社会科学中的因果分析

休谟提出的因果问题影响了两个半世纪的科学哲学讨论,即人类如何从有限经验观察推论必然因果关系?密尔从方法论角度阐释了因果推论的逻辑,指出只有在其他因素相同的条件下,经验相关才能推论因果,为现代随机分组试验设计奠定了基础。实验方法在社会科学中应用有限,更为常用的是观察数据统计分析和个案数据定性分析。复杂统计模型用统计控制模拟实验控制,也能有效检验因果命题。定性分析是理论与经验的反复碰撞,有利于提出新理论或新假设。本文强调,因果解释一定包括机制解释,而机制解释一定是理论解释。因果理论不是对经验相关的简单归纳,而是思想飞跃。检验因果理论的基本逻辑是:从理论演绎因果命题,再演绎相关假设,然后用统计数据检验之。最后讨论整合理论、定性、定量的三点定位原则。     

在交叉渗透中呈现张力——西方社会学发展概述

西方社会学是在西方社会的历史演进和社会理论发展的基础上萌芽产生的。目前西方社会学已进入到一个高度繁荣的发展阶段,各种学术流派争奇斗艳,社会学研究范式不断推陈出新,其他学科与社会学交叉渗透也日益明显。作为一门理论与经验并重的学科,社会学在人文社会科学领域呈现出前所未有的张力。     

华中科技大学中国乡村治理研究中心举办第四届农村研究方法高级研讨班

自20世纪80年代重建中国社会科学以来,一方面,政治学、社会学、法学等学科从西方引进了大量的新理论和新方法;另一方面,目前中国社会科学的本土经验研究相对不足。如何避免闭门造车同时又克服本本主义,就需要一方面积极吸收西方社会科学的优秀成果,借鉴其社会实践经验;另一方面注重结合中国社会建设的实践经验和思想传统,研究中国经验、中国问题,并将其理论化;既借鉴、反思、发展西方理论,又赋予理论以本土品格,是当前中国农村研究中面临的重大问题。基于这样的考虑,华中科技大学中国乡村治理研究中心以“经验研究与中国社会科学本土化”为…     

时间维度下的生命历程研究范式

美国社会学家ELDER在上世纪七十年代的重要著作《生命历程动力学》，开创了把大规模社会变迁与个体生命周期联系起来进行社会学研究的路径。1999年，李强等人第一次在《社会学研究》上发表对有关理论和方法的介绍以后，国内社会学、心理学、人口学领域都相继涌现出了不少关于生命历程的研究和著作，为社会科学研究带来了一种崭新的视角。但我们也注意到，其中部分研究存在对生命历程理论的误读，将生命历程与生活史以及生命周期研究混为一谈。本文将着重从时问维度的角度对生命历程理论的实质与内容进行澄清，并进一步讨论可能的研究范式。     

青年研究学科化的范式困境及其范式革命

青年研究的学科化,首要解决的硬核是研究范式的形成。作为一门综合学科,青年研究自身的特质问题给学科范式的形成造成了困难:1.多学科的理论分析尚未能形成论题共域;2.不同的方法论研究进路都未能提供学科说明的整体图景;3.学术共同体在青年研究的核心问题上未能达成共识。青年的生发机理是青年研究范式的轴心和根本,基于青年的生发机理,我们应沿着两条基本思路:一是"青年是什么?",二是"青年学是什么?",并通过增强学科意识,确立分支学科,重申历史意识,构建多元对话共域,注重经验研究向理论研究的提升,比较研究与强化原创性理论等路径进行青年研究的范式革命。     

证伪在社会科学中可能吗?

本文讨论在社会科学中影响广泛的波普尔“证伪主义”方法论,认为证伪主义除了受到自然科学哲学的批评外,更不适合于基于概率性因果关系的社会科学。本文讨论了在社会科学领域中使用证伪来判断社会理论的科学性的四个问题:(1)理论的辅助性假说使得证伪在逻辑上不可能;(2)社会科学命题复杂的因果机制对证伪形成挑战;(3)统计命题不能被单个反例证伪;(4)限界条件并不能挽救证伪主义。基于上述讨论本文认为,只有严格地发展理论,而不是寄希望于证伪的简便性,才能推动社会科学理论的进步。     

新生代农民工社会认同问题研究

问题范式是支撑既有新生代农民工研究的主导范式．新生代农民工群体常常被当作一个“问题群体”在研究。本文基于对一个新生代农民工融入城市社会之历程的阅读、理解和阐释,从社会认同角度探究了新生代农民工研究方式问题：新生代农民工群体并非一个问题群体所能简单概括．需要细致、冷静地观察与追踪研究;新生代农民工研究应摆脱结构化的问题范式,走向一种过程性的理解范式。本研究认为,群体资格是新生代农民工社会认同研究新的可能的研究路径。     

