DOCSLIB.ORG

Download Full Book

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Download Full Book Purpose and Necessity in Social Theory Mandelbaum, Maurice Published by Johns Hopkins University Press Mandelbaum, Maurice. Purpose and Necessity in Social Theory. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/book.67862. https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/67862 [ Access provided at 25 Sep 2021 20:07 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. HOPKINS OPEN PUBLISHING ENCORE EDITIONS Maurice Mandelbaum Purpose and Necessity in Social Theory Open access edition supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. © 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press Published 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. CC BY-NC-ND ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3190-1 (open access) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3190-4 (open access) ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3191-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3191-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3192-5 (electronic) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3192-0 (electronic) This page supersedes the copyright page included in the original publication of this work. Purpose & Necessity in Social Theory By the same author The Problem of Historical Knowledge: An Answer to Relativism Philosophy, Science, and Sense Perception: Historical and Critical Studies The Phenomenology of Moral Experience History, Man, and Reason: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Thought The Anatomy of Historical Knowledge Philosophy, History, and the Sciences: Selected Critical Essays Purpose AND Necessity IN SocialTheory Maurice Mandelbaum THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS Baltimore and London © 1987 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America The Johns Hopkins University Press 701 West 40th Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21211 The Johns Hopkins Press Ltd., London The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Libraryof Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mandelbaum, Maurice, 1908- Purpose and necessity in social theory. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Social sciences-Philosophy. 2. Necessity !Philosophy) 3. Chance. 4. Social choice. 5. Social change. I. Title. H61.M4227 1987 300'.l 86-46283 ISBN 0-8018-3470-8 jalk. paper) TO L.B.M. with love and gratitude Contents Preface 1x PART ¢ ONE Introduction 1 The Analysis of Social Theories 3 PART ¢ TWO Individualistic & Institutional Theories 2 Individualistic Theories of Purpose & Necessity 37 ON PURPOSE IN INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORIES 37 THREE TYPES OF NECESSITARIAN EXPLANATION 45 3 Necessity & Purpose in Institutional Theories 60 DEVELOPMENTAL LAWS AND PATTERNS OF DIRECTIONAL CHANGE 60 OTHER SOCIAL LAWS 75 THEORIES OF FUNCTIONAL NECESSITY 83 PART ¢ THREE Necessity, Chance & Choice 4 Determinism & Chance 99 5 Determinism & Choice 114 THE DETERMINANTS OF CHOICE 115 THE MORAL IMPLICATIONS OF DETERMINISM 133 THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CHOICE 145 6 Necessity, Chance & Choice in Human Affairs 148 Notes 171 Index 191 Preface Originally, this book was intended to be more historically oriented than it has turned out to be. I had also intended to discuss more of the categories used in the social sciences than those with which I have here been directly concerned. I found, however, that in order to do so I would have had to forego critical discussions of how these categories have in fact been used, and it seemed to me more important to evalu­ ate some of their uses than to introduce other topics or provide fur­ ther examples. Many of the controversies with which I have here dealt reappear in new guises in much recent social theorizing, but given the range and variety of these theories I could not deal fairly with them were I to refer to them merely in passing; I have therefore not extended my survey beyond the first decades of this century. I hope, nevertheless, that the reader will see the applicability of my discussions to more recent theoretical writings, and that this book may succeed in disen­ tangling a few misapprehensions concerning the place of necessity, choice, and chance in history. During my tenure as a Mellon Senior Fellow at the National Humanities Center in 1986 I was able to complete the text of this book, and I am grateful to the Center for its support. Owing to illness, I then had to rely on others for editorial help; Marjorie Close and the entire reference staff of the Baker Library of Dartmouth College pro­ vided essential help, as did Professor Michael Ermarth and my copy editor, Carolyn Moser. I am happy to acknowledge my great debt to each of them. ix PARTc:)ONE Introduction 1 ¢ The Analysis of Social Theories For the purposes of this study, the term social thought is construed in a broad sense, but one that is by no means all-inclusive. It is limited by the fact that I am exclusively concerned with Western thought, and within Western thought I deal only with the modern period, which I arbitrarily assume to have been inaugurated by Hobbes. Even so, the materials relevant for such a study would seem to exceed manageable bounds. They include not only the writings of political philosophers and philosophers of history but also the works of those who laid the foundations for all of the specialties which we now classify among the social sciences. To analyze this range of materials in detail would, of course, be a hopeless task. On the other hand, one can often quite clearly see that theories which arise in different fieldsof social inquiry may be based on com­ mon presuppositions, and even opposed theories within a given field may have some presuppositions in common. The task of analyzing social thought, as