Suchergebnisse

Social science is a social activity as well as a method of discovery. The researchers' values and politics colour their work and so do their choices of scientific method. This book is about both - the technical effects of values and the political effects of technique. The author reports what social scientists and historians actually do. He sorts out the scientific from the political content in a wide range of old and new work in history, sociology, political science and economics. The overall work is a detailed political and technical criticism of the 'scientistic' programme which would hav.

The understanding of science by members of the public has been of increasing concern to social scientists. This article argues that such understanding, or the ostensible lack of it, is structured by discourses that address science both as an abstract entity or principle (science-in-general) and as an activity directed at specific phenomena or problems (science-in particular). Drawing upon a wide range of interviews about various sources of ionizing radiation, it is suggested that understanding is tied to questions of social identity that encompass relations of differentiation from and identification with science and the institutions in which it is embedded