Humanities and Social Science education is integral in the development of active and informed citizens, and encourages learners to think critically, solve problems and adapt to change. Making Humanities and Social Sciences Come Alive: Early Years and Primary Education prepares pre-service educators to become high quality HASS educators who can unlock the potential of all students. Closely aligned with the Australian Curriculum and Early Years Learning Framework, this text is designed to enhance teaching practices in history, (...) geography, economics and business, and civics and citizenship. The text provides readers with an in-depth understanding of the curriculum structure, the individual disciplines, pedagogical approaches to teaching HASS, inclusivity, global connections and the transition to practice. Examples are provided for early childhood and primary education, making this an inclusive, versatile and comprehensive text. This book is an invaluable resource that provides pre-service educators with the knowledge and skills to deliver this exciting curriculum. (shrink)

Understanding factors that motivate farmers to perform conservation behaviors is seen as key to enhancing efforts to address agri-environmental challenges. This study uses survey data collected from 277 farmers in the La Moine River watershed in western Illinois to develop new measures of farmers’ environmental attitudes and examine their influence on current usage of agricultural best management practices (BMPs). The results suggest that a Dual Interest Theory approach reflecting two separate, competing psychological frames representing a stewardship view of the environment (...) and a farm as a business (or profit maximization) view of the environment are present within the decision making domain. Using a cluster analysis technique to examine the interaction between these attitude frames reveals four groups of farmers who hold distinct views of the environment. Further exploration of these distinct belief systems reveals little evidence of differences in participation or willingness to participate in agricultural BMPs; however, we observe significant differences between these groups with regard to their willingness to support rural conservation planning priorities that address agri-environmental challenges. Further discussion focuses on the implications of these interactive dual interest typologies and the implications of these findings on efforts to engage farmers in conservation efforts. (shrink)

The consumption of halal food may be seen as an expression of the Muslim identity. Within Islam, different interpretations of ‘halal’ exist and the pluralistic Muslim community requests diverse halal standards. Therefore, adaptive governance arrangements are needed in the halal food market. Globalization and industrialization have complicated the governance of halal food. A complex network of halal governors has developed from the local to the global level. In this paper, we analyze to what extent halal certification bodies in the Netherlands (...) address the needs of the Muslim community and how they are influenced by international halal governance. The Netherlands serves as a case study with its growing Muslim community and its central position in international trade. The data comes from literature review and eleven qualitative semi-structured interviews with the most prominent actors in the Dutch halal governance system. Our analysis shows that the halal governance system in the Netherlands is weakly institutionalized and hardly adaptive to the needs of a heterogeneous Muslim community. Improvements are needed concerning stakeholder engagement, transparency, accessibility, impartiality and efficiency. (shrink)

