Search

The objective of the paper is the discourse analysis of studies on the child's rights in humanitarian and social sciences. In the paper, the scientific discourse method -- conceptual analysis -- is employed. About 140 sources on children's rights within the subject field of philosophy, history, law, political and social sciences were used as the methodological material, and so were the regulatory, analytical and methodological data within the time span of 1999-2018. The research interests and priorities in studying the children's rights that are specific for each of the sciences have been outlined, as well as their contribution to the fulfillment of the human essence; enforcement of legal norms; protection of the rights of the child in crisis periods of history; establishment of the mediation institution; and control of social relationships. The system-forming concepts in children's rights research have been identified: the social and cultural context of children's rights; children's rights and children's welfare, health and survival; the rights-based approach to categories of "excluded" and "invisible children"; children's rights as an institution of legal socialization and legal culture; awareness raising and education in the sphere of human/children's rights. The scientific discourse on children's rights in the social and humanitarian knowledge conceptualizes and enriches new research paradigms in this field.

This paper explores the impacts of research excellence evaluation entailed in global ranking exercises, a control strategy characteristic of new managerialism, on Chinese Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) academics. The enquiry combines the Critical Incidents Technique (CIT) and internet-based discourse analysis, drawing on mass media texts and social media discussions. Our analysis identified three major dilemmas that may be created for Chinese HSS academics by their country's aspirations for world-class universities embedded in its complicated socio-political context. First, a highly centralised system restrains academics' autonomy to decide what to research and where to publish. Second, they are conflicted by the need to simultaneously attend to nationalistic interests and publish internationally. Third, ideological correctness is highly important. These findings invite us to reflect on the profound impact of university ranking exercises as a mode of university governance on HSS academics in many contexts.

This paper examines two influential views within the sociology of knowledge, specifically in literature examining relationships between knowledge, curriculum, and social justice, located in the South African context of extreme inequality and poverty. The first emphasizes the role of disciplines in creating criteria of powerful knowledge, arguing that knowledge must be evidence-based, generalizable, and revisable. The second argues for the importance of the social origins of knowledge for reasons both of strengthening knowledge and creating curricula that foster confidence in young scholars. We then draw on what we see as the strongest claims of each view and explore the value they bring to thinking about knowledge and curriculum debates raised by community of practitioners within three disciplines in the social science -- economics, education studies, and history. Our brief consideration of these disciplines reveals that different disciplines face specific challenges which transverse, in different ways, the polarity which characterizes the debate so far. Strong aspects of each view feature in the development of each of the three disciplines, some in negative ways. This is an interesting finding, which demonstrates that principled debates couched in epistemological terms, when applied to specific disciplines, do not remain as a simple binary.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the performance of second tier UK universities in relation to the effectiveness of their knowledge management systems and involvement in open innovation. Data were acquired using a mail survey of academic staff in social science and business faculties in second tier institutions. The results indicate that certain key factors influence the effectiveness of knowledge management systems. Universities engaged in open innovation appear to have developed more effective systems. It is concluded that universities seeking to survive in the face of government spending cuts could benefit from optimising the effectiveness of their knowledge management systems and giving greater emphasis to the acquisition of new knowledge by exploiting open innovation. (Contains 1 table.)

