Suchergebnisse

RéSUMé. — On oppose dans cet article deux modes de connaissance du monde social, un mode descriptif attaché au réalisme des effets, et un mode explicatif attaché au réalisme des causes. Le premier s'appuie sur la modélisation de phénomènes totaux complexes, sans égard aux processus réels en jeu. Le second s'appuie sur la modélisation des processus réels, sans chercher à reproduire les phénomènes totaux observables. L'impossibilité pratique de rendre compte simultanément de manière réaliste des causes et des effets des processus sociaux réels permet d'éclairer le problème des critères de la validité des modèles en sciences sociales.

Résumé On ignore aujourd'hui la pensée politique de Rœderer qui est, pourtant, l'un des théoriciens les plus éminents d'une science sociale en voie de formation. Dans une œuvre publiée fort importante et un fonds considérable de manuscrits inédits, il établit son modèle de la res publica : celle-ci ne renonce pas aux structures politiques tout en limitant leur caractère absolu et arbitraire par l'organisation sociale. L'article définit les principes de sa position et les situe dans le courant d'idées qui part de l' art social des physiocrates et économistes, aboutit à la politique positive de Saint-Simon et Comte, en passant par les travaux de la « Société de 1789 ».

"The past decade has witnessed a rapid growth in the development of research on the human dimensions of global environmental change. Environmental Social Science offers a synthesis of this new cross disciplinary enterprise, and provides a foundation for scholars and policy makers to address the urgent needs of these globally-scaled processes. With increasing evidence of climate change, loss of biodiversity, rapid deforestation in the tropics, and an impending crisis in availability of potable water, the book argues that environmental research demands a better understanding of the complexities of current human - environment interactions. In recommending a new collaborative approach that makes environmental theories and research methods accessible across the natural and social sciences, the book outlines a mutually beneficial research agenda for all concerned."--BOOK JACKET

The role of UNESCO in international social science education, research, & training is outlined. To face recent changes in Europe, innovative research orientations should be developed. Suggested are: (1) extensive interdisciplinarity & comparative approaches; (2) identification & conceptualization of new research tools; & (3) improved collaborative research organizations. Modified AA

AbstractThere is growing recognition of a new human ascendancy: 'the urban age'. Rising interest in urbanism is evident in popular literature, the media and major global institutions. And yet, as with another great issue of the age, global warming, there is evidence that social science is being sidelined from a rapidly enlarging field of human concern. New urban knowledges are forwarded from the physical sciences and from popular commentary that are characterized by naturalism and its kindred tendencies, especially determinism. In this essay I consider why social scientific urbanism seems increasingly marginal to an ever broadening urban discussion. The regressive consequences for human knowledge and prospect are essayed. The essay's final part is prospectus: for a revivified social scientific urbanism that draws from Sayer's recent argument for renewal of critical human knowledge.

Intro -- Table of Contents -- Foreword -- Section I: Global Social Thought -- Chapter 1 - Concepts that Hinder the Progress of Sociological Research: Identity as an Epistemological Obstacle -- Chapter 2 - Isn't Anthropology Already a Multiversalist Discipline?Assessing the Status of Anthropology in Asia -- Chapter 3 - Indigenised while Internationalised?Tensions and Dilemmas in China's Modern Transformation of Social Sciences in an Age of Globalisation -- Chapter 4 - 'Academic Dependence': The World Social Science Arena-a Battlefield among Parochial Thought? -- Section II: Spatialized Thought and Local Knowledge Production -- Chapter 5 - Michel Foucault and the Postcolonial African Theory: A Critical Essay -- Chapter 6 - Knowledge Production: A Perspective from the Periphery -- Chapter 7 - Civilizational Encounter, Cultural Translation, and Social Reflexivity: A Note on the History of Sociology in Japan -- Chapter 8 - The community of sociologists in Morocco facing the internationalization of knowledge -- Chapter 9 - Internationalization of Research in Lebanon: The case of the American University of Beirut -- Section III: Culture in Global Knowledge Encounters -- Chapter 10 - Culture as a Dimension in International Social Science Encounters -- Chapter 11 - The Manifestation of Scientific Cultures: A Sociophilosophical Study of Islamic Scientific Tradition -- Chapter 12 - The Study of Culture within Alternative Vision -- Section IV: Globalizing Local Social Thought -- Chapter 13 - The Transformation Processes in Global Social Knowledge -- Chapter 14 - Can Peripheries Talk Back? Alternative Intellectual Trends in Tamil Nadu and their Possible Lessons for Knowledge-Making Practices outside Intellectual Power Centers -- Chapter 15 - How to Overcome "Oriental" Sociology? -- Authors.

This paper offers four main arguments about the nature of causation in the social sciences. First, contrary to most recent work, I argue that there is a unitary conception of causation: a cause raises the probability of an event. This understanding of causation, borrowed from but not wedded to Bayesian inference, provides common semantic ground on which to base a reconstruction of causation. I argue, second, that rather than thinking about causation as a series of discrete types or distinct rules we ought to re-conceptualize this complex form of argument as a set of logical criteria applying to all arguments that are causal in nature (following the foregoing definition), across fields and across methods. Here, it is helpful to distinguish between the formal properties of a causal argument and the methods by which such an argument might be tested, the research design. Sixteen criteria apply to the former and seven criteria apply to the latter, as I show in the body of the paper. In summary, causation in the social sciences is both more diverse and more unified than has generally been recognized.

Cyril Burt, who died in 1971, was one of the most eminent British psychologists of his generation. His pioneering research on backward children, on delinquency and on educational disadvantage was influential, as was his contribution to methodology, for example in the development of factor analysis and of IQ measurement. Reconsiders Burt's work on intelligence variations. (Original abstract - amended)