This is not a work of mine. For some reason, I am unable to remove it from my page. It is a list of Dr. Reiner Schürmann's lecture notes for courses that he taught at the New School for Social Research (aka The New School).

The rapidly changing field of genetics affects society through advances in health-care and through implications of genetic research. This study addresses the impacts of new genetic discoveries and technologies on different segments of today's society. The book begins with a chapter on genetic complexity, and subsequent chapters discuss moral and ethical questions arising from today's genetics from the perspectives of health care professionals, the media, the general public, special interest groups and commercial interests.

This article argues that investigators doing developmental and social research with children have, for the most part, failed to acknowledge the inherent implications of their work for children's rights. The impact of these studies upon children's rights occurs at every stage; from hypothesis formulation to hypothesis testing to dissemination of findings. This paper addresses the issue in the context of developmental research on children's ability to report experienced events accurately. This particular research area has generated data (...) that has been extrapolated to legal contexts and created a foundation for assumptions about the credibility of child witnesses. This in turn has had profound effects on children's right to be heard and the weight given to their testimony. The argument is made that there is a need for social scientists to explicitly articulate how their work may impact upon children's rights and what is in fact the social agenda in this regard underlying their research. (shrink)

The use of psychoanalytic ideas to explore social and political questions is not new. Freud began this work himself and social research has consistently drawn on his ideas. This makes perfect sense. Social and political theory must find ways to conceptualise the relation between human subjects and our social environment; and the distinctive and intense observation of individual psychical structuring afforded within clinical psychoanalysis has given rise to rich theoretical and methodological resources for doing just (...) this. However, psychoanalytic concepts do not remain the same when they are rearticulated in the context of research. This book traces the reiteration and transformation of concepts in the psychoanalytic theory of Freud, Klein and Lacan, the social theory of Butler, Derrida, Foucault, Laclau and Zizek, and case studies of empirical research ranging from the classic Tavistock Institute studies to contemporary work in politics, gender studies, cultural studies and education. Each chapter explores one cluster of concepts: Melancholia, loss and subjectivity Overdetermination and free association Resistance, reflexivity and the compulsion to repeat Repression, disavowal and foreclosure Psychic defenses and social defenses Arguing against the reification of psychoanalytic concepts, Claudia Lapping suggests the need for a reflexive understanding of the play of attachments and substitutions as concepts are reframed in the contrasting activities of psychoanalysis and research. (shrink)

Methodological inspiration from the discipline of archaeology can spur new developments of logic of inquiry in social research beyond contemporary debates among empiricist, rationalist, and pragmatist positions with their corresponding modes of inference: induction, deduction, and abduction. Archaeological methodology pursues comparison not in terms of similarities and differences among cases but through the juxtaposition of heterogeneous yet coexisting finds. On this basis, it pursues inferences by what I call ‘conduction’ about the relationship among finds, understood as their conditions (...) of coexistence. Archaeological methodology will prove especially useful to studies that face uncertainty about the constituting relationships of a phenomenon, surprising coexistences, or a need to transgress established disciplinary or social demarcations. On this background, I particularly discuss the usefulness of archaeological methodology for the broad literature on problems, problematization, issues, and concerns building on the works of Dewey, Callon, and Foucault. (shrink)

The importance of ethics in social research has increased in recent years, something reflected, among other things, in the progressive codification and institutionalization of research ethics and the growing literature on this topic. We argue that despite increasing ethical regulation and ethical reflection in social research, ethical challenges also arise, i.e., difficult situations connected with selecting ethically appropriate behavior. The aim of this special issue is to invite social researchers to reflect upon and discuss (...) ethical challenges in contemporary social research. The contributions in this issue concern vulnerability (one critically analyzing it, and another adapting the vulnerability concept to conducting research with people after a laryngectomy), the researcher and participant relationship, research ethics in multilingual world, and the ethicality of data representation where language plays a particular role in creating a form of activist research. (shrink)