I conceive it, involves uncovering the presupposi­ tions that are present in the approach which all social theorists, whatever their fields, bring to bear on the concrete materials with which they work. Thus, it is with the analysis of those presupposi­ tions common to a wide variety of social theories, and not with the analyses of these theories themselves, that I am concerned. It may, I think, be taken for granted that however restricted the scope of a social theorist's investigations may be, the task he original­ ly sets himself and the methods he follows will reveal certain basic 3 4 ¢, The Analysis of Social Theories theoretical presuppositions. It is with them that I am concerned. To be sure, it has sometimes been claimed that the normative presup­ positions which a thinker brings to his work are no less important for understanding that work than are his theoretical presuppositions. While I do not deny that this is often true, I doubt that such a claim is universally applicable. Furthermore, even when true, no matter how strongly a theorist may be motivated by normative beliefs, his the­ oretical presuppositions will constitute a significant aspect of his work. Of course, the work of every social theorist will be affectednot only by his basic theoretical and normative presuppositions but also by a host of personal factors, such as his training, his relations to both his contemporaries and his predecessors, and the social or political experiences which he has undergone. I shall not be concerned with these more specific differences among different social theories, but only with some very basic presuppositions with respect to which these theories agree or disagree. Such presuppositions tend to fall into pairs of polar opposites. For the sake of convenience, I shall speak of such pairs as categories. Purpose and necessity are the cate­ gories with which this book as a whole is concerned. In the present chapter, however, I wish to single out another pair of categories which has special importance in all social theorizing and is also directly relevant to some of the problems we shall later encounter with re­ spect to the roles played by purpose and by necessity in social change. Currently, this firstpair of categories is most often referred to in terms of an opposition between "methodological individualism" and "holism." This formulation, as I have elsewhere argued, is somewhat misleading, since not all who reject "methodological individualism" accept what is labeled as "holism." 1 A more accurate characteriza­ tion of this pair of approaches would be to contrast those social theo­ ries which are based on individualistic presuppositions with those which adopt an institutional approach. This is the terminology I shall use. To be sure, any social theory has to include reference both to individuals and to institutions, and to the relations between them; nevertheless, some theories have attempted to understand social in­ stitutions in terms of the basic character and needs of individuals, whereas others have rejected this approach, attempting to under­ stand the nature of a society through a direct examination of its institutions and their relationships to one another. The opposition between individualistic and institutional ap­ proaches has been reflected in social thought in many indirect ways. For example, debates concerning the invariance or variability of stan­ dards of value have often been affected by it: those accepting an The Analysis of Social Theories � 5 individualistic approach have usually tended to hold that at least some basic values are universal and invariant, whereas those empha­ sizing institutional approaches have usually held that all values are historically conditioned and vary over time. The contrast between individualistic and institutional approaches is also sometimes re­ flected in other ways-for example, in arguments concerning the roles of "nature" and "nurture" in forming the character of indi­ viduals.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Islamization of Anthropological Knowledge
    The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences Vol. 6. No. 1, 1989 143 Review Article Islamization of Anthropological Knowledge A. R. Momin The expansion of Western coloniaHsrn during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought in its wake the economic and political domination and exploitation of the Third World countries. Western colonialism and ethnocentrism went hand in hand. The colonial ideology was rationalized and justified in terms of the white man's burden; it was believed that the White races of Europe had the moral duty to carry the torch of civilization­ which was equated with Christianity and Western culture-to the dark comers of Asia and Africa. The ideology of Victorian Europe accorded the full status of humanity only to European Christians; the "other" people were condemned, as Edmund Leach has bluntly put it, as "sub-human animals, monsters, degenerate men, damned souls, or the products of a separate creation" (Leach, 1982). One of the most damaging consequences of colonialism relates to a massive undermining of the self-confidence of the colonized peoples. Their cultural values and institutions were ridiculed and harshly criticized. Worse still, the Western pattern of education introduced by colonial governments produced a breed of Westernized native elite, who held their own cultural heritage in contempt and who consciously identified themselves with the culture of their colonial masters. During the nineteenth century Orientalism emerged as an intellectual ally of Western colonialism. As Edward Said has cogently demonstrated, Oriental ism was a product of certain political and ideological forces operating in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and that it was inextricably bound up with Western ethnocentrism, racism, and imperialism (Said, 1978).