环境关心的性别差异分析

本文基于2003年中国综合社会调查数据,分析了公众环境关心的性别差异。作者检验了关于环境关心之性别差异的社会化假设与社会结构假设,指出这些假设在本研究中不能得到支持。在引入环境知识这一中介变量的基础上作者认为,应当重新反思关于环境关心之性别差异的理论解释,关注社会化过程与社会结构位置影响的两面性,探索环境关心性别差异生成的具体机制。     

物—人关系的基本范畴：新唯物主义社会学综论

新唯物主义将物视为研究主题,是当代社会学极有影响力的新兴范式,然而新唯物主义社会学对物的讨论常常过于宽泛而缺乏焦点。为了解决这个问题,本文尝试对新唯物主义三大理论主轴,即后人类主义、能动实在论、物导向本体论进行讨论与综合,以确立共鸣关系、异化关系、灾难关系以及化用关系这四大物—人关系的基本范畴,明晰各新唯物主义理论的讨论主题与优缺点,并建立新唯物主义社会学的规范基础与批判准则。     

作为意义探究的深度访谈

本文着重从意义关联的角度讨论社会科学田野工作中的深度访谈法。从深度访谈的性质出发,本文尝试分析了与访谈有关的诸种意义体系,并讨论相关的访谈方法。本文主张,访谈既应当以“悬置”社会科学知识体系的态度进入现场,同时又要随时保持反省;访谈的过程应以日常生活及生活史的结构为结构,以发现问题,追究问题,最后再讨论个案的普遍性意义。在这种情况下,访谈将不仅仅是单纯搜集资料的过程,而已经成为研究的一个环节。①     

The Structure of Scientific Fields and the Allocation of Editorships on Scientific Journals: Some Observations on the Politics of Knowledge*

This study examines editorial appointment patterns in journals representing seven scientific disciplines: physics, chemistry, biology, economics, psychology, political science, sociology. Social science editors-in-chief are more likely than physical and natural science editors-in-chief to employ “particularistic” criteria in the selection of editorial appointees. In the social sciences, Columbia and Harvard editors-in-chief are significantly more likely than editors-in-chief with other doctorates to select graduates from Columbia or Harvard when making editorial appointments. In the physical and natural sciences, editors-in-chief with doctorates from schools other than Columbia and Harvard are just as likely as Columbia and Harvard editors-in-chief to select editorial appointees with Columbia or Harvard doctorates. The findings suggest that since consensus on basic paradigms does not exist in the social sciences, positions of influence are awarded and achieved on much more “particularistic” criteria than those for the physical and natural sciences.     

Whither IR? Multiplicity,relations, and the paradox of International Relations

ABSTRACT

Justin Rosenberg rightly highlights the paucity of International Relations’ (IR) influence in other disciplines, and selected works in historical sociology demonstrate the significance of the international to others whilst also revealing problematic understandings of the international itself. In this regard, Rosenberg’s intervention is welcome. However, in staking the disciplinary credentials of IR on ‘societal multiplicity’, Rosenberg inadvertently exposes IR as part of a wider convergence on the ontological importance of relations (rather than substances) across the social sciences. Historical sociology scholarship also reveals the international to be but one part of an interconnected, multi-scalar social world that is shaped by multiplicity across all scales; multiplicity and relations permeate social scales. By exploring the Czechoslovak Corps in the Russian Revolution, the article broadens Rosenberg’s multiplicity whilst also revealing the paradox of a multiplicitous IR: the more IR acknowledges multi-scalar relations, the less distinguishable it becomes from the other social sciences.     

The impact of quantitative research in social work

The importance of quantitative research in the social sciences generally and social work specifically has been highlighted in recent years, in both an international and a British context. Consensus opinion in the UK is that quantitative work is the ‘poor relation’ in social work research, leading to a number of initiatives. However, Sharland’s UK work involves interviews with academics, representing consensus opinion. We have little independent measures of their accuracy. This paper is the first to focus on the academic impact of quantitative research in social work developing measurable outcomes. It focuses on three leading British-based generic journals over a 10-year period, encapsulating 1490 original articles. Impact is measured through three indices: Google Scholar and Web of Science Citations, and downloads. These provide measures of ‘revealed preference’ in relation to individual scholars’ impact (though to use them for a particular methodology is novel), whose particular qualities, strengths and limitations are noted. Contrary to received opinion of quantitative work as the ‘poor relation’ of social work research, findings show that it is not significantly disadvantaged relative to qualitative work in its ‘reach’ as measured by citations and downloads. The implications of this, including caveats and nuances, are discussed.     