Permitting social researchers access to employees can raise ethical issues for management and researchers which are here identified and examined. Dr Baruch is Research Fellow in Human Resources at City University Business School, London. He wishes to thank Professor Roger Jowell from the Social & Community Planning Research and Mr Steve Birault from the Centre for Social Development for their helpful comments on an early draft of this article.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Social research techniques are a set of devices that contribute to the observation and knowledge of the social. Such devices are the subject of analysis in this article. The main argument that we hold is that increasingly innovation in design and use is required to better understand the complexity contained in social processes we studied, not succumbing to the formalization and crystallization of the same, but opening to movements that blur boundaries and open up new possibilities (...) increasingly filled with everyday observation. The youth as a metaphor for the social contains a good opportunity for the deployment of these ideas, especially in the possibility of addressing the confluence of biography and structure, when these individuals reflect on their future. With a qualitative method we investigate how young people from different social sectors are experiencing the output of secondary education in Chile. Further analysis on the technique used in this research allows us to offer the following thoughts. Las técnicas de investigación social constituyen un conjunto de dispositivos que contribuyen a la observación y conocimiento de lo social. Dichos dispositivos son el objeto de análisis del presente artículo. El argumento principal que sostenemos es que se requiere cada vez más innovación en su diseño y uso, para dar mejor cuenta de la complejidad contenida en los procesos sociales que estudiamos, no sucumbiendo ante la formalización y cristalización de las mismas, sino abriendo a movimientos que diluyan los límites y abran nuevas posibilidades cada vez más llenas de la cotidianidad del fenómeno en observación. Lo juvenil como metáfora de lo social, contiene una buena oportunidad para el despliegue de estas ideas, sobre todo en la posibilidad de provocar la confluencia de biografía y estructura, cuando estos sujetos reflexionan sobre su futuro. Con un método cualitativo indagamos sobre cómo jóvenes de diversos sectores sociales están experimentando la salida de la enseñanza media en Chile. Un análisis posterior sobre la técnica utilizada en dicha investigación, las decisiones que evidencian nuestras lógicas y prácticas investigativas, nos permite ofrecer las siguientes reflexiones. (shrink)

This paper reports the results of questionnaire-based research conducted at an exhibition of interactive humanoid robots that was held at the Osaka Science Museum, Japan. The aim of this exhibition was to investigate the feasibility of communication robots connected to a ubiquitous sensor network, under the assumption that these robots will be practically used in daily life in the not-so-distant future. More than 90,000 people visited the exhibition. A questionnaire was given to the visitors to explore their opinions of (...) the robots. Statistical analysis was done on the data of 2,301 respondents. It was found that the visitors’ opinions varied according to age; younger visitors did not necessarily like the robots more than elderly visitors; positive evaluation of the robots did not necessarily conflict with negative evaluations such as anxiety; there was no gender difference; and there was almost no correlation between opinions and the length of time spent near the robots. (shrink)

This paper provides a detailed discussion of the questions relating to the role of the researcher in relation to the researched when the researcher and the researched are both of Muslim origin. Issues relating to questions of objectivity, transparency, bias and interpretation are elaborated upon as part of the analysis of impacts and outcomes in relation to methodological process. It is argued that, ultimately, the subjective positions of researcher and researched are less important than the objective nature of the (...) class='Hi'>research process. The intention of this paper is to convey, to other Muslim and non-Muslim social researchers engaged in research on Islam and Muslims, how to avoid or identify the range of risks and pitfalls that may emerge in operationalising and evaluating social research in a highly charged political, cultural and social research arena. (shrink)

This innovative introduction to research in the social sciences guides students and new researchers through the maze of research traditions, cultures of inquiry and epistemological frameworks. It introduces the underlying logic of ten cultures of inquiry: ethnography; quantitative behavioral science; phenomenology; action research; hermeneutics; evaluation research; feminist research; critical social science; historical-comparative research; and theoretical research. It clarifies conceptual and intellectual traditions in research, and puts researchers firmly in the investigative (...) saddle - able to choose, justify, and explain the intellectual framework and personal rationale of their research. (shrink)

