Download or read book Social and Cultural Change written by Jay A. Weinstein and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2005 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book includes a comprehensive survey of the theories and principles employed by sociologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists in the study of sociocultural change. Employing these tools, the later chapters examine the major trends and challenges that face today's rapidly globalizing world. Students are asked to consider how they can participate actively in shaping the events that affect their lives. Among the book's pedagogical features are well over one hundred Web sites, organized by chapter and topic, which connect the text with contemporary events and commentary. Visit our website for sample chapters!

Download or read book How Social Science Got Better written by Matt Grossmann and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-05 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It seems like most of what we read about the academic social sciences in the mainstream media is negative. The field is facing mounting criticism, as canonical studies fail to replicate, questionable research practices abound, and researcher social and political biases come under fire. In response to these criticisms, Matt Grossmann, in How Social Science Got Better, provides a robust defense of the current state of the social sciences. Applying insights from the philosophy, history, and sociology of science and providing new data on research trends and scholarly views, he argues that, far from crisis, social science is undergoing an unparalleled renaissance of ever-broader understanding and application. According to Grossmann, social science research today has never been more relevant, rigorous, or self-reflective because scholars have a much better idea of their blind spots and biases. He highlights how scholars now closely analyze the impact of racial, gender, geographic, methodological, political, and ideological differences on research questions; how the incentives of academia influence our research practices; and how universal human desires to avoid uncomfortable truths and easily solve problems affect our conclusions. Though misaligned incentive structures of course remain, a messy, collective deliberation across the research community has shifted us into an unprecedented age of theoretical diversity, open and connected data, and public scholarship. Grossmann's wide-ranging account of current trends will necessarily force the academy's many critics to rethink their lazy critiques and instead acknowledge the path-breaking advances occurring in the social sciences today.

Download or read book Global Environmental Change written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1991-02-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global environmental change often seems to be the most carefully examined issue of our time. Yet understanding the human sideâ€"human causes of and responses to environmental changeâ€"has not yet received sustained attention. Global Environmental Change offers a strategy for combining the efforts of natural and social scientists to better understand how our actions influence global change and how global change influences us. The volume is accessible to the nonscientist and provides a wide range of examples and case studies. It explores how the attitudes and actions of individuals, governments, and organizations intertwine to leave their mark on the health of the planet. The book focuses on establishing a framework for this new field of study, identifying problems that must be overcome if we are to deepen our understanding of the human dimensions of global change, presenting conclusions and recommendations.

Download or read book The Impact of the Social Sciences written by Simon Bastow and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2014-01-17 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The impact agenda is set to shape the way in which social scientists prioritise the work they choose to pursue, the research methods they use and how they publish their findings over the coming decade, but how much is currently known about how social science research has made a mark on society? Based on a three year research project studying the impact of 360 UK-based academics on business, government and civil society sectors, this groundbreaking new book undertakes the most thorough analysis yet of how academic research in the social sciences achieves public policy impacts, contributes to economic prosperity, and informs public understanding of policy issues as well as economic and social changes. The Impact of the Social Sciences addresses and engages with key issues, including: identifying ways to conceptualise and model impact in the social sciences developing more sophisticated ways to measure academic and external impacts of social science research explaining how impacts from individual academics, research units and universities can be improved. This book is essential reading for researchers, academics and anyone involved in discussions about how to improve the value and impact of funded research.

Download or read book Politics and Paradigms written by Andrew C. Janos and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent economic and political developments in the Third World and in Communist and advanced industrial societies have challenged some of the most cherished assumptions of social science, forcing social scientists to rethink many of the categories of their discipline. In a concisely written and provocative book, the author traces this process of rethinking. He does so by going back to the nineteenth-century origins of political sociology and economy, and by exploring more recent attempts by American scholarship to fashion from the writings of Smith, Marx, Spencer, Weber, and Durkheim a new universal theory of modernization and political change. The author argues that these attempts led to a new intellectual crisis, which could be resolved only by a "paradigm shift," that is, by refocusing the discipline from the classical concept of social relations to a new global concept of the division of labor and systems of exchange. Overall, the volume may be read both as an intellectual history of modern political science, and as an attempt to fashion an analytical tool for empirical research. As such, it will be of interest to students of political philosophy as well as of comparative politics.

