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Purpose: This paper is a qualitative study of how social sciences faculty construct their research workflows with the help of technological tools. The purpose of this study is to examine faculty scholarly workflows and how both tools and practices support the research process. This paper could inform academic libraries on how to support scholars throughout the research process. Design/methodology/approach: This is a qualitative study case study of ten faculty members from six research universities from the United States and Canada. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and recorded. Atlas.ti was used to code and analyze the transcripts; each participant was a separate case. Descriptive coding was used to identify digital tools used for collaboration; process and descriptive coding was utilized to examine practices in scholarly workflows. Findings: Through case study analysis the results of this study include the role of technology in faculty research workflows. Each workflow was grouped into four categories: information literacy, information management, knowledge management, and scholarly communication. The findings included scholars creating simple workflows for efficiency and collaboration and utilizing workarounds. Research limitations/implications: The study did not observe faculty in the process of doing research and, thus, only reports on what the researchers say that they do. Originality/value: The research is unique in that there is almost no research on how social scientists conduct their research workflows and the affordances/impasses of this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Notre-Dame de Paris fire offers anthropologists in the field of critical heritage studies a rich opportunity for fieldwork and conceptual innovation. This paper examines the social repercussions of a monument's destruction, ranging from emotional responses and public involvement to local and global consequences. The paper also includes the project lines of a broader comparative survey on reactions to the destruction of cultural heritage. A team of social scientists created a comparative grid in order to describe and analyze a series of case studies: Notre-Dame de Paris (France, fire in 2019), the National Museum (Brazil, fire in 2018), Notre-Dame de la Merci (France, fire in 2017), and Coventry Cathedral (UK, bombed in 1940 during WWII). The comparative grid is as follows: - Practices and Reactions: Emotion and Mobilization Regimes Heritage disasters provoke a wide range of privately and collectively expressed reactions that frame these events as a social construction. How do citizens and institutions navigate the outpouring of emotion elicited by the destruction of a monument? - Consequences: The Nature of Heritage Items and Their Social Impact Laypersons and authorities assign different meanings to heritage items according to their cultural and political significance and material and intangible features. How does such representations of a ravaged monument influence its reconstruction process and future relevance? - The Social Fabrication of Memory and Narrative The destruction of a heritage object rapidly triggers a series of narratives, including legal documents and authorities' statements, that constitute a textual memory of the disaster. What standards define catastrophe narratives, and what do their retellings of the event reveal or obscure? - Heritage in Crisis: Catastrophe as Social Construction of Heritage Fragility Heritage is by nature fragile and requires continuous preservation. How does the destruction of monuments galvanize collective representations of the endangerment of heritage? - Temporality and Spatiality: Catastrophe as an Event in Time and Space Although the destruction event is often short-lived and localized, it reveals enduring values and concepts of past and future, as well as geographic place. How are temporality and spatiality reimagined after the loss of a heritage object? - The Right to Heritage: Reconstruction, Citizenship, and Cultural Policies Although often conceptualized as isolated events, the destruction of heritage objects is deeply embedded in their economic, cultural, and social context. What do the destruction and reconstruction of heritage reveal about power dynamics and economic inequalities? - The Limits of Reflexivity: Researchers as Actors Facing the Politics of Mourning As researchers, balancing personal commitment with heritage and ethical scientific inquiry is crucial to sound analysis and to the validity of research results. How should scholars simultaneously manage the experience of and the study of emotional responses such as rage or grief? This paper illustrates these points using vignettes from selected case studies. The project is part of the working group EMOBI, a broader ethnographic project on collective emotions and mobilization following the Paris cathedral fire (social sciences working group of Chantier Scientifique Notre-Dame , supported by the CNRS and the Ministry of Culture). The goal is to provide a comparative study of the stakes and repercussions of devastated heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares publication practices among social scientists from northeastern Mexico who were trained within the country or abroad. It focus critically on late regional scientific development (2000-2020) under the influence of a national academic evaluation scheme strongly aligned to the global publication system. A quantitative analysis was carried out on a selection of self-reported scientific production by a