Showing papers in "Social Science Information in 2022"
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors combine sociological and cognitive perspectives to develop a theoretical framework for explaining the paradox of university rankings and argue that these rankings have an increasing impact on scientific research and higher education.
Abstract: University rankings have led to the following paradox. On one hand, global and national university rankings have an increasing impact on scientific research and higher education. On the other hand, a growing number of researchers have argued that university rankings are biased and methodologically flawed as well as documented their unintended consequences that are counterproductive to education and research activities in universities. In this article, I combine sociological and cognitive perspectives to develop a theoretical framework for explaining this paradox. The theoretical framework has four interrelated parts. The first is a distinction between three temporal stages through which university rankings commensurate universities. The second consists of an account of the social mechanisms through which university rankings generate reactive outcomes that tend to transform universities instead of just measuring their quality. The third is a league table metaphor that links the conceptual domain of team sports and the conceptual domain of universities and, I argue, provides a cognitive mechanism that shapes how many extra-academic actors, such as prospective students and policymakers, understand the results of university rankings. The fourth focuses on the affordances of the published league tables of university rankings that many extra-academic actors use for outsourcing part of their decision-making to the league tables. As a whole, this framework allows us to understand how the interrelated and materially mediated actions of different groups of actors give rise to and sustain the paradox of university rankings.
6 citations
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors focus on (inter)disciplinary collaborations through the co-application to research projects funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the main provider of research funding in Switzerland.
Abstract: This article focuses on (inter)disciplinary collaborations through the co-application to research projects funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the main provider of research funding in Switzerland. We suggest that interdisciplinarity is a potential mode of distinction and that its frequency and the disciplines involved may be associated with specific configurations of scientific, institutional, international, extra-academic, and network resources. We rely on biographical data on all biology and chemistry professors in Switzerland in 2000 (n = 342), including all their funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation. In a first step, we highlight the role of the resources mentioned previously in structuring the symbolic hierarchy of disciplines using multiple correspondence analysis. In a second step, we look at how interdisciplinarity fits into these structures based on an opposition between international and institutional resources and on the unequal distribution of scientific (and social) capital. We show that these interdisciplinary logics of social distinction differ across the two disciplines. On the one hand, collaborations with biologists seem to help chemists reaching dominant positions in the academic field, while their degree of internationality is associated with interdisciplinary collaborations. On the other hand, the biologists who are the most endowed with symbolic capital are more likely to collaborate with the medical sciences.
4 citations
TL;DR: In this paper , a systematic search was conducted across four databases: Sociological Abstracts, SocINDEX, SCOPUS, and Google Scholar to study women's definitions of career success and their perspectives on the barriers they face.
Abstract: Despite scholarly debate on the topic of success, how women define career success remains unclear. For many decades, research on the concept of success has largely used quantitative methods to assess the external aspects of success in a male-dominated culture. Using a total of 18 articles from 1999 to 2020, this qualitative meta-synthesis aims to gain detailed insights into women’s definitions of career success and to capture their perspectives on the barriers they face. A systematic search was conducted across four databases: Sociological Abstracts, SocINDEX, SCOPUS, and Google Scholar. This study is novel in that it is the first synthesized research that qualitatively studies the concept of career success. From this review, three distinct themes regarding women’s definition of career success emerged: (1) having support, (2) having accomplishments, and (3) feeling belonging. This article also establishes three themes regarding the obstacles to women’s career path toward success: (1) work–family/work–life imbalance, (2) gender bias/gender discrimination, and (3) the lack of mentors and role models. In contrast to previous research, the findings of this qualitative meta-synthesis indicate that while women define career success individually, they acknowledge that the professional objective aspects of success are important or even central to them in their life. The limitations of the study are noted, and the implications and future research directions are discussed.
3 citations
TL;DR: The use of quantitative performance indicators to measure quality in academic publishing has undercut peer review's qualitative assessment of articles submitted to journals as mentioned in this paper , leading to the current state of academic publishing in medicine.
