Hard Problems in Social Science

An update to the "Harvard List" of the next "Hard Problems in Social Science"....

On Saturday, April 10, 2010, a dozen “big thinkers” shared their thoughts on the hardest problems in social science.

The magazine Nature recently summarized the event and updated with more related events and efforts. The US National Science Foundation has just finished its own agenda setting exercise:
SBE 2020: Future Research in the Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences
The top ten list according to Nature:

"Published online 2 February 2011 | Nature 470, 18-19 (2011) | doi:10.1038/470018a
Corrected online: 9 February 2011
Box: Priority list
From the article:
Social science lines up its biggest challenges
Top ten social-science questions
1. How can we induce people to look after their health?
2. How do societies create effective and resilient institutions, such as governments?
3. How can humanity increase its collective wisdom?
4. How do we reduce the ‘skill gap’ between black and white people in America?
5. How can we aggregate information possessed by individuals to make the best decisions?
6. How can we understand the human capacity to create and articulate knowledge?
7. Why do so many female workers still earn less than male workers?
8. How and why does the ‘social’ become ‘biological’?
9. How can we be robust against ‘black swans’ — rare events that have extreme consequences?
10. Why do social processes, in particular civil violence, either persist over time or suddenly change?"

LSE Blog: Impact of Social Sciences

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/

The Impact of Social Sciences blog is a hub for researchers, administrative staff, students, think-tanks, government, and anyone else interested in maximising the impact of academic work in the social sciences and other disciplines.

Open Letter: SSH for the future of Europe

An Open Letter to the European Commissioner for Research and Innovation,
Maire Geoghegan-Quinn.

A sustained and substantial European investment in cutting-edge Socio-economic Sciences and the Humanities (SSH) can unlock new knowledge and insights that are necessary for Europe

• to overcome inequality, exclusion and poverty and to adapt to demographic change (migration, ageing, gender relations etc.);
• to develop resilient institutions that can strengthen sustainable growth, innovation processes, and social and political participation;
• to exploit cultural diversity as a source for creativity, adaptive capabilities and social innovation;
• to advance our understanding of cognitive processes and create educational opportunities in inclusive and democratic societies;
• to understand the complexity of value systems, worldviews and behavioural patterns, and address issues of openness or resistance to change and
• to move towards successful intercultural dialogue and global diplomacy

If you agree with the need for SSH to produce policy-oriented research for Europe, and if you wish to see a strong SSH-programme under the new European Framework Programme Horizon 2020 (2014-2020) you are invited to read the Open Letter to the Commissioner and sign it!

New Book

Social Knowledge in the Making


EDITED BY CHARLES CAMIC, NEIL GROSS, AND MICHÈLE LAMONT

See also Q&A with editors @ Inside Higher Education

Over the past quarter century, researchers have successfully explored the inner workings of the physical and biological sciences using a variety of social and historical lenses. Inspired by these advances, the contributors to Social Knowledge in the Making turn their attention to the social sciences, broadly construed. The result is the first comprehensive effort to study and understand the day-to-day activities involved in the creation of social-scientific and related forms of knowledge about the social world.

The essays collected here tackle a range of previously unexplored questions about the practices involved in the production, assessment, and use of diverse forms of social knowledge. A stellar cast of multidisciplinary scholars addresses topics such as the changing practices of historical research, anthropological data collection, library usage, peer review, and institutional review boards. Turning to the world beyond the academy, other essays focus on global banks, survey research organizations, and national security and economic policy makers.Social Knowledge in the Making is a landmark volume for a new field of inquiry, and the bold new research agenda it proposes will be welcomed in the social science, the humanities, and a broad range of nonacademic settings.

Coming up: The Social Life of Methods CRESC Conference

The programme is now online: http://www.cresc.ac.uk/events/conference2010/programme.html

International KWALON Conference 'Is Qualitative Data Analysis Software really comparable?'

April 22-23, 2010
University for Humanistics, Utrecht, The Netherlands

"In this 2-day conference we want to explore the use of analysis software in a more methodological sense. The main theme of the conference is the intertwinement of qualitative data analysis, the use of software and the person analyzing. To that end, we've invited developers and users of qualitative analysis software to reflect on the use of CAQDAS. Developers of data analysis software will be presenting the results of their participation in an experiment we designed for them. Users of software present their experiences in working with software.