sample of researchers. It was found that both profiles have assimilated the hegemonic publication criteria. Also, that those trained abroad generally have better performances (some linked to their social capital). But, nonetheless, regional collaborations that could contribute to a sustainable local scientific practice are moderately more frequent in locally trained researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives a philosophical outline of the importance of plausible ontologies in the social sciences and argues how mechanisms and processes should be placed as the foundation in the social world. The argumentation is mainly based on a critical appraisal of the use of mechanisms and processes in the works of Norbert Elias, Charles Tilly, and Jon Elster. I start by elaborating on how inquiries of scientific interest evolve to shed light on cases, facts and the things that constitute such facts, whilst the actual explanation demands the description of mechanisms and processes. Basically, focusing on (co)variation and difference making is not sufficient to sustain claims of ontological plausibility and reasonableness. It is thus pointed out how the practices and proceedings of the social sciences can be ontologically enhanced by embracing the complementary roles of mechanisms plus processes together with difference making, as is performed in a special science such as biology, as well as is informally but promisingly pursued in the works of the discussed social scientists. While discussing their work, it is also argued that we should differentiate between processes and mechanisms in order to formalize this approach, which highlights the role of technologies and institutions as prime building blocks for social explanation. I conclude by presenting a claim that in taking seriously that the purported relations between beings and entities need to make discursive sense and historical sense, the social sciences will increase our cognitive success about the things of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data education is gaining traction across disciplines and degree levels in higher education. Teaching data skills in the Social Sciences in today's data-driven world is vital for preparing the next generation of dataliterate and critical social scientists. The ability to identify, assess, analyze, and communicate well and responsibly with data is key for scholars and professionals to navigate dynamic and expansive information ecosystems. This paradigm shift demands instructors to adapt their curricula and pedagogy to advance students’ computational and statistical knowledge. This paper presents some of the findings from a local report of a larger national project which explored pedagogical techniques and instructional support needs for teaching undergraduates with quantitative data in the Social Sciences. Results revealed that the core learning goal of instructors is to develop students' critical thinking skills with data, including the conceptual understanding of the research methods employed in the field; the ability to critically evaluate research methodologies, findings, and data sets; and prowess using quantitative and computational tools and technologies. A recurring theme across interviews was students’ fear of math and technology and the challenges these fears pose to data-related instruction. Instructors value participation in a community of practice and are eager for more institutional support to advance their computational skills. Based on these findings, we suggest avenues for academic libraries to further develop services, activities, and partnerships to aid data instruction efforts in the Social Sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Islamization of social sciences is a collective religious obligation (farḍ al-kifāyah) to serve the Muslim community. Thus, it is steadily progressing after being established last century. However, the Western secularly oriented social scientists are typically sceptical, especially the positivistic, or post-positivistic ones. Moreover, editors of established journals also are reluctant to acknowledge the application of traditional Islamic methodologies in the Islamization of Knowledge (IoK) research due the methodological integrity issues like the validity issues according to their practice. But then, Islam has a lengthy history of traditional methodologies dating back to the time of the Prophet Muhammad s.a.w. whose prophethood began in the seventh century C.E. Since then, he had founded initial Thematic Analysis methodology in interpreting the Holy Qur'an with another relevant part of it intertextually, and his prophetic guidance (alSunnah), which is more developed in the Fundamentals of Islamic Jurisprudence (Usul al-Fiqh) for its significant role to the Islamic Jurisprudence (al-Fiqh al-Islamī). Thus, by rights it has to be equivalently recognized like other de/post-colonial/subaltern methodologies especially when it is being used in IoK movement that revers the revelation (al-Naqlī) above the human intellect (alᶜAqlī). This paper is a comparative study between the Reflexive Thematic Analysis method that is commonly used in the Social Sciences and the Qur’anic Thematic Analysis (QTA – Al-Tafsīr Al-Mauḍūᶜī) methodology under the Qur’anic Sciences (ᶜUlūm al-Qur’ān). Some compatible methodological fusions allowable in Islam are suggested for the QTA to stay relevant in merging the Islamic Studies into the contemporary Social Sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing push within the social sciences to conduct translational science that not only advances