Abstract: The use of quantitative performance indicators to measure quality in academic publishing has undercut peer review’s qualitative assessment of articles submitted to journals. The two might have co-existed quite amicably were the most common indicator, citation, on which the journal impact factor is based, not been so susceptible to gaming. Gaming of citations is ubiquitous in academic publishing and referees are powerless to prevent it. The article gives some indication of how the citation game is played. It then moves on from academic publishing in general to look at academic publishing in medicine, a discipline in which authorship is also gamed. Many authors in medicine have made no meaningful contribution to the article that bears their names, and those who have contributed most are often not named as authors. Author slots are openly bought and sold. The problem is magnified by the academic publishing industry and by academic institutions, pleased to pretend that peer review is safeguarding scholarship. In complete contrast, the editors of medicine’s leading journals are scathing about just how ineffectual is peer review in medicine. Other disciplines should take note lest they fall into the mire in which medicine is sinking.
2 citations
TL;DR: In this article , the authors draw on a general model of the governance of organizations to analyze the dynamics among various actor types given the present ubiquity of evaluations in and around universities, and conclude that multiple actors are responsible for the current evaluation regime in academia, and that none of them is responsible alone.
Abstract: We draw on a general model of the governance of organizations to analyze the dynamics among various actor types given the present ubiquity of evaluations in and around universities. Regulators demand evaluations to assess the return on taxpayers’ money. Market actors, particularly publishers of academic journals, promote different metrics, including citation scores and impact factors. Scrutinizers, such as media companies, professions, auditors, and nongovernmental organizations, create further evaluations by developing university rankings, accounting systems, and investigative reports. There are also initiatives for evaluations inside universities: vice chancellors, department heads, and other academic leaders launch voluntary internal assessments, and researchers assist regulators, market actors, and scrutinizers throughout their evaluations. We conclude that multiple actors are responsible for the current evaluation regime in academia, and that none of them is responsible alone. Rather, it is in the dynamic relationships among actors at different levels that we find the strongest processes driving a seemingly ever-increasing number of evaluations in contemporary academia.
2 citations
TL;DR: In this article , the authors argue that "neoliberalism" is a concept too broad and diluted to be useful when analyzing the development of research evaluation and bibliometric measures in the past half a century.
Abstract: In this article, we problematize the notion that the continuously growing use of bibliometric evaluation can be effectively explained by ‘neoliberal’ ideology. A prerequisite for our analysis is an understanding of neoliberalism as both denoting a more limited set of concrete principles for the organization of society (the narrow interpretation) or as a hegemonic ideology (the broad interpretation). This conceptual framework, as well as brief history of evaluative bibliometrics, provides an analytical framing for our approach, in which four national research evaluation systems are compared: Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. On basis of an analysis of the rationales for implementing these systems, as well as their specific design, we discuss the existence or non-existence of neoliberal motivations and rationales. Overall, we find that a relatively homogeneous academic landscape, with a high degree of centralization and government steering, appears to be a common feature for countries implementing national evaluation systems relying on bibliometrics. Such characteristics, we argue, may not be inductively understood as neoliberal but as indications of national states displaying strong political steering of its research system. Consequently, if used without further clarification, ‘neoliberalism’ is a concept too broad and diluted to be useful when analyzing the development of research evaluation and bibliometric measures in the past half a century.
2 citations
TL;DR: The authors explored the question of which field-specific problems and conflicts scientists identify and for which they could imagine using a grant lottery in the allocation of research funding in the field of science.
Abstract: Discussions about funding research grants by lottery have centered on weighing the pros and cons of peer review, but this focus does not fully account for how an idea comes across in the field of science to those researchers directly dependent on research funding. Not only do researchers have personal perspectives, but they are also shaped by their experiences and the positions they occupy in the field of science. Applying Bourdieu’s field theory, the authors explore the question of which field-specific problems and conflicts scientists identify and for which they could imagine using a grant lottery in the allocation of research funding. Under what conditions does such a solution, which is external to the field of science, seem justified to them? The results show that different areas of application are conceivable for a lottery mechanism in the field of science but that its use seems justifiable only for legitimate field-specific quandaries.