    [Show full text]
  • Franz Boas's Legacy of “Useful Knowledge”: the APS Archives And
    Franz Boas’s Legacy of “Useful Knowledge”: The APS Archives and the Future of Americanist Anthropology1 REGNA DARNELL Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology University of Western Ontario t is a pleasure and privilege, though also somewhat intimidating, to address the assembled membership of the American Philosophical ISociety. Like the august founders under whose portraits we assemble, Members come to hear their peers share the results of their inquiries across the full range of the sciences and arenas of public affairs to which they have contributed “useful knowledge.” Prior to the profes- sionalization of science in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the boundaries between disciplines were far less significant than they are today. Those who were not experts in particular topics could rest assured that their peers were capable of assessing both the state of knowledge in each other’s fields and the implications for society. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington were all polymaths, covering what we now separate into several kinds of science, humanities, and social science in ways that crosscut one another and illustrate the permeability of disciplinary boundaries. The study of the American Indian is a piece of that multidisciplinary heri- tage that constituted the APS and continues to characterize its public persona. The Founding Members of the Society all had direct and seminal experience with the Indians and with the conflict between their traditional ways of life and the infringing world of settler colonialism. On the one hand, they felt justified in exploiting Native resources, as surveyors, treaty negotiators, and land speculators. On the other hand, the Indians represented the uniqueness of the Americas, of the New World that defined itself apart from the decadence of old Europe.
    [Show full text]
  • History of the Human Sciences
    History of the Human Sciences http://hhs.sagepub.com/ Herder: culture, anthropology and the Enlightenment David Denby History of the Human Sciences 2005 18: 55 DOI: 10.1177/0952695105051126 The online version of this article can be found at: http://hhs.sagepub.com/content/18/1/55 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for History of the Human Sciences can be found at: Email Alerts: http://hhs.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://hhs.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://hhs.sagepub.com/content/18/1/55.refs.html Downloaded from hhs.sagepub.com at Zabol University on November 23, 2010 03HHS18-1 Denby (ds) 8/3/05 8:47 am Page 55 HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 18 No. 1 © 2005 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) pp. 55–76 [18:1;55–76; DOI: 10.1177/0952695105051126] Herder: culture, anthropology and the Enlightenment DAVID DENBY ABSTRACT The anthropological sensibility has often been seen as growing out of opposition to Enlightenment universalism. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) is often cited as an ancestor of modern cultural relativism, in which cultures exist in the plural. This article argues that Herder’s anthropology, and anthropology generally, are more closely related to Enlightenment thought than is generally considered. Herder certainly attacks Enlightenment abstraction, the arrogance of its Eurocentric historical teleology, and argues the case for a proto-hermeneutical approach which emphasizes embeddedness, horizon, the usefulness of prejudice. His suspicion of the ideology of progress and of associated theories of stadial development leads to a critique of cosmopolitanism and, particularly, of colonialism.
    [Show full text]
  • Society: a Key Concept in Anthropology - Christian Giordano and Andrea Boscoboinik
    ETHNOLOGY, ETHNOGRAPHY AND CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY - Society: A Key Concept In Anthropology - Christian Giordano and Andrea Boscoboinik SOCIETY: A KEY CONCEPT IN ANTHROPOLOGY Christian Giordano and Andrea Boscoboinik University of Fribourg, Department of Social Sciences, Pérolles 90, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland. Keywords: Society, Culture, Evolutionism, Functionalism, Structuralism, Post- Structuralism, Dynamic Anthropology, Diffusionism, Relativism, Interpretive Anthropology, Postmodern Anthropology Contents 1. Introduction: semantic ambiguities of the concept of anthropology 2. Pioneers of Social Anthropology: Evolutionism and Society 3. The Idea of Society in British Anthropology: Functionalism 4. The French School: Structuralism 5. From Structuralism to Post-Structuralism and Their Influence on Agency Theory 6. Against Stability: Dynamic Anthropology 7. Diffusionism, Historicism and Relativism in Franz Boas: Culture as the Expression of Society in American Anthropology 8. Beyond seemingly objective facts: the interpretive anthropology of Clifford Geertz 9. Postmodern Anthropology: The Advent of Methodological Individualism and the Omission of Society. 10. Conclusion. Glossary Bibliography Biographical Sketches Summary In this chapter, we present the major anthropological currents that directly or indirectly made use of the notion of society in their theoretical reflections and analyses of empirical data. Having first clarified the polysemic nature of the term anthropology, we analyze the theoretical framework of early anthropologists who drew upon the evolutionist theories stemming from natural science. We then analyze British functionalism,UNESCO-EOLSS whose theoretical basis chiefly consists in a criticism of evolutionism, which was regarded as too speculative. Functionalism is characterized by its interest in institutions that, through their functions, generate cohesion in societies deemed primitive. TypicalSAMPLE of British functionalism is CHAPTERSthe empirical orientation of research put forward by Bronislaw Malinowski.
