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Social Sciences have been interested in biographical studies since the 1920s. However, this way of observing and analyzing social phenomena was displaced, between the World War II and the 1980s, from the methodological scene. According to Daniel Bertaux, the oblivion in which the biographical method fell in that period is attributable to a double imperialism: the one of the structural-functionalism and the one of survey research. During the 1980s there was a new appearance of the biographical method within the social sciences that progressively derived in the consolidation of an academic field in which take part multiple disciplines (history, sociology, anthropology, literary studies, among others). The biographical studies field is characterized for the existence and, in the last years, proliferation of empirical research that relate theoretical elements that belong to different fields of knowledge. In this article, I present some reflections on the use of the biographical method within the social sciences. First of all, I make a brief historical review of the method origins, its disappearance from the methodological scene, its resurgence and, finally, its actual relevance. Then, I mention the main biographical research styles, according to the typology made by Ernesto Meccia (2019a). In third place, I highlight the differences between two terms that, within the biographical method field, are used frequently as synonyms: life history and life story. After that, I reflect on the truth status of the testimonies. In general terms, I conceive testimonies as tools for identity (re) construction and not only as factual accounts limited to an informative function. Then, I specify the way in which life stories assume a certain plot, an arrangement that is given by the biographical events or turning points. Finally, I show how life stories can express different social issues and problems that go beyond the biography itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing interest in the field of social sciences in the study of topics related to the so-called gig economy or platform economy and, among them, in the figure of the rider-a term that refers to the home delivery workers employed through digital platforms. In these platforms, the work of the riders is organized from algorithmic management logics, a mediation in which the panoptic quality of their forms of control and governmentality has tended to be emphasized. In contrast to these frameworks, this paper presents a theoretical-methodological approach that emphasizes the co-constitution-in an open agency- of the rider and the application, to ethnographically approach the everyday labor practices of riders. In the interest of exploring how algorithmic mediation functions in the diversity of riders' experiences, we analyze the coordination tasks responsible for producing the shared space-time geography and the flexible control strategies that mediate the application. The text describes how the algorithm generates a kind of scaffolding that defines directive spatiotemporalities in the riders' operations, within which the deliverers extend the landscape of calculability to those elements that the algorithm cannot consider and to those others that the rider must incorporate in order to make his activity compatible with the algorithmic logic. This article presents the initial results of an ethnography carried out in Madrid since September 2021 with riders from several of the main digital home delivery platforms: Glovo, Uber Eats, and Getir . Along with the fieldwork with riders, we interviewed four technologists in urban logistics. The results show that salaried riders have a less intense experience of the directive chronography of the algorithm, showing how autonomy is not necessarily equivalent to the riders' capability to choose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The changes promoted in the dairy sector from the industrial restructuring process, which began decades ago, as well as the most recent governance systems and policies of the European Union in the matter, are fully related to the vast abandonment that a large number of dairy farms, both in Spain and Catalonia since years ago. This process is experienced in a special way by those smaller and family-type farms. Therefore, the consequences that this evolution of the sector may have in the medium and long term are not negligible from the perspective of the future of the agricultural world. For this reason, it is of great interest for the social sciences to know the socioeconomic conditions that currently characterize the evolution of dairy farms, as well as the social representations that farmers build on them. These will be the main objectives of the article. We therefore try to analyze the socio-economic conditions of the farms and the way in which they are conceived and valued by farmers, as well as exploring how they face their future. The empirical work has combined a quantitative analysis with a qualitative analysis through focus groups and interviews with dairy farmers. The results suggest the existence of fear of the end of the small family farm, as well as the disappointment of the ranchers in a crisis situation that they are not capable of reversing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Grounded Theory (TF) is a widely known and widely used research methodology in the social sciences. It has various versions (Glaserian Grounded Theory, Straussian, Dimensional, Constructivist and Situational Analysis) show differences that tend to generate some confusion in their study and use. It is the case with the data analysis process. To identify these differences, we carried out an intentional review of the literature published in the last 20 years in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. We did a systematic search in five scientific databases and Google Scholar Beta. We selected 72 texts, included books and articles. They were 31 of them written by the main referents of each version and, 41 were written by other authors who contribute to the understanding of the method. The analysis of these texts allowed us to identify common elements and significant differences. The results that we found reveal five common aspects between the versions: constant comparison, theoretical sampling, elaboration of memoranda, theoretical sensitivity, and theoretical saturation. Also, we found we find significant differences in the data analysis process, the philosophical currents of each version, the theory generated, the data collected as interviews, among others. In particular, the analysis process in the five versions has common aspects, but the procedures used are different. Finally, we elaborate graphical representations to facilitate understanding of data analysis. The article makes it easier for investigators, especially new ones, to recognize how and when to fit in the various aspects used for data analysis, especially if the research requirements force you to mix or merge some perspectives during the analysis process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

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]