One of the greatest contributors to the field of Sociology, Jurgen Habermas has had a wide-ranging and significant impact on understandings of social change and social conflict. He has inspired researchers in a range of disciplines with his multidimensional social theory, however an overview of his theory in applied settings is long overdue. This collection brings together in one convenient volume a set of researchers who place Jurgen Habermas key concepts such as colonisation, deliberation and communication at (...) the centre of their research methodologies. Full of insight and innovation, this book is an essential read for those who want to harness the potential of Habermas core concepts in their own work, thereby helping to bridge the gap between theory and method in social research. Structured around three core themes, Habermas and Social Research provides a range of research case studies looking at system colonization, the politics of deliberation and communicative interactions. Issues as diverse as social movements, the digital public sphere, patient involvement, migration and preschool education, are all covered in the book, intertwined with a set of innovative approaches to theory application in social research. Designed to help researchers harness the potential of Habermas core concepts as methodological tools, this timely volume will prove highly useful for graduate and upper level undergraduates within the fields of theory and method, research design, public policy, education policy, urban and environmental planning. ". (shrink)

This article presents a review of the literature on science and religion in Nordic countries. Seventy-seven articles, books, and chapters on the topic were collected from five major scholarly databases between 1997 and 2018. We scrutinized how research in this data set was engaged with social scientific research. Most of the research was not social scientific. It was primarily philosophical, theological, and historical research; very little presented empirical and theoretical social scientific research. (...) The studies reflected societal discussions, bringing out some cultural dimensions and social issues, but not specifically in the Nordic context. Some societal aspects were highlighted, such as ethics and climate change, but these were not necessarily tied to the Nordic societies. We propose that in the Nordic context there seems to be a need for social scientific research on science and religion. This research could use theoretical perspectives from, for instance, sociology, science and technology studies, higher education studies, and anthropological research. (shrink)

This paper offers a realist critique of socialresearch on health inequalities. A conspectus of thefield of health inequalities research identifies twomain research approaches: the positivist quantitativesurvey and the interpretivist qualitative `casestudy'. We argue that both approaches suffer fromserious philosophical limitations. We suggest that aturn to realism offers a productive `third way' bothfor the development of health inequality research inparticular and for the social scientific understandingof the complexities of the social world in general.

This volume constitutes a lucid introduction to methodology in social research. It will enable social science researchers trained in a particular field to look beyond and relate to other methodological domains.

This paper examines the concept of vulnerability in the context of social research ethics. An ambiguity is noted in use of this term: it may refer to an incapacity to provide informed consent to participate in a research project, or it may imply heightened susceptibility to the risk of harm. It is pointed out that vulnerability is a matter of degree, and that there are different sources and types of harm, which must be taken into account in (...) any judgment about whether additional precautions are required to protect particular categories of research participants. Furthermore, such judgments must be sensitive to the particular context in which research is taking place. This is one of several considerations that raise questions about the desirability of the sort of pre-emptive ethical regulation that has become institutionalized in many countries over the past few decades, a form that is more appropriate to medical rather than to social research. However, this is not to deny that a concern with the vulnerability of research participants is necessary on the part of social researchers. Furthermore, it must be recognized that researchers themselves may be vulnerable to harm in the research process. Finally, some discussion is provided of the way in which a concern with vulnerability can conflict with other considerations that researchers need to take into account in doing their work. The key point is that vulnerability is a complex and controversial concept, and it requires careful handling in thinking about social research ethics. (shrink)

