Geschiedenis van de sociale wetenschappen
Eller – Introduction
Social sciences can be seen as a sub-type of science or a parallel field to “natural sciences”. Different
believes in what counts as knowledge/science include:
- Scientific knowledge is knowledge (music doesn’t convey knowledge by itself)
- Only natural sciences produce knowledge
- Science is a Western idea of knowledge that differs from non-Western “science”
- The current way of the organization of knowledge is not the best way to construct an
transmit knowledge
Key terms
A priori: “Prior to experience; self-evident and necessary, even without empirical data.”
Agency: “The capacity to participate in society or history as a creative actor, rather than a
passive product or victim; the possession of intelligence or will “intentionally” (the ability to
act on your own intentions).”
Agnotology: “The practices and tactics used by individuals and institutions to obscure or
misrepresent knowledge for the purpose of breeding doubt and ignorance.”
Collective memory: “Also known as social memory and first discussed in detail by Halbwachs,
follower of Durkheim, the notion that a society possesses, perpetuates, and sometimes
invents memories for its members, stored in various social practices like documents, stories,
memorials, and of course the curriculum and canon.”
Cultural relativism: “The position that a society or an historical era can only be accurately
understood in terms of (relative to) its own concepts, beliefs, and values.”
Discourse: “The language or ways of speaking (and therefore of thinking and acting) in a
particular society, historical era, or academic discipline. Also sometimes described as a
“discursive regime”.”
Embodiment: “The notion that culture is not merely “ideas” but is enacted in and through
the body; social categories are experienced through the body; culture is not just a thought
but felt and lived.”
Enskilment: “The acquisition of practical “know-how” in addition to, or instead of, “factual”
or “propositional” knowledge; skill in this sense often is not expressed in words and
sometimes cannot be expressed in words.”
Epistemic culture: “According to Cetina, the arrangements and mechanisms, which, in a
given field, make up how we know what we know; the people, practices, and institutions
that create and warrant knowledge – the premier knowledge institution being science.”
Epistemology: “The philosophical study of the nature of knowledge.”
Expert knowledge: “Greater and deeper knowledge of a subject usually resulting from
training and experience and commonly conferring power and prestige.”
Hermeneutics: “Practices of interpretation: at least, that interpretation is a problematic
process; at the extreme, that all “facts” must be interpreted or are interpretations.”
Indigenous knowledge: “The things that native or indigenous people know, and more
importantly the ways in which they know, based on unique local concepts, terms, values,
practices, and institutions.”
Normative: “A statement that establishes, is based on, or implies a judgement or preferred
standard of behaviour; research that proposes or argues what should be, rather than
describes what is."
Postmodernism: “As formulated by Lyotard, the contemporary cultural moment and
experience in which “truth” breaks down, “grand narratives” are no longer believed,
“progress” is no longer assured if even possible, and in which perspective and subjectivity,
emotion, and irrationality, images (rather than words), and fragmented and reassembled
experiences dominate.”
, Practice: “The analysis and description of what members of a group or society actually do, as
opposed to the abstractions that we call “culture” or “social structure”; practice is informed
by culture and occurs within a social structure, but is not predetermined by those forces,
instead depending on skilful and creative performance in social situations.”
Reductionism: “The practice of explaining a phenomenon in terms of some lower-level
phenomenon.”
Representation: “The choices and strategies concerning how to communicate or convey a
set of information.”
Social construction: “The idea that humans create and perpetuate their social reality through
culturally-informed interaction.”
Social reproduction: “The practices in a society that “reproduce” an existing community or
society, that is, that perpetuate its relationships, institutions, beliefs, and values, and
inequalities.”
Sociology of knowledge: “The study of the social processes and practices by which
knowledge is created, distributed, institutionalized, disseminated, and used.”
Structure of scientific revolutions: “According to Kuhn, the idea that science does not
proceed in a straight line, getting better and better “facts” and “theories,” but that scientific
thinking jumps from one “paradigm” to another- each paradigm being a different way of
thinking and talking about the world.”