Promoting Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) aims to increase the productive capacities of farmer households. Under FMNR, farmers select and manage natural regeneration on farmlands and keep them under production. While FMNR contributes to the wealth of farming communities, its contribution to household food security has rarely been researched. We, therefore, used a mixed-methods approach to address the research gap by measuring FMNR’s contribution to food security among farmer households in the Talensi district of Ghana. We adopted the Household Dietary (...) Diversity Score (HDDS) and Food Consumption Score (FCS) to estimate food security status among 243 FMNR farmer households and 243 non-FMNR farmer households. Also, we performed a Chi-square test of independence to compare the frequency of each food group (present vs not present) between FMNR adopters and non-FMNR adopters to establish the relationship between adopting FMNR and consuming the FCS and HDDS food groups. Our results reveal that FMNR farmer households are more food secure than non-FMNR farmer households. The HHDS of the FMNR farmer households was 9.6, which is higher than the target value of 9.1. Conversely, the HHDS of the non-FMNR farmer households was 4.3, which is lower than the target value of 9.1. Up to 86% and 37% of the FMNR farmer households and non-FMNR farmer households fell within acceptable FCS; 15% and 17% of FMNR farmer households and non-FMNR farmer households fell within borderline FCS. While none of the FMNR farmer households fell within poor FCS, 46% of non-FMNR farmer households fell within poor FCS. Adopting FMNR is significantly related to consuming all food groups promoted and benefiting from FMNR practices. The paper recommends enabling farmers in semi-arid environments to practice and invest in FMNR for long-term returns to food security. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to provide a holistic examination of local food entrepreneurs (LFE) across the local food system (LFS) of a specific U.S. geographic region, including the drivers and barriers to their success. Over the past few decades, there has been a surge in entrepreneurs becoming involved in the LFS which includes the production (farming and manufacturing), distribution, and retail of local ag-related products and services. The LFS is complex and entrepreneurs operating within the system are often (...) met with steep barriers of entry and have trouble maintaining long-term success. Through recorded semi-structured interviews of LFEs (producers, processors, and purveyors) in the Missouri Ozark region, data was gathered and coded according to grounded theory methodologies. From the data collection, 24 emergent themes were identified using thematic clustering. These were further consolidated into eight categorical themes (strategy, skills development, financially sustainable model, differentiation drivers, operational drivers, external drivers, internal constraints, and external constraints) and three over-riding themes (approach, drivers, and barriers). This cross-sectional approach in examining entrepreneurs across the value chain in an LFS provides new insights into the unique entrepreneurial mindset of LFEs. (shrink)

Critical development and food studies scholars argue that the current food security paradigm is emblematic of a ‘New Green Revolution’, characterized by agricultural intensification, increasing reliance on biotechnology, deepening global markets, and depeasantization. High-profile examples of this model are not hard to find. Less examined, however, are food-security programs that appear to work at cross-purposes with this model. Drawing on the case of Feed the Future in Guatemala, I show how USAID engages in activities that valorize ancestral crops, subsistence production, (...) and agroecological practices. Rather than the result of macro-level planning—of either the New Green Revolution or a greener reform regime—I argue that nonconforming food security projects can be traced to individual actors and their interactions on the ground. I draw on an ‘interface approach’ (Long 1990 ), focusing on the lifeworlds of development workers, their interfaces with each other, and with the to-be-developed. Doing so reveals how food security projects are significantly shaped by the relationships and interests of development actors enmeshed in particular organizational and national settings. This research contributes a fresh perspective on the food security paradigm and its role within the ‘corporate food regime’. (shrink)

Ending world hunger remains one of the central global challenges, but the question of how to measure and define the problem is politically charged. This article chronicles and analyses the indicator selection process for SDG 2.1, focusing in particular on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) indicator. Despite alleged efforts to separate political and technical aspects in the indicator selection process we find that they were entangled from the start. While there was significant contestation around which indicators should be selected, (...) the process was characterized by pathway lock-in: The complexity of food security quantification and the resource constraints in the process favored already established data infrastructures and milieus of expertise, locking in the position of FAO and its established food security indicators. The SDG 2.1 indicators frame food insecurity in terms of caloric supply and demand and individual experience, arguably excluding dimensions of democratic agency, sustainability and other dimensions and drivers of food insecurity. The lock-in has thus embedded a narrow concept of food security in the major global indicator framework for food security monitoring. This is likely to have significant effects on how food insecurity is addressed nationally and internationally. Addressing the knowledge politics of food security indicators is important to broaden and open the agenda for sustainable transformation of food systems. Statistics and indicators are important tools in this agenda, but a diversity of approaches and data infrastructures from the local to the international level are needed to understand the multiple dimensions and drivers of food insecurity. (shrink)