Philosophical considerations and positions underlie all of the natural and social sciences. In the latter case philosophical foundations and their emergent issues have a profound impact on methodology and empirical practice. Design decisions will usually depend on philosophical perspectives or assumptions, such as the very fundamental decision to employ a quantitative design or an interpretive design. The 'philosophy of social research' is thus a subset of the philosophy of social science, but also an important subject area (...) that spans methodology and method. The articles making up this timely collection are the best exemplars of key positions in a very wide disciplinary field. The selection is designed to begin each section with an 'entry level' article to introduce the reader to the topic area and to ground the approach a research problem. Topics covered include science and art in the history of social research, positivism and antipositivism, language and the linguistic turn, realism and anti-realism, theory and theory choice, logic and models, prediction and laws, interpretation, probability and complexity. With the study of the philosophical foundations of methods and methodology gaining increasing priority in university courses, this will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers across the social sciences. (shrink)

Applying natural science methodologies to the social sciences causes a crisis in science. A crisis of science means the narrowing of researcher subjectivity so the possibility of research heuristics is drastically reduced. Martin Heidegger a philosopher of existentialism tried to solve this problem by developing a method that integrated schools of phenomenology and hermeneutics. This research aims to describe the hermeneutics situation method which embodies the two things above. This research is a type of library (...) class='Hi'>research that is descriptive and qualitative. The important value and novelty of this research is that it examines the closeness of philosophy and social science through Martin Heidegger’s way of thinking. A researcher does not live in isolation, he is connected to the context of life in which he lives. The context of life motivates researchers to see the meaning of something. In social research, researchers do not just meet social facts, but meet appropriate events (ereignis). So, social researchers are advised to avoid two things when conducting social research in the context of hermeneutics situation, namely the principle of subject-object division and the value-free principle. The reason is a presumption that a researcher was involved in the surrounding environment which then becomes the object of his research, even before conducting the research. This involvement is what makes the researcher able to understand the object of his research. (shrink)

This essay provides evidence to support a promising conceptual and potentially practical set of ideas at once both principled and effective found in the work of Max Weber and Alfred Schutz addressed to the issue of ‘adequacy’ as a goal in social research. Efforts to achieve adequacy beyond the epistemological conditions required by Weber’s demand that evidence meet both causal adequacy and adequacy on the level of meaning were significantly refocused by Schutz’s later concern, responding specifically to Weber, (...) that the social sciences also address themselves to his postulate of adequacy. It states that “Each term used in a scientific system referring to human action must be so constructed that a human act performed within the life-world by an individual actor in the way indicated by the typical construction would be reasonable and understandable for the actor himself, as well as for his fellow men”. A serious attempt to implement a more expansive notion of adequacy by practically activating this postulate in the ways suggested can be beneficial not only for the social research situation but in everyday life as well. (shrink)

Over the last two decades sport-related research has become increasingly influenced by ethical propriety and institutional governance. Whilst there has been thorough consideration of biomedical and associated research in sport and exercise, social research in sport studies has received less attention. In this article, following a brief contextualization of the current climate for research ethics discourse, the planks of an argument for social research in sport without informed consent are addressed. Dealing with ideas (...) linked to ecological validity, impracticality, averting alarm, public interest and ‘leaving only footprints’, a case is made based on two important questions: (a) is the research useful?; and (b) are other research methods available that are fit-for-purpose and allow informed consent to be secured? If the answers are ‘yes’ and ‘no’, respectively, the case should be considered. In such instances the principle of ‘McFee’s friends’ serves as an important source of guidance for researchers. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Ethical Issues in Social Research. Edited by Tom L. Beauchamp, Ruth R. Faden, R. Jay Wallace, Jr., and LeRoy Walters. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. xii + 436 pp. $25.00 (hardcover); $8.95 (paper). Ethics of Human Subject Research. Edited by Allan J. Kimmel, Jr. San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass, 1981. 106 pp. $6.95 (paper). Social Research Ethics. Edited by Martin Bulmer. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982. xiv + 284 pp. (...) $39.50 (hardcover); $14.50 (paper). The Ethics of Social Research: Field‐work, Regulation and Publication. Edited by Joan E. Sieber. New York: Springer‐Verlag, 1982. x + 187 pp. $23.50 (hardcover). The Ethics of Social Research: Surveys and Experiments. Edited by Joan E. Sieber. New York: Springer‐Verlag, 1982. xii + 249 pp. $23.50 (hardcover). (shrink)

