Conformity in Modern Science: An Engine of Societal Transformation?

Received 25 September 2017. Accepted 30 November 2017. Published online 18 December 2017.The penetration of science into all spheres of life has self-evidently become a contemporary “megatrend”. In turn, science itself is also undergoing distinct transformations, e.g., as a result of such processes as increasing regulation and bureaucratisation within academia. In this context, researchers as active producers of scientific knowledge face multiple challenges, including the need to cope with increasing regulation of their everyday practices. Therefore, our research purpose was to investigate the phenomenon of conformity, which, although always having been inseparable from social life, is acquiring a new significance today. Various representations of conformity (e.g. conformist behaviour) have received a great deal of attention from sociologists, biologists and psychologists; however, to our knowledge, there is no generally accepted philosophical understanding of its nature. In this paper, we provide a phenomenological study of conformity on the basis of a comprehensive literature analysis and evaluate its role as a mode of existence in modern science. For the sake of clarity, some illustrations from the everyday lives of researchers are given, including the distribution of the IMRAD format of research articles. Conformity in science is predicted to involve consequences at three distinct levels: (1) within a scientific community, when scientists follow prescribed patterns of conduct; (2) within a particular society when people from all walks of life conform to the standards set by the scientised world-view; and (3) at the global level when non-western communities conform to western standards of life through borrowing western scientific world picture

Orwellian Doublespeak: Dialogicality and the English Language

Received 30 September 2021. Accepted 16 December 2021. Published online 30 December 2021

Three Aspects of the Phenomenon of Science: In Search for Unity among Sociologists

Introduction. In today’s globalising world, science acquires a crucial importance: integrating humanity within the framework of solving global problems, it becomes one of the leading factors in social development, facilitating work and diversifying leisure time, as well as serving as an instrument of transformations in the political sphere. Undoubtedly, the social aspects of contemporary science are capturing the attention of a huge number of researchers. However, it is not clear that all areas of the sociology of science treat the object of their study in the same way. Aim. A lack of reflection on the unity or otherwise in the understanding of the essence of science in the various fields of sociological research makes it difficult to compare different theories of the institutional, cultural, social and communicative contexts of scientific development. An urgent methodological task therefore consists in developing an understanding of the various definitions of the concept of “science” used in the framework of contemporary sociological analysis of this phenomenon. Results and scientific novelty. In this paper, two dominant sociological views on science – as an experimental-mathematical approach to cognising the world and as a system of representations in general – are compared. We conclude that while researchers studying institutional aspects of science tend to interpret it in terms of the “heritage” of post-Enlightenment European rationalism, constructionist and communicatively-oriented researchers tend to approach science as the system of knowledge and cognition that is formed in any human society, having its own specific sociocultural features in each respective case. While each of these two approaches undoubtedly has its own methodological potential, in order to provide such a diverse field of studies with a common ground, it would be necessary to balance them with a third aspect. We argue that this balancing role, since both common for all mankind and unique for every culture, could be played by Heidegger’s conceptualisation of science as “the theory of the real”. Practical significance. In order to avoid a pluralism of incompatible theories, it is important to continually pose the question “what is the object of study when conducting a sociological study of various scientific phenomena?” – as well as to understand the “limits of applicability” of the particular interpretation of science on which basis sociological analysis proceeds.Введение. В современном глобализующемся мире научные знания приобретают все большую значимость: они интегрируют усилия человечества для решения общих проблем, становятся одними из ведущих факторов развития общества, облегчают труд и разнообразят досуг людей. Кроме того, они используются и в качестве инструмента социально-политических трансформаций. Не случайно сегодня внимание огромного количества исследователей приковано к социальным аспектам науки, а также образования как важнейшего взаимосвязанного с ней социального института. Однако вопрос о том, все ли направления социологии науки трактуют объект своего изучения одинаково, остается открытым. Между тем практически полное отсутствие рефлексии по поводу единства в понимании существа науки в поле социологических исследований затрудняет сопоставление различных теорий развития научного знания в институциональном, культурном, социально-коммуникативном контекстах. Такое положение дел актуализирует поиск решения одной из центральных методологических задач по осмыслению вариантов определения понятия «наука», используемых в рамках современного социологического анализа данного феномена. Цель публикации заключается в попытке сопоставить основные трактовки науки – как экспериментально-математического способа познания мира и как системы представлений о существующих реалиях. Результаты и научная новизна. В ходе обсуждения проблемы авторы приходят к выводу о том, что исследования, посвященные изучению институциональных аспектов, тяготеют к пониманию науки как рационалистического «наследия» Европы Нового времени, а конструкционистски и коммуникативистски ориентированные течения склонны рассматривать ее как систему знания и познания, которая формируется в любом человеческом сообществе, имея, однако, в каждом случае свои специфические социокультурные черты. Каждое из двух указанных направлений, несомненно, обладает своим методологическим потенциалом. Тем не менее в целях выведения таких разноплановых исследований на единую почву предлагается уравновесить их третьей точкой зрения, согласно которой наука есть «теория действительного», имеющая черты универсально-общечеловеческого и уникально-культурного феномена. Практическая значимость. Ответ на вопрос: «Что мы изучаем, когда проводим социологическое исследование науки?» позволит избежать плюрализма несопоставимых теорий и понять «границы применимости» той трактовки науки, от которой мы отталкиваемся в социологическом анализе

Le FORUM, Vol. 39 No. 4

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/francoamericain_forum/1047/thumbnail.jp

The ethnoarchaeology of sacrifice: some comments on the visible and the invisible with respect to human contacts with the spirit workd in Borneo

