scholarly journals Interpretation out of Contradiction: A World of Music in the West Indies

2013 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Jocelyne Guilbault
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The West ◽  
Simple Fact ◽  
Types Of Knowledge ◽  
Ethnographic Writing ◽  
The Social ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
The One ◽  
Great Complexity

This paper addresses the researcher's double challenge: to acknowledge and situate contrasting experiences of the same phenomenon and yet to integrate them into a personal rendition of that phenomenon. An examination of the various strategies employed in ethnographic writing, from the copious use of quotations to dialogical or polyphonic writing, shows how contradictory viewpoints have been given more attention in ethnographic literature, as the politics of representation have developed into an important debate in the social sciences. While these various approaches have undeniably allowed more voices to be heard, they have nevertheless left unanswered the problem of interpretation in the case of contested appropriations or contradictory versions of the same phenomenon. The simple fact of integrating various voices in an ethnography does not indeed constitute in an by itself an explanation of what is being said and why. This paper examines possible uses and treatments of diverging voices in ethnographic writing. By way of illustration, I emphasize the great complexity of the responses and interpretations generated by zouk, a mass-distributed popular music from the West Indies, by presenting contrasting voices and viewpoints from the islands of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Domenica, and Haiti. By doing so, I show, on the one hand, how each viewpoint can provide distinct types of knowledge. On the other hand, I argue that while there can be no analysis which can provide final answers to the questions raised by controversial phenomenon such as zouk, not all the points of view should be accorded the same importance.

Women break down the barriers to the Vietnamese social sciences and humanities

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quan-Hoang Vuong
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Middle Income Country ◽  
Women In Science ◽  
Income Country ◽  
The West ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Low And Middle Income

Valian rightly made a case for better recognition of women in science during the Nobel week in October 2018 (Valian, 2018). However, it seems most published views about gender inequality in Nature focused on the West. This correspondence shifts the focus to women in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in a low- and middle-income country (LMIC).

Defending the Difference

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Natural Entities ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Methodological Difference ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One

Dreyfus argues that there is a basic methodological difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences, a difference that derives from the different goals and practices of each. He goes on to argue that being a realist about natural entities is compatible with pluralism or, as he calls it, “plural realism.” If intelligibility is always grounded in our practices, Dreyfus points out, then there is no point of view from which one can ask about or provide an answer to the one true nature of ultimate reality. But that is consistent with believing that the natural sciences can still reveal the way the world is independent of our theories and practices.

Benson and Miller in Perspective

1979 ◽  
Vol 3 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 242-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Kuklick
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Applied Science ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Knowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Stock Of Knowledge

Despite differences in coloration Miller and Benson are birds of a feather. Although he is no Pollyanna, Miller believes that there has been a modest and decent series of advances in the social sciences and that the most conscientious, diligent, and intelligent researchers will continue to add to this stock of knowledge. Benson is much more pessimistic about the achievements of yesterday and today but, in turn, offers us the hope of a far brighter tomorrow. Miller explains Benson’s hyperbolic views about the past and future by distinguishing between pure and applied science and by pointing out Benson’s naivete about politics: the itch to understand the world is different from the one to make it better; and, Miller says, because Benson sees that we have not made things better, he should not assume we do not know more about them; Benson ought to realize, Miller adds, that the way politicians translate basic social knowledge into social policy need not bring about rational or desirable results. On the other side, Benson sees more clearly than Miller that the development of science has always been intimately intertwined with the control of the environment and the amelioration of the human estate.

Chronique d’une écologie décoloniale dans C’est ma terre de Fabrice Bouckat

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 189-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Françoise Naudillon
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Agent Orange ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
The West ◽  
The One

The documentary film C’est ma terre by Fabrice Bouckat screened during the 2019 edition of Terrafestival is one of the first large-scale films produced locally on the crisis of the chlordecone molecule. This article will examine from a decolonial perspective, how its director, a Martinican with Gabonese origins who lives and works in Guadeloupe, develops a synthetic and universal vision of environmental crises, and thus demonstrates that destruction of ecosystems crosses time and space, cultures and lands, languages and peoples by bringing ecological crisis in the West Indies closer to the one experienced by the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange.

Teaching the West and the World from the Massachusetts Framework

1998 ◽  
Vol 180 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-78
Author(s):  
Paul Gagnon
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Science Curriculum ◽  
World History ◽  
Student Assessment ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
Curriculum Framework ◽  
Massachusetts History ◽  
Common Problems ◽  
Selection Of

This article summarizes how teachers may implement the Massachusetts History and Social Science Curriculum Framework as they design and teach courses in Western civilization and world history. It discusses the integration of history, geography, and the social sciences, together with suggested approaches to common problems such as the balance between Western and world studies, selection of main topics and questions, professional development, student assessment, and challenges teachers may confront.

scholarly journals Peirce’s Classification of the Sciences

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-278
Author(s):  
Torjus Midtgarden
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Physical Nature ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Empirical Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
Methodological Principles ◽  
The One ◽  
Philosophical Pragmatism

