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The aim of the article is to intervene in debates about the digital and, in particular, framings that imagine the digital in terms of epochal shifts or as redefining life. Instead, drawing on recent developments in digital methods, we explore the lively, productive and performative qualities of the digital by attending to the specificities of digital devices and how they interact, and sometimes compete, with older devices and their capacity to mobilize and materialize social and other relations. In doing so, our aim is to explore the implications of digital devices and data for reassembling social science methods or what we call the social science apparatuses that assemble digital devices and data to 'know' the social and other relations. Building on recent work at CRESC on the social life of methods, we recommend a genealogical approach that is alive to the ways in which digital devices are simultaneously shaped by social worlds, and can in turn become agents that shape those worlds. This calls for attending to the specificities of digital devices themselves, how they are varied and composed of diverse socio-technical arrangements, and are enrolled in the creation of new knowledge spaces, institutions and actors. Rather than exploring what large-scale changes can be revealed and understood through the digital, we argue for explorations of how digital devices themselves are materially implicated in the production and performance of contemporary sociality. To that end we offer the following nine propositions about the implications of digital data and devices and argue that these demand rethinking the theoretical assumptions of social science methods: transactional actors; heterogeneity; visualization; continuous time; whole populations; granularity; expertise; mobile and mobilizing; and non-coherence.

Whilst many undocumented migrants in the United States continue to exist in the shadows, since the turn of the millennium an increasing number have emerged within public debate, casting themselves against the dominant discursive trope of the "illegal alien," and entering the struggle over political self-representation. Drawing on a range of life narratives published from 2001 to 2016, this book explores how undocumented migrants have represented themselves in various narrative forms in the context of the DREAM Act and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) movement.By reading these self-representations as both a product of America's changing views on citizenship and membership, and an arena where such views can potentially be challenged, the book interrogates the role such self-representations have played not only in constructing undocumented migrant identities, but also in shaping social borders. At a time when the inclusion and exclusion of (potential) citizens is once again highly debated in the United States, the book concludes by giving a potential indication of where views on undocumented migration might be headed. This interdisciplinary exploration of migrant narratives will be of interest to scholars and researchers across American Literary and Cultural Studies, Citizenship Studies, and Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Invisible Hands, Russian Experience, and Social Science: Approaches to Understanding Systemic Failure. By Stefan Hedlund. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 324p. $95.00, cloth, $35.99 paper.In recent decades the study of social phenomena has been characterized by the increasing specialization of academic subdisciplines. At the same time, social science has had great difficulty in accounting for instances of systemic failure that challenge the artificial typologies often promoted by specialized scholarship. Increasing theoretical sophistication thus arguably has come at the expense of grasping the particular and unique nature of historical events. In Invisible Hands, Russian Experience, and Social Science, Stefan Hedlund examines the postcommunist Russian encounter with capitalism and the global financial crisis as examples of unprecedented events that challenged social scientists' assumptions about the causes of human behavior and the functioning of social and political institutions. In this symposium a group of political scientists have been asked to critically assess the book's account and to comment more broadly on what systemic failure can tell us about social science theorizing.—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

In this introduction to the special issue on Anti-Racism and Intersectionality in Feminist Criminology and Academia, we describe the Virtual Forum of the same name that inspired the special issue. The June 4, 2021 Forum was organized by an ad hoc committee of the American Society of Criminology's Division on Women & Crime's Diversity & Inclusion Committee and featured over 100 presenters. We also outline the contributions to the special issue, which contain concrete recommendations on how to improve our discipline, our research, our mentorship, our departments, and our universities. Finally, we included two beautiful tributes on the legacy of bell hooks, in light of her December 2021 passing. We hope that readers will find the contributions to this special issue informative and beneficial as they work to advance antiracist and intersectional ideas and practices within criminology, feminist criminology and academia.

AbstractThe Russo Williamson thesis (RWT) states that a causal claim can be established only if it can be established that there is a difference-making relationship between the cause and the effect, and that there is a mechanism linking the cause and the effect that is responsible for such a difference-making relationship (Russo & Williamson, 2007). The applicability of Russo and Williamson's idea was hugely debated in relation to biomedical research, and recently it has been applied to the social sciences (Shan & Williamson, 2021). While many philosophers and social scientists have advocated the use of different kinds of evidence for causal discoveries, others have criticised this approach. With this paper, I aim to defend RWT from criticisms and to show its importance in the social sciences. The paper is structured as follows. After a brief introduction, in Sect. 2, I will summarise RWT, and in Sect. 3 I will describe how this approach can be applied to the social sciences. In Sect. 4, I will reconstruct two main criticisms of this thesis proposed in the philosophy of the social sciences literature: namely (i) RWT is not used in the social sciences, (ii) RWT does not work. For each criticism I will provide a defence of RWT. My defence will be based on two general considerations: (i) RWT appears perfectly in line with the research methods used in the social sciences and (ii) RWT can be applied successfully to establish causal claims. In Sect. 5, moreover, I will examine the causal accounts that have motivated such criticisms and I will argue that they should be rejected to endorse RWT and a causal account able to accommodate the current use of mechanistic and difference-making evidence in the social sciences. Section 6 will conclude with a note on the relevance of RWT in both its descriptive and normative form.