theory but also achieves real world impact. The goals of this paper are (a) to encourage scholars to engage in translational science by conducting research that responds to pressing social challenges, and (b) to provide concrete recommendations on how to incorporate such practices into their research programs. To do this, we bring together perspectives of academics and practitioners who have experience merging science with practice. We begin by defining what translational science is, describing the benefits of engaging in translational science for peace and conflict studies, and highlighting past research that has done this successfully. Next, we describe various aspects of conducting translational science, such as how researchers can partner with nonacademic stakeholders to create social impact and advance scientific theory, and how they can disseminate findings for public impact. We also address key challenges researchers might face when conducting translational research and provide practical tips that social scientists can use to effectively engage in what we coined the "Bruneauian" approach for how to address such challenges. Specifically, we focus on the skills needed for study design and deployment, how researchers can sensitively interact with vulnerable communities, statistical and methodological considerations, logistical challenges, and how to develop relationships with practitioners. Finally, we conclude with a practitioner's perspective on how to foster these types of relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Research integrity is understood in terms of academic and professional integrity. • Honesty, responsibility, and respectfulness are important researcher values. • Limited presence of research ethics committees. • Human participant research ethics is an individual responsibility. Central Asian (CA) countries have been actively developing their research and knowledge production systems. However, inconsistent alignment with international research ethics norms creates challenges for researchers in CA to equally participate in global knowledge production. Based on quantitative survey responses of 296 social science researchers from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, this paper explores social scientists' understandings of international principles and practices of human participant research ethics. The findings show that CA social science researchers focus on a broad understanding of research integrity, focused on academic and professional integrity. The respondents highlighted the importance of individual researcher values such as honesty, responsibility, and respectfulness. With only 35 % of the respondents reporting the existence of a research ethics committee (REC) at their institutions, most respondents believe that human participant research ethics are an individual rather than an institutional responsibility in Central Asia. This study has implications for developing research and policy in other post-Soviet and emerging research contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is great diversity in the methods, terms, and empirical focuses employed by social and natural scientists working on agroecological transitions. The upshot is that whilst various researchers may nominally be putting their shoulder to the same agroecological wheel, the impact of their combined efforts is not what it might be. The aim of this article is to assist in the co-ordination and collaboration of disparate research activities and actors. It does so by offering the readers of this journal a user-friendly guide to someof the terms being used by social scientists (particularly human geographers and anthropologists) in their work on pests, diseases, crop protections and agroecological transitions. Such a document is of particular use as the terms and concepts employed by social scientists are equipped to generate analysis with explicit political insight in a way that those used by natural scientists may not be. The concepts and theories of social scientists foreground the commonalities that cut across case studies which might otherwise seem separated by a reservoir of context specificity. Tooled with these terms of analysis, the promise of agroecology rightly becomes something with far reaching political and justice consequences. These terms are presented across five areas: the ontological, the epistemological, the methodological, the historical, and the aesthetic. Given the range of social, ecological, cultural, and economic barriers involved in effecting an agroecological transition, it is vital that different researchers are conversant in each other's language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world's centre of gravity is changing, from the North Atlantic to Eastern Asia. As world centres of knowledge have correlated historically with world centres of power, this ongoing geopolitical change is likely to bring changes also to the global map of cognition. Knowledge and power are intrinsically related, knowledge is power, it is based on power, and it produces instruments of power. Moreover, the vistas of social scientists and scholars are always circumscribed by the power relations of the social world they are studying. A way of looking into this is to analyse the concepts and the narratives they use and produce. What features do they highlight, and what do they hide? Cognitive change is driven by two kinds of change, change (i.e. new discovery) of evidence, and change of power. On a macro scale, the major forces of power change bearing upon cognitive change have been social mobilizations, for