The development of different software is facilitating the extension of multilevel models in different disciplines of social sciences in recent years. These quantitative techniques help us to observe characteristics of individuals and the contexts in which they interact in the same analytical model. It let to regard the effect of several explanatory variables on a phenomenon considering both the differences between individuals and the available information that they are grouped above in different hierarchical. Although initially it's thrived in models of linear dependent variables, it could also be used in models with categorical outcomes. The Multilevel logistic regression (MLR) can facilitate estimation of complex models with a dichotomous categorical dependent variable type. The current article is a brief explanation of this technique. We seek to indicate that it can be used in different areas of sociological analysis, especially in inferential statistics. Despite its apparent complexity, thanks to the recommendations of some authors, we can utilize in a feasible and to facilitate the provision of information on the association of variables and the context of a phenomenon. In the second part of this text we offer an adjusting exercise of multilevel logistic models. The intention was to observe the incidence of individual variables such as working conditions, occupational conditions and the domestic-family demands that working people have, together with variables of the labour market and social protection of the 27 EU members on perceived health status. The main results indicated already that the worst working conditions and temporary employment were associated with poor health with significant gender inequalities between countries. These conclusions were noted by some occupational health studies. This study allowed going beyond the individual analysis and observing that a percentage of the differences between employees can be explained by different variables of welfare between countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper shows a methodological proposal carried on in a PhD research, entitled "La población inmigrante extranjera y la construcción de la diferencia. Discursos de alteridad en el sistema educativo andaluz" (Olmos Alcaraz 2009). In the text is analized the convination of Critical Discourse Analysis and Ethno-graphy, to approach the study of the 'construction of the difference' toward foreign migrant students in Spain. To do that in the paper are described the procceses of production and analysis of the data and the results obtained in the research on the methodological sphere, to claim an inter, multi and trans-disciplinary approach in Social Science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the book "Fomento de la población rural" by Fermín Caballero and the role of social science and government in his writing. It describes Caballero's agricultural contribution to the prosperity of Spain through his introduction of systemic strategies for the rural economy and rural population. Caballero's impact on the moral of the Spanish people is also discussed. It explains topics addressed in his book such as the people in his life as well as how he views the government, scientific associations, and the common people. Caballero's study of theology and its effects on his writing and work is also discussed.

This article discusses the professional life of 20th century American sociologist Louis Wirth, particularly his views on urban life and urbanism. The author comments on Wirth's influences in the field of social sciences and sociology, and considers such concepts as urban ecology, modernity, and social transformations. He also analyzes Wirth's perspectives on the differences between urban and rural communities during the early 20th century, especially the growth of cities. An article written by Wirth regarding these differences is also translated into Spanish and reprinted.