Pontuso reviews 'The Orders of Discourse: Philosophy, Social Science, and Politics' by John G. Gunnell.

Based on a review of economists' debates on mathematical economics, this article discusses a key issue for shaping the science of social work—research methodology. The article describes three important tasks quantitative researchers need to fulfill in order to enhance the scientific rigor of social work research. First, to test theories using empirical data, researchers should follow the positivistic/postpositivistic principles. Second, social work researchers should incorporate the latest advances in methods from other disciplines. Third, researchers should use quantitative methods to address the most pressing and challenging issues of social work research and practice.

Marxism, Psychology and Social Science Analysis applies Marxist theory, psychology, and the work of Lucien Sève to specific research in the social sciences. It shows in practical terms what guidance can be offered for social scientific researchers wanting to incorporate Sève's view of personality into their work. Providing case studies drawn from different social sciences that give the book significant breadth of scope, Roche reviews the impact of "Taking Sève Seriously" across the study of international relations theory, economics, law, and moral philosophy.?The book begins by placing the work of Lucien Sève in context and considers the development of psychology in relation to Marxism, before going on to summarise the work of Sève in relation to the psychology of personality. It considers the opportunities for refreshed research in social relations based on developments by Sève, before examining Marxist biography and the implications of Sève's views. The book also includes chapters on the social discount rate, on constructivism in international relations, on the concept of promising in moral philosophy and the Marxist conception of individual responsibility. It addresses not only how research should be carried out differently, but whether utilising the theoretical framework of other writers, even non-Marxists, can deliver a similar outcome.With its use of five distinct case studies to analyse the work of Lucien Sève, this unique book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of psychology, philosophy and social sciences.

The extent of & prospects for European cooperation in the social sciences are examined, focusing on three primary institutions -- the Vienna Centre, the European Science Foundation, & the European Community -- which play key roles in cross-national collaboration. Reasons for the lack of European collaboration in the social sciences are discussed, & additional barriers are noted, including: the unavailability of social-scientific data in Europe, shortcomings in international comparative research, & inadequate methods for disseminating research findings. It is suggested that researchers need to think in European terms rather than nationalistically, & that more attention needs to be given to the development of large-scale, long-term research projects that span national boundaries. 11 References. W. Howard

Part of a collective project for promoting the study of the history of political ideas within the field of the social sciences in French academia, this interview focuses on method, and more specifically on Prof. Quentin Skinner's relationship to the social sciences (from Max Weber to Peter Winch and Pierre Bourdieu). Questions were sent in French, via email, to Quentin Skinner, who answered them in English. The answers were then translated into French and the interview was published in Vers une histoire sociale des idées politiques, ed. Chloé Gaboriaux and Arnault Skornicki (Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2017). For editorial reasons, one question and response, regarding method in the Italian tradition of the history of ideas, had to be omitted; it is reintroduced here. The questions have been translated for Theoria by Victor Lu. Quentin Skinner is Emeritus Professor in the Humanities at Queen Mary University of London and co-director of the Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought (London); Arnault Skornicki is Senior Lecturer at Paris Nanterre University (Institut des Sciences Sociales du Politique); and Jérémie Barthas is Researcher at the CNRS (Institut d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine).

Historical explanations seek to identify the causes of outcomes in particular cases. Although social scientists commonly develop historical explanations, they lack criteria for distinguishing different types of causes and for evaluating the relative importance of alternative causes of the same outcome. This article first provides an inventory of the five types of causes that are normally used in historical explanations: (1) necessary but not sufficient, (2) sufficient but not necessary, (3) necessary and sufficient, (4) INUS, and (5) SUIN causes. It then introduces a new method—sequence elaboration—for evaluating the relative importance of causes. Sequence elaboration assesses the importance of causes through consideration of their position within a sequence and through consideration of the types of causes that make up the sequence as a whole. Throughout the article, methodological points are illustrated with substantive examples from the field of international and comparative studies.

Background: We are witnessing increasing demand from governments and society for all sciences to have relevant social impact and to show the returns they provide to society. Aims and objectives: This paper reports strategies that promote social impact by Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) research projects.