The Semantic Link Network is a general semantic model for modeling the structure and the evolution of complex systems. Various semantic links play different roles in rendering the semantics of complex system. One of the basic semantic links represents cause-effect relation, which plays an important role in representation and understanding. This paper verifies the role of the Semantic Link Network in representing the core of text by investigating the contribution of cause-effect link to representing the core of scientific papers. Research carries out with the following steps: (1) Two propositions on the contribution of cause-effect link in rendering the core of paper are proposed and verified through a statistical survey, which shows that the sentences on cause-effect links cover about 65% of key words within each paper on average. (2) An algorithm based on syntactic patterns is designed for automatically extracting cause-effect link from scientific papers, which recalls about 70% of manually annotated cause-effect links on average, indicating that the result adapts to the scale of data sets. (3) The effects of cause-effect link on four schemes of incorporating cause-effect link into the existing instances of the Semantic Link Network for enhancing the summarization of scientific papers are investigated. The experiments show that the quality of the summaries is significantly improved, which verifies the role of semantic links. The significance of this research lies in two aspects: (1) it verifies that the Semantic Link Network connects the important concepts to render the core of text; and, (2) it provides an evidence for realizing content services such as summarization, recommendation and question answering based on the Semantic Link Network, and it can inspire relevant research on content computing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades the world society perspective has influenced comparative research on a broad range of issues across the social sciences. The perspective emerged to make sense of an empirical puzzle: why did nation-state after nation-state expand mass schooling after World War II? The perspective evolved to address broader issues such as the authority of science and its influence on the environmental movement, the expansion of the scope of citizenship and its impact on women's rights and, more recently, the rise of an international human rights regime on the one hand and the celebration of universities of excellence on the other hand. The world society perspective has motivated research that examines worldwide and regional trends and generates hypotheses to explain these cross-national developments and variations. This paper first clarifies some of the world society perspective's key assumptions and core arguments as applied to comparative education. Next, the paper situates the world society perspective within a broader neo-institutional theoretical framework. Neo-institutionalists assume that the actors are highly embedded in their larger environment. Following this assumption, we distinguish between levels of analysis (macro or societal, meso or organisational, and micro or individual levels) and the extent to which the relevant actors are conceptualised as embedded in environments. The paper then turns to consider the character of the influential environment and to discuss the role of models of reality as rationalising and legitimating myths. From a neo-institutional perspective, the actors are often imagined as enacting scripts that make sense given the triumph of some models of reality. The fourth section of this paper focuses on the concepts of institutional isomorphism and loose coupling and their uses in comparative research guided by the world society perspective. Lastly, the paper clarifies the kinds of research strategies associated with the world society perspective, from trend identification to more explicit efforts to model the diffusion of discourse, policies, structures, and practices. These strategies have varied over time. A common thread though is to empirically ascertain as to whether there is evidence supporting the dynamics emphasised within the world society perspective, net of other influences that impinge on the outcomes of interest.

How has sociology evolved over the last 40 years? In this paper, we examine networks built on thousands of sociology-relevant papers to map sociology's position in the wider social sciences and identify changes in the most prominent research fronts in the discipline. We find first that sociology seems to have traded centrality in the field of social sciences for internal cohesion: sociology is central, but not nearly as well bounded as neighboring disciplines such as economics or law. Internally, sociology appears to have moved away from research topics associated with fundamental social processes and toward social-problems research. We end by discussing strategies for extending this work to wider science production networks.

This paper explores the link between the composition and the performance of junior research groups. The authors argue that the heterogeneity-performance link depends on the type of heterogeneity (cultural vs. study field) and on the disciplinary area. The authors test their hypotheses on a data set of 45 junior research groups and find a U-shaped relation between cultural heterogeneity and performance in the humanities and social sciences, but no link between the two in the natural sciences. The link between study field heterogeneity and performance in the natural sciences is negative, and in the humanities and social sciences study field heterogeneity and performance are not related. Interaction within the group helps reap the benefits of heterogeneity. The study results are derived in the context of junior research groups in Germany, but are generalizable to other countries and contexts where PhD education is taking part in groups.

This paper challenges British proposals to concentrate research funding in select universities. Such a policy would reinforce social inequalities of opportunity thus frustrating the purpose of widening student access. Quality teaching, especially in the social sciences, requires teacher engagement in research. Universities should reappraise the teaching/research relationship within their institutions. (Author/DB)