example, of classes, women, and ethnic groups, the rise and decline of states, and, third, economic or ecological crises disrupting the functioning of existing powers. Indigenization and de-Westernization are different programmes. The former is synonymous with nativization and rooting in the particular culture of a population, whereas the latter may be, and often is, an emancipation from Western cultural domination in the name of another universalistic culture. De-Westernization is inherently confrontational, whereas indigenization may range from supplementary to isolationist. Academic indigenization and de-Westernization have in their cognitive challenges similarities with contemporary critical identity movements, such as feminism and ethnic movements. The cognitive challenges mounted by both types of currents proceed across four levels of cognitive depths, claiming canon inclusion of certain thinkers and role models, questioning and rejection of prevailing social narratives, practising new forms of knowledge production, and fourth epistemological or meta-sociological reflections on the old and the new knowledge paradigms. Indigenization should be treated as a limited supplementary project, whereas de-Westernization is likely to advance. It should be an opening of global horizons, not a closure. Pluralism of critique, challenge, and search for other, better ways are decisive for the development of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, based on literature review and interviews with key informants in 2021-22, reflects on the degree to which social science and social science specialists were involved in the Thai government's handling of the multidimensional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The article juxtaposes the marginal role of social scientists in official structures with their multiple engagements outside of such structures. The findings show that pandemic-specific social research agenda of social scientists were generally technocratic in nature, being geared to the perceived needs of policymakers, even if formal mechanisms to feed inputs into the policymaking process were restricted. Using public debates and the media, a smaller group of social scientists were able to make an impact by highlighting neglected aspects of the pandemic, advocating for the rights of the underserved and challenging policy decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Current Sociology is the property of Sage Publications Inc. 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.)

I argue that the COVID-19 pandemic presents an opportunity for sociologists and other social scientists to focus their scholarship on this apparently new event, while applying theoretical and methodological traditions that were established during pre-pandemic times. I substantiate this argument by critically reviewing published sociological research on COVID-19, especially as it developed early on during the pandemic, in the light of the historical development and original ambitions of sociology and other social sciences. Evaluating these contributions, I make a case for the value of a collaborative notion of interdisciplinarity to analyze the multi-dimensional dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic from the viewpoint of various disciplines. On the basis of sociological work on celebrity culture during the pandemic, I argue that this task can be accomplished without resorting to all too readily made judgments concerning the unprecedented nature of the pandemic. Studying the multiple dimensions of the pandemic, each of the social sciences can usefully contribute to interdisciplinary research by relying on the proven perspectives of their respective disciplinary orientations and specialty areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the 1920s and 1930s, expansive domestic infrastructural and institutional developments consolidated the U.S. national economy and generated the conditions for U.S.-led international commerce and finance. As the United States transformed from a debtor nation into a creditor nation that captured markets across Africa, Asia, and the Americas, it reckoned with the racial and labor antagonisms of the U.S. South, and ascendant interconnected Black worker-led liberation movements throughout the broader "American Mediterranean." By interrogating their engagement with Southern agrarian labor-capital relations, this essay addresses how race-liberal U.S. social scientists helped shore up the nation and an ascendant modern U.S. racial capitalism by translating such crises into the geoeconomic commensurabilities at the heart of a universalist U.S. nationalism and U.S.-led international finance. It focuses on how Charles S. Johnson, Rupert B. Vance, and others helped disavow the plantation system as a modern(izing) institution while recasting it as an object of national developmental intervention. Through the concepts of the "plantation economy" and the idealized "national economy" it presupposed, race-liberal social scientists not only framed the U.S. nation-state as that which could foster social forms of security through the market. They did so in ways that helped suture an "official" antiracism to U.S. nationalism bearing the agency for international finance and transnational capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has been the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide since 2006. To achieve the goal of carbon neutrality by 2060, social scientists must become involved in China's deep decarbonization process. However, Chinese social scientists have given little attention