Reflecting on the interplay of historical and social scientific concepts, Roland Betancourt discusses the extent to which current social and cultural trends influence the study of the past. Responding to critiques of current research being ‘presentist’…
Category: social science
Social Scientists Can’t Ignore the Power of Wikipedia—or Its Systemic Biases
Wikipedia’s gender gap is well documented and presents a challenge for women social scientists, who may as a result find themselves less discoverable in the worlds most used reference work and potentially less cited and recognised as a result. Reflecti…
What are social structural explanations?
Social structures are often invoked as the cause of various problems in society. In this post, Lauren N. Ross discusses how social structural causes can be understood as constraints and why clarity on this point is not just a problem of definition, but…
Book Review: Driving With Strangers: What Hitchhiking Tells Us about Humanity by Jonathan Purkis
In Driving With Strangers: What Hitchhiking Tells Us about Humanity, Jonathan Purkis argues that the nature of hitchhiking and its place in the world has important things to tell us both about who we are and who we might be. This hopeful book suggests …
No Impact People? Reframing research impact in the social sciences
Responding to a call for renewed thinking about how we understand and measure social science impact by Ziyad Marar, Ron Kassimir, outlines how the way in which impact is figured in the social sciences is often dependent on those external to its product…
Book Review: COVID-19 and Psychology: People and Society in Times of Pandemic by John G. Haas
In COVID-19 and Psychology: People and Society in Times of Pandemic, John G. Haas explores the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic at all levels of society. This book will be useful for those in the social sciences, policymakers and the gener…
3 Challenges for a reparatory social science
Reflecting on work uncovering the colonial genealogies of foundational works in the social sciences, Gurminder K Bhambra argues for a reparatory social science and highlights three challenges that any reparatory project must face in order to be success…
Three false starts on the road to open social science
The shift to ‘open’ working across the social sciences as a discipline group entails a welcome but demanding cultural change. Yet, Patrick Dunleavy argues that there have already been three false starts: focusing only on isolated bits of the open agend…
Book Review: Revolutionary Routines: The Habits of Social Transformation by Carolyn Pedwell
In Revolutionary Routines: The Habits of Social Transformation, Carolyn Pedwell examines how social change can be enacted through everyday habits and routinised practices, arguing that such ‘minor’ gestures may be just as transformative as major events…
Podcast: Do we need the arts to change the world?
The latest episode episode of the LSE IQ podcast asks: Do we need the arts to change the world? As the UK government looks to recover from the costs of the pandemic its decision to cut funding for creative higher education courses could be seen as a pr…