The increasing importance of the competition in global university ranking has resulted in a paradigm shift in academic governance in East Asia. Many governments have introduced different strategies for benchmarking their leading universities to facilitate global competitiveness and international visibility. A major trend in the changing university governance is the emergence of a regulatory evaluation scheme for faculty research productivity, reflected by the striking features of the recent changing academic profile of publication norms and forms that go beyond the territories of nation-states in the East and West. With the expansion of the Taiwanese higher education system in the last two decades, the maintenance of quality to meet the requirements for international competitiveness has become a key concern for policy makers. Since 2005, the Ministry of Education has introduced a series of university governance policies to enhance academic excellence in universities and established a formal university evaluation policy to improve the competitiveness and international visibility of Taiwanese universities. In so doing, the government has legalized a clear link between evaluation results and public funding allocation. Research performance is assessed in terms of the number of articles published in journals indexed by the Science Citation Index (SCI), the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index and in terms of citation rates and associated factors. Therefore, evaluation has taken on a highly quantitative dimension. Despite the efforts of concerned parties to encourage academic excellence, the above-mentioned quantitative evaluation indicators have resulted in bitter complaints from the humanities and social sciences, whose research accomplishments are devalued and ignored by the current quantitative indicators. In this paper, the authors describe the recent petition for collective action initiated by university faculty to protest the privileging of SSCI and SCI publications as critical indicators for academic performance regardless of faculty discipline and specialization. The article concludes its argument with a group petition calling for more diverse and reliable indicators in recognizing the research of different natures and disciplines while creating culturally responsive evaluation criteria for social sciences and humanities in the Taiwanese academe. The article not only sheds light on academic evaluation literature, especially on the uncertain paradox of globalization and market economy, but also proposes alternatives to the evaluation system for humanities and social sciences in higher education.

The paper examines the impact of the transformations in doctoral education in the arts, humanities and social sciences in the United Kingdom over the past decade. It focuses on the introduction of formal research training and codes of research practice and in the first longitudinal candidate cohort study examines their impact on doctoral outcomes, especially Ph.D. submission rates. Results from this quantitative study show that engagement with research training, completion of a project outline and plan and appointment of a supervisory team were statistically positively associated with submission of the thesis within four years. It is concluded that the professionalisation of doctoral education by research training and codes of research practice has had a positive impact on doctoral educational outcomes. (Contains 1 figure and 5 tables.)

This paper suggests that some refinements might need to be considered to current codes of ethics for dissemination of research. The growth of research in music education over the last decade is reviewed, with examples from new journals, conferences and professional associations. It is argued that nowadays researchers have to address a multidisciplinary number of audiences and this should be taken into account in the regulations for conferences and publications with the incorporation of guidelines for contributors to address their specific audience and to explain any previous dissemination. The authorship of papers is also considered, in particular issues arising from multiple authorship, as well as the research participants' contribution to the final report. Some of these issues are discussed with reference to studies focused on a particular topic (creativity in music education) within the context of music education research, but it is acknowledged that the discussion also applies to other fields of the humanities and social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the proposal by South Africa's grant-making National Research Foundation (NRF) to introduce a ratings system for the humanities and social sciences comparable to that which pertains in the natural sciences. Welcomes this development and argues for full and open consultation with the research community regarding appropriate ratings criteria, offering examples of these fields' unique research practices. (EV)

This paper reviews recent interpretive trends among historians of anthropology and sociology, examining both introductory texts and scholarly studies. It focuses on works published over the last ten years, and stresses that there has been no resolution of the long-standing conflict between “presentist” and “historicist” approaches to the history of the human sciences. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SURFACING: SELECTED PAPERS ON RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISMS AND THEIR IMPACT ON WOMEN'S SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AND RIGHTS, an anthology from the 2007 ARROW (Asian-Pacific Resource & Research Centre for Women) [...]