In 2009 the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil established a conflict resolution mechanism to help rural communities address their grievances against palm oil companies that are RSPO members. This article presents the broadest ever comprehensive assessment of the use and effectiveness of the RSPO conflict resolution mechanism, providing both overviews and in-depth analysis. Our central question is: to what extent does the RSPO conflict resolution mechanism offer an accessible, fair and effective tool for communities in Indonesia to resolve conflicts with (...) companies? Our aim is not only to provide a ‘reality check’ of this mechanism but also to contribute to the wider debate on how communities can seek access to justice when engaged in intractable conflicts with palm oil companies. For data collection, we took three steps. First, we used our own database of 150 conflicts between communities and companies in Indonesia. We identified 64 conflicts that involved RSPO member companies, of which 17 prompted communities to convey their grievances to the RSPO’s conflict resolution mechanism. Second, we used the database of the RSPO, which handled 85 complaints against companies in Indonesia in the period 2009–2020. Third, we conducted fieldwork, in total, about 6 months of fieldwork and extensive interviews on three conflicts involving RSPO companies to identify mechanisms leading to both failed and successful instances of conflict resolution. For our assessment, we used three criteria to assess the conflict resolution mechanism of the RSPO: accessibility, procedural justice, and the outcomes of the process. We conclude that—on all counts—the conflict resolution mechanism is biased in favor of companies. The result of these biases is that the actual capacity of the RSPO’s mechanism to provide a meaningful remedy for rural communities’ grievances remains very limited. This unequal access to justice sustains conflicts between companies and communities over land. (shrink)

As a group, LGBTQ+ people experience food insecurity at a disproportionately high rate, yet food security scholars and practitioners are only beginning to uncover patterns in how food insecurity varies by subgroups of this diverse community. In this paper, we use data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey—which added measures of gender identity and sexuality for the first time in 2021—to analyze New Englanders’ food insufficiency rates by gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. We find that (1) in the (...) past seven days, 13.0 percent of LGB + (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and other non-heterosexual) New Englanders experience food insufficiency—which is nearly twice the rate of heterosexual people—and 19.8 percent of transgender+ (transgender, genderqueer, gender non-binary, and other non-cisgender people) New Englanders experience food insufficiency—which is two to three times the rate of cisgender men and women. (2) Whereas cisgender New Englanders experience food insufficiency at a _lower_ rate than their counterparts in the rest of the nation (about two percentage points lower for both cisgender men and women), transgender+ New Englanders experience no such New England advantage compared to transgender+ people in the country as a whole. (3) LGBTQ+ New Englanders of color experience devastatingly high rates of food insufficiency, with, for example, one in three Black transgender+ New Englanders not having enough food to eat in the past seven days. These findings suggest that addressing food insecurity in New England demands approaching the problem with an intersectional queer lens, with attention to the ways in which racism, cissexism, and heterosexism are creating a systemic, ongoing food crisis for LGBTQ+ New Englanders, especially those who are transgender+ and/or people of color. (shrink)

This study presents a description of an open database on scientific output of Vietnamese researchers in social sciences and humanities, one that corrects for the shortcomings in current research publication databases such as data duplication, slow update, and a substantial cost of doing science. Here, using scientists’ self-reports, open online sources and cross-checking with Scopus database, we introduce a manual system and its semi-automated version of the database on the profiles of 657 Vietnamese researchers in social sciences (...) and humanities who have published in Scopus-indexed journals from 2008 to 2018. The final system also records 973 foreign co-authors, 1,289 papers, and 789 affiliations. The data collection method, highly applicable for other sources, could be replicated in other developing countries while its content be used in cross-section, multivariate, and network data analyses. The open database is expected to help Vietnam revamp its research capacity and meet the public demand for greater transparency in science management. (shrink)

Bringing together diverse theoretical and empirical contributions from the fields of social and cognitive psychology, philosophy, and science education, this volume explores representational pluralism as a phenomenon characteristic of human cognition. Building on these disciplines' shared interest in understanding human thought, perception, and conceptual change, the volume illustrates how representational plurality can be conducive to research and practice in varied fields. Particular care is taken to emphasize points of convergence and the value of sharing discourses, models, justifications, and theories (...) of pluralism across disciplines. The editors give ample space for philosophers, cognitive scientists and educators to explicate the history and current status of representational pluralism in their own disciplines. Using multiple forms of research from the relational perspective, this volume will be of interest to students, scholars and researchers with an interest in cognitive psychology, as well as educational psychology and philosophy of science. (shrink)

This book provides an analysis of the construction, diagnosis (as chaotic) and evaluation of models in chaos theory. It contains a detailed look at the interaction of the different models used in chaos theory and analyses how these models influence the way chaos is defined. Furthermore, the book discusses the conditions for the occurrence of chaos and the detection of chaos in nature.