    [Show full text]
  • Deflection, Denial and Disbelief: Social and Political Discourses About Child Sexual Abuse and Their Influence on Institutional Responses a Rapid Evidence Assessment
    Deflection, denial and disbelief: social and political discourses about child sexual abuse and their influence on institutional responses A rapid evidence assessment Jo Lovett, Maddy Coy and Liz Kelly Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit London Metropolitan University February 2018 Deflection, denial and disbelief: social and political discourses about child sexual abuse and their influence on institutional responses A rapid evidence assessment This report is authored by Jo Lovett, Maddy Coy and Liz Kelly Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit London Metropolitan University February 2018 Disclaimer This is a Rapid Evidence Assessment prepared at IICSA’s request. The views expressed in this report are those of the authors alone. Due to the nature of the research report, the authors have worked with the predominant ideas on child sexual abuse and use the language in which those ideas were commonly expressed over the period from the 1940s to 2017. The use of language that encapsulates these ideas and meanings should not be read as an endorsement of any of the identified discourses. © Crown copyright 2018. This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/opengovernment-licence/version/3 Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned. This publication is available at www.iicsa.org.uk Any enquiries regarding this publication should be sent to us at [email protected] Deflection, denial and disbelief: social and political discourses about child sexual abuse and their influence on 3 institutional responses.
    [Show full text]
  • AHA Colloquium
    Cover.indd 1 13/10/20 12:51 AM Thank you to our generous sponsors: Platinum Gold Bronze Cover2.indd 1 19/10/20 9:42 PM 2021 Annual Meeting Program Program Editorial Staff Debbie Ann Doyle, Editor and Meetings Manager With assistance from Victor Medina Del Toro, Liz Townsend, and Laura Ansley Program Book 2021_FM.indd 1 26/10/20 8:59 PM 400 A Street SE Washington, DC 20003-3889 202-544-2422 E-mail: [email protected] Web: www.historians.org Perspectives: historians.org/perspectives Facebook: facebook.com/AHAhistorians Twitter: @AHAHistorians 2020 Elected Officers President: Mary Lindemann, University of Miami Past President: John R. McNeill, Georgetown University President-elect: Jacqueline Jones, University of Texas at Austin Vice President, Professional Division: Rita Chin, University of Michigan (2023) Vice President, Research Division: Sophia Rosenfeld, University of Pennsylvania (2021) Vice President, Teaching Division: Laura McEnaney, Whittier College (2022) 2020 Elected Councilors Research Division: Melissa Bokovoy, University of New Mexico (2021) Christopher R. Boyer, Northern Arizona University (2022) Sara Georgini, Massachusetts Historical Society (2023) Teaching Division: Craig Perrier, Fairfax County Public Schools Mary Lindemann (2021) Professor of History Alexandra Hui, Mississippi State University (2022) University of Miami Shannon Bontrager, Georgia Highlands College (2023) President of the American Historical Association Professional Division: Mary Elliott, Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (2021) Nerina Rustomji, St. John’s University (2022) Reginald K. Ellis, Florida A&M University (2023) At Large: Sarah Mellors, Missouri State University (2021) 2020 Appointed Officers Executive Director: James Grossman AHR Editor: Alex Lichtenstein, Indiana University, Bloomington Treasurer: William F.
