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Since the mid-twentieth century, the scientific field of social sciences has been transforming the trajectory of its institutionalization. This is because the trend towards reducing the number of disciplinary categories that had been identified since 1850 was reversed after the Second World War through a steady increase in names. However, such multiplication does not seem to have been developed proportionally to the necessary communication that should exist between them; suggesting a propensity of modern social sciences to hyper-specialize its subjects and therefore, to increase and extend the gaps between their related fields (also called here “No man’s land” spaces). This circumstance seems to be constituting a blockage in the field’s explanatory capacity, and studying it can contribute to unblocking it. Thus, the present research has focused on providing a micro and macro view of the discipline, on the one hand describing different phases through which it is developed and, on the other hand, by identifying the sociocultural conditioning to which it is exposed. From the analysis of these questions, two aspects have been obtained that seem to characterize the production of knowledge in modern social sciences, which are: a.) the existence of a higher risk of obstruction in the disciplinary construction after the specialization phase- because it is when research activity tends to be more likely to be trapped in hyperspecialization-, and b.) the tendency towards a greater appreciation due to its applicability to social interests of nomothetic attributes as opposed to idiographic ones-whose reproduction in knowledge is produced through mechanisms of legitimization. From these results, we can extract what seems to be a causal relationship between the nomothetic tendency of the current hyperspecialization, the increase of idiographic gaps between related fields, and the need for the legitimization of the theories in the contemporary symbolic universe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evaluation criteria used by the Research Ethics Committees come from studies in medicine, some specialists project, from their sources and experiences, universal ethical requirements based on clinical research. This opens the discussion on whether such principles can be transferable to evaluate social science research, which commonly uses complex methodologies and knowledge that challenge the Committees on ways to understand informed consent, the risks and benefits of research. The objective of the article is to systematize the project review work of the Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC) of the University of Santiago, Chile. The methodology includes the content analysis of 114 projects from the social sciences. The seven universal ethical requirements of Ezekiel Emanuel were used as a guiding element of the analysis, whose proposal is assumed and followed by Chilean ministerial instructions that order the work of the Research Ethics Committees. Among the results is that the universal requirements of Emanuel are present in a large part of the projects in social sciences, but they are not enough to approach the specific situations of research in social sciences, being the deliberation of the investigations by multidisciplinary teams essential to respect the heterogeneity and complexity of the social subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The Informative Bulletin of the University of Salamanca Political Law Seminar, created and directed by Enrique Tierno Galván, assisted by the enthusiastic dedication of his young university collaborators, encouraged the democratic and pro-european concerns they professed and introduced currents of thought that helped to renew the social sciences in Spain. The Bulletin was published for ten years overcoming material difficulties and those that the political regime imposed to the free and plural expression of ideas. Authors from different specialties wrote on its pages, many already renowned at the time, and others that would become renowned later [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Espacio, Tiempo y Forma: Serie VI, Geografía is the property of Editorial UNED 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.)

The use of methodological «recipes» and the appeal to various forms of political correctness in the study of different groups are temptations to which a large number of social scientists often embrace. In this article, we attempt to develop a critical revision of the way in which some of these common places of social research operate, based on «methodological» principles as dogmas in the abstract. In the same vein, we also describe, by appealing to research examples, frequent impostures of the «right» way that abound in academic discourses, as is sometimes the case with researchers who define themselves as «militants» when they study subaltern sectors. Consequently, in this paper some tricks are developed, as defined by the sociologist Howard Becker, who question formalities, tendencies and agreements implicit in the scientific-academic work that do not precisely stimulate creativity. The application forms that circulate in the scientific system, the «methodological» subjects, the guidelines for the evaluation of academic production and the intellectual impostures, configure a diversity of situations that often promote comfortable routines linked more to rigidity than rigor. Although this text is constructed in perspective with the Argentine case, it refers to practices that are also present in the diverse scientific traditions in the social sciences. Such approaches, guided by political correctness, often result in asymmetric assessments that sacrifice creativity because they to lie down in comfortable routines that are usually celebrated in the academic environment. On the contrary, other types of academic proposals are confronted with the censorship of «normal science», which in certain contexts are accompanied by a set of moral and ideological judgments that can dissemble creativity, open discussion of ideas and exploration of problematic empirical vacuums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the social sciences, methodological debates contribute to the understanding of social research. This paper discusses one way of understanding the role of the investigator in relation to the approach and analysis of the object/subject of study. The objective is to question the use of the researcher's metaphor as a craftsman. This image appears in the 1950s in order to explain the creativity required by the research process and qualitative data analysis. However, the artisan's metaphor represents a deductive approximation of the researcher to the subject/object of study. On the contrary, the qualitative analysis is oriented by inductive procedures. The metaphor of the hunter after the prey is then proposed as a resource with a paradigmatic and epistemological consistency that contributes to the understanding and training in the qualitative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Educación XX1 is the property of Editorial UNED 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.)

Darwin believed that his theory of evolution would stand or fall on its ability to account for human behavior. The ideas in the Descent of Man were widely discussed by his contemporaries although they were far from the only evolutionary theories current in the late 19th Century. Darwin's specific evolutionary ideas and those of his main followers had very little impact on the social sciences as they emerged as separate disciplines in the early 20th Century. The social and biological sciences continued to diverge until the late part of the twentieth century. In the 1960s, Donald T. Campbell, an American social psychologist, published some of the first theoretical work that adapted principles of evolutionary theory to the problem of the evolution of cultures. Since the pioneering work of Campbell several research programmes on evolutionary approaches to human culture have been developed. Here we sketch our own theory of gene-culture co-evolution. Despite his prestige, Darwin convinced only a few of his contemporaries that he had the correct theory of the origin of the human mind. His strongest influence was on the pioneering psychologists, Romanes, Morgan, James, and Baldwin, but their importance in psychology waned drastically after the turn of the 20th Century (Richards, 1987). No 20th Century social science derives any significant influence from the Descent of Man, and to this day, eminent social scientists are quite hostile to Darwinism. How can it be that a theory can generate so much controversy, and yet not attract enough critical work to test its worth for over a century? Can we flesh out a satisfactory theory of the evolution of human behavior along Darwinian lines, or is the enterprise really fatally flawed? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The model is today a crucial idea in the social and physical sciences. Revisiting several philosophical or historical works on models, the author gives some elements for a genealogy of this category ranging from the use by Maxwell and Boltzmann in Physics to the debates of the Vienna Circle on model theory in mathematical logic. Later, the irruption of the concept in Social Sciences around World War II connected with applied mathematics, computer science and simulations, structural modelling and operational research. The study of new objects as ecosystems, climate and the world economy, which can not be represented within the framework of a theory has needed different approaches to knowledge, either theoretical or empirical. The model and the software must seek to integrate these various elements of knowledge, taking into account the aims of the modelling activity: arbitrages, decisions about actions and the management of systems, rather than to consider the model as a cognitive mediator between theory and observation. Modelling is a social and political activity linked to the motivations of the actors and to collective decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]