Discusses the creation of the project, "Internet2," that was developed due to concerns about the Internet's ability to meet educational and research needs. Explains that "Internet2" is seen as a vehicle to ease concerns and also be a useful tool in teacher education. (CMK)

The primary goal of the present paper is to analyse and compare the criteria on the conditions and requirements for academic promotion in three countries: Serbia, Slovenia and Montenegro. The University of Novi Sad, the University of Ljubljana, and the University of Montenegro were selected to be subjects in this study. The sources used for the analyses in this study were the official criteria on the condition and requirements for academic promotion at the abovementioned universities. The authors used a descriptive method with the consulting of competent sources and personal experiences. First, it is interesting to note that the universities in Serbia and Slovenia follow official documents at two levels: one at the national level issued by the relevant higher education council/agency and the second at the university level issued by the senate of each university, whose criteria are more strict in terms of quantitative requirements. However, this is not the case in Montenegro, where universities follow only the national criteria in the research quality evaluation. In each country, evaluation exercises usually recognize three fields, one of which is social sciences and humanities, which is concerned with an entire range of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary scientific areas. Comparing the minimum standards for the appointment of university teachers, it is essential to highlight that Slovenian regulations are the most demanding, especially with regards to quantitative criteria, while Serbian and Montenegrin criteria are similar to each other; however, it is necessary to highlight that Montenegrin regulations contain some unusual criteria, such as the requirement that scientific research work must be achieved through one single-author paper published in an international journal for promotion to academic titles at all three levels (assistant, associate and full professor) in social sciences and humanities; however, this is not the case in other academic fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Divides the history of urban sociology in France into three periods: (1) functionalism, which lasted from 1910 until the 1960s, (2) neo-Marxist socioeconomics lasting from 1968 until 1979, and (3) anthropological approach which is still dominant. Reviews theoretical perspectives and research characteristic of each period. (JDH)

Maintains that sociological thought and research must turn toward a future no longer dominated by the thinking and needs of industrialized nations. Describes the factors which will shape life experience in the next century. (JDH)

Details the aims and efforts of contemporary social science research in the Soviet Union. Includes an extensive list of recent Russian-language social science research monographs and books. (JDH)

Purpose - This paper is written as an attempt to employ the Chinese Social Science Citation Index (CSSCI) in the evaluation of Chinese humanities and social science research. Design/methodology/approach - This paper uses statistics in the CSSCI (2000-2004) to analyze the academic impact of researchers, papers and works, institutions and regions on Chinese humanities and social science research. Findings - The authors identify 100 highly cited people, 50 highly cited papers, 50 highly cited works, 20 highly productive institutions and 20 highly cited institutions. Also provided is some regional information about Chinese humanities and social science research. Originality/value - It is hoped that the CSSCI, as well as the analysis and evaluation based on it, will give researchers a better understanding of Chinese humanities and social science research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International collaboration is one of the effective ways to enhance the impact of scientific research papers. In this research, international research collaboration papers published by world-class universities in the field of humanities and social sciences from 2015 to 2019 were selected as the research object, and the effective enhancement of the impact of international research collaboration papers was found to not be dependent on expanding the scale of international research collaboration, but rather on selecting researchers with different international backgrounds and from high-level institutions for collaboration. It was also discovered that, in the field of humanities and social sciences, despite a relatively low proportion of international research collaboration papers being led by Chinese scholars, the Chinese research is characterized by a higher impact compared with the research led by non-Chinese scholars. In light of this, a series of proactive measures should be taken by China's world-class universities, such as actively participating in and initiating international collaboration, selecting high-level research collaborators, and attracting scholars from different countries to engage in research collaboration in the field of humanities and social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers interested in the structure of scientific fields have documented increases in specialization and collaboration. How, if at all, are these two trends related? Is specialization so severe that scholars cannot collaborate unless they share specific research interests? Or, have specializing tendencies promoted research that joins specialty areas and broaches new topics? We answer these important questions for a single discipline, sociology, using both qualitative interviews and latent profile analysis. We empirically identify three collaborative styles that depend on both the areas and extent of specialization in coauthors' research programs. The prominence of the reinforcing generalist profile suggests that specialization in science mainly serves to encourage scholars to work with others in their specialty area. However, the existence of two other styles - a more complementary one and one that is characterized by migration into new intellectual terrain - suggests that subfields within sociology are permeable enough to permit boundary-spanning, original research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on the periodical, Sociological Methodology. Sociological Methodology is a journal that seeks to publish excellent contributions to each and every one of the many and diverse research methodologies that sociologists use in their research,or that they would want to use, if they knew of these methods or how to adapt them to sociological analysis. Many think of sociological methodology as a synonym for statistics or quantitative research methods. These Pavlovian responses are unfortunate. The editors of Sociological Methodology have consistently sought outstanding papers on all sociologically useful methods, including those that are generally perceived to be non-statistical and non-quantitative. Sociological Methodology is a refereed journal. The editor picks referees to render opinions on papers,makes editorial decisions based substantially (but not entirely) on referee reports, protects reviewers' identities from wounded authors,and does his best to protect authors from unfair, incompetent, or simply mistaken reviews. The editor also does his best to protect authors from his own errors by attending carefully to the comments of reviewers and by honoring any reasoned request for reconsideration and re-review. The system works on a web of redundant checks and balances,overseen by the editor.

