What the Study of China Can Do for Social Science

1964 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. William Skinner
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
Specific Research ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Chinese Studies ◽  
Entire Society ◽  
Great Tradition

In recent years the cry has gone up: Sinology is dead; long live Chinese studies! And in this apothegm, by contrast with its prototype, a fundamental change is implied. Whereas old-time Sinology was given shape by its tools, so that Sinological skills defined the field and became an end in themselves, Chinese studies is shaped by its subject matter and Sinological skills are but means to analytic ends. Whereas traditional Sinology fostered uncritical immersion in a single civilization, modern Chinese studies brings at least that degree of impartial detachment which the comparative method implies. Whereas Sinology focused on China's “great tradition” and strove to capture the very ethos of the literati whose works it studied, Chinese studies today attempts to encompass the entire society and cultural product of China, to study its regional “little traditions” along with the “great,” and to empathize for heuristic purposes with nonélite social groups as well as with the literati. Sinology, a discipline unto itself, is being replaced by Chinese studies, a multidisciplinary endeavor with specific research objectives. As Professor Wright has suggested, what is text for the Sinologist becomes, for the disciplinary student of China, evidence.

Comparative Area Studies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Köllner ◽  
Rudra Sil ◽  
Ariel I. Ahram
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Middle Range ◽  
The Social ◽  
Small N ◽  
Scholarly Discourse ◽  
Science Disciplines

Two convictions lie at the heart of this volume. First, area studies scholarship remains indispensable for the social sciences, both as a means to expand our fount of observations and as a source of theoretical ideas. Second, this scholarship risks becoming marginalized without more efforts to demonstrate its broader relevance and utility. Comparative Area Studies (CAS) is one such effort, seeking to balance attention to regional and local contextual attributes with use of the comparative method in search of portable causal links and mechanisms. CAS engages scholarly discourse in relevant area studies communities while employing concepts intelligible to social science disciplines. In practice, CAS encourages a distinctive style of small-N analysis, cross-regional contextualized comparison. As the contributions to this volume show, this approach does not subsume or replace area studies scholarship but creates new pathways to “middle range” theoretical arguments of interest to both area studies and the social sciences.

scholarly journals Beyond Hegemony: Elaborating on the Use of Gramscian Concepts in Critical Discourse Analysis for Political Studies

2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 392-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Donoghue
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Antonio Gramsci ◽  
Political Studies ◽  
Asymmetrical Power

The work of Antonio Gramsci is important for the theoretical underpinnings of critical discourse analysis. However, many scholars’ engagement with Gramsci’s work within critical discourse analysis remains surprisingly thin. This article seeks to highlight the detriment to critical discourse analysis of having only a surface engagement with Gramsci. It critically assesses how Gramscian concepts such as hegemony and ‘common sense’ are currently employed within critical discourse analysis and provides more detailed discussion on the import of these concepts for critical discourse analysis. The article also argues that introducing the Gramscian concepts of the war of position and spontaneous and normative grammars enables the further realisation of critical discourse analysis’ ambition to be an emancipatory tool in political and social science. In so doing, the article contributes to work on critical discourse analysis as a method in political studies, particularly concerning the role of discourse in reproducing and maintaining asymmetrical power relations between classes and social groups, and potential challenges to this.

scholarly journals The Causes and Consequences of Urban Riot and Unrest

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Newburn
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Online Publication ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Crowd Behavior ◽  
Life Cycle Model ◽  
Cycle Model ◽  
Critical Overview

This review explores those varied bodies of work that have sought to understand crowd behavior and violent crowd conduct in particular. Although the study of such collective conduct was once considered central to social science, this has long ceased to be the case and in many respects the study of protest and riot now receives relatively little attention, especially within criminology. In addition to offering a critical overview of work in this field, this review argues in favor of an expanded conception of its subject matter. In recent times, scholarly concern has increasingly been focused on questions of etiology, i.e., asking how and why events such as riots occur, with the consequence that less attention is paid to other, arguably equally important questions, including how riots spread, how they end, and, critically, what happens in their aftermath. Accordingly, as a corrective, the review proposes a life-cycle model of riots. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 4 is January 13, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

What, If Anything, is the Philosophy of Political Science?