Lecture 1
Wat is de status van de wetenschap in de maatschappij? Wordt de wetenschap geaccepteerd in de
samenleving als de waarheid? Een huidig voorbeeld zijn de coronavaccins, men trekt de werking van
de vaccins in twijfel.
Een ander voorbeeld vindt plaats op de Oostvaarderplassen, volgens wetenschappers mochten de
hongerige dieren niet bijgevoerd worden en moest de natuur haar gang gaan. Nederlandse burgers
trokken dit in twijfel en gingen ze toch bijvoeren. Na veel discussie besloot de provincie, tegen
wetenschappelijk advies in, toch bijvoeren.
Het Rathenau instituut heeft laten zien dat tegenwoordig wetenschap een 7,1 krijgt op de schaal van
vertrouwen wekken. Boven het rechtssysteem.
Pre-modern society: given truth (God)
Modern society: found truth (ontdekking)
Postmodern society: made truth (wie heeft de kennis geproduceerd? Heeft invloed)
Post-postmodern society: truth has a marketable effect (wordt bv. bepaald door algoritme)
Onderzoek is min of meer systematisch onderzoek naar kennis door “experts” die reageren op
voorafgaande kennis en hun ideeën delen met anderen. Wetenschap is geïnstitutionaliseerd.
Sociale wetenschappen vs. Natuurlijke wetenschappen
Is lastig met elkaar te vergelijken aangezien wij vergeleken worden op basis van een model wat niet
voor onze wetenschap van toepassing is. Vb, molecule druk is een formule voor maar politieke druk
niet. De variabelen beïnvloeden elkaar onderling wat het te lastig maakt om te testen.
Eller – Ch. 1 What is Social Science?
Mid-1800s social sciences became a thing, only in the early 1900s it came close to the science that
we know today. According to social scientists the social construction of knowledge refers to the
process of creation, perpetuation, transmission, and institutionalization of their own knowledge.
Mannheim was the first to put social and science together, even though he didn’t study society. He
,studied how the location of individuals shaped their knowledge. He saw that people of the same age,
who therefore have experienced similar things, have comparable knowledge. According to him, this
resulted in “the ‘stratification of experience’”. There was thus difference between generations and
knowledge within society. It was taken into the curriculum.
Bernstein started to research educational knowledge. He found three message systems. First, the
curriculum. This is what was selected to be worth knowing and should therefore be thought to
society. It is also known as the ‘canon’. The second message system is pedagogy/teaching methods.
This refers to the institutions, teachers, etc. need to define how they want to convey the knowledge.
For example, does one want to encourage group work? Critical thinking? The last defined message
system is evaluation. This is a two-way street between teachers and pupils evaluating one another.
He also defined two dimensions of the organization of knowledge. Firstly, classification. This meant
demarcating boundaries between courses within the curriculum. Second, the frame which referred
to the timing and order of teaching. When both of these dimensions are strong the learning will
operate on the “collection code” and one would become highly specialized, Bernstein argued. The
other way around is also possible, both dimensions are weak which results in broad perspectives and
knowledge.
Knowledge is not only socially constructed but also socially distributed. Different groups know
different things in different depths. Meaning, there is a difference in knowledge between a novice
and an expert. This expert knowledge is often restricted to a certain domain but can cross
boundaries. The main source for this expertism is still education, followed by books, and “masters”.
Society will always be able to call upon these knowledgeable people even though they don’t always
need them. For example, “expert witnesses” in court can contribute to the justice system by shining
a light on a situation involving their field of expertise. These experts are often paid well because
society values their opinion. Germain wanted to add “charismatic”, “self-assured”, “self-confident”,
and “outgoing” to the list of traits an expert has.
Foucault stressed the techniques of power by which individuals, groups, institutions, and societies
shape the knowledge and the actions of others. They include Bernstein’s’ concepts but they also
include more subtle tactics such as labelling and less subtle tactics such as punishment and physical
constraint. According to him, this is also a form of power. After all, power is knowledge and
knowledge is power. This knowledge develops over time which can cause power shifts.
