1. Social World II How We Know Things in the Social World

2. Introduction Recall Social World I –An introduction to the Social World –Via access to wide variety of writing and thinking –Centering on a specific issue with multiple dimensions

3. First Part of Social World II Conducting primary research –Contrast World Cultures II and its emphasis on primary documents –Social sciences, and primary research

4. Project description –Actual project; grant funding –Goal: Analyze a specific set of questions as they apply to an actual neighborhood This class-students and faculty together-on a voyage of discovery; project outcomes as a joint product

5. Goal of project: collect, organize, interpret data Recognize the difficulties in doing so by examining project from a critical perspective

6. Use Halperin book to help us understand project better Project provides basis for understanding, evaluating other kinds of social science research

7. Second Part of Course A critical perspective –What’s that? –Goal: To talk more broadly about how we know things about the social world What is it? How can we talk about it?

8. Feynman book provides anchor for doing this. Talks about –How we come to understand things –The difficulties involved with this process

9. Quick look at what is the social world –Human conduct and behavior, as Individuals Groups –A set of events, processes, organizations, and rules of conduct that humans generate

10. We claim: Events, processes, organizations, and rules do not speak for themselves Rather: they need to be interpreted

11. Examples: –Is TAO old; or young? –“Who’s poor?”

12. Niels Bohr: “It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.”

13. Feynman: “Nature doesn’t care what anybody thinks.”

14. Claim: We don’t have access to a “God’s eye view” of reality Or: There is no one exactly true and complete description of the way the world is Or: “We can not have a privileged correct description of the world from an external perspective.”

15. So: How Do We Understand the Social World? Numbers (and statistical inference) –Collection, organization, interpretation of data –Examples from Social World I Dreze and Sen, and large samples Gospel Hill, and small samples Head Start: a longitudinal study Coleman Report

16. –Issues Sampling –Random? –Representative? Filtering presuppositions Accuracy of numbers Accuracy/usefulness of interpretation

17. Narration –Storytelling –Analogy; metaphor –Facts; logic –Appeal to authority –Examples from Social World I

18. How Do We See Social World I and II? Social World I –Organized around a particular issues and its dimensions –Questions What’s the problem? What issues were raised, debated? What problems were raised by attempts to apply general solutions to particular problems?

19. What lessons from the past can be applied to the present? How can we –Identify a problem? –Analyze its elements? –See the interrelatedness of these elements? –Isolate important issues? –Understand the issues involved in resolving the problem?

20. Social World II –Consider possibilities, limitations of studying the social world from a scientific perspective –Goal: A better understanding of individual, group behavior

21. –Skills: Become comfortable with discussing –What are major sources of data? –How to »Gather? »Interpret? –What are limitations of the scientific approach?

22. –What ethical issues are involved in »Gathering data? »Applying theoretical, empirical knowledge to practice? Develop habit of systematic, critical thinking about the social world; and about public policy in the social world