Despite the growing interest of geographers in the sociology of science, no work has been done on the structure analysis of a community of geographers engaged in a particular research specialty. The paper sketches the set-theoretic foundations for such work and reviews the literature on research specialties. Particular attention is focused upon the descriptions of social and cognitive structures yielded from citation analysis. Citations are used to explore the structure of one research specialty, spatial diffusion modeling, this is accomplished using multidimensional scaling (MDS) and Q-analysis. The graphical description yielded by MDS does not prove illuminating, but the algebraic, structural description provided by Q-analysis, whereby both citing and cited papers are considered, offers a more useful interpretation. Q-analysis is suggested as a natural language in which to investigate further the structure and dynamics of research specialties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discourse and ideology are interrelated concepts in social sciences and the humanities and are even occasionally employed interchangeably. This paper sheds light on their relationship in academic discourse and examines the role of sociology as a scientific field in its conceptualization. Using bibliometric analysis, we examined 15,716 academic publications mentioning "discourse" or "ideology" in their title and written in English by American and British scholars between 1966 and 2015. The investigation focused on the two terms' conceptual environment, areas of usage, journals, and the organizations to which the authors were affiliated. First, we conclude that although some sociology researchers have attempted to create a sociological definition for the concept of discourse, sociologists are not its most active users. The same is true for ideology. These concepts have established niches in other disciplines (political science and history for "ideology," and educational science and linguistics for "discourse"). Second, throughout the years, the field of discourse studies has become more diversified and fragmented than that of ideology. Third, the leading organizations in both fields are prestigious American and British universities, which indicates that discourse and ideology are elements of the intellectual elites' language. Fourth, the concept of discourse was more frequently applied than that of ideology in the years 2010–2015, and we expect that it will remain popular among scholars in the next decade. As for ideology, we believe that new social challenges could foster the rediscovery of this concept in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, the author discusses the assessment of evidential value in sex research. Also cited are the disadvantages of using single-study papers in research like they maximize the danger of false positives and they undermine the critical test of theoretical and conceptual patterns, as well as the dangers of false positive psychology in psychological science.

