Christian Dayé

Sounds sequential: sonification in the social sciences

Abstract This article discusses the use of sound for auditory information display, and in particular its application for exploration of scientific data, known as sonification. Sonification can be defined as the use of sound to display data of scientific interest in order to investigate structures, trends or patterns in the data. Background is provided from several perspectives: the use of the senses in the history of science, the strengths of human hearing, the recent technological availability of auditory interfaces, the development of sonification itself, and differentiation of sonification from musical practices. In Western science, as in Western culture, the eye has become the predominant organ of sense; using the ear consciously in research thus implicitly questions the implications of the eyes predominance. As practical examples, two applications of sonification to data-sets from the social sciences are discussed in detail. We argue that the most promising areas of application of sonification within the social sciences are in the exploration of sequential data. Our two examples both concern sets of sequential data, one temporal, the other spatial (geographical). Discussion of these examples is followed by consideration of the practical and cultural implications of working with sonification. We thus hope to further the use of sonification in the social sciences, not as an alternative to visualisation or statistical approaches, but as a complementary tool of data analysis and exploration.

Visions of a Field Recent Developments in Studies of Social Science and Humanities

This field review discusses several recently published books that are concerned with historical, cultural, philosophical, or sociological aspects of the social sciences and humanities (SSH), past and present. It investigates similarities and differences between the various perspectives and approaches, and analyzes how these are informed by different visions of the field of SSH studies. In concluding, the review discusses three recurrent themes that will presumably move in the focus of debate in the near future: the debate on positivism in SSH and its “epistemological others;” the impact of the Cold War on the gestalt of the SSH; and, finally, the adequacy of science, technology, and society approaches to describe techniques and practices in the SSH.

Schools in the Social and Behavioral Sciences: Concepts and Historical Relevance

The term ‘schools’ in social and behavioral sciences (SBS) refers to two different types of concepts: the school of thought, which consists mainly of a coherent set of interrelated ideas and positions, and the concept of the school as institution, which takes in view not only a system of ideas, but also the social organization in which this system is developed and stabilized. The article introduces theoretical approaches to these concepts and discusses their relevance for the history of SBS. Both concepts of schools imply that SBS disciplines are not characterized by a consensus on theoretical and methodological principles, but must be conceived of as multiparadigmatic.

Methodology of the History of the Social and Behavioral Sciences

The history of the social and behavioral sciences (SBS) gets varying coverage in different disciplines. Regardless of these differences, we sketch a general and descriptive methodology for the historiography of SBS. The approach is not to seek for a consistent reconstruction of how to correctly write history, but to observe historians of SBS at work empirically. This, at best, results in a collection of models of best practice that can guide future research on the history of SBS. In all brevity, we do this for five units of analysis: (1) Actors; (2) Ideas; (3) Instruments; (4) Institutions; and (5) Contexts.

Small Group Research, History of

Small group research is a field of empirical research that observes the behavior of groups – and of individuals in groups. These can be natural groups observed in their habitat or ‘artificial’ groups convened in the laboratory. After blooming in the 1950s, the field receded into the background in both disciplines that originally contributed to it, social psychology and sociology. This contribution discusses the sources relevant to the establishment of the field in the 1940s, introduces three important traditions of small group research, reports some explanations for the fields recession, and presents some newer approaches to the study of small groups.

Book Review: Book Review: Michèle Lamont How Professors Think. Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. 330 pp.