Charles Peirce’s classification of the sciences was designed shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. The classification has two main sources of inspiration: Comte’s science classification and Kant’s theoretical philosophy. Peirce’s classification, like that of Comte, is hierarchically organised in that the more general and abstract sciences provide principles for the less general and more concrete sciences. However, Peirce includes and assigns a superordinate role to philosophical disciplines which analyse and provide logical, methodological and ontological principles for the specialised sciences, and which are based on everyday life experience. Moreover, Peirce recognises two main branches of specialised empirical science: the natural sciences, on the one hand, and the social sciences, the humanities and psychology on the other. While both branches share logical and methodological principles, they are based on different ontological principles in studying physical nature and the human mind and its products, respectively. Peirce’s most basic philosophical discipline, phenomenology, transforms his early engagement with Kant. Peirce’s classification of aesthetics, ethics and logic as normative sub-disciplines of philosophy relate to his philosophical pragmatism. Yet his more overarching division between theoretical (philosophical and specialised) sciences and practical sciences may be seen as problematic. Taking Peirce’s historical account of scientific developments into consideration, however, I argue that his science classification and its emphasis on the interdependencies between the sciences could be seen as sustaining and supporting interdisciplinarity and interaction across fields of research, even across the divide between theoretical and practical sciences.

scholarly journals Il sistema contabile e la struttura di gobernó del “Campansi” nella seconda metà dell'ottocento

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (23) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Catturi ◽  
Daniela Sorrentino
Keyword(s):  
Governance Structure ◽  
Accounting System ◽  
Cultural Goods ◽  
City Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
Urban Patterns ◽  
History Of ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
The One ◽  
Charitable Activities

In every city community, there always exist social, economic and political- administrative bodies, whose activities and organisational structures delineate and convey the historical and cultural periods experienced by that community.The city community we aim at investigating is the Sienese one. Siena is universally recognised for its medieval reminders, as well as for those of the Renaissance, distinctly appreciable in its current urban patterns, painting pieces, and cultural goods, of which it is plenty and rightly proud.The organisation we identified as one traditionally characterising –at least in the last century and a half- and still characterising the Sienese history and culture, is the Ricovero di Mendicità, later named Casa di riposo in Campansi per anziani, unanimously known as “Campansi”.Undoubtedly, the Campansi one is not the only institution whose structural and operational evolution contributed – and keeps on contributing- to shape the history of Siena, from the social, political and institutional points of view. Nevertheless, it is surely one of the most peculiar ones, in that it has been involved in those charitable activities, which exalted Siena since the second millennium, at the time of the restoring and propitiatory journeys to the main religious destinations: Rome, Jerusalem, and Saint James of Compostela.In this study we adopt a business administration perspective, with particular reference to the structure of the accounting system and its related documentation, which the organisation had been producing in order to memorise, summarise and communicate its administrative events, these latter occurring from the exercise of its institutional function. Moreover, we acknowledge the related governance structure, selected with the purpose of making operational decisions, verifying their execution, and controlling the deriving effects. As a matter of fact, there is a tight interdependency between the governance structure and the accounting system of whichever organisation. Particularly, the investigation refers to the period we considered the most significant and interesting, the one comprised between the issuing of the law “Sull'Amministrazione delle Opere pie” (3rd August 1862) and law “Istituzioni pubbliche di beneficenza”, in 1890, respectively known as Rattazzi and Crispi law, from the Prime Ministers in charge at the time of their enactment.

scholarly journals Pragmatisme og "practice turn"

2018 ◽  
pp. 43-61
Author(s):  
Antje Gimmler
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
John Dewey ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
The Other ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
Practice Turn ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
The One ◽  
Philosophical Pragmatism

Practices are of central relevance both to philosophical pragmatism and to the recent ‘Practice Turn’ in social sciences and philosophy. However, what counts as practices and how practices and knowledge are combined or intertwine varies in the different approaches of pragmatism and those theories that are covered by the umbrella term ‘Practice Turn’. The paper tries to show that the pragmatism of John Dewey is able to offer both a more precise and a more radical understanding of practices than the recent ‘Practice Turn’ allows for. The paper on the one hand highlights what pragmatism has to offer to the practice turn in order to clarify the notion of practice. On the other hand the paper claims that a pragmatism inspired by Dewey actually interprets ‘practices’ more radically than most of the other approaches and furthermore promotes an understanding of science that combines nonrepresentationalism and anti-foundationalism with an involvement of the philosopher or the social scientist in the production of knowledge, things and technologies.

The Political Science Discipline in Argentina: The Political Scientist's National Association's Role

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (03) ◽  
pp. 616-618
Author(s):  
Diego Mazzoccone ◽  
Mariano Mosquera ◽  
Silvana Espejo ◽  
Mariana Fancio ◽  
Gabriela Gonzalez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Science Discipline ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One

It is very difficult to date the birth of political science in Argentina. Unlike other discipline of the social sciences, in Argentina the first distinction can be made between political thought on the one hand, and political science in another. The debate over political thought—as the reflection of different political questions—emerged in our country in the nineteenth century, especially during the process of constructing the Argentine nation-state. Conversely, political science is defined in a general way as the application of the scientific method to the studies on the power of the state (Fernández 2001).

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