We aim, in this paper, to discuss how far the ethical framework for assessing medical research, generalized into other institutional settings, is also appropriate for social science research, particularly qualitative research. Recently, researchers have raised concerns about ‘ethics creep’, incompatibility with participatory methodologies and the exclusion of service users. Researchers are increasingly raising questions as to whether the processes of governance and the paradigmatic assumptions pervading research ethics committees are fit for purpose when they deliberate (...) on non-clinical research that uses social science methods. We review whether ethical scrutiny by research ethics committees is asking the wrong questions and holding research to the wrong standards. (shrink)

This 1996 book defends the prospects for a science of society. It argues that behind the diverse methods of the natural sciences lies a common core of scientific rationality that the social sciences can and sometimes do achieve. It also argues that good social science must be in part about large-scale social structures and processes and thus that methodological individualism is misguided. These theses are supported by a detailed discussion of actual social research, including theories (...) of agrarian revolution, organizational ecology, social theories of depression, and supply-demand explanations in economics. Professor Kincaid provides a general picture of explanation and confirmation in the social sciences and discusses the nature of scientific rationality, functional explanation, optimality arguments, meaning and interpretation, the place of microfoundations in social explanation, the status of neo-classical economics, the role of idealizations and non-experimental evidence, and other specific controversies. (shrink)

This never published paper by Benita Luckmann describes the ori­gins and uniqueness of the New School for Social Research. It portrays Alfred Schutz’s arrival in the United States, his reasons for working at the New School, his exchange with Talcott Parsons, the debate over his presentation of the Stranger in the General Seminar, and his many efforts to recruit Aron Gurwitsch to the New School. It also provides an account of Gurwitsch’s experience of life in exile, his friendship (...) with Schutz, and his time at the New School after Schutz’s death. (shrink)

In this response, we first tackle what we take to be the core disagreement between ourselves and Hammersley, namely the justification for our model of social research ethics governance. We then consider what follows from our defence of governance for ethics review and show how these claims attend to the specific concerns outlined by Hammersley.

Resumen Como toda actividad social, la investigación en el campo de las ciencias sociales se institucionaliza por la acción de los individuos, instaurando ciertos mecanismos que regulan -a través de pautas organizacionales definidas- su quehacer social e institucional. Es así que la investigación social desarrollada en las instituciones de educación superior es experimentada por sus actores como una realidad establecida y objetiva que antecede al individuo actual, una realidad sujeta a una clara definición de roles, situaciones y (...) comportamientos. Desde una perspectiva sociológica, y ante a la injerencia de las actuales tecnologías de la información y la comunicación, en este trabajo se exploran los obstáculos y las posibilidades que enfrenta la condición institucionalizada de la investigación social y la de sus actores en sociedades con distintos tipos de desarrollo. Con tal propósito nos detenemos en el enlace de cuatro dimensiones del problema: la expansión y dispersión de las ciencias humanas y sociales; la institución como marco normativo de la organización de la actividad de investigación; el académico-investigador como principal actor y, por último, la función del "par académico" como árbitro de una competencia más institucional que cognitiva.As any social activity, research in social sciences is institutionalized by the action of individuals, establishing certain mechanisms that regulate -through defined organizational patterns- its social and institutional activities. In this way, the social research developed in higher education institutions is experienced by their actors as an established and objective reality that precedes the actual individual; a reality attached to a clear definition of roles, situations and behaviors. From a sociological perspective, and confronting the interference of the current information and communications technologies, in this paper are explored the obstacles and opportunities facing the institutionalized condition of social research, and their actors in societies with different types of development. For that purpose, we look into the connection of four dimensions of the problem: the expansion and dispersion of human and social sciences; the institution as a regulatory structure for the organization of the research activity; the academic researcher as the main actor, and finally, the role of "academic peer" as an arbiter of a competition more institutional than cognitive. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to discuss how ethics associated with social research in connection with the collection of authentic and reliable data, use of appropriate data process and impartial data analysis for preparing an acceptable research report. Ethics is closely related to moral integrity, and values associated with appropriate methods and techniques applied for collection of reliable and authentic information that ensure the trust worthy research findings. This paper is based on secondary data collected through (...) reviewing the relevant literatures. This paper examine to what extent the research findings contribute to the knowledge of planners and policy makers in formulating the appropriate policy and at the same time preparing effective as well as pragmatic planning based on the quality of research findings and finally thus may affect on development. (shrink)