to climate change in their bibliometric research. Based on the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index journal catalog of the four essential social sciences, namely, management, economics, politics, and sociology, we used the China National Knowledge Infrastructure database to quantify the extent to which Chinese social scientists are concerned about climate change. The results showed that from 1978 to 2020, 1179 articles on climate change were published in management, economics, politics, and sociology journals, which represented only 26.8% of the 4397 articles published on pollution in the same journals. Politics journals published the most articles (38.76%), while sociology journals published the fewest (2.37%). Thus, Chinese social scientists rarely considered climate change, mainly because this topic remains controversial in some fields and because of the influence of international politics in addition to the promotion and incentive mechanisms for researchers. We analyzed the keywords and evolution of climate change research in the four social sciences and our results show that social scientists should give greater emphasis to climate change in their research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Erna Brodber’s 1994 novel, Louisiana, as a methodological invitation to the field of Black Studies to query how we do the work of black study. A Jamaican social scientist turned novelist, Brodber finds the tools of social science and notions of Western rationality and reason that undergird it insufficient for the unique challenges of recovering a past characterized by violent rupture and irreparable loss. In turn, she takes up fiction to imagine a new method and field of study to fill in the gaps of black diasporic history. Merging anthropology and sociology with literature, she produces a fictionalized ethnography—the novel Louisiana—that undermines the tenets of Western Enlightenment thought, its various offspring (social scientific method, History, Christianity, and technology), and their attendant claims to truth, facticity, and progress. Mobilizing the epistemes embedded within black diasporic cultural and political practices such as spirit possession, music, storytelling, and grassroots labor organizing, Louisiana constructs a counter-archive of diaspora that is at once sacred, feminist, and communal. Ultimately, the novel sketches the contours of a new interdisciplinary method and field of study—perhaps Brodber’s own version of Black Studies—that foregrounds 1) “sacred praxis” vis-à-vis spirit possession as a legitimate mode of knowledge acquisition, 2) the “global black south” as a nodal point of diasporic relationality, and 3) a dispossessive logic and an ethic of humility and surrender in the research process that serves as an affront to notions of liberal individual personhood and the hierarchization of peoples and knowledges that produced and sustain the Western “order of things.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article by Wells is a chance to ponder on the different conceptions of culture endorsed by the natural sciences and by the social sciences. The standard definition of culture among biologists/natural scientists usually focuses on transmission of behaviors (e.g. "tradition of socially learned behaviors"), while on the other hand anthropologists and social scientists focus more on the symbolic aspect of culture (e.g."webs of significance"). This differential emphasis likely reflects a difference in ontology (what culture is) and in its epistemology (how it can be studied). Natural scientists typically prefer to focus on how cultural traits change quantitatively, while social scientists are much more focused with the process of symbolic interpretation, which typically involves the ability to account for meaning and sense-making (thus, it is more qualitative-grounded). These two conceptions of culture are both valid but incomplete, if they do not take into account the counterpart. The scientific conundrum that has to be solved is how these two different onto-epistemologies can be successfully linked together. A speculative hypothesis is put forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open Science and open research data have the potential to speed up the processes of science and to generate benefits to society. However, the openness of research data and science cannot be taken for granted since there is a trend toward the capitalization of knowledge. In addition, each area of knowledge differs in terms of the data used and the rules that govern each scientific community. The aim of this article is to analyze social researchers' interest in sharing research data within the context of a Mexican university. Based on the constructivist grounded theory approach, 12 interviews were conducted with social scientists from a higher education institution in Mexico. From the analysis, four categories associated with the researchers' attitudes of sharing their data emerged. The findings exhibit that researchers' interest in sharing their scientific data is prone to (1) selectively sharing, (2) perpetuating the system, (3) protecting privacy and (4) considering resources. These results show that the scientists interviewed show an opposite inclination to Open Science, since they are not willing to share their data openly, including the fact that within the Mexican context, the practice of sharing data openly is not encouraged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Sociology is the property of Sage Publications Inc. 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.)