Dans cet article sont examinés les traces, invisibles à l\u27archéologue, des rites qui incluent un sacrifice animal comme celui pratiqué par les lban de Bornéo. La première partie est consacrée à un examen du sens général des rites concernant l\u27animal dans la religion des Iban. Il est montré que les animaux jouent un rôle important comme intermédiaires entre les dieux et les hommes ; les animaux sauvages, en particulier les oiseaux et les reptiles, comme messagers des dieux, et les animaux domestiques, porcs et coqs, comme sujets de sacrifices et comme moyens de communication des hommes vers le monde des esprits. Dans un deuxième temps on examine les conséquences archéologiques. Les hommes contactent les dieux lors des combats de coqs et lors de la consommation de nourritures sacrées et de viande sacrifiée; cependant il est montré que ces activités rituelles concernant les animaux ne laissent pas de traces archéologiques. Les restes de ces activités ne peuvent être distingués de ceux relevant de la consommation quotidienne. Enfin, le troisième aspect évoqué concerne le contexte dans lequel ces activités rituelles se déroulent. La plupart ont lieu dans l\u27espace domestique. Les vies des dieux, des hommes et des animaux sont étroitement liées, et les établissements domestiques sont les foyers de presque toutes les grandes cérémonies.</p

Produits exotiques d&#039;origine animale et commerce chinois avec Bornéo

Cet article décrit les relations commerciales entre la Chine et Bornéo et en examine trois conséquences pour les sociétés indigènes de Bornéo. La première est la manière dont les marchandises sont intégrées, par certaines de ces sociétés indigènes, comme bien de prestige; la seconde concerne les modalités d\u27établissement d\u27une relation symbiotique, dans le Nord de Sarawak, entre les chasseurs-collecteurs de la jungle et les sociétés agro-pastorales commerçant avec la Chine. Les chasseurs-collecteurs ont rarement traité directement avec les Chinois ; ils ont échangé les produits de la jungle avec les sociétés sédentaires contre du sel, du tabac et des vêtements. Les deux types de société ont maintenu une association à long terme, au sein de laquelle chacune acceptait l\u27autonomie de l\u27autre, sans qu\u27il y ait de tendance, de la part des chasseurs-cueilleurs, à adopter une économie agro-pastorale. Le troisième aspect envisagé est le rôle tenu par ce commerce dans le processus par lequel un autre groupe, les Iban, a adopté l\u27agro-pastoralisme.The paper will describe trade contacts between China and Borneo and then examine three consequences for the indigenous societies of Borneo, The first is the manner in which the trade items became incorporated into some of the indigenous societies as prestige property, and the second the means by which a symbiotic relationship was established in the northern part of Sarawak between the hunter-gatherer collectors of jungle produce and the farming societies which traded with the Chinese. The hunter-gatherer s rarely met the Chinese themselves, they exchanged their jungle products with the settled societies for salt, tobacco and cloth. The two types of society maintained a long term association, in which each accepted the autonomy of the other, but where there was no marked tendency for the hunter-gatherer s to adopt farming. The third aspect to be considered is the part played by this trade in the process whereby another group, the Iban did adopt farming.</p

The demands of liminality: Community, communitas, and reflexivity

An enduring aspect of any notion of community is a sense of being connected to others. It is the experience of communitas - in that sense of the word employed by Buber and later developed by Victor Turner - that brings a particular emphasis and persistence to this aspect of ‘belonging’ associated with community. The disparity between the hopeful ideas placed around community and the often much more chaotic and conflict ridden experience of actually being with others, suggests that communitas needs our consideration. This is particularly so if our involvement with community is to be driven not by a sense of nostalgia or utopian desire, but instead by intention to develop some agency amidst the gradients of power that surround and run through it. Communitas presents us with a particularly unfettered form of relationship, but one that occurs primarily in liminal environments. Commonly, liminal space is considered to be a moment in time between one state and another, a condition of ‘betwixt and between’. However, this observation avoids acknowledging that the function of liminal space is to provide participants with a reflexive environment, one removed from the normal parameters of social structures. Such a reflexive space, consciously entered and exited, can provide both community members and the community itself with the opportunity to more creatively engage with the world and its own contradictions and conflicts. Being able to move across the threshold into, and out of, liminal space, places considerable demands on those involved. My argument in this thesis, that liminality and communitas are integral to the functioning of community, leads to the proposal that negotiating the transition in and out of liminal environments requires community members to exercise a degree of individual reflective practice. Schőn’s concept of reflection-iniv action is proposed as a suitable meta-skill for operating in this way. Reflection-in-action bears an affinity with the sense of flow engendered by communitas; it also implies a readiness both to reframe questions and respond in an improvisational manner. These two gestures are required in order to meet the demands of liminality

Jurgen Habermas and Russian philosopher-theologians dialogue through the century

During the era of the emergence of Sociology as a science of the early 20th century, the so-called Russian philosopher-theologians subjected the foundations of the Sociology of religion to powerful criticism. In opposing the idea of socialism, their counter-arguments turned out to be prophetic since the failure of the socialist society took place largely according to their predictions. However, at the time, the platform of scientific atheism emerged as dominant, thus forming the methodological atheism of the Sociology of religion. A century later, Jürgen Habermas was compelled to take cognisance of these two opposing worldviews of secular and religious societies. In this article, while the authors do not examine the reasons that prompted the pre-eminent contemporary sociologist of religion to return to this analysis, an attempt is made to compare the arguments of Russian philosopher-theologians of the early 20th century with those of the respected contemporary scholar. The aim of providing such a comparative analysis is to try to understand to what extent the 21st century views are consonant with the theological platform of the vision of social reality proposed by the Russian theological position of the early 20th century. © 2020, Ecozone, OAIMDD. All rights reserved