality: the history of formation, problems and prospects

In the article, there are investigated the concept and practices of transculturalism in the global world, its features and differences from the multicultural practices of developed Western countries. The first important feature of transculturalism as a new ethics is that both scientists and politicians realize the need for a purely rational (pragmatic) form of combining the goals and means of cultural coexistence. It is in rational, pragmatic dimensions that modern scientists and politicians are looking for possible ways of combining excellent value and behavioral rules without threatening the civilized world. The second important aspect of the peculiar content of the latest forms of transculturality is closely related to the social nature of a person, which is inherently based on the identification of oneself as an individual only through the prism of the reflected Other. One of the main signs of the change in the picture of the world in modern sciences is the formulation of the principles of non-classical reality based on the study of the concepts of everyday life and the theory of communications in social phenomenology. If we consider that in the modern picture of the world communication between "Own and Other" is gaining more and more importance, then in this sense it can be considered that the main feature of the cultural reality of today is not the culture as a system of values in its classical sense, but rather the cultural border and its constant crossing. Transculture is a new symbolic habitat for the human race that is about as much about culture in the traditional sense as culture is about nature.

Knowledge Mobilized in Teacher-Student Interactions in PE in Difficult Vocational High School Classes: Enacted Knowledge.

Introduction: Our study aims to analyze the enactive knowledge mobilized during teacher–student interactions in physical education lessons with difficult classes in vocational high school. These classes are considered “difficult” because they concentrate a large number of pupils who are referred to them because they have no choice. This lack of choice makes it difficult for these pupils to engage in school work and is the cause of deviant behavior and school dropout.Methods: This study was conducted within the methodological and theoretical research program of the course of action. We analyzed the individual activity of nine teachers and 18 students during a PE lesson by collecting audiovisual data and conducting self-confrontation interviews. These data were processed in several stages: transcription, identification, and typification of the components of the experience.Results: The results show mutual active knowledge between the teacher and the “difficult” students: emerging from the context, anchored in a dynamic of experience, coupled with the concerns of actors. The teacher classifies the profiles of students according to their reaction to authority and their difficulties, by spotting students' “thermometers” of the class climate. Some of the knowledge of students is coupled with their concerns to avoid boredom, to avoid trouble with the teacher, and to avoid trouble with their friends.

Main Belt Asteroid Science in the Decade 2023-2032: Fundamental Science Questions and Recommendations on behalf of the Small Bodies Assessment Group

Solicited by the Small Bodies Assessment Group, we recommend a balanced program of telescopic observation (ground-based, airborne, and space-based), laboratory studies, theoretical research and missions to Main Belt Asteroids utilizing the full spectral range from ultraviolet to far-infrared to investigate these outstanding fundamental questions in the next decade.

Experiences With Using of Loading Tests and the “design Assisted by Testing” Method for the Determination and Verification of Structural Members and Details

This paper describes experiences with use of different types of experiments (i.e. loading tests) as well as with use of socalled “Design assisted by testing” method given in the standard “Eurocode 1”. Both these mentioned ways are useful in case of a determination and verification of important design parameters, material properties and load-carrying capacities (in case of different types of stresses, used materials or geometric configurations of designed constructions or their elements and details). In this area, during recent years, large number of miscellaneous loading tests have been performed at the authors’ workplace. Therefore, all presented information and all described experiment results in this article are directly based on solved experimental (and theoretical) research programs carried out at Institute of Metal and Timber Structures at the Faculty of Civil Engineering at Brno University of Technology in cooperation with research institutes and companies in the Czech Republic. Most of all research projects were focused on the load-carrying capacity determination as well as on the knowledge about an actual behaviour and failure mechanisms of steel and steel-concrete structural members and details (recently of members made of FRP or GFRP composite, too), usually in case of verification of either existing or newly designed building or bridge structures.

