scholarly journals Erasing the Social from Social Science: The Intellectual Costs of Boundary-Work and the Canadian Institute of Health Research

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katelin E. Albert
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Health Research ◽  
Research Funding ◽  
Boundary Work ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Canadian Institute ◽  
The Social

In 2009, Canadian social science research funding underwent a transition. Social science health-research was shifted from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR), an agency previously dominated by natural and medical science. This paper examines the role of health-research funding structures in legitimizing and/or delimiting what counts as ‘good’ social science health research. Engaging Gieryn’s (1983) notion of ‘boundary-work’ and interviews with qualitative social science graduate students, it investigates how applicants developed proposals for CIHR. Findings show that despite claiming to be interdisciplinary, the practical mechanisms through which CIHR funding is distributed reinforce rigid boundaries of what counts as legitimate health research. These boundaries are reinforced by applicants who felt pressure to prioritize what they perceived was what funders wanted (accommodating natural-science research culture), resulting in erased, elided, and disguised social science theories and methods common for ‘good social science.’

Environment and Health Research in China: The State of the Field

2013 ◽  
Vol 214 ◽  
pp. 255-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Holdaway
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Collaboration ◽  
Health Research ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Environment And Health ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Developments

AbstractIn the context of this symposium, this article reviews social science research in the emerging field of environment and health in China, with a particular focus on the impacts of pollution. It begins with a discussion of the particular nature of China's environment-related health problems, distinguishing the different challenges presented by diseases of poverty, affluence and transition. It then reviews recent developments in policy and civil society with regard to environment and health, and the extent to which work in the social sciences has advanced our knowledge of these and of state–society interactions. The article concludes with some reflections on the need for and challenges of interdisciplinary and international collaboration in this area.

Housing Segregation and School Desegregation

1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Armor
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Residential Segregation ◽  
School Desegregation ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
School Segregation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Housing Segregation ◽  
The Relationship

The issue of residential segregation has had a long history in the development of school desegregation laws and policies. Most social scientists and jurists would agree that school segregation is closely associated with racial segregation in housing, particularly in larger school systems. Residential segregation can give rise to school segregation between school systems, such as that existing between a predominantly minority city school system and its predominantly white suburban systems, and within a single school system when a neighborhood school policy reflects segregated residential patterns. The debate over the relationship between housing and school segregation arises, however, not from the mere fact of association, but from the causal interpretations applied to this association. Two major issues have framed the debates over this relationship. One issue concerns the causes of housing segregation itself, whether it arises primarily from discriminatory actions, either public or private, or from a complex set of social, economic, and demographic forces in which discrimination plays only a secondary role. The second issue focuses on the causal connections between school segregation and housing segregation and the direction of the causal relationship: the extent to which a neighborhood school policy actually contributes to housing segregation (rather than simply reflecting it) and the extent to which school desegregation contributes to integrated housing choices. On these points there is sharp disagreement between and within the social science and legal communities. The debates within the social science and legal communities have had reciprocating influences. On the one hand, a considerable amount of research on housing segregation has been generated by school desegregation litigation. On the other, a number of court decisions about the role of housing in school desegregation cases have been influenced by social science research and expert testimony. Thus the relationship between judicial policy and social science research is well illustrated by the housing segregation issue. The role of residential segregation in school desegregation law has itself passed through several stages during the past thirty years of school desegregation litigation.

scholarly journals Hazards, Climates and Cultures: Reflections on Recent Scholarship and Proposals for Further Research

2016 ◽  
Vol 03 (02) ◽  
pp. 1602002
Author(s):  
James M. Jeffers
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Complex Dynamic ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Social

Writing in 2006 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, James K. Mitchell challenged social science researchers of hazards and disasters to broaden their research agenda. He advocated a move beyond simply applying existing social science insights to contemporary events to reflection on the larger project of the production of knowledge through academic research, the application of that knowledge to public policy, and the role of the social sciences in these endeavors. In particular, he urged consideration of the context-dependent nature of scientific knowledge on hazards, the relationships between scientific and non-scientific ways of understanding and responding to disasters, and the complex and often contradictory ways in which hazards can be framed, interpreted and understood. Ten years on from this challenge, this paper reviews scholarship that has addressed some of these concerns and proposes questions for further research. It argues that while social science research has advanced in some of the directions proposed by Mitchell, the challenge of complex, dynamic and contradictory interpretations of hazards and the implications of the provisional nature of knowledge remain understudied. It also suggests that while recent innovations in the co-production of hazards knowledge are welcome, there may be significant challenges to utilizing these approaches on a wider basis.

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