    [Show full text]
  • A Case Study of the Gezi Park Protests
    Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, 5(1), 13 ISSN: 2468-4414 Contextualising Feminist Global Justice Activism: A Case Study of the Gezi Park Protests Zeynep Kilicoglu 1* Published: March 5, 2021 ABSTRACT Neoliberal globalisation has not affected everywhere equally. It has deepened the socio-economic inequalities and in some regions has stimulated conservative counter-movements, which affect women more than men. Feminists in the Global Justice Movement draw attention to such issues by highlighting the interrelated nature of patriarchy and the global economic order. In this way, they could incorporate gender justice claims into the wider agenda of the Global Justice Movement and increase their influence as a political actor. This article examines the Gezi Park protests in Turkey as an example of this particular type of feminist activism and contextualises it in local forms of collective action. Utilising Eschle and Maiguashca’s (2010) framework, this article explores how women experience unjust global patterns in local contexts and how oppressive patriarchal neoliberal structures at different levels speak to each other. In Turkey’s context, neoliberal restructuring policies are accompanied by the promotion of religious, familial and heterosexual values along with the state’s penetration into private space, which affects women disproportionally. Turkish feminists in the local Gezi Park protests responded to such regional and national contexts, whilst also defining power relations, injustices and demands in line with international frameworks of feminist anti- globalisation activisms. Keywords: globalisation, neoliberalisation, Gezi Park protests, feminist activism, Turkey INTRODUCTION By creating winners and losers between states and within states, globalisation has not affected all individuals or regions equally (Karns, Mingst and Stiles, 2015).
    [Show full text]
  • Philosophical Anthropology
    070.616 – Proseminar: Philosophical Anthropology Johns Hopkins University, Fall 2010, Macaulay 400, Thursdays 2-4 PM Anand Pandian* Working along four distinct axes of philosophical thought and anthropological investigation – the human and non-human, culture and history, space and time, and mind and matter – we will examine the relationship between conceptual and empirical work in classical and contemporary anthropology. The first three sections of the course begin with Enlightenment philosophies crucial for the development of modern social and cultural anthropology, tracking subsequent inheritances and transmutations of their conceptual positions; the final section instead explores a movement of thought from anthropology to philosophy and back again. Throughout the semester, we will be concerned with how concepts arise in, and circulate through, the exercise of anthropology: what is it to think – critically, imaginatively, comparatively, minutely – about human being and becoming? Required Texts. Michel Foucault, Order of Things; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings, Volume 1; Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques; Hugh Raffles, The Illustrated Insectopedia; Johann Gottfried Herder, Herder: Philosophical Writings; Michael Fischer, Anthropological Futures; Emile Durkheim, Elementary Forms of Religious Life; Alfred Gell, The Anthropology of Time; Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind; Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus; Todd Ochoa, Society of the Dead: Quita Manaquita and Palo Praise in Cuba; other articles and excerpts. Coursework. All required texts will be available either at the campus bookstore or through library reserve (password PAN616). You will be expected to have read them completely before each class meeting, and to be prepared to discuss them closely.
    [Show full text]
  • Unhinged: on Ethnographic Games of Doubt and Certainty Stephan
    Unhinged: On Ethnographic Games of Doubt and Certainty Stephan Palmié University of Chicago To deny the reality or logical significance of what we can never describe or understand is the crudest form of cognitive dissonance. Thomas Nagel There are already too many things that do not exist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro1 As practitioners of what is sometimes (rightly or wrongly) called an empirical field science, can we describe matters we have no concepts for? Franz Boas (1888) raised this question more than 130 years ago in his famous demolition of the idea that supposedly variable phonetic values in native speech were somehow racially determined. Drawing on his own experience at mishearing native utterances, Boas left little doubt that the observer’s own phonological conditioning lay at the source of the misapprehensions that led to such spurious theories. Decades later, Boas’s student Edward Sapir and Sapir’s mentee Benjamin Lee Whorf extended Boas’s insight to the role of grammatical categories and linguistic forms in socially variable apprehensions of reality. Inspired by Einsteinian ideas about relativity, Whorf (1956), in particular, presented us with a picture where – to somewhat bowdlerize his rather more careful argument – the tendency of what he called Standard Average European languages to quantify space and time may have not only enabled the growth of Greek mathematics, but of geography, and ultimately the forms of reckoning that underwrote the rise of capitalism. Around the same time, Edward Evans-Pritchard presented us with a magnificent ethnographic defense of the rationality of Zande conceptions of the role of witchcraft in their day to day lives.