What Is Neuroentrepreneurship? The Theoretical Framework, Critical Evaluation, And Research Program

As interest in entrepreneurship research increases to identify possible economic development opportunities that entrepreneurs can provide, the objective tools applied to entrepreneurship research are reaching their limits. Researchers in entrepreneurship are striving to discover new techniques and methodologies to answer questions about what makes a person an entrepreneur, and perhaps how to identify and encourage an entrepreneur in the next step. Although a great deal of research has been done to scientifically answer these questions, traditional techniques have failed to produce the desired answers. For this reason, researchers working in the entrepreneurship field have recently been increasingly interested in applying the techniques provided by neuroscience, especially after the proliferation of research fields such as neuroeconomics, neuromarketing and neuropolitics. Although the population of neuro-entrepreneurship research is gradually increasing, we cannot say that the field has been studied enough theoretically yet. In this article, a theoretical definition of neuroentrepreneurship is made and a scientific framework is tried to be gained on the way to future research.

Into the Clearing: Back to the future of constitutive institutional analysis

In the wake of recent scholarly disquiet regarding organizational institutionalism, we argue for a more focused constitutive approach to institutional analysis that concentrates attention on the socio-cultural sources of actors and their behavior. To do so, we suggest that complementarities between world society institutionalism and the institutional logics perspective provide an opportunity to develop a richer, more critical approach to contemporary transformations in economy and society. Building upon nascent empirical directions in world society scholarship, we argue that bridging these theoretical research programs can seed a generative research agenda on the variegated challenges to the established world society order that underpins the liberal capitalist-democracy model. We argue that this should include research on the multiplicity of logics that undergird liberal as well as illiberal beliefs and practices. Foregrounding issues of power and inequality that are grounded in disparate configurations of logics, we suggest that new analytical tools related to the new structuralism and multimodal analysis can help advance the constitutive institutional project for which we advocate.

Populations as Fluid on a Landscape Under Global Environmental Change

Long-term climate change has been an ever-present feature of the Earth, but in ecology, it has, until recently, been largely ignored outside of paleoecological and dendroecological studies. It is now difficult to ignore due to strong anthropogenic drivers of change. However, standard ecological models and theory have always assumed no long-term trends in the environment, limiting the ability to conceptualize a natural world inescapably influenced by long-term change. Recent theory of asymptotic environmentally determined trajectories (aedts) provides a way forward, but has not previously considered the critical interactions between space and time that are of much importance in understanding ecosystem responses to climate change. Here this theory is extended to spatial models including long-term environmental change, and is illustrated with simple model examples. Regarding a population as fluid on a landscape allows consideration of how the environment that the population actually experiences changes with time. Here it is shown that although the environment at any one locality may show strong temporal trends, the environment experienced by a population as it moves around a landscape need not have any strong trends. However, the experienced environment will generally differ by being less favorable on average than without long-term global change. These results suggest theoretical and empirical research programs on the characteristics of landscapes, dispersal and temporal change affecting the properties of experienced environments. They imply moving away from local population and community thinking to conceptualization and study of populations and communities on multiple spatial and temporal scales. Many standard ecological methods and concepts may still apply to populations tracked as they move on a landscape, while at the same time, understanding is enriched by accounting for how dispersal processes and landscape complexity, interacting with temporal change, affect those moving populations.

The Problems and Possibilities of the Relational Approach: An Introduction to the Special Issue

This Special Issue Editor’s introduction provides an overview of the rationale for the Issue and a summary of the papers. Importantly, it does two things: first, it locates the work in the field and in particular the absence of sustained dialogue and debate – or more specifically the logic of academic work (argument and refutation) – concerning theoretical research programs; and second, it demonstrates how journals (or other scholarly outlets/forums) can facilitate a social epistemology. In doing so, the introduction (and the Special Issue at large) identify an issue of timely relevance and provides a generative alternative that works towards overcoming (not necessarily resolving) the issue

For My Teacher, Stanley Cavell

I AM HONORED TO BE HERE, with members of the Cavell family, with friends and with colleagues, to celebrate the life and work of Stanley Cavell, to whom I owe inestimably large debts of gratitude and whom I remember with the greatest affection and admiration.
 Cavell’s role in my life was that of a philosophical parent. He is well known to have held that “philosophy is the education of grownups,” and the sort of parenting I am talking about involved opening the door of philosophy for my young adult self. This was not a matter of induction into a theoretical research program of the type that then already dominated academic philosophy. Cavell’s way was to prompt students to confront and interrogate our own intellectual responses, leading us to ask “why we do what we do, judge as we judge,” and positioning us to think for ourselves. This is a demanding pedagogical enterprise, and Cavell devoted singular amounts of time and energy to supporting the young thinkers around him. What I am going to recount is the story of two extraordinary things that he did as my teacher, circumstances all the more arresting in that I was not officially his student.

