Social Research articles from December 1995

Social Research archives from December 1995

What are we bounding, and whom, when we bound social research.(Defining the Boundaries of Social Inquiry)
December 22, 1995... Once upon a time, there was knowledge and/or wisdom. Whatever its source or its intellectual framework, it was more or less a seamless whole. As knowledge accumulated, it became more and more clear that no individual could retain it all or even...

Things of boundaries.(Defining the Boundaries of Social Inquiry)
December 22, 1995... In this paper, I shall argue that it is wrong to look for boundaries between preexisting social entities. Rather we should start with boundaries and investigate how people create entities by linking those boundaries into units. We should not look...

Putting economics in its place.(Defining the Boundaries of Social Inquiry)
December 22, 1995... I have deliberately chosen a title for this essay that carries a double meaning. On the one hand, it expresses my skepticism with respect to the position that economics occupies among the social disciplines. Although I know of no systematic...

Civil society and social things: setting the boundaries of the social sciences.(Defining the Boundaries of Social Inquiry)
December 22, 1995... Emile Durkheim opened his Latin thesis with an observation worth remembering when reflecting on how the social sciences have defined their boundaries. A discipline may be called a science only if it has a definite field to explore. Science...

Delimiting anthropology: historical reflections on the boundaries of a boundless discipline.(Defining the Boundaries of Social Inquiry)
December 22, 1995... The boundaries of anthropology have always been problematic-more so, one suspects, than those of other social science disciplines or discourses. Never, however, so problematic as they are today. A recent issue of the Anthropology Newsletter...

The boundaries of languages and disciplines: how ideologies construct difference.(Defining the Boundaries of Social Inquiry)
December 22, 1995... Introduction In nineteenth-century Europe, the rise of interest in exotic languages as well as local dialects coincided with colonial expansion and the creation of a European regime of nation-states. Through the dichotomizing discourses of...

Three departments in search of a discipline: localism and interdisciplinary interaction in American sociology, 1890-1940.(Defining the Boundaries of Social Inquiry)
December 22, 1995... MORE than a decade ago, Clifford Geertz gave strong voice to two themes which have since acquired increasing importance throughout the social sciences and the humanities. On the one hand, he urged attention to the phenomenon of "local knowledge,"...

Network switchings and Bayesian forks: reconstructing the social and behavioral sciences.(Defining the Boundaries of Social Inquiry)
December 22, 1995... A likely basis for renewing sociocultural analysis is in terms of the dynamics of sociocultural networks. Recastings of current disciplinary boundaries and constructs can follow. Sociocultural reality was constructed only when there was...

Out of bounds and undisciplined: social inquiry and the current moment of danger.(Defining the Boundaries of Social Inquiry)
December 22, 1995... "Is it not time to question the metaphor of the boundary line? Is it not time to question human science's thinking in terms of lines, delimiting immaterial thoughts like material things, locating relations like objects, drawing geographies...

The rigid, the fuzzy, and the flexible: notes on the mental sculpting of academic identity.(Defining the Boundaries of Social Inquiry)
December 22, 1995... The social organization of academic scholarship is a topic of great interest not only to those who study science and formal organizations but also to students of both cognition and identity.(1) After all, the way we institutionally carve up...