How do crisis conditions affect longstanding societal narratives about hunger? This paper examines how hunger was framed in public discourse during an early period in the COVID-19 crisis to mobilize attention and make moral claims on others to alleviate it. It does so through a discourse analysis of 1023 U.S.-based English-language posts dedicated to hunger on Twitter during four months of the COVID-19 pandemic. This analysis finds that Twitter users chiefly adopted hunger as a political tool to make moral claims (...) on the state rather than individuals, civil society organizations, or corporations; however, hunger was deployed to defend widely diverse political agendas ranging from progressive support for SNAP entitlements to conservative claims reinforcing anti-lockdown and racist “America First” sentiments. Theoretically, the paper contributes to understanding how culture and morality operate in times of crisis. It demonstrates how culture can be deployed in crisis to reinforce longstanding ideological commitments at the same time that it organizes political imaginations in new ways. The result, in this case, is that longstanding cultural narratives about hunger were used to defend dissimilar, and in some ways contradictory, political ends. Practically, the paper demonstrates how moralized calls to alleviate hunger are vulnerable to political manipulation and used to further conflicting political goals, yet may also offer opportunities to leverage support for bolstered state investments in food assistance during times of crisis. (shrink)

Background: Academic productivity has been studied by scholars all round the world for many years. However, in Vietnam, this topic has scarcely been addressed. This research therefore aims at better understanding the correlations between gender, age, research experience, the leading role of corresponding authors, and the total number of their publications in the specific realm of social sciences and humanities. Methods: The study employed a Scopus dataset with publication profiles of 410 Vietnamese researchers between 2008 and 2017. Results: (...) Men did not differ from women in academic publications (P=0.827). The proficiency of corresponding authors positively correlated with the number of published papers (rs=0.61, P<0.001). Lastly, the age of lead authors strongly correlated with scientific output (rs=0.74, P<0.001 for authors between 40 and 50 years of age). Conclusion: While scientific output correlated with the author ages and number of articles in which they led, it was not correlated with their gender in Vietnamese social science and humanities authors. (shrink)

Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the works (...) of Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

The humanities and social sciences (HSS) are being turned upside down by advances in artificial intelligence (AI), and their very existence could be threatened. These sciences are being profoundly destabilised by a dual process of naturalisation of social phenomena and fetishisation of numbers, accentuated by the development of AI (part 1). Both STM (science, technology, medicine) and HSS are facing major epistemological challenges, but for the latter they carry the risk of marginalisation (part 2). The humanities (...) and social sciences remain the best equipped to question the social construct represented by the development of AI. However, this essential approach is not enough. We need to ask ourselves: how can the HSS reintroduce interpretation when they have less and less control over how data is put together? Only a balanced partnership between STM and HSS is likely to meet all these challenges (part 3). Using the case of education, which has long been at the forefront of developments in other sectors of social life, we would like to show how and on what priority issues such a partnership can be built (part 4). (shrink)

Interdisciplinary research needs innovation. As an action-oriented intervention, this Manifesto begins from the authors’ experiences as social scientists working within interdisciplinary science and technology collaborations in agriculture and food. We draw from these experiences to: 1) explain what social scientists contribute to interdisciplinary agri-food tech collaborations; (2) describe barriers to substantive and meaningful collaboration; and (3) propose ways to overcome these barriers. We encourage funding bodies to develop mechanisms that ensure funded projects respect the integrity of social (...) science expertise and incorporate its insights. We also call for the integration of social scientific questions and methods in interdisciplinary projects from the outset, and for a genuine curiosity on the part of STEM and social science researchers alike about the knowledge and skills each of us has to offer. We contend that cultivating such integration and curiosity within interdisciplinary collaborations will make them more enriching for all researchers involved, and more likely to generate socially beneficial outcomes. (shrink)

Volume 18, Issue 2, May 2024, Page 210-228.