The Institute for Social Research, or Frankfurt School, is an interdisciplinary research center associated with the University of Frankfurt in Germany and responsible for the founding and various trajectories of Critical Theory in the contemporary humanities and social sciences. Three generations of critical theorists have emerged from the Institute. The first generation was most prominently represented in the twentieth century by Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Leo Löwenthal, and also for some time (...) Erich Fromm. The so-called ‘second generation’ of the Institute is centrally represented by Jürgen Habermas, whose work has functioned as the focal point of a wide range of critical theorists. The third generation of the Frankfurt School is represented by Axel Honneth who emerged as a new center, with different strands or readings of who else belongs to the third generation, some in Germany, some internationally, and some more in sociology and social and political theory than philosophy. (shrink)

Though full of promise, Big Data research success is often contingent on access to the newest, most advanced, and often expensive hardware systems and the expertise needed to build and implement such systems. As a result, the accessibility of the growing number of Big Data-capable technology solutions has often been the preserve of business analytics. Pay as you store/process services like Amazon Web Services have opened up possibilities for smaller scale Big Data projects. There is high demand for this (...) type of research in the digital humanities and digital sociology, for example. However, scholars are increasingly finding themselves at a disadvantage as available data sets of interest continue to grow in size and complexity. Without a large amount of funding or the ability to form interdisciplinary partnerships, only a select few find themselves in the position to successfully engage Big Data. This article identifies several notable and popular Big Data technologies typically implemented using large and extremely powerful cloud-based systems and investigates the feasibility and utility of development of Big Data analytics systems implemented using low-cost commodity hardware in basic and easily maintainable configurations for use within academic social research. Through our investigation and experimental case study, we found that not only are solutions like Cloudera’s Hadoop feasible, but that they can also enable robust, deep, and fruitful research outcomes in a variety of use-case scenarios across the disciplines. (shrink)

The rapid expansion of research on Brain-Computer Interfaces is not only due to the promising solutions offered for persons with physical impairments. There is also a heightened need for understanding BCIs due to the challenges regarding ethics presented by new technology, especially in its impact on the relationship between man and machine. Here we endeavor to present a scoping review of current studies in the field to gain insight into the complexity of BCI use. By examining studies related to (...) BCIs that employ social research methods, we seek to demonstrate the multitude of approaches and concerns from various angles in considering the social and human impact of BCI technology. For this scoping review of research on BCIs’ social and ethical implications, we systematically analyzed six databases, encompassing the fields of medicine, psychology, and the social sciences, in order to identify empirical studies on BCIs. The search yielded 73 publications that employ quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods. Of the 73 publications, 71 studies address the user perspective. Some studies extend to consideration of other BCI stakeholders such as medical technology experts, caregivers, or health care professionals. The majority of the studies employ quantitative methods. Recurring themes across the studies examined were general user opinion towards BCI, central technical or social issues reported, requests/demands made by users of the technology, the potential/future of BCIs, and ethical aspects of BCIs. Our findings indicate that while technical aspects of BCIs such as usability or feasibility are being studied extensively, comparatively little in-depth research has been done on the self-image and self-experience of the BCI user. In general there is also a lack of focus or examination of the caregiver’s perspective. (shrink)