Foucault was interested in how knowledge changes over time, he referred to knowledge in any given
time frame as discursive regime or episteme. It doesn’t just mean what they know, but also what is
possible for them to know or think. It looks at the edges of our knowledge, what we used to think
was unthinkable is now basic knowledge.
The expert knowledge doesn’t have to be literary; it can also be muscle memory. Look at artisanal
workers and their field of work, this takes a lot more physical know-how. This knowledge and the
process towards having this type of knowledge is called enskilment. Paiget was the first to notice
that children discover the world by physically interacting with people and objects. At different ages
they would embody different schemas for their discovery of the world. Bourdieu wrote the famous
piece “Outline of a theory of practice” in which he thought of knowledge as less factual and more
skilful.
Sometimes we still do the things we know we are not supposed to do (e.g., smoking). Tabaco
companies will use our ignorance to sell their products anyway. They will keep their production
process a secret so that the consumer is not appalled by it. Or they will produce their own “scientific
, journal” degrading the severity of the smoking consequences. We might call this strategy a
conspiracy. Smithson argued that there are two subtypes of ignorance – error and irrelevance.
Irrelevance refers to subjects that are off-topic or a taboo whereas ignorance refers to distortion
(confusion and inaccuracy) and incompleteness (absence and uncertainty). Uncertainty falls apart
into probability, ambiguity, and vagueness.
Three widely held assumptions about knowledge are as followed:
Scientific knowledge is inevitably “progresses,” each day science has more knowledge than
the day before
Scientific knowledge is superior to other forms of knowledge because of its “method”
Scientists are particularly conscious of both
The notion that science is simply a matter of getting more and better facts is called positivism. Social
sciences see that things don’t develop in a straight line but rather like a process over time.
Fleck noticed that thought is a social or collective activity; one does not know anything in isolation
but knows a great deal within a group. We have “pre-ideas” that we have inherited over the years
and now lay the basis of our future knowledge.
In Kuhn’s 1962 book he called a paradigm shift, it encompasses everything from a person’s way of
seeing the world to how they interact with the world. When a new paradigm blossoms the old ones
(and the rivalry ones) are often discarded. It will also inject the sciences with new models, theories,
figures, etc.
Knorr-Cetina insisted that different sciences or even different subfields within a science function as
discrete knowledge communities. She created the term “epistemic cultures” that refers to cultures
that create and warrant knowledge, and the premier knowledge institution throughout the world is,
still, science. She doesn’t believe in one type of knowledge/science and disunifies sciences.
Most current (social) science have an ancient history and most often stem from ancient philosophy.
Back then, the term “natural” was used instead of science so there was no discussion if social
sciences were in fact a science. Popper argued that science is something that can be tested and
falsified.
Modern science is characterized by law and cause. A law is a description, ideally in mathematical
form, of the operation of a phenomenon or a relationship between phenomena. It is regular and
therefore we can make predictions. The cause refers to the necessary relationship between two
variables or events such that if A occurs, B will occur. These two terms will help control and predict
the future events and phenomena. Comte was the first to describe “positive philosophy” which
stated that all phenomena are subjected to invariable natural laws.
Schutz argued that natural and social sciences were two different things, after all, nature wasn’t
based on the same principles as society. Social sciences call for a different methodology. Agency was
used to describe the difference between natural and socials sciences. Weber published an essay in
which he stated that humans only desire something for its end state or for something greater, there
are no causes. Instead of law and cause, Weber described generalizability and explanation as two
key terms. Except, due to individual differences it is hard to generalize, instead we should look at
cultures which will lead to significance. We look at social rules and norms.
In ancient Greece there were some studies of the man. This evolved into “trivium” (rhetoric,
grammar, logic) and “quadrivium” (astronomy, geometry, music, arithmetic) in the late medieval