Pain research is still dominated by biomedical perspectives and the need to articulate pain in ways other than those offered by evidence based medical models is pressing. Examining closely subjective experiences of pain, this book explores the way in which pain is situated, communicated and formed in a larger cultural and social context. Dimensions of Pain explores the lived experience of pain, and questions of identity and pain, from a range of different disciplinary perspectives within the humanities and (...) social sciences. Discussing the acuity and temporality of pain, its isolating impact, the embodied expression of pain, pain and sexuality, gender and ethnicity, it also includes a cluster of three chapters discusses the phenomenon and experience of labour pains. This volume revitalizes the study of pain, offering productive ways of carefully thinking through its different aspects and exploring the positive and enriching side of world-forming pain as well as its limiting aspects. It will be of interest to academics and students interested in pain from a range of backgrounds, including philosophy, sociology, nursing, midwifery, medicine and gender studies. (shrink)

This paper presents three cases of research ethics violations in the social sciences and humanities that involved major educational institutions in Vietnam. The violations share two common points: the use of sophistry by the accused perpetrators and their sympathisers, and the relative ease with which they succeeded unpunished. The strategies the violators used to avoid punishment could be summarised as: (i) relying on people not paying enough attention when asked to do something relatively quickly, (ii) asking for the (...) benefit of the doubt, (iii) redefining the meaning of ethics, and (iv) defaming the whistleblowers and showing how fighting ethics violations is too costly, slow and, in the end, worthless. We offer suggestions to improve transparency: investment in translation and education about codes of conduct in Vietnam; investment in research ethics and integrity; the use of open online resources and platforms; and educating Vietnamese researchers about international standards. (shrink)

The experience with genetically modified foods has been prominent in motivating science, industry and regulatory bodies to address the social and ethical dimensions of nanotechnology. The overall objective is to gain the general public’s acceptance of nanotechnology in order not to provoke a consumer boycott as it happened with genetically modified foods. It is stated implicitly in reports on nanotechnology research and development that this acceptance depends on the public’s confidence in the technology and that the confidence is created (...) on the basis of information, education, openness and debate about scientific and technological developments. Hence, it is assumed that informing and educating the public will create trust, which will consequently lead to an acceptance of nanotechnology. Thus, the humanities and social sciences are seen as tools to achieve public acceptance. In this paper, the author argues that this is a narrow apprehension of the role of the humanities and social sciences. The humanities and social sciences have a critical function asking fundamental questions and informing the public about these reflections. This may lead to scepticism, however, the motivation for addressing the social and ethical dimensions of nanotechnology should not be public acceptance but informed judgement. The author illustrates this critical function by discussing the role, motivation and contribution of ethics as an example. Lastly, the author shows that a possible strategy for incorporating the humanities and the social sciences into nanotechnology research and development is Real-Time Technology Assessment, where the purpose is to integrate natural science and engineering investigations with ethical, legal and social science from the outset. (shrink)

Aims and Scope -/- The Vietnamese Social Sciences and Humanities at a Fork in the Road, utilizing an object-oriented structured database on the productivity of Vietnamese researchers, seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of the development of Social Sciences and Humanities in Vietnam from 2008 to 2018. -/- Quan-Hoang Vuong (Ph.D., Université Libre de Bruxelles) is the director of Centre for Interdisciplinary Social Research, Phenikaa University in Hanoi, Vietnam. He is chairman of the Vietnam chapter (...) of the European Association of Science Editors and serves in the NAFOSTED Scientific Council on Basic Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities (2019-2021). Dr. Vuong has published more than 120 academic articles, and book chapters in about 50 refereed journals and books by such publishers as Elsevier, Inderscience, Nature Publishing Group, Springer, Praeger, Wiley, World Scientific, etc. -/- Trung Tran is an Associate Professor of Mathematics Education and works at Vietnam Academy for Ethnic Minorities. He is a member of the Vietnam chapter of The European Association of Science Editors (EASE), a leader of the Vietnamese Science Editors (VSE) Team, and a chairman of Editor's Board of Journal of Ethnic Minorities Research (ISSN: 0866-773X). (shrink)