Um esboço de um programa weberiano para compreender o Pentecostalismo

Neste trabalho, procuro mapear os impedimentos históricos e ideológicos e também as possibilidades da construção de um programa de pesquisa teórico e empírico organizado a partir das ideias de Max Weber a respeito de um fenômeno religioso o qual este autor não presenciou, a saber, o Pentecostalismo. Tendo em vista tal objetivo, construirei meus argumentos em quatro eixos distintos: (1) “O Mainstream da análise do Pentecostalismo e o afastamento da perspectiva weberiana”; (2) “Max Weber e o Materialismo”; (3) “Pentecostalismo e o Capitalismo”; (4) “A promessa de salvação para uma nova classe na história”; e, por último, (5) “Notas a respeito da cognição religiosa e o Pentecostalismo”. Ao término deste artigo, não tenho a pretensão de apresentar uma tese final sobre o Pentecostalismo, mas sim, um conjunto de hipóteses bem sólidas, aos moldes de um programa de pesquisa a ser desenvolvido e testado.

Comparative Analysis in Group Processes: Expanding the Reach of Sociological Social Psychology

Over the past 40 years, the social psychological field of group processes has achieved rapid theoretical development. However, this subfield’s amazing growth has been recognized mainly by its own practitioners. The focus of this special issue is to spark new conversations. First, it aims to ignite an interest amongst regular readers of the journal to consider how theoretical research programs in group processes may be relevant to their own work. Second, it also aims to encourage group processes researchers to think more carefully about how different kinds of comparative analysis can be incorporated in their own research. Considering new forms of comparative analysis (cross-cultural, cross-national, cross-level of analysis, etc.) may help group processes scholars become more aware of the theoretical and cultural assumptions that undergird the scope conditions and the manner in which their traditional experimental protocols have been designed. While the four articles in this issue do not encompass the full range of theoretical research programs in group processes, they all grapple with the ups and downs of using comparative analysis to question the fundamental assumptions undergirding the theories they work with. More than resolving any questions, this special issue aims to inspire new lines of inquiry.

The status and factions theory of influence

AbstractWe review a relatively new theoretical research program on the joint effects of status and the distribution of opinions on social influence. The status and factions theory of influence combines sociological insights about status generalization with psychological research on how the distribution of opinions promotes social influence. To date, several published studies support the logic of the theory, including how the effect of status varies with the distribution of opinions and the intervening theoretical mechanism. The former has been replicated a number of times, but only one study to date has truly tested the mechanism. Uncertainty reduction has been found to explain some of the joint effects of status and the distribution of opinions on social influence, but there is room for improvement. Consequently, after we discuss the existing literature, we identify additional mechanisms that may be worth pursuing in the future and also some applications of the theory's utility.

Excitation energies in neutron-rich rare isotopes as indicators of changing shell structure

The quest for a predictive model of atomic nuclei fuels experimental and theoretical research programs worldwide. The properties of rare isotopes emerge as crucial ingredients for the development of nuclear models valid also towards the nucleon driplines. Many important aspects of the interactions between the constituent protons and neutrons are amplified in the regime of large isospin and can best be isolated and characterized there. The energies of excited states offer a unique view into the structure of nuclei and are often some of the first quantities accessible by experiment. Excitation energies can be measured directly and in model-independent ways and thus are among the key observables that can guide our understanding of atomic nuclei.

(2+1)-Dimensional Spatial Localized Modes in Cubic-Quintic Nonlinear Media with the -Symmetric Potentials* *Supported by the Project of Technology Office in Zhejiang Province under Grant No. 2014C32006, the Special Foundation for theoretical physics Research Program of China under Grant No. 11447124, National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 11374254 and the Higher School Visiting Scholar Development under Grant No.

We obtain exact spatial localized mode solutions of a (2+1)-dimensional nonlinear Schrödinger equation with constant diffraction and cubic-quintic nonlinearity in -symmetric potential, and study the linear stability of these solutions. Based on these results, we further derive exact spatial localized mode solutions in a cubic-quintic medium with harmonic and -symmetric potentials. Moreover, the dynamical behaviors of spatial localized modes in the exponential diffraction decreasing waveguide and the periodic distributed amplification system are investigated.