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A pioneer in Performative Social Science, Kip Jones makes a case for the potential of arts-based social science to reach audiences and engage communities. Jones contextualises both the use of the arts in Social Science, as well as the utility of Social Science in the Arts and Humanities. The discussion turns next to examples from his own work and what happens when Art talks to Social Science and Social Science responds to Art. The benefits of such interaction and interdisciplinarity are outlined in relation to a recently completed project using multi-methods, which resulted in the production of a professional short film. In conclusion, Performative Social Science is redefined in terms of synthesis that can break down old boundaries, open up channels of communication and empower communities through engagement.

AbstractAgent-based models (ABMs) are increasingly important in social science research. They have two obvious apparent virtues: they can model complex macrosociological phenomena without strong assumptions about agents and without analytic solutions for models, and they seem to instantiate the methodological individualist program in a concrete way. We argue that the latter claim is false. After providing schematic accounts of ABM models and a first introduction to ways in which to characterize individualist explanations, we work through six conceptions of individualist explanations that are decreasingly "less individualist" and argue that ABM-based explanations in the social sciences are not inevitably individualist in any of these senses. ABMs allow for explanatory relations among social entities and properties in the model environment and they are silent on what basic agents are, allowing social entities and properties to play basic explanatory roles.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- An Overview of the Text -- Part I Engaging the Ontological Turn -- 1 A Turn From what? -- 2 An Overview of Vibrant Materialism -- 3 Paradigm Changes -- Part II Methodological Contradictions in Social Science Inquiry -- 4 Objectivity in Research -- The McDonaldization of Society -- Quantification -- Falsification -- Objectivity and Truth -- 5 Instruments of Measurement -- Questionnaires -- The Ontology of Instrumentation -- 6 Beyond Cause and Effect -- The General Linear Model -- Probabilities -- Spurious Relationships -- Noise -- Nonlinearity and Complexity -- Quantum Mechanics and the Death Knell of Causality -- 7 Zombie Categories -- Against Binaries -- 8 Data -- 9 The Crisis of Representation -- Voice -- Language -- Colonization -- 10 Reflexivity and its Discontents -- Part III Diffractive Ethnography -- 11 A Brief Overview of Ethnography -- Qualitative 4.0 -- 12 Thinking with Theory -- 13 Assemblages and Entanglements -- Deleuze and Guattari -- Latour -- Barad -- 14 Diffraction -- Physics and Sociology -- Quantum Philosophy -- Acts of Diffraction -- Nature/Culture Theorizing -- 15 The Liveliness of Matter -- Agency -- Performativity -- How Forests Think -- Liquidity -- Below -- Electric -- Part IV Becoming -- 16 Healing the Nature/Culture Divide -- Natural Resources -- Reimagining the Public -- 17 The Ethics of Entanglements -- References -- Index

A discussion of the growing interest among social & natural scientists in research on the human dimensions of global environmental change. Here, three questions are addressed: (1) Why should social scientists conduct a major research effort on global change when other important research topics require attention? (2) Can social science contribute to the larger scientific research effort in global change & influence ongoing efforts in other sciences? (3) How will the study of global change influence or contribute to the social sciences? It is concluded that, despite the importance of the research issues, the success of the research field will depend on the ability of the social sciences to develop an international infrastructure of databases, research institutions, & research networks on global environmental change. 2 Photographs. Modified AA

Social scientists from various disciplines discuss and offer predictions about the future.Predicting the future is notoriously difficult. But systematic analysis leads to clearer understanding and wiser decisions. Thinking about the future also makes social scientists focus their research into the past and present more fruitfully, with more attention to key predictors of change.This book considers how we might think intelligently about the future. Taking different methodological approaches, well-known specialists forecast likely future developments and trends in human life. The questions they address include: How many humans will there be? Will there be enough energy? How will climate change affect our lives? What patterns of work will exist? How will government work at the local, national, and world level? Will inflation remain under control? Why have past forecasts been so bad? The book concludes with a discussion of the intellectual and historical context of futurology and a look at the accuracy of predictions that were made for the year 2000. Jed.

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction: The Pittsburgh Survey in Historical Perspective | Margo Anderson & -- Maurine W. Greenwald -- 2. The Social Survey Movement and Early Twentieth-Century Sociological Methodology | Martin Bulmer -- 3. The Pittsburgh Survey and the Survey Movement: An Episode in the History of Expertise | Stephen Turner -- 4. The Failure of Fair Wages and the Death of Labor Republicanism: The Ideological Legacy of the Pittsburgh Survey | Steven R. Cohen -- 5. The Pittsburgh Survey and "Greater Pittsburgh": A Muddled Metropolitan Geography | Edward K. Muller -- 6. Seeking the Meaning of Life: The Pittsburgh Survey and the Family | S. J. Kleinberg -- 7. Does the Evidence Support the Argument?: Margaret Byington's Cost of Living Survey of Homestead | Margo Anderson -- 8. Visualizing Pittsburgh in the 1900s: Art and Photography in the Service of Social Reform | Maurine W. Greenwald -- 9. Civic Leaders and Environmental Reform: The Pittsburgh Survey and Urban Planning | John F. Bauman & -- Margaret Spratt -- 10. The Pittsburgh Survey as an Environmental Statement | Joel A. Tarr -- 11. The Spirit of '92: Popular Opposition in Homestead's Politics and Culture, 1892-1937 | Richard Oestreicher -- 12. Optimism, Dilemmas, and Progress: The Pittsburgh Survey and Black Americans | Laurence A. Glasco -- 13. The Immigrants Pictured and Unpictured in the Pittsburgh Survey | Ewa Morawska -- Notes -- Contributors -- Index.