1 citations
TL;DR: In this article , the authors divide the postindependent Indian history into three different time periods, and argue that the interaction between academia and industry between 1947 and 1991 is of a different kind compared to the nature of interaction after liberalization.
Abstract: The nature of commercial interaction between academia and industry in India has transformed over time. This transformation is a result of several macro changes in the political-economic sphere. Dividing the postindependent Indian history into three different time periods, this article argues that the nature of interaction between 1947 and 1991 – the period after Independence and before economic liberalization – is of a different kind compared to the nature of interaction after liberalization. It is further argued that the interaction before economic liberalization is more of demand-driven in nature, while the one after liberalization is neoliberal in character. This neoliberal characterization is because of the implementation of supply-side measures such as oversupply of patents with a disproportionately lower demand, focus on entrepreneurship, and replacement of the academic value system with corporate value system. The neoliberal period is in turn characterized as conquest of innovation period and coercive innovation period. While the changes during the conquest of innovation period reflect the implementation of supply-side measures, the coercive innovation period depicts the normalization of this process through coercive measures.
1 citations
TL;DR: In this article , the authors divide the postindependent Indian history into three different time periods, and argue that the interaction between academia and industry between 1947 and 1991 is of a different kind compared to the nature of interaction after liberalization.
Abstract: The nature of commercial interaction between academia and industry in India has transformed over time. This transformation is a result of several macro changes in the political-economic sphere. Dividing the postindependent Indian history into three different time periods, this article argues that the nature of interaction between 1947 and 1991 – the period after Independence and before economic liberalization – is of a different kind compared to the nature of interaction after liberalization. It is further argued that the interaction before economic liberalization is more of demand-driven in nature, while the one after liberalization is neoliberal in character. This neoliberal characterization is because of the implementation of supply-side measures such as oversupply of patents with a disproportionately lower demand, focus on entrepreneurship, and replacement of the academic value system with corporate value system. The neoliberal period is in turn characterized as conquest of innovation period and coercive innovation period. While the changes during the conquest of innovation period reflect the implementation of supply-side measures, the coercive innovation period depicts the normalization of this process through coercive measures.
1 citations
TL;DR: The authors investigated the impact of the British Research Assessment Exercise in 2008 and Research Excellence Framework in 2014 on the diversity and topic structure of UK sociology departments from the perspective of habitus-field theory.
Abstract: Our study investigates the impact of the British Research Assessment Exercise in 2008 and Research Excellence Framework in 2014 on the diversity and topic structure of UK sociology departments from the perspective of habitus-field theory. Empirically, we train a Latent Dirichlet allocation on 819,673 abstracts stemming from the journals in which British sociologists submitted at least one paper in the Research Assessment Exercise 2008 or Research Excellence Framework 2014. We then employ the trained model on the 4822 papers submitted in the Research Assessment Exercise 2008 and 2014. Finally, we apply multiple factor analysis to project the properties of the departments in the topic space. Our topic model uncovers generally low levels of research diversity. Topics with global reach related to political elites, demography, knowledge transfer, and climate change are on the rise, whereas locally constrained research topics on social problems and different dimensions of social inequality get less prevalent. Additionally, some of the declining topics are getting more aligned to elite institutions and high ratings. Furthermore, we see that the associations between different funding bodies, topics covered, and specialties among sociology departments changed from 2008 to 2014. Nonetheless, topics aligned to different societal elites are found to be associated with high Research Assessment Exercise/Research Excellence Framework scores, while social engineering topics, postcolonial- and cultural-related, as well as more abstract topics are related to lower Research Assessment Exercise/Research Excellence Framework scores.
1 citations
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TL;DR: The first issue of the newly established Kiel Journal of Consumer Studies was published in 2013 as discussed by the authors , with the first issue devoted to the first year of the Kiel Conference on Consumer Studies.
Abstract:
Editorial of the first issue of the newly established Kiel Journal of Consumer Studies.
