BiblioVault - Books about Social sciences

Uncertainties Of Knowledge

Immanuel Wallerstein

Temple University Press, 2004

The Uncertainties of Knowledge extends Immanuel Wallerstein's decade-long work of elucidating the crisis of knowledge in current intellectual thought. He argues that the disciplinary divisions of academia have trapped us in a paradigm that assumes knowledge is a certainty and that it can help us explain the social world. This is wrong, he suggests. Instead, Wallerstein offers a new conception of the social sciences, one whose methodology allows for uncertainties.

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Undertaking Discourse Analysis for Social Research

Kevin C. Dunn and Iver B. Neumann

University of Michigan Press, 2016

Kevin C. Dunn and Iver B. Neumann offer a concise, accessible introduction to discourse analysis in the social sciences. A vital resource for students and scholars alike, Undertaking Discourse Analysis for Social Research combines a theoretical and conceptual review with a “how-to” guide for using the method. In the first part of the book, the authors discuss the development of discourse analysis as a research method and identify the main theoretical elements and epistemological assumptions that have led to its emergence as one of the primary qualitative methods of analysis in contemporary scholarship.

Then, drawing from a wide-range of examples of social science scholarship, Dunn and Neumann provide an indispensable guide to the variety of ways discourse analysis has been used. They delve into what is gained by using this approach and demonstrate how one actually applies it. They cover such important issues as research prerequisites, how one conceives of a research question, what “counts” as evidence, how one “reads” the data, and some common obstacles and pitfalls. The result is a clear and accessible manual for successfully implementing discourse analysis in social research.

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Unthinking Social Science

Limits Of 19Th Century Paradigms

Immanuel Wallerstein

Temple University Press, 2001

In this new edition of a classic work -- now with a new preface -- on the roots of social scientific thinking, Immanuel Wallerstein develops a thorough-going critique of the legacy of nineteenth-century social science for social thought in the new millennium. We have to "unthink" -- radically revise and discard -- many of the presumptions that still remain the foundation of dominant perspectives today. Once considered liberating, these notions are now barriers to a clear understanding of the social world. They include, for example, ideas built into the concept of "development." In place of such a notion, Wallerstein stresses transformations in time and space. Geography and chronology should not be regarded as external influences upon social transformations but crucial to what such transformation actually is. Unthinking Social Science applies the ideas thus elaborated to a variety of theoretical areas and historical problems. Wallerstein also offers a critical discussion of the key figures whose ideas influenced the position he formulates -- including Karl Marx and Fernand Braudel, among others. In the concluding sections of the book, Wallerstein demonstrates how these new insights lead to a revision of world-systems analysis.

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The Use of Social Science Data in Supreme Court Decisions

Rosemary J. Erickson and Rita J. Simon

University of Illinois Press, 1998

The legal community traditionally has drawn unsystematically and at will on the findings of social science, sometimes with unfortunate results. The authors of this study explore this issue by focusing on the way the United States Supreme Court uses social science data in reaching its decisions. Concentrating on decisions involving abortion, sex discrimination, and sexual harassment, they show that the use of such data has increased over the last twenty years, but that the data's use by the court appears to hinge more on the judges' liberal, conservative, or long-held positions and the types of cases involved than on the objectivity or validity of the data.

By offering insights into how data are used by the Supreme Court, the authors hope to show social scientists how to make their research more suitable for courtroom use and to show the legal community how such data can be used more effectively. The volume includes an overview of the kinds of research used, a list of cases in which such research was used, and a discussion of justices and how they voted on cases in which such data were used from 1972 to 1992.

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The User Unconscious

On Affect, Media, and Measure

Patricia Ticineto Clough

University of Minnesota Press, 2018

Wide-ranging essays and experimental prose forcefully demonstrate how digital media and computational technologies have redefined what it is to be human

Over the past decade, digital media has expanded exponentially, becoming an essential part of daily life. The stimulating essays and experimental compositions in The User Unconscious delve into the ways digital media and computational technologies fundamentally affect our sense of self and the world we live in, from both human and other-than-human perspectives.

Critical theorist Patricia Ticineto Clough’s provocative essays center around the motif of the “user unconscious” to advance the challenging thesis that that we are both human and other-than-human: we now live, think, and dream within multiple layers of computational networks that are constantly present, radically transforming subjectivity, sociality, and unconscious processes.

Drawing together rising strains of philosophy, critical theory, and media studies, as well as the political, social, and economic transformations that are shaping the twenty-first-century world, The User Unconscious points toward emergent crises and potentialities in both human subjectivity and sociality. Moving from affect to data, Clough forces us to see that digital media and computational technologies are not merely controlling us—they have already altered what it means to be human.

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