Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of society", established in the 19th century. In addition to sociology, it now encompasses a wide array of academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, economics, human geography, linguistics, management science, communication science and political science.
Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining the behavior of the participants in a given social situation and understanding the group members' own interpretation of such behavior.
Social research is a research conducted by social scientists following a systematic plan. Social research methodologies can be classified as quantitative and qualitative.
Autoethnography is a form of ethnographic research in which a researcher connects personal experiences to wider cultural, political, and social meanings and understandings. It is considered a form of qualitative and/or arts-based research.
Grounded theory is a systematic methodology that has been largely applied to qualitative research conducted by social scientists. The methodology involves the construction of hypotheses and theories through the collecting and analysis of data. Grounded theory involves the application of inductive reasoning. The methodology contrasts with the hypothetico-deductive model used in traditional scientific research.
The philosophy of social science is the study of the logic, methods, and foundations of social sciences. Philosophers of social science are concerned with the differences and similarities between the social and the natural sciences, causal relationships between social phenomena, the possible existence of social laws, and the ontological significance of structure and agency.
In epistemology, and more specifically, the sociology of knowledge, reflexivity refers to circular relationships between cause and effect, especially as embedded in human belief structures. A reflexive relationship is bidirectional with both the cause and the effect affecting one another in a relationship in which neither can be assigned as causes or effects.
Critical ethnography applies a critical theory based approach to ethnography. It focuses on the implicit values expressed within ethnographic studies and, therefore, on the unacknowledged biases that may result from such implicit values. It has been called critical theory in practice. In the spirit of critical theory, this approach seeks to determine symbolic mechanisms, to extract ideology from action, and to understand the cognition and behaviour of research subjects within historical, cultural, and social frameworks.
Charles C. Ragin is Chancellor's Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine.
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. In simple words sociology is the scientific study of society. It uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order and social change. While some sociologists conduct research that may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, others focus primarily on refining the theoretical understanding of social processes and phenomenological method. Subject matter can range from micro-level analyses of society to macro-level analyses.
Thomas S. Popkewitz is an Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Education, USA. His studies explore historically and contemporary education as practices of making different kinds of people that distribute differences. He has written or edited approximately 40 books and 300 articles in journals and book chapters translated into 17 languages. Recent studies focus on the comparative reason of educational research as cartographies and architectures that produce phantasmagrams of societies, population and differences. The studies entail theoretical, discursive, ethnography, and historical studies that explore school, professional identities, and the relation to conceptions of differences inscribed childhood, learning and cultural differences.
Y. Michal Bodemann is professor emeritus, University of Toronto, sociologist, best known for his work on German Jewry, the concept of ideological labor and "memory theater" (1991) and his contributions to sociological praxis, interventive field work, here in particular, his interventive observation method in qualitative field work. In the approach to interventive observation, Bodemann advocates the reciprocal nature of researcher and the people in a setting, as active participation, against the notion of passive or neutral role of the observer. Bodemann's theoretical foundation continues to be influential against positivist notions of objectivity, which still persist in the field of sociology and in the approach to qualitative methods. His methodological approach is close to that of Michael Burawoy and notions of public sociology. Bodemann is best known for his contributions to Jewish studies, and Holocaust memory his concept of "ideological labour:" where especially ethnic minorities are cast as representing values contrasting those of the larger society. He is the author and editor of books, newspaper and academic articles spanning the entirety of his academic career, in English, German and Italian.
David Beniaminovich Zilberman was a Russian-American philosopher and sociologist, scholar of Indian philosophy and culture. He was well-versed in the study of languages and knew Russian, Sanskrit, English, Slavic languages, Ancient Greek, French, and German.
Critical realism is a philosophical approach to understanding science, and in particular social science, initially developed by Roy Bhaskar (1944–2014). It specifically opposes forms of empiricism and positivism by viewing science as concerned with identifying causal mechanisms. In the last decades of the twentieth century it also stood against various forms of postmodernism and poststructuralism by insisting on the reality of objective existence. In contrast to positivism's methodological foundation, and poststructuralism's epistemological foundation, critical realism insists that (social) science should be built from an explicit ontology. Critical realism is one of a range of types of philosophical realism, as well as forms of realism advocated within social science such as analytic realism and subtle realism.
A critical theory is any approach to social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to attempt to reveal, critique, and challenge power structures. With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from social structures and cultural assumptions than from individuals. It argues that ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation. Critical theory finds applications in various fields of study, including psychoanalysis, sociology, history, communication theory, philosophy and feminist theory.
Yvonna Sessions Lincoln is an American methodologist and higher education scholar. Currently a Distinguished Professor of Higher Education and Human Resource Development at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, Lincoln holds the Ruth Harrington Endowed Chair of Educational Leadership. As an author, she has been largely collected by libraries.
Tara J. Yosso is a professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Riverside. Yosso's research and teaching apply the frameworks of critical race theory and critical media literacy to examine educational access and opportunity. She is specifically interested in understanding the ways Communities of Color have historically utilized an array of cultural knowledge, skills, abilities, and networks to navigate structures of racial discrimination in pursuit of educational equality. She has authored numerous collaborative and interdisciplinary chapters and articles in publications such as the Harvard Educational Review,International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education,Journal of Popular Film and Television, and The Blackwell Companion to Social Inequalities. She has been awarded a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for Diversity and Excellence in University Teaching, and honored with a Derrick Bell Legacy Award from the Critical Race Studies in Education Association. She is extensively cited within and beyond the field of education.
Martyn Hammersley is a British sociologist whose main publications cover social research methodology and philosophical issues in the social sciences.
Norman Kent Denzin is an American professor of sociology. He is an emeritus professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he was research professor of communications, College of Communications scholar, professor of sociology, professor of cinema studies, professor in the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory. Denzin's academic interests include interpretive theory, performance studies, qualitative research methodology, and the study of media, culture and society.
Kathleen Marian Charmaz was the developer of Constructivist Grounded Theory, a major research method in qualitative research internationally and across many disciplines and professions. She was professor emerita of Sociology at Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California, and former Director of its Faculty Writing Program. Charmaz’s background was in occupational therapy and sociology. Charmaz’s areas of expertise included grounded theory, symbolic interactionism, chronicity, death and dying, qualitative health research, scholarly writing, sociological theory, social psychology, research methods, health and medicine, aging, sociology of emotions, and the body.