TL;DR: In this paper , a metatheoretical analysis of George Herbert Mead's theories of the self and the act to contemplate the incidence of processes encompassed by the latter upon the former is presented.
Abstract: The pragmatism of George Herbert Mead has been fundamental to the sociological understanding of the self. However, the complexity of his work is largely unrecognized in the discipline. This mainly affects the way in which Mead intertwined discursivity with the materiality of experience in his conception of human subjectivity. Through a metatheoretical analysis, the present article proposes a straightforward approximation between Mead’s theories of the self and the act to contemplate the incidence of processes encompassed by the latter upon the former. Based on this movement, and after a dialogue with Francis Chateauraynaud’s pragmatic sociology, the article suggests a new Meadian-inspired sociological alternative to the concept of self, attentive to its material dimension and centered on the concepts of outer and inner grasps. The current discussion about the ontological politics in the context of a new mastery of nature allows for an empirical exercise of the argument.
TL;DR: The authors explored a subgroup of elites at the border to non-elites that I shall call fringe nobles and developed the theoretical interest in this group, understood as a structural ideal-type.
Abstract: This article explores a sub-group of elites at the border to non-elites that I shall call fringe nobles. It develops the theoretical interest in this group, understood as a structural ideal-type. It then fleshes out the characteristics of it with the help of historical examples of relational studies of fringe nobles before complementing this with a case-study on study motivation of German fringe noble economics students. The habitus of this group is characterized by a taste for purification and field-specific extreme positions – in the field of contemporary economics, this seems expressed by the likely uptake of an ultraliberal position. The article then goes on to explore the links of this position-taking with a specific feeling of threat before turning to the position-taking of fringe noble economists in the field of politics. The article concludes with a plea for a sociology of fringe nobles by formulating further empirical and theoretical questions.
TL;DR: In this article , the double hermeneutic is used to explain the way in which configured social practices avoid members' control and regulation, which is not to be confused with a sort of hidden collective intentionality that diverges from members' apparent intentionality.
Abstract: The article explores in a historical context Melvin Pollner’s way of integrating radical reflexivity in ethnomethodology. It is argued that a kind of double hermeneutic should prompt and assist this integration. The implementation of the double hermeneutic discloses a problematic that goes beyond Pollner’s program. It is a problematic that concerns the unintended effects and the unexpected consequences in members’ ongoing construction of local orders. The emergence of such effects and consequences is assigned to configured social practices capable of transcending members’ situated actions and activities. The way in which configured social practices avoid members’ control and regulation is not to be confused with a sort of ‘hidden collective intentionality’ that diverges from members’ apparent intentionality. In order to spell out the nexus of radical reflexivity and double hermeneutic, the article makes use of the ontological difference between the facticity of members’ interpretive-practical mode of being-in-the-world and the factuality of the manifolds of indexicalities resulting from the documentary description of members’ production of lived orders. Facticity is addressed in terms of interplay of practices and possibilities. This interplay is also the terrain on which unintended effects and unexpected consequences come into being.
TL;DR: The deductive-nomological model is also related to the use of probabilistic laws in explanations of social mechanisms as discussed by the authors , as discussed in Section 2.2.1.
Abstract: According to the dominant view, analytical sociology is largely incompatible with the deductive-nomological model because the latter allows neither accurate and precise explanations, nor explanations that give individuals and their actions a privileged role. This view neglects two relevant facts about the deductive-nomological model as understood by Hempel and Popper and some of their precursors such as J.S. Mill and Weber. The first is the relationship between this model, situational analysis, and the use of probabilistic laws in explanation. The second is that, from the standpoint of the deductive-nomological theory, it is possible to make sense of social mechanisms in terms of Weber’s ideal–typical models. Like these models, mechanisms are functional for the development of concrete empirical sociological hypotheses that, without covering generalizations, lack explanatory power.
TL;DR: The causes and consequences of the current evaluation regime in (academic) science, contributing with new insight as well as opening important new routes for further investigation are discussed in this paper .
