Social Science Space

Joe Henrich and his colleagues are shaking the foundations of psychology and economics—and hoping to change the way social scientists think about human behavior and culture.

In the February edition of Sociology, a previously unpublished translation of a speech given by Pierre Bourdieu. Here is an excerpt and introduction.

We study social science because social phenomena affect people’s lives in profound ways. If you want to start with Cantor’s focus—physical illness and death—then social phenomena are tremendously important.

Emory’s recent decision to shut down or suspend various academic departments and programs has rightly generated campus-wide and national attention.

Much destruction of human potential takes the form of a “slow violence” that extends over time. It is insidious, undramatic and relatively invisible.

Just as it is insufficiently recognised in public debates, the emotional side of forced flexibility in academic labour does not appear to be a major topic of conversation among established sociologists

So what exactly are the rules by which academic careers work? Where does one learn them? How does one learn them? And how, exactly, is playing by the rules to the benefit of one’s career?

This is not a body of work that instructs us what to think – it invites us to ask the question that an ethnographer would ask: confronted with this scene, what is going on here?

“The social scientists we could do business with were those who grounded their ideas through field studies, cultural probes and social data”.

All criticism of the genre notwithstanding, textbooks do have a central role to play in turning sociology students into sociologists. Sometimes I do wonder, however, whether it is time to re-invent the textbook.

In our study we were interested in examining differences between religious groups and the dominant religious faith within nations in the likelihood that residents would engage in premarital or extramarital sex.

Study finds boredom is a key experience in daily life in secure care and young people deal with their boredom through the generation of risk-taking action.