The UK has recognised itself as a world leading educator, particularly in higher education where ten of the top 100 institutions are based in the UK. And yet, establishments such as the British Academy and the Royal Society are questioning whether the UK will continue to hold this recognition. Ahead of the recommissioning of Doctoral Training Partnerships (DTPs) in 2023, the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC), one of seven council domains of UKRI (UK Research & Innovation, the largest funder of doctoral research in the UK distributing funding from the UK Government) has sought to understand what the 'gap' is and how to close it. The ESRC commissioned three projects (Adams & Neary, 2022; ESRC, 2022; Ferrie et al., 2022; Tazzyman et al., 2021) in preparation for recommissioning and this paper reviews their recommendations and anticipated impact on DTPs, and the education of doctoral researchers. Specifically, the plans to increase exposure of digital data and related skills/toolkits and project management skills including dissemination strategies will be evaluated. The paper critically asks how the new approach will benefit researchers with a focus on those intending to stay in the academy and those who choose to build a career 'beyond'. To focus this critical work, an 'alternative' career pathway, that uses research skills but also dissemination and knowledge exchange skills, will be examined as a critical exemplar: journalism. This paper will close by considering the future for research methods training, at least within UK social sciences, and whether it meets the needs of doctoral researchers, whichever career pathway they intend to follow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The results from four studies are reported separately to test the idea that influential articles in psychology will be more readable than less influential ones. This idea is upheld when the papers involved are ones that have been highly rated by fellow colleagues (Studies 1 and 2) but it is not supported when the papers involved are highly-cited journal articles (Studies 3 and 4). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior studies showed that scientists’ professional networks contribute to research productivity, but little work has examined what factors predict the formation of professional networks. This study sought to 1) examine what factors predict the formation of international ties between faculty and graduate students and 2) identify how these international ties would affect publication productivity in three East Asian countries. Face-to-face surveys and in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with a sample of faculty and doctoral students in life sciences at 10 research institutions in Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan. Our final sample consisted of 290 respondents (84 faculty and 206 doctoral students) and 1,435 network members. We used egocentric social network analysis to examine the structure of international ties and how they relate to research productivity. Our findings suggest that overseas graduate training can be a key factor in graduate students’ development of international ties in these countries. Those with a higher proportion of international ties in their professional networks were likely to have published more papers and written more manuscripts. For faculty, international ties did not affect the number of manuscripts written or of papers published, but did correlate with an increase in publishing in top journals. The networks we examined were identified by asking study participants with whom they discuss their research. Because the relationships may not appear in explicit co-authorship networks, these networks were not officially recorded elsewhere. This study sheds light on the relationships of these invisible support networks to researcher productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the call for papers which develop a sociology or a history of accounting academia and utilize a theoretical framework borrowed from French intellectuals. Papers which examine when, where and why did accounting researchers become interested in using theoretical frameworks adopted from French scholars are welcome. Papers tackling the influence of Bruno Latour and Pierre Bourdieu on accounting research will be received. Papers are required to be submitted in a Word file format. The deadline of submission is on January 2, 2009.

The article discusses the highlights of the first joint meeting of the European Society for the History of the Human Sciences and Cheiron: The International Society for the History of the Behavioral and Social Sciences 39th annual meeting at University of College Dublin, Ireland on June 25-29, 2007. The idea of bringing the two societies together was evaluated from organizational and academic perspectives. The aim of the meeting is to provide an analysis of international tendencies within current research in the history of human behavioral sciences.

The article presents comments of the author on the article "Cross-Cultural Research in Experimental Social Psychology," by researcher Faucheux Claude. He discusses cross-cultural psychology as a social science and states that every human being perceives, imagines, fears, learns, evaluates, communicates, responds and strives. The scientific study of these phenomena and the attempt to explain them is the domain of psychology, which employs for that purpose distal and proximal antecedent variables and mediating processes. The culture is actually embedded in each of the other distal antecedents. This confirms that the human being and his environment constitute an interacting system and makes it impossible to isolate cross-cultural and social psychology from related disciplines.

Copyright of Italian Journal of Health Education, Sport & Inclusive Didactics is the property of Edizioni Universitarie Romane and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Replies to the comments made by Thomas Mayer (2004) regarding the productivity of economic research. Optimal rate of scientific exploration and little evidence of socially efficient investment, at least with respect to economics; Technical issues raised by Mayer; Increased production of highly-cited papers.