Abstract: Evaluation is ubiquitous in current (academic) science, to the extent that it is relevant to talk about an evaluation regime. How did it become this way? And what does it mean for scientists, groups, organizations, and fields? Picking up on the inspiring debate in a previous issue of this journal, four articles in this special section go deeper in studying the causes and consequences of the current evaluation regime in (academic) science, contributing with new insight as well as opening important new routes for further investigation. This introductory essay provides a background and framework to the special section and points out some key takeaways from the articles included.
TL;DR: In this article , the authors propose to conceive money as a cognitive institution whose study would anchor in the paradigm of embodied cognition and extended cognition by bringing together works carried out both in cognitive sciences and in philosophy of mind, while continuing certain classical authors' ideas.
Abstract: Money is a fundamental and ubiquitous institution in modern economies. It has the distinctive characteristic of being at the same time a complex social phenomenon and a very easily manipulated object in everyday life. By bringing together works carried out both in cognitive sciences and in philosophy of mind, and while continuing certain classical authors’ ideas, this article proposes to conceive money as a cognitive institution whose study would anchor in the paradigm of embodied cognition and extended cognition. Including the study of this artefact into embodied cognition and extended cognition would imply a refusal of any cerebrocentrism, and more broadly, to approach its multiple facets such as its affective dimension in relation to the embodiment of value. Moreover, presenting money as a cognitive institution would mean not only that it would be an extension of certain cognitive processes but also a condition of possibility for others. The cognitive processes in question relate to the objectivation of value in a market society, in order to orient the desire of agents and to the structuring of certain inter-individual actions.
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors argue that structural analysis is not sufficient to understand the social reality of the nationality policies in the Soviet context and add the conditional, unclear and unpredictable aspects to the structural analysis of Soviet nationality policies.
Abstract: Early Soviet nationality policies determined the framework of the ethnicity regime of the Soviet state and largely continued within the same context until the collapse of the Soviet state. While reevaluating early nationality policies, this study argues that structural analysis is not sufficient to understand the social reality of the nationality policies in the Soviet context. Hence, there is an urgent need to add the conditional, unclear and unpredictable aspects to the structural analysis of Soviet nationality policies. By analyzing through the amorphous nationality legacy of the classical Marxist thought, which highly affected the contingent Bolshevik nationality policy orientation, this study shares the concept of Soviet nation-building against the conventional Cold War approach. While analyzing the foundational dynamics of the early Soviet nationality policies, this study attempts to further improve structural analysis through poststructuralist intervention taking into account contingent case study examples.
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors draw on sociological insights into the complementarity of formal and informal structures to show how this paradigmatic alternative can be read as a real structural dualism, with two conflicting but complementary chains of influence and initiative.
Abstract: The workings of monetary systems have been controversially discussed. Mainstream economists assert that money creation is a ‘top down’ process governed by centralized monetary policy decisions (central banks => banks => customers), while heterodox economists emphasize ‘bottom up’ dynamics in the opposite direction, driven by customers’ demand for credit. The article draws on sociological insights into the complementarity of formal and informal structures to show how this paradigmatic alternative can be read as a real structural dualism, with two conflicting but complementary chains of influence and initiative. It suggests a ‘dual circuit’ of money creation, with a formal ‘top down’ chain inscribed in institutional competencies, clearing and control mechanisms, and an informal ‘bottom up’ chain emerging spontaneously from everyday maneuvers and pragmatic accommodations by participants. Both chains are contradictory in theory but compatible in practice. This dualistic solution cannot be officially acknowledged, but it is highly viable and apt to operate under complex, uncertain, and variable conditions.
TL;DR: In this paper , a meta-analysis of pain inflicted upon non-western women during aggressive ritualized occurrences is discussed, particularly in the domain of honor crimes, and women's burdens are emphasized as situated individuals.