Download or read book A Time for Critique written by Bernard E. Harcourt and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world of political upheaval, rising inequality, catastrophic climate change, and widespread doubt of even the most authoritative sources of information, is there a place for critique? This book calls for a systematic reappraisal of critical thinking—its assumptions, its practices, its genealogy, its predicament—following the principle that critique can only start with self-critique. In A Time for Critique, Didier Fassin, Bernard E. Harcourt, and a group of eminent political theorists, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, and literary and legal scholars reflect on the multiplying contexts and forms of critical discourse and on the social actors and social movements engaged in them. How can one maintain sufficient distance from the eventful present without doing it an injustice? How can one address contemporary issues without repudiating the intellectual legacies of the past? How can one avoid the disconnection between theory and action? How can critique be both public and collective? These provocative questions are addressed by revisiting the works of Foucault and Arendt, Said and Césaire, Benjamin and Du Bois, but they are also given substance through on-the-ground case studies that treat subaltern criticism in Palestine, emancipatory mobilizations in Syria, the antitorture campaigns of Sri Lankan activists, and the abolitionism of the African American critical resistance and undercommons movements in the United States. Examining lucidly the present challenges of critique, A Time for Critique shows how its theoretical reassessment and its emerging forms can illuminate the imaginative modalities to rejuvenate critical praxis.

Download or read book Social Science Research written by Anol Bhattacherjee and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is designed to introduce doctoral and graduate students to the process of conducting scientific research in the social sciences, business, education, public health, and related disciplines. It is a one-stop, comprehensive, and compact source for foundational concepts in behavioral research, and can serve as a stand-alone text or as a supplement to research readings in any doctoral seminar or research methods class. This book is currently used as a research text at universities on six continents and will shortly be available in nine different languages.

Download or read book The Navy Chaplain written by and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Rethinking Science Technology and Social Change written by Ralph Schroeder and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rethinking Science, Technology, and Social Change challenges the prevailing notion that science and technology are constructed or socially shaped. The text puts forth a case for technological determinism, based on a realistic and pragmatic account of science and technology, informed by historical comparisons. Schroeder begins by exploring the social organization of scientific and technological advances; the intersecting trajectories of big science and technological systems; and the impact of science and technology on economic change. He goes on to discuss the social implications of technology, including the way that it affects politics and consumption. The book then rethinks traditional theories about the relationship between science, technology, and social change. The argument presented shifts the debate on topics such as the relationship between growth and sustainability, and thus has important policy implications. This book will be of great interest to scholars, scientists, and anyone interested in understanding how science and technology are transforming our world.

Download or read book The Future of Political Science written by Gary King and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-03-15 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains some of the newest, most exciting ideas now percolating within political science. One hundred authors each contribute a brief essay about a single novel or insufficiently appreciated idea on some aspect of political science.

Download or read book WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY Volume I written by George Modelski and Robert A. Denemark and published by EOLSS Publications. This book was released on 2009-09-19 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World System History is a component of Encyclopedia of Social Sciences and Humanities in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. The Theme on World System History presents the study of the history of the world system. World system history offers an array of tools with which to apprehend the future. This volume discuss the essential aspects such as World-Systems Analysis; Big History; Epistemology of World System History: Long-Term Processes and Cycles; One World System or Many: The Continuity Thesis in World System History; World Population History; States Systems and Universal Empires; The Silk Road: Afro-Eurasian Connectivity Across the Ages; Dark Ages in World System History; The Kondratieff Waves as Global Social Processes; Globalization in Historical Perspective; Emergence of a Global Polity; World Urbanization: The Role of Settlement Systems in Human Social Evolution; Democratization: The World-Wide Spread Of Democracy in The Modern Age; The Rise of Global Public Opinion; East Asia In the World System; Incorporating North America into the Eurasian World-System. This volume is aimed at the following five major target audiences: University and College Students Educators, Professional Practitioners, Research Personnel and Policy Analysts, Managers, and Decision Makers, NGOs and GOs.