Society as an ethical system†

The idea of society on which the social sciences are premised is one of a structured pattern of interdependence and interaction that drives participation in a shared communication space and, thereby, a degree of common consciousness. These are also the preconditions for ethics to operate as an internal mode of self-understanding rather than an external imposition. Societies, in other words, are ethical systems. In order to understand in what sense societies, in the context of contemporary transformations, can still be thought of and analysed as ethical systems, the article focuses on inequality as both a practically important and normatively complex challenge – one that the international community, through the 2030 Agenda for Inclusive and Sustainable Development, has recognized to be one of its action priorities. These considerations further bear on the relation between the social sciences and the humanities, which is one important dimension of the future of the social sciences.     

Sociological Knowledge and Scientific Knowledge

Some significant insights in relation to science and its claims emerged in early sociology. However, sociologies of knowledge and science remained separate until the late 1960s. Questioning scientific knowledge raised questions about career interests, language, interaction, class and gender in shaping scientific claims. Offering insights, this new sociology tended towards 'epistemological polarisation'. New waves further distanced themselves from the validity claims of 'scientists'. Insulating within a self-referential field of peers, journals, conferences and subdisciplinary norms, epistemological polarisation, emulated natural sciences, but had a marginalising effect. Attention to symmetry in the social study of scientific beliefs, such that social causation of belief is not said to invalidate such belief, was often ignored, and the sociology of scientific knowledge tended towards debunking. This article challenges this spiral and suggests a 'reflexive epistemological diversity' that recognises the value of many forms of explanation, promoting interaction between different explanations, at different levels of causation, and across the divide between natural and social sciences. Recent feminist science studies go furthest in developing this trend. In line with recent developments in the natural sciences, such an approach does not suggest that 'anything goes', yet opens up explanation beyond narrow conceptions of expertise, reductionism and relativism.     

„First international conference on social sciences and the development of societies“ Kuwait, 10.–12. April 2001

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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„First international conference on social sciences and the development of societies“ Kuwait, 10.–12. April 2001

     

Biodiversity conservation in the Brazilian social sciences: an analysis of epistemological paths and conditions of possibility

This article aims to present the analysis of a carefully chosen literature in social sciences on the subject of biodiversity conservation. The purpose was to recognize some of the methods and epistemological conceptions which underlie the arguments published in the main academic journals of Sociology, Anthropology and Political Sciences. The analysis is based on a confrontation of Foucault’s concept of “conditions of possibility” with the discursive practices present in the survey. This exercise enabled us to demonstrate that even though we specifically targeted the social sciences, it is possible to recognize the presence of different conditions possibility that are not necessarily compatible and can be critic of each other. These criticisms arise in a context in which the objectivist view was widely accessed in order to corroborate restrictive and punitive actions on biodiversity conservation. This mapping can thus contribute to problematize the dialogue between disciplines in a scenario where each science has a particular political weight.     

Diffusion of Protest

Studies of diffusion have a long‐standing history within the social sciences. Recent concurrent political uprisings within the mid‐East and the global spread of the Occupy! Movement have renewed focus on the spread of tactics within and between social movements organizations. The article discusses the historical context of diffusion research, with an emphasis on diffusion research within the study of social movements. The author calls for continued research on the spread of tactics within international social movements given that such movements are currently dynamic and contested sites of struggle.     

Scientific Misconduct in Social Welfare Research: Preventive Lessons from Other Fields

This article examines instances of scientific misconduct which have occurred in recent years from an international perspective and explores their implications for the burgeoning social work research enterprise. Although the majority of cases of scientific misconduct which have received international publicity are confined to the hard sciences, there are important implications to be derived for the growing productivity in social welfare research. A comprehensive search was conducted of press reports for the time frame of 1995–2002 for both US and international stories about research misconduct. Using qualitative analysis, themes related to scientific conduct were identified. These cases reveal serious consequences to individual researchers and to their employing institutions. The motivating factors for the wrongdoing are applicable to researchers of any discipline and include perceived pressure to document positive outcomes and the rush to publish findings. The authors urge development of standards of research conduct specific to social work and social welfare and increased dialogue about the issues involved.     

Treatment and reporting of item-level missing data in social science research

Most quantitative studies in the social sciences suffer from missing data. However, despite the large availability of documents and software to treat such data, it appears that many social scientists do not apply good practices regarding missing data. We analyzed quantitative papers published in 2017 in six top-level social science journals. Item-level missing data was found in at least 69.5% of the papers, but their presence was explicitly reported in only 44.4% of all analyzed papers. Moreover, in the majority of cases, the treatments applied to missing data were incorrect, with many uses of deletion methods that are known to produce biased results and to reduce statistical power. The impact of missing data and of their treatment on results was barely discussed. Results show that social scientists underestimate the impact of missing data on their research and that they should pay more attention to the way such data are treated.