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This paper articulates the findings of a two-year Canadian federally-funded postdoctoral study — Poetic inquiry in qualitative research: A critical survey — on the use of poetry in social science qualitative research practices. Based on a 1000+ page annotated bibliography gathered into a critical anthology as the data for this project, the discoveries emerged that are expressed below. The bibliography consists solely of poems included in over 230 studies found for this multidisciplinary project, supported by abstracts and brief contextual notes. Selection criteria for included studies were peer-reviewed journal contributions only, bracketing out anything that had appeared in book form, in 'Poet's Corners', and also excluding poems appearing in theses or dissertations. Some of these excluded poems are cited in a separate Appendix. These criteria were made simply to limit the scope of the study to a manageable scale. Most of this poetically-informed scholarship has appeared in the past decade, although some entries date as far back as the 1970's and 80's. Conclusions are that poetic inquiry most often addresses topics with clear affective dimensions, and can be distinguished between participant-based and self-study foci, with occasional examples of theoretical studies. Participant-based studies generally draw on the literary tradition of found poetry to represent participant data. Self-studies may address more philosophical, phenomenological and/or poststucturalist opportunities that present themselves through the use of poetry in social science contexts.

"Social science practitioners have recently witnessed numerous episodes of influential research that fell apart upon close scrutiny. These instances have spurred suspicions that other published results may contain errors or may at least be less robust than they appear. In response, an influential movement has emerged across the social sciences for greater research transparency, openness, and reproducibility. Transparent and Reproducible Social Science Research crystallizes the new insights, practices, and methods of this rising interdisciplinary field"--Provided by publisher

How does one research racial categorizations and exclusion while remaining sensitive to context? How does one engage the social reality of racial categorizations and the history of racialized exclusions without falling into the trap of race essentialism? These concerns prompt debate about, and also resistance to, examining race in Swedish social science. In this article, Voyer and Lund offer American racial reasoning as one possible approach to researching race in the Swedish context. American racial reasoning means being attentive to how power and the processes of social inequality operate through categories of racial and ethnic difference, and also seeing the path to greater equality in the embrace of those categories. American racial reasoning is a valuable research tool that uncovers dynamics of social inequality and possibilities for social justice that are otherwise difficult to grasp. Taking up the topic of immigration in Sweden, Voyer and Lund demonstrate the analytical value of American racial reasoning for understanding persistent social inequality and exclusion even when explicit racial categories are not in wide use in everyday life.

Recent times have seen a significant reorientation in public funding for academic research across many countries. Public bodies in the UK have been at the forefront of such activities, typically justified in terms of a need to meet the challenges of international competitiveness and improve quality of life. One set of mechanisms advanced for further achieving these goals is the incorporation of users' needs into various aspects of the research process. This paper examines some of the consequences of greater user involvement in the UK Economic and Social Research Council by drawing on both empirical evidence and more speculative argumentation. In doing so it poses some of the dilemmas for conceptualizing proper user involvement.

In the mid-1990s, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) expanded its mission beyond sustainable improvements in productivity & formally incorporated a poverty focus. At the same time it initiated a process for the System to become explicitly output & impact oriented. As a result, social science research has become an integral part of the CGIAR research agenda & the research implementation process. & there is evidence that research in the social & anthropological disciplines is permeating the CGIAR research. However, there is a need for a systematic effort to facilitate the formulation & implementation of an updated social science research agenda that is commensurate with the new CGIAR vision & strategy. This is particularly important in facilitating the true integration of social research into the CGIAR research agenda, a need that has been strongly highlighted by external reviews in recent years. This article emphasizes that there is a need to foster a research culture & ethos in the CGIAR that will promote a development-oriented synthesis of socially responsible research that integrates biophysical & human sciences in CGIAR research planning & implementation processes along the research-to-development continuum in agriculture, forestry, & fisheries. 2 Tables, 2 Figures, 2 Appendixes, 31 References. Adapted from the source document.

Researchers employing qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) and its variants use two-element Boolean algebra to compare cases and identify putative causal conditions. I show that the two-element Boolean algebra constrains research in three important ways: it restricts what we can say about sets and the interactions between sets, it embodies a logical language that is too weak to capture modern social science theories, and it restricts our analysis of causation to necessity and sufficiency accounts and does not allow for counterfactuals. Modern quantitative analysis suffers none of these restrictions and provides a much richer way to understand the social world.

Based on theoretical and mathematical principles of chaos theory, we argue that the customary social science goals of "prediction" and "control" of systems behavior are sometimes, if not usually, unobtainable. Specifically, chaos theory shows how it is possible for nearly identical entities embedded in identical environments to exhibit radically different behaviors, even when the underlying systems are extremely simple and completely deterministic. Furthermore, chaos theory arguments are general enough to apply to any type of entity, including individuals, groups, and organizations, and therefore they are relevant to a large domain of social science problems. As a result, this paper concludes with six familiar claims about the study of social phenomena for which chaos theory provides new theoretical arguments.

In the mid-1990s, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) expanded its mission beyond sustainable improvements in productivity and formally incorporated a poverty focus. At the same time it initiated a process for the System to become explicitly output and impact oriented. As a result, social science research has become an integral part of the CGIAR research agenda and the research implementation process. And there is evidence that research in the social and anthropological disciplines is permeating the CGIAR research. However, there is a need for a systematic effort to facilitate the formulation and implementation of an updated social science research agenda that is commensurate with the new CGIAR vision and strategy. This is particularly important in facilitating the true integration of social research into the CGIAR research agenda, a need that has been strongly highlighted by external reviews in recent years. This article emphasises that there is a need to foster a research culture and ethos in the CGIAR that will promote a development-oriented synthesis of socially responsible research that integrates biophysical and human sciences in CGIAR research planning and implementation processes along the research-to-development continuum in agriculture, forestry, and fisheries. (Original abstract)

THE SSRC HAS ALWAYS HAD ITS CRITICS, WITHIN THE SOCIAL SCIENCE COMMUNITY AS WELL AS OUTSIDE IT. NO DOUBT THIS WILL CONTINUE. IT IS HEALTHY FOR ANY ORGANIZATION TO BE KEPT ON ITS TOES AND TO BE SUBJECTED TO PERIODICAL CHALLENGES. BUT THERE CAN BE TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING. LIFE ON THE KNIFE-EDGE DOES NOT STIMULATE A QUANGO IN THE SAME WAY AS IT MAY STIMULATE A COMMERICAL ORGANIZATION.

In this decade, sociological and anthropological studies of formal education in Latin America show signs of vigorous growth and promise of substantial future developments. The leitmotiv running through most of the social scientific research on education is education and social change or, more specifically, education and economic development and social progress. There is still no strong evidence of a concerted, cumulative development in this area despite heightened research activity and the fact that scholars are more regularly communicating and integrating their efforts. To the contrary, it is more common of researchers to appear oblivious of the prior or related work of other scholars in other centers of research. However, the common cause of a relatively narrow range of concern has produced a concentration of effort and many-faceted attack by scholars from many disciplines on these problems that promise potent developments in theory, understanding and discovery.