Download or read book How Change Happens written by Cass R. Sunstein and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An “illuminating” study that reveals the different ways social change occurs—for readers of Freakonomics and Thinking, Fast and Slow (The New York Times) How does social change happen? When do social movements take off? Sexual harassment was once something that women had to endure; now a movement has risen up against it. White nationalist sentiments, on the other hand, were largely kept out of mainstream discourse; now there is no shortage of media outlets for them. In this book, with the help of behavioral economics, psychology, and other fields, Cass Sunstein casts a bright new light on how change happens. Sunstein focuses on the crucial role of social norms—and on their frequent collapse. When norms lead people to silence themselves, even an unpopular status quo can persist. Then one day, someone challenges the norm—a child who exclaims that the emperor has no clothes; a woman who says “me too.” Sometimes suppressed outrage is unleashed, and long-standing practices fall. Sometimes change is more gradual, as “nudges” help produce new and different decisions—apps that count calories; texted reminders of deadlines; automatic enrollment in green energy or pension plans. Sunstein explores what kinds of nudges are effective and shows why nudges sometimes give way to bans and mandates. Finally, he considers social divisions, social cascades, and “partyism,” when identification with a political party creates a strong bias against all members of an opposing party—which can both fuel and block social change.

Download or read book Change written by Damon Centola and published by Little, Brown Spark. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to create the change you want to see in the world using the paradigm-busting ideas in this "utterly fascinating" (Adam Grant) big-idea book.​ Most of what we know about how ideas spread comes from bestselling authors who give us a compelling picture of a world, in which "influencers" are king, "sticky" ideas "go viral," and good behavior is "nudged" forward. The problem is that the world they describe is a world where information spreads, but beliefs and behaviors stay the same. When it comes to lasting change in what we think or the way we live, the dynamics are different: beliefs and behaviors are not transmitted from person to person in the simple way that a virus is. The real story of social change is more complex. When we are exposed to a new idea, our social networks guide our responses in striking and surprising ways. Drawing on deep-yet-accessible research and fascinating examples from the spread of coronavirus to the success of the Black Lives Matter movement, the failure of Google+, and the rise of political polarization, Change presents groundbreaking and paradigm-shifting new science for understanding what drives change, and how we can change the world around us.

Download or read book Social Sciences for Knowledge and Decision Making written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2001-01-31 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This conference proceedings examines the role social sciences can play in developing sound policy.

Download or read book The Cambridge History of Science Volume 1 Ancient Science written by Alexander Jones and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-13 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume in the highly respected Cambridge History of Science series is devoted to the history of science, medicine and mathematics of the Old World in antiquity. Organized by topic and culture, its essays by distinguished scholars offer the most comprehensive and up-to-date history of ancient science currently available. Together, they reveal the diversity of goals, contexts, and accomplishments in the study of nature in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, and India. Intended to provide a balanced and inclusive treatment of the ancient world, contributors consider scientific, medical and mathematical learning in the cultures associated with the ancient world.

Download or read book Why the Social Sciences Matter written by Jonathan Michie and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-01-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published with the support of the Academy for Social Sciences, this volume provides an illuminating look at topics of concern to everyone at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Leading social scientists tackle complex questions such as immigration, unemployment, climate change, war, banks in trouble, and an ageing population.

Download or read book If Truth Be Told written by Didier Fassin and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-18 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when ethnographers go public via books, opinion papers, media interviews, court testimonies, policy recommendations, or advocacy activities? Calling for a consideration of this public moment as part and parcel of the research process, the contributors to If Truth Be Told explore the challenges, difficulties, and stakes of having ethnographic research encounter various publics, ranging from journalists, legal experts, and policymakers to activist groups, local populations, and other scholars. The experiences they analyze include Didier Fassin’s interventions on police and prison, Gabriella Coleman's multiple roles as intermediary between hackers and journalists, Kelly Gillespie's and Jonathan Benthall's experiences serving as expert witnesses, the impact of Manuela Ivone Cunha's and Vincent Dubois's work on public policies, and the vociferous attacks on the work of Unni Wikan and Nadia Abu El-Haj. With case studies from five continents, this collection signals the global impact of the questions that the publicization of ethnography raises about the public sphere, the role of the academy, and the responsibilities of social scientists. Contributors. Jonathan Benthall, Lucas Bessire, João Biehl, Gabriella Coleman, Manuela Ivone Cunha, Vincent Dubois, Nadia Abu El-Haj, Didier Fassin, Kelly Gillespie, Ghassan Hage, Sherine Hamdy, Federico Neiburg, Unni Wikan