The strength of a tie is feature commonly studied in the analysis of personal networks. It is data apparently simple to create, that offers a great predictive potential on the exchanges that take place within a relationship, and of its position within the network. However, the wide diversity of indicators that can be found in the literature show evidence of the vagueness in the definition of the concept and the subsequent difficulty to operationalize it, returning mixed results in empirical observation. With this theoretical, methodological and empirical revision, the authors aim to contribute to the definition of the concept. A theoretical dimensionalization of the concept is proposed, distinguishing the expressive, social and structural aspects of the notion. A comparison of various indicators of the different dimensions is offered, using a sample of 441 personal networks and 13,230 relationships, from a survey conducted in Catalonia between 2009 and 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reform of art. 135 CE, made urgently in order to ensure fiscal stability and to promote economic and social sustainability of the country has shown the gradual erosion of some of the traditional paradigms of constitutionalism. In particular, the content analysis of the new Article 135 and of the procedure reveals the tension generated between the European project transfer of sovereignty and democratic legitimacy. This parallel to the reflection on the urgent need to undertake serious reform of a constitutional text that, despite sustained mutations requires an urgent adaptation to a social and political context radically different from that shone over 30 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Nowadays a clear contradiction exists between a social world in which images are everywhere and a sociology that scarcely considers any kind of visual representations. This «blind sociology» takes into account neither the visual construction of the social, nor the social construction of the visual. In addition, this «blind sociology» does not use image to carry out social research. Most sociologists think that words and numbers are appropriate modes of representation to produce social knowledge but that images are not. This article is an epistemological reflection on the possibility and necessity of incorporating images into the processes by which the social sciences produce knowledge. Ludwig Wittgenstein's Picture Theory of Meaning and John Berger's theory about the coherence of the images show that images not only can, but also must be incorporated into the processes of knowledge production. The dual nature of photographic images permits us to use them in two different ways. Photographic images can be incorporated into social research as indexes, given the existential or empirical connections that link the different parts of the image with real objects. But we can also incorporate photographs as icons, given the homology between the situation represented by the image and real facts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By way of the recent release of a Spanish translation of Harold Garfinkel's radical classic Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967), we present here a backward-prospective review essay on the ethnomethodological revolution construed with some resources borrowed from the bibliographic corpus of Hispanic cultural studies. A variety of key thematic elements and context clues are arranged to try seduce readers to understand Garfinkel in a different fashion. To wit: (1) The Second Coming of the UCLA sorcerer (Garfinkel's new handbook, Ethnomethodology's Program, released forty years later in 2002); (2) The controversy about Agnes vs. the controversy about Castaneda; (3) The implict sociolgy of Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote; and (4) The heideggerian genealogy of the videogamic drift in garfinkelian ethnomethodology's program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tries to illustrate the way in which changing social conditions and practical urgencies to which an author faces up to, determine the possibilities within his intellectual trajectory. Nevertheless, this does not mean that this trajectory should be solely explained by these determinants. In order to illustrate this phenomenon, we will focus upon two versions of E. P. Thompson's William Morris, one of the most influential historians in the field of contemporary social sciences. We will apply to this subject Pierre Bourdieu's tools concerning the sociology of intellectuals, whose proposals explain the functioning of extra-intellectual determinants, without reducing the «text» to the «context». [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the first decades following World War II, population history was dominated by the model of «historical demography» designed by Louis Henry at INED, and taken over by Fernand Braudel and the Annales school. But in the 1980s, the Henry model was called into question by deconstructionist approaches derived from Michel Foucault, and by critics against objectivism. At the same time, history of statistics discovered the ambiguous ideological roots of demography (pronatalism, eugenics, biopolitical thought). To pick up again, the discipline introduced new methods (micro-history) and new issues (institutions). As a result, nowadays, historical demography is more and more replaced by a social and political population history. It focuses on how institutions, policies and knowledge devoted to populations construct each other in an interactive, simultaneous process. Condorcet, who was fought against by Malthus; Achille Guillard, who coined the word «demography», and of course the durkheimian sociologist Maurice Halbwachs have formalised the «socia» dimension of population. Contrary to current sociobiological temptatioins, the deep, organic tie between population and social protection raises the fundamental issue of how society endlessly shapes itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has different aims. First, we focus on evolutionary psychology and, above all, Pinker's ideas. By way of analysis, Pinker's main thesis and specially his vindication of a true human nature is critically evaluated. Second, we show the bias of his theoretical predicaments regarding to the biology/culture binomial understanding. Then, we also take into consideration the (assumed) incapacity, according to Pinker, of the so called social science standard model in order to elucidate the psychological nature of human beings. Finally, Pinker's ethnocentric, biomedical, conservative and ideological approach is revealed. Morover, is refused. Rejection is based on an antropological standpoint:the social construction of intersexuality. [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]

Ring cohesion, as a theory relevant to social cohesion, offers itself in the analysis of matrimonial relinking as an outgrowth of a structural approach: «Structural studies are, in the social sciences, the indirect outcome of modern developments in mathematics which have given increasing importante to the qualitative point of view in contradistinction to the quantitative point of view of tradicional mathematics. It has become possible, therefore, in fields such as mathematical logic, set theory, group theory, and topology, to develop a rigorous approach to problems which do not admit of a metrical solution. The outstanding achievements in this connection--which offer themselves as springboards not yet utilized by social scientist--is to be found in J. von Neumann y O. Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour; N. Wiener. Cybernetics; and C. Shannon and W. Weaver. The Mathematical Theory of Communication». [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work relates the psychoanalytical investigation method to the qualitative approach in social research. The objective is to improve the comprehension and practical application of the qualitative techniques as the focus groups and the not structured interview. This objective is approached through psychoanalytical dialogue and its application to the communicative situation developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of works which focus on the diverse «dispositifs» in the social sciences. Given the small number of works which reflect critically on this concept, this article revisits the original definition by Michel Foucault. It will, on the one hand, offer a critical perspective of a commonly used but seldom defined term, and on the other, outline how the term «dispositifs» has been converted into a key reference for the methodology of the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spain, like other southern European countries, has become in the last decade what is commonly known as an «immigration country», i.e., a destination of migratory fluxes of a considerable size. The Spanish Social Sciences have begun to pay an increasing attention to the phenomenon and processes related to this new reality. The main supporters of social research on matters related to the immigration are public agencies. This leads to a strong interdependence between those agencies and the academic institutions responsible of research. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how this relationship affects the studies, e.g., increasing considerably the difficulties to define scientifically the subject of study beyond the common sense «pre-notions» imbedded in the «State vision» of the immigration. The Weberian term of elective affinity defines quite accurately this mutual dependence between the "State vision" and the dominant empiricist approach. Finally, the paper points out to some frequent epistemological mistakes in the immigration research (more or less due to the aforementioned interdependence), e.g. the culturalism, the positivist interpretation of statistic and demographic data, the juridical fetishism, the descriptionism, or the positivist classification of immigrant population in terms of nationality or ethnicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]