2020 ◽  
pp. 004839312097682
Author(s):  
Gianluca Pozzoni
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Philosophical Study ◽  
Philosophy Of Social Science ◽  
Special Sciences ◽  
Definition Of

Compared to other philosophies of special sciences, the scope, object, and definition of the philosophy of political science remain vague. This article traces this vagueness to the changing subject matter of political science throughout its history, but argues that all social sciences are subject to radical changes in what count as their defining characteristics. Accordingly, the only legitimate definition of “philosophy of political science” is “the philosophical study of whatever happens to conventionally fall within the scope of political science at a given moment.” Moving from this assumption, this article makes the case for a unified philosophy of social science.

scholarly journals Power theories in political ecology

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanne Svarstad ◽  
Tor A. Benjaminsen ◽  
Ragnhild Overå
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Broad Spectrum ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Environmental Conflicts ◽  
Environmental Interventions ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Discursive Power ◽  
Conservation Interventions

Power plays a key role in definitions of political ecology. Likewise, empirical studies within this field tend to provide detailed presentations of various uses of power, involving corporate and conservation interventions influencing access to land and natural resources. The results include struggle and conflict. Yet, there is a lack of theoretical elaboration showing how power may be understood in political ecology. In this article, we start to fill this gap by reviewing the different theoretical perspectives on power that have dominated this field. There are combinations of influences, two of them being actor-oriented and neo-Marxist approaches used from the 1980s. Typically, case studies are presented of environmental interventions by a broad range of actors at various scales from the local to the global. The focus has been on processes involving actors behind these interventions, as well as the outcomes for different social groups. Over the last two decades, in political ecology we have increasingly seen a move in power perspectives towards poststructuralist thinking about "discursive power", inspired by Foucault. Today, the three approaches (actor-oriented, neo-Marxist and Foucauldian) and their combinations form a synergy of power perspectives that provide a set of rich and nuanced insights into how power is manifested in environmental conflicts and governance. We argue that combining power perspectives is one of political ecology's strengths, which should be nurtured through a continuous examination of a broad spectrum of social science theories on power.

Convergent and Divergent Amplification and its Meaning for Social Science

1977 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan D. London
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Representative Sample ◽  
Basic Characteristic ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Classical Physics ◽  
Stability And Change ◽  
Phenotypic Specificity ◽  
Expected Outcomes

Social science is viewed as requiring a paradigm fundamentally different from that currently in use which reflects essentially the habits of classical physics. Its basic characteristic is the prevalence of minor and major events which amplify sequentially in such a way as to converge toward or diverge from expected outcomes. Other distinguishing characteristics of social science are discussed in the context of amplification and include the historicity of its subject matter, the everpresent tension between stability and change, the frequent primacy of phenotypic specificity over a genotypic generality, the importance of context and meaning in the constitution of data, and the altering effects of theory on reality. Recognition of these characteristics requires a change in the role of the investigator so as to include him more intimately in the research process. It also suggests the usefulness of substitution of an orientative sample for the usual representative sample to take into account the researcher's new role, especially in the context of amplification. The orientative sample permits an accretionary N ≥ 1 initially, as the investigator is sensitized and instructed in the course of his research.

What Social Science Can Do for Chinese Studies

1964 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 523-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurice Freedman
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Chinese Studies ◽  
Obvious Reason

I Am the joker in the pack—not simply for the obvious reason that I am not an American, but also, and much more significantly, because I have no right to sit on a platform with people learned in Sinology. That I have been invited to join them says a great deal about American broadmindedness and something too about the underdeveloped state of Chinese studies in my own country. But in a way my disabilities qualify me: I am doubly an outsider (maybe that was why I was asked) and can therefore be relied on to be biased. Prejudice is a condition for argument.

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