Press the link for further information about the Conference.
Paper proposals can be submitted untill November 15, 2009. See the Call for Papers link above for further information. Registration for the Conference is open now and can be done with the online registration form above. The Conference fee is 165 Euro for Early Birds (untill November 30, 2009), and 225 Euro from December 1, 2009 onwards."

For a European Research Space in Social Sciences

"Our network aims at analysing the conditions of possibility and realisation of an European space of research in the social sciences. The first objective is to describe the barriers which impede the emergence of such a transnational, multidisciplinary space. Our team plans to achieve the task by a systematically comparative approach of the history of the social sciences within each of the represented national contexts. Intercultural divergences and convergences prevailing within the European space will be identified; obstacles and filters slowing down if not blocking the free circulation of ideas will be delineated."
More info @ http://www.espacesse.org/en/index.php

European Evaluation Fever hitting France

The french journal BMS just published interesting comments on the situation and ongoing debates in France concerning the evaluation and assessment criteria for social sciences.

http://bms.revues.org/index3023.html

The new role(s) of social sciences

New issue of Science, Technology & Innovation Studies deals with the roles of social scientists and their expertise in participatory policy making.

It contains the following articles, free download here: http://www.sti-studies.de

__ Priska Gisler/Silke Schicktanz
Introduction: Ironists, reformers, or rebels? Reflections on the role
of the social sciences in the process of science policy making

__ Gabriele Abels
Organizer, observer and participant. What role for social scientists
in different pTA models?

__ Maud Radstake/Annemiek Nelis/Eefje van den Heuvel-Vromans/Koen Dortmans
Mediating online DNA-Dialogues. From public engagement to
interventionist research

__ Kevin Burchell
A helping hand or a servant discipline? Interpreting non-academic
perspectives on the roles of social science in participatory
policy-making

CRESC Conference 2010 CFP: The Social Life of Methods

http://www.cresc.ac.uk/events/conference2010/callforpapers.html

6th Annual Conference 2010: The Social Life Of Methods
31 August - 3 September, St Hugh's College Oxford

CFP

During the past century and longer, social scientific methods have come to be extensively deployed in government, administration and business, as well as in academic research. Maps, enumerations, surveys, interviews, indicators, software and visualizations proliferate. The aim of this conference is to consider how we can best understand the agency of social science methods in both shaping, and themselves being affected, by economic, social and cultural change, both historically and in the current context when digitalization poses specific challenges to established repertoires of social science methods.

Mindful of the ideas developed within Science and Technology Studies, which show how objects in the natural and medical sciences can be social agents, we seek to broaden this agenda to focus more particularly on methods within the social sciences and humanities. Papers are invited from interdisciplinary audiences addressing the following issues:

• Is it useful to explore how agency can be located in certain kinds of social scientific methodological repertoires?
• What kinds of methods succeed and which fail? What are the respective powers of different sorts of qualitative and quantitative forms of analysis? How can we explain why certain sorts of methods become hegemonic in certain domains, and what consequences follow from this?
• What is the role of the visual in social science methods? How is this changing?
• With the proliferation of digital data, are we currently seeing a crisis of standard social science methods based around the sample survey and the interview, and what does this portend for our understanding of socio-cultural change? Does the idea of a descriptive turn offer a useful way of grasping the role of these new methods?
• What is the transformative and critical potential of social science research methods, both historically and today?

We are interested in using reflecting theoretically about how actor network theory, genealogy, complexity theory, feminist theory, anthropological studies of expertise, ecological studies of knowledge, political economy and field analysis can be used to understand and illuminate these issues. There will be four themes which will structure the sessions of the conference:

1: The device: what kinds of device have come to play an important historical role, and which have failed? How can we better understand the histories of nations, social groups, individuals and organizations through a focus on devices?
2: The challenge of digital data: what is the implication of the proliferation of digital information for the ordering of economic, social, political and cultural knowledge?
3: Envisaging the visual: how have visual methods historically competed with textual and numerical methods, and how far is their role changing in the current context?
4: Transformative practice: history, discipline and movements: how can methods be mobilized to critique and challenge dominant methodological repertoires, focusing especially on the role of historical analysis, ethnographic, feminist, and subaltern methods?

Please submit either (a) proposal for individual papers, or (b) panel proposal including 3 papers by the end of February 2010.

CRESC Conference Administration, 178 Waterloo Place, Oxford Road, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, Tel: +44(0)161 275 8985 / Fax: +44(0)161 275 8985