Abstract: Violence(s) imposed on non-western women during aggressive ritualized occurrences and, in the hereafter, meta-analysis of pain inflicted upon women is discussed particularly in the domain of honor crimes. Representational languages framing trauma in global discourses of naming and human rights are scrutinized, asserting that women’s perspectives must be centric to the discussion. Orientalist frames and control over women as symbols of honor and patriarchal codes maintain tensions of dichotomies between modernity and tradition and cultural relativism. These are thus challenged by emphasizing women’s burdens – as situated individuals – of multi-layered struggles which unfold from purporting to depict women’s realities. The naturalization of women’s suffering is further amplified when constrained within a one-dimensional representation claimed by regional and global injustice. This article contributes to critical feminist interventions in spaces representing women’s realities in a process which deconstructs and diverts the post of modernity and colonialism toward equality and dialogue across socio-political racial and gendered markers.
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors examined the perceptions of BRICS member states on the role of the BRICS as an actor in international politics, and found that despite BRICS' unified agenda and plans of action, considerable heterogeneity persists in the perception of each BRICS country concerning its role in the international community.
Abstract: This article is aimed at the analysis of the perceptions of BRICS member states – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – on the role of BRICS as an actor in international politics. While numerous analyses of BRICS have already been provided, little attention has been given to the deliberate self-presentation of the group per country. As such, this work examines whether these countries themselves perceive the BRICS as a political body that offers an alternative to the Western political imaginary. The focus is on how the BRICS member states construct meanings of what BRICS is and put these perspectives into dialogue with each other. Through a critical discourse analysis, this work takes the official documents released by BRICS countries (e.g. texts and speeches) and examines how these documents reflect each BRICS country’s perception of BRICS as a group. Findings show that despite BRICS’ unified agenda and plans of action, considerable heterogeneity persists in the perceptions of each BRICS member country concerning the role of BRICS in the international community. The shared vision of the BRICS members remains reflective of the Western framework. However, while the BRICS bloc may not offer a full-fledged alternative politics to that of the West, it still offers an alternative reading of contemporary international politics. Considering also its current state as a group-in-progress, BRICS is significant for its adjunct role in global governance, not least through the differences between the countries and the uncertainty of its future, challenging how to examine historical transitions.
TL;DR: The authors examines the contributions to this progress made by the work of three American social scientists (King, Keohane, and Verba, 2021 [1994], hereafter KKV) and the responses that their work provoked.
Abstract: Qualitative political analysis has made substantial methodological progress in the last 25 years. This article examines the contributions to this progress made by the work of three American social scientists (King, Keohane, and Verba, 2021 [1994], hereafter KKV) and the responses that their work provoked. The article identifies a recurring ambiguity in this methodological literature. In the quantitative tradition to which KKV want to hold qualitative methods endogeneity is a methodological problem that induces a search for methodological workarounds. Yet in qualitative work, endogeneity is often more a basic feature of the social and political world that needs to be modeled directly. While there can be substantial theoretical differences in how these features are modeled, the presumption is that endogeneity is more an ontological claim than a methodological problem. The article identifies how this ambiguity first arises in the work of KKV and then traces out the implications through a discussion of a range of methodological options, from process tracing to instrumental variables.
TL;DR: This study takes Sina Microblog users as the research subject, hoping to provide data from Chinese users and provide evidence for differences in users’ ethical perceptions in different cultural contexts and found differences in cognition regarding ethical issues in social media data research across groups.
Abstract: In the big data environment, various systems and platforms have provided billions of data points to researchers. The large amount of user data on social media platforms has become a source for research data for many kinds of research. However, few scholars realize the ethical risks in the collection and utilization of social media data, and many ignore the ethical needs of users themselves. Users’ concerns should be considered when formulating ethical guidelines. This study takes Sina Microblog (the world’s largest Chinese social media platform) users as the research subject, hoping to provide data from Chinese users and provide evidence for differences in users’ ethical perceptions in different cultural contexts. Within our survey sample, few users had previously known that their microblogs could be collected and used by researchers, and the majority believed that researchers should not use their microblogs without consent. We also found differences in cognition regarding ethical issues in social media data research across groups.