Michèle Lamont’s How Professors Think is an empirical study of peer review panels that evaluate applications for research fellowships. She conducted eighty-one interviews with panel participants as well as with officials of five U.S. American research funding organizations. All these organizations award funds to scholars from the social sciences and humanities. Panels had to rank the submissions according to criteria of excellence as spelled out by the respective funding organization. The exact meaning of these criteria, however, is unclear and contested: not all panelists and officials agree on what terms like, for example, clarity, originality, significance, or quality mean. In other words, these terms do not per se allow for clear and transparent decisions on how to rank scholarly work. It takes a process of group discussion for panel members to reach an agreement about which proposal is excellent and which is not, thereby continuously reasoning about excellence, negotiating its actual content, and weighing up its different criteria (clarity, significance, etc.). This situation is aggravated when, as was the case with the panels Lamont studied, the panels are set up by scholars coming from different disciplines. Lamont’s approach to norms is that of the interpretive paradigm of sociology (as opposed to the normative paradigm): Norms exist, but what they actually mean in relation to a given phenomenon is a matter of interpretation (and discussion). Arguing that peer ‘‘evaluation is not based on stable comparables, and that various competing criteria with multiple meanings are used to assess academic work’’ (p. 18), she tries to investigate how the meaning of scientific norms is created in the interactive processes that Science, Technology, & Human Values 36(3) 413-416 a The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav http://sthv.sagepub.com

27.95 (hardcover). ISBN 978-0-674-03266-8

I 2002, the council of the American Sociological Association decided to prepare a book in conjunction with the upcoming 100th anniversary of the organization to be celebrated in 2005. Craig Calhoun, president of the Social Science Research Council and professor at New York University, was asked to take over the editorship, and accepted. Conceivably, the task must have felt more than challenging: for many decades, most theoretical, methodological and organizational innovations within sociology, as well as the majority of its leading exponents, came from the United States. Still, the historical development of sociology in America had not been investigated with the scrutiny it deserved. Scholars tended to focus either on dominant departments (e.g. Chicago, Columbia) or on specific historic periods, thus leaving others hidden in the shadier areas of history. Furthermore, most book-length work on the history of sociology is centred on the intellectual development of the discipline, on the history of sociological ideas. The institutional aspects of this history – with notable exceptions, though – have hardly been touched on; moreover, if they had, it would have been by historians and not by sociologists. Hence, the aim of Sociology in America: A History was to produce a sociological history of sociology (p. xiv). To this end, Calhoun was joined by more than two dozen distinguished scholars. After an introductory chapter by Calhoun himself, the 900 pages of the book, comprising 21 chapters, trace the history of sociology from the ‘American Spencerians’ Franklin Giddings, Albion Small, William Graham Sumner and Lester Ward to sociology’s division from social activist movements in the early 1920s. The development of sociology before, during and after World War II is examined from different emphases in three chapters. In addition, the impact of the 1960s on United States sociology is discussed. Other chapters are more broadly concerned with sociology’s relation to neighbouring fields, such as social work or philosophy, and with the history of fieldwork. One chapter deals with the contrast between mainstream sociology and its challengers; another approaches the question about whether race, class and gender studies are ‘business as usual’ or still ‘pushing the boundaries’. Several chapters follow the developments of specific fields of sociological research, such as the sociology of race, or the sociology of education and the trajectories of theoretical frameworks like feminism. A closing chapter reflects on the historiography of United States sociology. Without any doubt, this book is a big thing – not just in extent, but also in quality. The chapters are accessibly written and mostly informative. They are also provocative and can motivate scholars into immersing themselves in the history of the discipline. Each contribution can be taken outside the context of the other texts. Clearly, though, it could not have been the aim to treat all relevant aspects or areas of sociological activity comprehensively. As Calhoun acknowledges, there is no adequate coverage of topics such as the areas of rural sociology, of urbanity, of immigration, of medical sociology. Nevertheless, the volume is a unique contribution to the history of sociology in the United States, and the comprehensive index adds to its value as a resource in one’s own research. Nonetheless, Calhoun’s claim to have produced a sociological history of sociology must be assessed more critically. A sociological history of sociology (SHS) analysis appears to be based on two assumptions. First, it analyses the development of sociology under the assumption that this development is shaped by factors originating in the sociability of the members of the field and in the positions and roles these members occupy within society. And second, an SHS approach assumes that these factors can be analysed with the methods available within sociology. SHS analyses strive for contextualization; they are attempts to locate author and Book Reviews