Social science and the american bicentennial

The big “birthday party,” as publicists of the American Bicentennial portrayed it, came at the end of a period of significant national upheaval. Major resources and extensive public attention were devoted to the celebration, but it was neglected as a topic for serious research by social scientists. This paper (1) provides a partial inventory of propositions and data sources that could even now—several years after the event—be applied to the study of the Bicentennial, (2) presents a set of findings from a small‐scale 1977 study that examined variations in Bicentennial involvement—variations that relate to some of the propositions previously generated, and (3) speculates on some of the reasons why more research has not been done on this major happening of the past decade.     

Social science and the poetics of public truth

I argue that sociological theory can be understood as a kind of poetic discourse and that sociological truth is itself a rhetorical construction. Once we see social scientific objectivity and innovation as linguistically constructed, we can reframe our criteria for judging the adequacy of sociological theories. We then notice that the meanings of such criteria as logical rigor, or correspondence to a factual or hermeneutic foundation, are themselves relative to different paradigms or genres, which in turn are shaped and assessed through prudent poetic judgment. Awareness of the literary, discursive character of social science knowledge should encourage a greater critical appreciation of truth generated through our own and other poetic forms.     

The future of the social sciences and humanities in the science of complex systems

The modern world is characterized by problems that involve systems with social and physical subsystems. They are entangled systems of system of systems with multilevel dynamics. There is no methodology able to combine the partial micro-, meso- and macrotheories that focus on subsystems into a coherent representation of the dynamics of the whole. Policy requires prediction, but the traditional definitions of prediction are not appropriate for multilevel socio-complex systems. Heterogeneous multilevel systems have subsystems that may behave with great regularity over long periods of time, and then suddenly change their behavior due to weak coupling with other subsystems. Thus systems that are usually highly predictable may be subject to rare but extreme events, and this is highly relevant to policy-makers. New ways of thinking are needed that transcend the confines of the traditional humanities, social and physical sciences. Of necessity, this science will be embedded in the design, implementation and management of systems, and therefore the new science will be entwined with policy. Much policy is interventionist experiment. By themselves scientists cannot conduct experiments on socio-complex systems because they have neither the mandate nor the money to design and instrument experiments on the large scale. Policy-makers – elected politicians and their officers – design the future, making it as they believe it ought to be. New kinds of scientific predictions can inform policy but can only be instrumented and tested if there is goodwill between policy-makers and scientists, where scientists are junior partners. Scientists offer policy-makers theories and predictions of social systems based on logical-deductive methods. Policy is generally made on the basis of rhetoric, with the best possible arguments being deployed to support favored conclusions. To convince policy-makers that a particular scientific theory should be used, scientists move from the logical-deductive to the rhetorical. Thus the full theory of a science of complex systems has to provide a logical-deductive metatheory of the rhetorical and logical-deductive systems that make decisions and implement them. Traditional natural and physical science has avoided rhetoric, which is much better understood in the humanities and social sciences. Thus it is concluded that the science of complex systems must embrace the humanities and social sciences not just because their domains of study are relevant but also because their methods are necessary to understand how science and policy work together in complex social systems.     

Social movement schools: sites for consciousness transformation,training, and prefigurative social development

ABSTRACT

We develop the concept of “social movement school’ (SMS), showing how these organizational spaces are deliberately designed for purposes of educating, mentoring, training, and coordinating individuals as effective, committed movement agents. SMSs can also be important sites of prefigurative design and practice for future societal development consistent with movement goals. We motivate the theoretical significance of SMSs based on five perspectives in social movement scholarship: (1) resource mobilization; (2) cultural approaches to repertoires of contention; (3) cognitive perspective; (4) micro-mobilization; and (5) biographical consequences of participation. We then offer a typology to capture primary purposes, and spatial reach within the broad field of SMSs. Within-movement variation is illustrated by focusing on a variety of SMSs in the U.S. civil rights movement; and the cross-movement breadth of the concept is illustrated by highlighting contemporary SMS forms drawn from three very different movements–labor, radical feminism, and mindfulness meditation movements. In the interest of launching a research agenda on SMSs, we end with several key questions that could serve to guide future research. Important theoretical, empirical, and practical considerations suggest that SMSs deserve the attention of scholars and activists alike.     

Community struggles and the shaping of democratic consciousness

Grass-roots protest activities against economic growth have often been viewed as particularistic, random, self-interested actions that have little significant impact on the larger political economy or movements for social change. This article, however, provides an alternative framework for understanding these community conflicts by examining the structural contradictions of political life that frame such conflicts and by showing, through a case study of a toxic waste protest, the ways in which these structural contradictions are subjectively experienced in the process of political protest. This integrated analysis thus shows how ordinary citizens may develop a more active, participatory concept of democracy.     

业缘关系与青年自我意识的发展--一个来自中部城市青年的实证调查

一、导言 个体社会化的结果之一是自我意识的形成.自我意识指个体对自身的身心状况、人我关系的认知、情感以及由此而产生的意向.①自我意识是个体与社会环境交互作用的产物,它体现了人认识自己和对待自己的统一,个体根据自我意识来调节和控制自己的心理和行为,修正自己的经验与观念,使自己与环境保持动态的平衡.     