In 1959 C. P. Snow delivered his now-famous Rede Lecture, 'The Two Cultures,' a reflection on the academy based on the premise that intellectual life was divided into two cultures: the arts and humanities on one side and science on the other. Since then, a third culture, generally termed 'social science' and comprised of fields such as sociology, political science, economics, and psychology, has emerged. Jerome Kagan's book describes the assumptions, vocabulary, and contributions of each of these cultures (...) and argues that the meanings of many of the concepts used by each culture are unique to it and do not apply to the others because the source of evidence for the term is special. The text summarizes the contributions of the social sciences and humanities to our understanding of human nature and questions the popular belief that biological processes are the main determinant of variation in human behavior. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to vindicate the viability of Kurt H. Wolff''s methodology of surrender-and-catch for the human and social sciences. The article is divided into three sections. The first section explicates the fundamental significance of surrender-and-catch and Wolff''s motivation for advocating its practice. The second section compares surrender-and-catch with phenomenological methodology as well as objective science and the province of the everyday. The third section illustrates surrender-and-catch through my own practice. In this section I contextualize surrender-and-catch (...) in a triangulated design, which exhibits its flexibility and compatibility for use in conjunction with other forms of research. (shrink)

Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) was an Italian philosopher, rhetorician, and historian. As one of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment, he exerted tremendous influence on the social sciences. He was the first to stress cultural and linguistic dimensions in the development of both the human mind and social institutions. Although his ideas on the relationship between mind and culture and his epistemology have inspired the work of many scholars in psychology, his sizeable influence has been scarcely acknowledged. The volume (...) is organized in two sections. The first locates Vico in his historical context and in the landscape of contemporary human and social sciences. The second part presents those of Vico's concepts that seem promising for the development of a new way of looking at psychological phenomena. In the book's conclusion, Luca Tateo gathers the ideas of the volume's contributors to suggest future development of the psychological sciences. This book aims to show how Vico's insights can inspire future research in the psychological sciences. It collects multidisciplinary contributions of leading international scholars that draw upon the thought of this original thinker. Collectively, the contributors remind us of the legacy and continuing influence of this inspiring historical figure. (shrink)

This book is an inter-disciplinary volume based on collaborative research in the humanities and social sciences that explores the benefits of historical understanding in leading disciplines, including History, Politics, Literature, Economics, Anthropology, Law, Sociology, and Philosophy.

This article presents a retrospective analysis of the evolution of the Russian humanities and social sciences education system, highlighting issues that the current system has faced during the country's repeated transformations in the twentieth century, especially in the 1990s.

Ethics review processes are frequently perceived as extending from codes and protocols rooted in biomedical disciplines. As a result, many researchers in the humanities and social sciences (HASS) find these processes to be misaligned, if not outrightly obstructive to their research. This leads some scholars to advocate against HASS participation in institutional review processes as they currently stand, or in their entirety. While ethics review processes can present a challenge to HASS researchers, these are not insurmountable and, in (...) fact, present opportunities for ethics review boards (ERBs) to mediate their practices to better attend to the concerns of the HASS disciplines. By highlighting the potential value of the ethics review process in recognising the nuances and specificity across different forms of research, this article explores the generative possibilities of greater collaboration between HASS researchers and ERBs. Remaining cognisant of the epistemic and methodological differences that mark different disciplinary formations in turn will benefit the ethical conduct of all researchers. (shrink)

The paper addresses the problem of the delay of the social sciences with respect to the natural sciences. It is argued that there are no special differences between them from a methodological point of view. The methodology of both can be understood in terms of the idealizational conception of science. Nor is the subject-matter the source of the problems. It is argued that it is the social placement of the social sciences within wider communities that is responsible (...) for the delay. (shrink)