Copyright of TEME: Casopis za Društvene Nauke is the property of TEME: Casopis za Drustvene Nauke and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Objective: To review research published in the AJA in terms of authors' positions and disciplinary backgrounds, and the settings in which research was done. Methods: Eighty two papers by 373 authors, in Vol. 35 No 1, March 2016, to Vol 37 No 2, June 2018, were reviewed. Results: Different clusters of authorship were found for research using surveys or database analyses, research in hospitals and aged care settings. Two out of three authors held academic positions, and professional practitioners in hospitals were much more likely to have academic affiliations than in aged care settings. Differing research cultures are seen to contribute to these outcomes. Conclusions: Editorial policies have been central to maintaining publication standards. The Journal's publication partners could take a number of actions to advance recognition of professionals in different roles as authors and to expand the range of research published, especially nursing and social science research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central mission of scholars and educators in professional schools of management, health, education, and social work is to conduct research that contributes knowledge to a scientific discipline, on the one hand, and to apply that knowledge to the practice of management as a profession, on the other (Simon, 1967). To do this well, we need to design our research so that it provides an intimate understanding of the practical problems facing the profession. Equally important, we need to appreciate and strengthen our skills in developing good theory so that research conducted about these problems will advance the knowledge that is relevant to both the discipline and the profession. Lewin's (1945) statement that "nothing is so practical as a good theory" captures a theme that is as important today as it was in Lewin's time. Good theory is practical precisely because it advances knowledge in a scientific discipline, guides research toward crucial questions, and enlightens the profession of management. This special forum focuses on criteria and methods for building good theory. Its purpose is to suggest ways to strengthen our theory-development capabilities, and thereby link better theory with the disciplines and professions represented in the Academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a tribute to esteemed scholar Manfred M. Fischer along with information on papers published in the 2007 issue of "The Review of Regional Studies." Fischer has given the academy a virtually unending stream of papers and books of the highest quality. He also given of himself for the betterment of the academic institutions and organizations for which he is a member. Fischer is currently working as a professor in the Institute for Economic Geography and GIScience and the Dead for the Department of Social Sciences of the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration. The papers that appear in this issue have been produced by scholars who have given much to regional science and spatial analysis in their own right.

Accompanying the ageing of contemporary ageing societies is an increase in age associated morbidity, with dementia having an important impact. Mental frailty in later life is a source of fear for many and a major policy concern to all those concerned with health and welfare services. This introduction to the special issue on 'Ageing, dementia and the social mind' situates the selected papers within the context of debates about dementia and its social relations. In particular it draws attention to the importance of the social imaginary of the fourth age and what this means for the issue of personhood, care, social representations of dementia and its social contextualisation. The papers illuminating these themes draw on a variety of disciplines and approaches; from the social sciences to the humanities and from the theoretical to the empirical in order to help orientate future researchers to the complexities of dementia and the social and cultural matrix in which it exists. This paper provides an introduction to the potential for a more extended sociology of dementia; one which could combine the insights from medical sociology with the concerns of social gerontology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers in this volume generally represent new developments in anthropology and cultural theory. Inevitably, in an evolutionary flowering, divergence can occur. Two of the papers represent a very new approach to theory for anthropology. This note discusses issues related to construction of theory that distinguish those papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose |!|#8211; This Guest Editorial aims to demonstrate the diversity of application fields in which FTA methods are being used and to offer a glimpse into possible consequences that grand challenges may imply for the development of FTA.Design/methodology/approach |!|#8211; This introductory paper provides an overview of selected FTA 2011 Conference contributions for this Special Issue.Findings |!|#8211; FTA approaches create spaces where an effective dialogue between key players in different policy domains facilitates vision-building and consensus-building for engineering major processes of transformation. Therefore, sound approaches of futures thinking will help to better address the grand challenges.Research limitations/implications |!|#8211; From a large set of excellent papers presented at the FTA 2011 Conference, only a restricted number of papers could be included in this Special Issue highlighting the broad diversity of FTA application fields in response to grand challenges.Practical implications |!|#8211; FTA can contribute not only to the steering of diverse innovation systems, but also to their adjustment, adaptability and ability to shape responses to grand challenges.Social implications |!|#8211; The papers of this Special Issue point to the need for FTA to take into account user perspectives and to shape the social context.Originality/value |!|#8211; This Special Issue brings together papers that explore not only the opportunities and limitations of implementing FTA methods in a variety of policy domains, but also their benefits in enabling a better understanding of complex systems that interact in each situation and in defining effective policy responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Clinica y Salud is the property of Colegio Oficial de Psicologos de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)