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Among the large field of human social sciences, demography is, probably, the most comprehensive. Nevertheless, the main aim of this issue is to advance in the knowledge that demography plays in order to find explanations and solutions to social problems. Scientific debates and published papers on demography and populations are focussed around two almost antagonist doctrines. One of them maintains a line of neutrality and tries to improve instrumental possibilities of assessment. The other one look for a line of compromise with real problems, and set the values as a priority. With this issue we pretend to underline the importance of the relationship between demography and specific socioeconomic problems to prevent them and to look for future solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social studies of sciences have shown that they use the concept of the usefulness of science and technology as a contributor to well-being and social and economic development to legitimize scientific activity. This usefulness is concretized in interactions which are materialized in the scientific-technological production that legitimizes scientific and technical endeavors. In the case of the Mexican Space Agency, for example, the author maintains that in emerging institutions, "sociability" plays the role of materializing the usefulness expectations to bestow legitimacy on scientific-technological activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, we investigate the dominant position of economics within the network of the social sciences in the United States. We begin by documenting the relative insularity of economics, using bibliometric data. Next we analyze the tight management of the field from the top down, which gives economics its characteristic hierarchical structure. Economists also distinguish themselves from other social scientists through their much better material situation (many teach in business schools, have external consulting activities), their more individualist worldviews, and in the confidence they have in their discipline's ability to fix the world's problems. Taken together, these traits constitute what we call the superiority of economists, where economists' objective supremacy is intimately linked with their subjective sense of authority and entitlement. While this superiority has certainly fueled economists' practical involvement and their considerable influence over the economy, it has also exposed them more to conflicts of interests, political critique, even derision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to revisit some connections drawn from literature and others identified directly, between accountancy and the Theory of Communicative Action -henceforth TCA- as described by Jürgen Habermas, with a view to favouring an extension of the social role of accountancy towards social understanding and integration, and not just to globalisation and economic integration, as it is presented today. The paper, making use of TAC concepts, states that accountancy can be the product of social efforts aimed at creating a dialogue between companies and socio-economic actors. It compares in a critical way various concepts drawn from both volumes of the TAC with notions on the role of accountancy regarding development and neoliberal globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper points to the production of space as an appropriate methodological framework for social sciences in their aim to analyze how current processes of neoliberalization and global fluxes of capital actually work and affect our cities. The interest of this approach lies in the growing penetration of neoliberal policies in Spain, especially in the field of urban planning. Combining theoretical discussion with the presentation of a case study of the old centre of Palma (Majorca), I argue that the reason why urban regeneration projects proliferate in Spanish cities is the purpose of extracting surplus values through the production of space. Nonetheless, the economic success of these processes does not depend on pure market mechanisms but on the mobilization of social forces apparently alien to the market which, as a result, are dramatically reshaped so as to fall in line with the reproduction (and expansion) requirements of the accumulation system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents abstracts of several studies on economics in relation with other social sciences. "The Historical Evolution of Politics," by Douglass C. North; "Economic Theory, Affection and Family," by Homero Cuevas; "Illegality, Metaorders and Metapreferences," by Jorge Iván González.