With regards to the inefficiencies and uncompromising situations within the humanities and social sciences field in Iran, the challenge of problematizing these sciences is inevitable. So far, numerous research analyzing humanities and social sciences’ problems in the Iranian academic system have been published. Considering the important role of humanities and social sciences in the modern Iranian society, we attempt to suggest a theoretical framework for the problematization of humanities and social sciences in (...) Iran. The exploration of the main challenges facing humanities and social sciences in Iran from the community, academy and administration point of view, sparks three hypotheses. First, humanities and social sciences’ theories and teachings are not applied accurately. Second, the humanities and social sciences’ schools of thought are not chosen properly according to Iranian circumstances. And third, there are metaphysical differences between axioms and presupposition of humanities and social sciences having western origins and those with Islamic-Iranian culture. (shrink)

The work under consideration addresses a fundamental problem in cognitive neuroscience and social science. Although both aim to explain and understand human action, their explanatory tools are so divergent that our theories are riddled with conceptual gaps. Both fields are moreover permeated by old-fashioned action theory and folk psychology, which explain and understand action in terms of mind-reading and attributing beliefs, desires, and intentions to others. While these theories may work pragmatically in navigating our social world, they are (...) increasingly questioned as a basis for our theorizing. These and other problems within both disciplines have long held back a much-needed multidisciplinary approach to human action from gaining traction. Turner’s book aims to set it free. In this review I assess the book based on the key argumentative steps in Turner’s analysis, rather than providing a chapter-by-chapter overview. (shrink)

For the past fifty years anxiety over naturalism has driven debates in social theory. One side sees social science as another kind of natural science, while the other rejects the possibility of objective and explanatory knowledge. _Interpretation and Social Knowledge_ suggests a different route, offering a way forward for an antinaturalist sociology that overcomes the opposition between interpretation and explanation and uses theory to build concrete, historically specific causal explanations of social phenomena.

Since 1984, the AHV journal has provided a key forum for a community of interdisciplinary, international researchers, educators, and policy makers to analyze and debate core issues, values and hopes facing the nation and the world, and to recommend strategies and actions for addressing them. This agenda includes the more specific challenges and opportunities confronting agriculture, food systems, science, and communities, as well as broader contextual issues and grand challenges. This paper draws extensively on 40 years of AHV journal articles (...) and reviews and begins with a focus on a limited number of key grand challenges (climate change and global warming; threats to democracy and the growing neo-nationalism, populism, and authoritarianism; and increasing national and international inequality). With these challenges as the underlining context, the remainder of the paper addresses core journal themes of sustainable agriculture and local food systems, citizen and public science, and empowered communities. Highlighted are numerous important journal contributions to the analyses and recommendations to address these hopes and themes. I conclude that these themes and hopes not only deserve to live but are essential for changing and redirecting an unsustainable and destructive environmental, economic, political and social agenda to a viable, livable and just democratic society. (shrink)

By any metric, the twentieth century university was a successful institution. However, in the twenty-first century, ongoing neoliberal educational reform has been accompanied by a growing epistemological crisis in the meaning and value of the humanities and social sciences (HaSS). Concerns have been expressed in two main forms. The governors of tertiary education systems—governments, private investors, university managers and consultancy firms—have focused on how HaSS can adapt to the perceived research needs of the 21st century. At the same (...) time, a competing set of discourses has been generated by scholars and researchers employed within the critical HaSS themselves. This article considers what these differing perspectives mean for reconceptualising HaSS for the twenty-first century. After surveying the contemporary climate, this article examines the findings of key reports on the future of the humanities from the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Alongside those of Western Europe, these university systems are arguably the key drivers for the global university system. It is argued that these reports provide an opportunity for emerging universities to reflect on their research priorities and developmental strategies. The article concludes with some reflections on the wider consequences of the globalising of the university system, the increase of China's influence in Asia, and ponders the prospect of post-human/ist futures of the humanities. (shrink)