Counter-Movements in the Sciences

Counter-Movements in the Sciences PDF Author: H. Nowotny
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400994214
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Heretical thoughts in an orthodox series on sociology of the sciences? Devils and science between the covers of one book? Games with ambivalence to mask collective uncertainty? We anticipate similar future reactions from readers or reviewers when assessing the way in which this volume has been assembled. But writings on counter-science, like the history of colonialism, are usually written by the winners, therefore unequivocally partial and only too often lacking in social imagination. In seeking to redress the balance, we admit to having been fully receptive to the latter, of having displayed an un measured degree of sympathy with heretics and outsiders, including practising scientists, and to letting science defend itself. The antithetical relationship implied in the volume's title - Counter-movements in the Sciences - stands for what we regard as an ongoing, open-ended process. In collecting material for this volume, we have brought together voices speaking from different quarters: there are those who, although modestly claiming to speak only for them selves, have set out to question sacred assumptions of scientific faith or to cast doubt on well-known claims scientific knowledge holds over other forms of knowledge; others have undertaken to demonstrate the fragility, ifnot untenability of attempts at demarcation between science and other systems of belief or practice or shown that demarcations between different forms of rationality rest on other than methodological grounds; finally, those who wish to re-arrange, by mapping out some meta-point of surveillance, familiar territory, showing the need for rearrangement and

Counter-Movements in the Sciences

Counter-Movements in the Sciences PDF Author: H. Nowotny
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400994214
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Get Book Here

Book Description
Heretical thoughts in an orthodox series on sociology of the sciences? Devils and science between the covers of one book? Games with ambivalence to mask collective uncertainty? We anticipate similar future reactions from readers or reviewers when assessing the way in which this volume has been assembled. But writings on counter-science, like the history of colonialism, are usually written by the winners, therefore unequivocally partial and only too often lacking in social imagination. In seeking to redress the balance, we admit to having been fully receptive to the latter, of having displayed an un measured degree of sympathy with heretics and outsiders, including practising scientists, and to letting science defend itself. The antithetical relationship implied in the volume's title - Counter-movements in the Sciences - stands for what we regard as an ongoing, open-ended process. In collecting material for this volume, we have brought together voices speaking from different quarters: there are those who, although modestly claiming to speak only for them selves, have set out to question sacred assumptions of scientific faith or to cast doubt on well-known claims scientific knowledge holds over other forms of knowledge; others have undertaken to demonstrate the fragility, ifnot untenability of attempts at demarcation between science and other systems of belief or practice or shown that demarcations between different forms of rationality rest on other than methodological grounds; finally, those who wish to re-arrange, by mapping out some meta-point of surveillance, familiar territory, showing the need for rearrangement and

Women's Movements and Countermovements

Women's Movements and Countermovements PDF Author: Claudia Derichs
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443868027
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
The relationship between social movements and their countermovements is an underrepresented research topic, given the bulk of social movement studies that have been published to date. Moreover, empirical research on this topic primarily covers certain geographic areas of the world, specifically what is commonly called the “global North”. The mobilization of religious and women’s movements against social change, which strive for a preservation of the status quo and can be held responsible for a delayed expansion of reform-oriented interest articulation, is a rare topic of social movement literature, too. The authors of this volume address the issue of women’s movements and countermovements in countries of Southeast Asia and the North African part of the MENA region. They arrive at interesting constellations of coalition and competition between state and non-state actors, and religious and secular movements, as well as within women’s movements. Covering case studies from Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco and Tunisia, the pattern of Islamist movements countering the goals of (Muslim) women’s movements emerges as dominant.

Globalisation and Labour

Globalisation and Labour PDF Author: Ronaldo Munck
Publisher: Zed Books
ISBN: 9781842770719
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Intellectual fashion currently focuses on us as consumers, but the world of production and services still needs us as workers. While globalisation has, in part, been driven over the past two decades by the transnational corporations' search for cheap labour in new regions of the South, scholarly research and the mass media have paid remarkably little attention to the consequent changes that are happening in the world of work. This book is the first to deal comprehensively and analytically with labour's response to globalisation. It provides a critical overview of the main challenges facing workers and trade unions worldwide. Its author argues that what may be described as the national period in labour history is decisively over. Now the labour movement is itself acting increasingly in a transnational manner. This holds out the hope of its playing a major role in the social regulation of a global economic system which is largely out of control. The author explains how globalisation is foisting flexibilisation and feminisation on working people, but in the process also making them conscious of their transnational links. The 'old' internationalism of the trade union movement is now showing signs of developing into a 'new' internationalism where workers develop a sense of common interest and new ways of organizing that transcend national boundaries. Drawing his evidence from what is happening to workers and trade unions in a wide range of countries in both the industrialized North and the developing South, Professor Ronaldo Munck suggests that we may be on the brink of a new version of what Karl Polanyi, many years ago, strikingly called 'the great transformation'. The implications for workers, trade unions and their transnational corporate employers could be profound.

The Counter-revolution of Science

The Counter-revolution of Science PDF Author: Friedrich August Hayek
Publisher: Indianapolis : Liberty Press
ISBN: 9780913966679
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
Early in the last century the successes of science led a group of French thinkers to apply the principles of science to the study of society. These thinkers purported to have discovered the supposed 'laws' of society and concluded that an elite of social scientists should assume direct control of social life. The Counter-Revolution of Science is Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek's forceful attack on this abuse of reason.

Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?

Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? PDF Author: Sandra G. Harding
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501712950
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Sandra Harding here develops further the themes first addressed in her widely influential book, The Science Question in Feminism, and conducts a compelling analysis of feminist theories on the philosophical problem of how we know what we know.Following a strong narrative line, Harding sets out her arguments in highly readable prose. In Part 1, she discusses issues that will interest anyone concerned with the social bases of scientific knowledge. In Part 2, she modifies some of her views and then pursues the many issues raised by the feminist position which holds that women's social experience provides a unique vantage point for discovering masculine bias and and questioning conventional claims about nature and social life. In Part 3, Harding looks at the insights that people of color, male feminists, lesbians, and others can bring to these controversies, and concludes by outlining a feminist approach to science in which these insights are central. "Women and men cannot understand or explain the world we live in or the real choices we have," she writes, "as long as the sciences describe and explain the world primarily from the perspectives of the lives of the dominant groups."Harding's is a richly informed, radical voice that boldly confronts issues of crucial importance to the future of many academic disciplines. Her book will amply reward readers looking to achieve a more fruitful understanding of the relations between feminism, science, and social life.

Sciences and Cultures

Sciences and Cultures PDF Author: E. Mendelsohn
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9789027712356
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Anthropological approaches to the sciences have developed as part of a broader tradition concerned about the place of the sciences in today's world and in some basic sense concerned with questions about the legitimacy of the sciences. In the years since the second World War, we have seen the emergence of a number of different attempts both to analyze and to cope with the successes of the sciences, their broad penetration into social life, and the sense of problem and crisis that they have projected. Among the of movements concerned about the earlier responses were the development social responsibility of scientists and technological practitioners. There is little doubt that this was a direct outgrowth of the role of science in the war epitomized by the successful construction and catastrophic use of the atomic bomb. The recognition of the deep social utility of science, and especially its role as an instrument of war, fostered curiosity about the earlier develop ment of scientific disciplines and institutional forms. The history of science as an explicit diSCipline with full-time practitioners can be seen as an attempt to locate science in temporal space - first in its intellectual form and second ly in its institutional or social form. The sociology of science, while certainly having roots in the pre-war work of Robert K.

Undone Science

Undone Science PDF Author: David J. Hess
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262035138
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Introduction -- Repression, ignorance, and undone science -- The epistemic dimension of the political opportunity structure -- The politics of meaning: from frames to design conflicts -- The organizational forms of counterpublic knowledge -- Institutional change, industrial transitions, and regime resistance politics -- Contemporary change: liberalization and epistemic modernization -- Conclusion

Fugitive Science

Fugitive Science PDF Author: Britt Rusert
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479805726
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
Honorable Mention, 2019 MLA Prize for a First Book Sole Finalist Mention for the 2018 Lora Romero First Book Prize, presented by the American Studies Association Exposes the influential work of a group of black artists to confront and refute scientific racism. Traversing the archives of early African American literature, performance, and visual culture, Britt Rusert uncovers the dynamic experiments of a group of black writers, artists, and performers. Fugitive Science chronicles a little-known story about race and science in America. While the history of scientific racism in the nineteenth century has been well-documented, there was also a counter-movement of African Americans who worked to refute its claims. Far from rejecting science, these figures were careful readers of antebellum science who linked diverse fields—from astronomy to physiology—to both on-the-ground activism and more speculative forms of knowledge creation. Routinely excluded from institutions of scientific learning and training, they transformed cultural spaces like the page, the stage, the parlor, and even the pulpit into laboratories of knowledge and experimentation. From the recovery of neglected figures like Robert Benjamin Lewis, Hosea Easton, and Sarah Mapps Douglass, to new accounts of Martin Delany, Henry Box Brown, and Frederick Douglass, Fugitive Science makes natural science central to how we understand the origins and development of African American literature and culture. This distinct and pioneering book will spark interest from anyone wishing to learn more on race and society.

Enlightenment Now

Enlightenment Now PDF Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525427570
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.

Climate Change and Society

Climate Change and Society PDF Author: Riley E. Dunlap
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199356122
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
Climate change is one of the most critical issues of the twenty-first century, presenting a major intellectual challenge to both the natural and social sciences. While there has been significant progress in natural science understanding of climate change, social science analyses have not been as fully developed. Climate Change and Society breaks new theoretical and empirical ground by presenting climate change as a thoroughly social phenomenon, embedded in behaviors, institutions, and cultural practices. This collection of essays summarizes existing approaches to understanding the social, economic, political, and cultural dimensions of climate change. From the factors that drive carbon emissions to those which influence societal responses to climate change, the volume provides a comprehensive overview of the social dimensions of climate change. An improved understanding of the complex relationship between climate change and society is essential for modifying ecologically harmful human behaviors and institutional practices, creating just and effective environmental policies, and developing a more sustainable future. Climate Change and Society provides a useful tool in efforts to integrate social science research, natural science research, and policymaking regarding climate change and sustainability. Produced by the American Sociological Association's Task Force on Sociology and Global Climate Change, this book presents a challenging shift from the standard climate change discourse, and offers a valuable resource for students, scholars, and professionals involved in climate change research and policy.