Social signals as design interventions for enhancing citizen science contributions*

Despite the scientific potential and increasing popularity of web-based citizen science, low contribution from volunteers is often a major hurdle. Studies have shown that individual behavior could be altered through targeted design interventions, but little is known about the specific factors that modulate volunteers’ contributions. A particularly elusive question entails the role of social feedback, in the form of targeted notifications about the contribution of other volunteers. Based on social comparison theory, we hypothesized that (1) volunteers increase contribution when presented with information about a high-performing peer or group, and (2) volunteers conform more strongly to a group rather than to a single peer. To test whether volunteers’ contributions change due to the exposure to the contribution of a peer or group norm, we systematically varied the information presented to participants in an environmental monitoring citizen science project. Volunteers increased their contributions when they were presented with the contribution of a high-performing peer and norm, but they were not influenced by a low-performing peer or norm. Further, we found that volunteers were more likely to match the contributions of a group than that of a peer. However, when volunteers were simultaneously exposed to information about a peer and a group, the effect depended on the respective performance of the peer and group. A theoretical model was developed to explain volunteers’ response and dissect the specific role of social comparison. Our findings offer the possibility of increasing volunteers’ contributions through design interventions.     

Social work doctoral education in the United States: examining the past,preparing for the future

The relevance of doctoral education is being questioned across a wide spectrum of disciplines, and social work is no exception. An examination of the history of social work education in the United States provides a backdrop to the current challenges in doctoral education in the field. The historical role of research and teaching in social work education, the structure of doctoral social work education in the United States including the Ph.D. vs. the DSW, and the growth of doctoral programs are all examined. Current issues explored include: the interdisciplinary nature of practice; increased institutional focus on funded research; support for underrepresented doctoral students; and the need for doctoral students to be trained in pedagogy. Suggestions on how to address these issues are provided in order to enhance social work’s mission of teaching, research and service.     

Knowledge,boundaries, and bodies: Social construction between medical sociology and science and technology studies

Medical sociology and science and technology studies (STS) emerged from different positions, but often closely related concerns, within the broad discipline of sociology. Their interface and areas of overlap have mostly been shaped by theoretical positions broadly considered “social constructionist.” Taken together, these perspectives provide empirical and theoretical tools to analyze important questions about how social inequalities, forms of scientific knowledge, and patterns of human health come to be produced and feedback into one another. Examining their intersection enables sociological questions such as: How is medical and public health scientific knowledge produced, stabilized, and taken as fact? How are scientific facts about health and illness used, experienced, and challenged? What is the relationship between health inequalities and public health or medical knowledge? This article seeks to briefly trace the important contributions that social constructionist research has made at the interstices of medical sociology and STS, further clarifying the history, points of intersection, and areas of diversion between them. The current COVID-19 pandemic has unveiled the political struggles that constitute public health scientific knowledge and circulation. The interface between STS and medical sociology can help us to make sense of the interrelationships between politics, power inequalities, and public health scientific knowledge.     

Between Society,politics and the market: The structure and future of Social Scientific research against the background of the process of Internationalization

The present article looks at the challenge posed by the process of internationalization for the social sciences and examines the structural constraints on the development of adequate comparative social‐scientific research. The comparative advantages and disadvantages of universities, consultants and the professionalized research sector respectively are discussed. A model of networking is proposed as one that entails the main potential for development in this direction.     

Social acceleration and the network effect: a defence of social ‘science fiction’ and network determinism

This essay is a response to Judy Wajcman's essay ‘Life in the fast lane? Towards a sociology of technology and time’ (2008: 59–77). In that article Wajcman argued that recent developments in the sociology of temporal change had been marked by a tendency in social theory towards a form of ‘science fiction’– a sociological theorizing, she maintains, that bears no real relation to actual, empirically provable developments in the field and should therefore be viewed as not contributing to ‘a richer analysis of the relationship between technology and time’ (2008: 61). This reply argues that as Wajcman suggests in her essay, there is indeed an ‘urgent need for increased dialogue to connect social theory with detailed empirical studies’ (2008: 59) but that the most fruitful way to proceed would not be through a constraining of ‘science fiction’ social theorizing but, rather, through its expansion – and more, that ‘science fiction’ should take the lead in the process. This essay suggests that the connection between social theory and empirical studies would be strengthened by a wider understanding of the function of knowledge and research in the context of what is termed ‘true originality’ and ‘routine originality’. The former is the domain of social theory and the latter resides within traditional sociological disciplines. It is argued that both need each other to advance our understanding of society, especially in the context of the fast‐changing processes of technological development. The example of ‘technological determinism’ is discussed as illustrative of how ‘routine originality’ can harden into dogma without the application of ‘true originality’ to continually question (sometimes through ideas that may appear to border on ‘science fiction’) comfortable assumptions that may have become ‘routine’ and shorn of their initial ‘originality’.