In this essay, the authors consider the challenge made by two keynote speakers at recent social work research conferences, one in the United States and the other in Europe. Both spoke of a knowledge crisis in social work. Both John Brekke (Society for Social Work and Research) and Peter Sommerfeld (First Annual European Conference for Social Work Research) proposed some version of realism as a solution to the crisis. The authors will deepen the argument for realism, however, by discussing how a critical realist perspective allows us to rethink positivist and conventionalist assumptions about the fact/value relation. Using a critical realist philosophy of social science, the authors discuss how social work has taken up positivism and myriad forms of conventionalism and also identify how practical knowledge gradually loses its place and thus contribute to social work's ongoing knowledge crisis. The authors then offer a way of thinking about practice. The authors will consider forms of practice knowledge and propose that social work has four kinds that unfold in essentially open systems: discursive, visual, embodied, and liquid systems, and that each of these have both tacit and explicit dimensions. These forms of practice, moreover, are inevitably situated in theory-to-practice gaps (the authors call them phenomenological practice gaps), which are the source of social work's knowledge crisis. The authors conclude with a discussion of the role of reflexivity in a science of social work.

"This book focuses on the implementation of computational social science methods and touches upon the opportunities and challenges of this method in social sciences with the goals of suggesting how the infrastructure could be built to gain required skill sets, the tools used in computational social sciences and the methods which have been developed and applied into computational social sciences"--

"The politics and science of health and disease remain contested terrain among scientists, health practitioners, policy makers, industry, communities, and the public. Stakeholders in disputes about illnesses or conditions disagree over their fundamental causes as well as how they should be treated and prevented. This thought-provoking book crosses disciplinary boundaries by engaging with both public health policy and social science, asserting that science, activism, and policy are not separate issues and showing how the contribution of environmental factors in disease is often overlooked"--Provided by publisher

The use of social science knowledge in the policy of administrative reforms results in a remarkably reflexive connection between science and practice. In the case of the Federal Republic of Germany, too, which is being dealt with here, the state administrations have become significant promoters of the policy of science. Within the scope of social sciences not only the administrative science, but also diciplines such as the political science increasingly serve as an advisory science for public agencies. In this way part of the problems of science and practice is reflected in the use of social science knowledge in the policy fo administrative reforms.

Contents -- Acknowledgement -- Chapter One: Problem, Purpose, Plan -- Chapter Two: James Coleman: Educational Policy for Youth and High Schools -- Chapter Three: Eli Ginzberg: Manpower and Human Resources Policy -- Chapter Four: Morris Janowitz: Military Institutions, the Draft, and the Volunteer Army -- Chapter Five: Joseph A. Pechman: Comprehensive Income Taxation -- Chapter Six: Merton J. Peck: Deregulation of the Transportation Industry -- Chapter Seven: Peter Rossi: Unemployment Insurance Payments and Recidivism Among Released Prisoners

The time is, I think, opportune for introspection by Canadian social scientists. The present is a transitional period in the life of the nation. Five years of war have profoundly altered Canadian society: Canada has become a great industrial nation; the paternalistic state has arrived at least at adolescence under the stimulus of war; for the time being the Canadian people have become military-minded, a condition which may well continue into the peace in view of the shift of world power in favour of North America; everywhere social values hitherto accepted are under fire, and traditional folkways have been rudely disturbed; new social goals are being raised and new patterns of life are being established.It is probable also that we are in a transitional stage in higher education. At any rate Canadian universities, like other social institutions, will be compelled to adjust themselves to the changed conditions of the post-war world. One condition likely to obtain is an increasing interest in the social sciences, if for no other reason than the increasing demand for social technicians to manage a paternalistic society. It is not improbable also that Canadian society faces a prolonged and acrimonious, if not violent, debate on social objectives. Under these conditions I suggest it is of first importance that social scientists should have firm opinions as to the nature of their calling, both with 'a view to guiding educational expansion, and assisting them in deciding their personal responsibilities in a distracted world.

This brief examines the influence and prestige of scholars and works in the field of criminology and criminal justice, as well as changes in influence and prestige over a period of 35 years, using citation analysis. Based on responses to prior research, most criminologists consider the results both fascinating and thought-provoking, although methods of measuring scholarly influence are also highly controversial. The brief includes 35 years of data (1986 through 2020) on the most-cited scholars and works in major American and international criminology and criminal justice journals, and provides an objective measure of scholarly influence and prestige. Appropriate for graduate students and researchers, it helps to document the intellectual development of criminology and criminal justice as a field of study.

A study of the production, size, growth, & composition of the serial & monograph literature of the social sciences up to 1973 is reported. Data on the social science serial literature was obtained by analysis of the Check List of Social Science Serials (CLOSSS)--a machine-readable data base constructed specifically for the Design of Information Systems in the Social Sciences (DISISS) project. A wide range of published & unpublished primary & secondary statistics were used for a variety of other analyses. In many analyses the data is broken down by subject within the social sciences & by country of origin. The analysis of literature growth shows that it is necessary to reexamine the widely held view that the bulk of literature growth has been & will continue to be exponential. Accelerating & exponential growth has occurred in much of the serial literature, & in a few, but not all, parts of the monograph literature. There are currently signs of a leveling off in the rate of growth. 27 Tables, 5 Figures. AA.