    [Show full text]
  • CHAPTER 1 Anthropological Perspectives Learning Objectives
    CHAPTER 1 Anthropological Perspectives Learning Objectives Chapter Objectives This chapter introduces anthropology as an academic subject and explores its historical development. It discusses various theoretical and contemporary perspectives on fieldwork and ethnography. It also explores how the evolutionary past of primates and early humans is used and understood by contemporary cultural anthropologists. • Learning Objective 1: Understand the definitions of culture and the subdisciplines of anthropology. • Learning Objective 2: Understand the differences between cultural relativity and ethnocentrism. • Learning Objective 3: Understand the significance of the major characteristics, physical and cognitive, of Homo sapiens and how they differ from earlier hominids. • Learning Objective 4: Understand the history of anthropology and the changes in the discipline over the past 150 years. • Learning Objective 5: Understand how the metaphor of the “tapestry” applies to learning about culture. Sample Questions Multiple choice questions Select the one answer that best completes the thought. 1. Anthropology can be best described as: A. the study of behavior and customs B. digging up bones to study the evolution of the human species C. the comparison of cultures in order to identify similarities and differences of patterning D. the analysis of the weaving of tapestry 2. Culture can be defined as: A. a set of ideas and meanings that people use based on the past and by which they construct the present B. symphony orchestras and opera C. the knowledge about yourself and your past that you’re born with and is transmitted through your genes D. all of the above 3. Society is A. the same thing as culture B.
    [Show full text]
  • Investigating Variation in Kinship Policy and Procedure Across Ohio's County-Based Child Welfare System Andreja M
    The College of Wooster Libraries Open Works Senior Independent Study Theses 2014 Put Him in Grandma's House: Investigating Variation in Kinship Policy and Procedure across Ohio's County-based Child Welfare System Andreja M. Siliunas The College of Wooster, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://openworks.wooster.edu/independentstudy Part of the Family, Life Course, and Society Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons, Social Statistics Commons, and the Social Work Commons Recommended Citation Siliunas, Andreja M., "Put Him in Grandma's House: Investigating Variation in Kinship Policy and Procedure across Ohio's County- based Child Welfare System" (2014). Senior Independent Study Theses. Paper 5872. https://openworks.wooster.edu/independentstudy/5872 This Senior Independent Study Thesis Exemplar is brought to you by Open Works, a service of The oC llege of Wooster Libraries. It has been accepted for inclusion in Senior Independent Study Theses by an authorized administrator of Open Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. © Copyright 2014 Andreja M. Siliunas The College of Wooster Put Him in Grandma’s House: Investigating Variation in Kinship Care Policy and Procedure across Ohio’s County-based Child Welfare System By: Andreja Siliunas Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of Independent Study Thesis Senior Thesis Supervised by: Dr. Anne Nurse Department of Sociology and Anthropology 2013-2014 This thesis is dedicated to the grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles, neighbors, teachers, social workers, and all other people who ensure that children have a place to call home… …and especially to Dawn, who embodies the spirit of kinship and has made me want to embody it too.
    [Show full text]
  • An Exploratory Study of Free Will in the Social Sciences
    AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF FREE WILL IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES A Thesis Presented to The Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs at Ashland University In Partial Fulfillment of the Program Requirement for Ashbrook Students Michael Byrne April, 2011 © 2011 Michael Byrne ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii Abstract This study is an exploratory analysis of the belief in free will within the social sciences. While free will is a common topic in many fields, currently, very little research has investigated this topic. As such, this study was based on the assumption that no statistical difference would be found between the social sciences on belief in free will. To investigate this hypothesis, a historical case study was used to analyze belief in free will among professionals in the social science fields. Three general problems were addressed. First, this study examined the consistency of the belief in free will or determinism across the major divisions of the soft sciences. Second, this investigation highlighted the differences found within anthropology and political science. Lastly, consistency and inconsistency in the belief of free will and determinism within the social sciences was discussed. Significance was found in political science and anthropology. Two potential implications are addressed for these findings. Firstly, anthropology and political science may not accurately be classified as social sciences. Secondly, a mobius model was introduced to explain the natural flow of quantitative and qualitative methods that define the social sciences. These results provide an understanding of the social sciences beliefs concerning free-will. As no research has investigated belief in this way before, this research provides a basis for further research.
    [Show full text]