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Social Sciences Quotes

Browse 24 quotes about Social Sciences.

Social Sciences Quotes

“The conclusion that race is a serious and durable social fault line is not a popular one in the social sciences. Many scholars have downplayed its importance, and have insisted that class differences are the real cause of social conflict. Political scientist Walker Connor, who has taught at Harvard, Dartmouth, and Cambridge, has sharply criticized his colleagues for ignoring ethnic loyalty, which he calls ethnonationalism. He wrote of “the school of thought called ‘nation-building’ that dominated the literature on political development, particularly in the United States after the Second World War:” 'The near total disregard of ethnonationalism that characterized the school, which numbered so many leading political scientists of the time, still astonishes. Again we encounter that divorce between intellectual theory and the real world.' He explained further: 'To the degree that ethnic identity is given recognition, it is apt to be as a somewhat unimportant and ephemeral nuisance that will unquestionably give way to a common identity . . . as modern communication and transportation networks link the state’s various parts more closely.' However: “There is little evidence of modern communications destroying ethnic consciousness, and much evidence of their augmenting it.” Prof. Connor came close to saying that any scholar who ignores ethnic loyalty is dishonest: '[H]e perceives those trends that he deems desirable as actually occurring, regardless of the factual situation. If the fact of ethnic nationalism is not compatible with his vision, it can thus be willed away. . . . [T]he treatment calls for total disregard or cavalier dismissal of the undesired facts.' This harsh judgment may not be unwarranted. Robert Putnam, mentioned above for his research on how racial diversity decreases trust in American neighborhoods, waited five years to publish his data. He was displeased with his findings, and worked very hard to find something other than racial diversity to explain why people in Maine and North Dakota trusted each other more than people in Los Angeles. Setting aside the reluctance academics may have for publishing data that conflict with current political ideals, Prof. Connor wrote that scholars discount racial or ethnic loyalty because of “the inherent limitations of rational inquiry into the realm of group identity.” Social scientists like to analyze political and economic interests because they are clear and rational, whereas Prof. Connor argues that rational calculations “hint not at all at the passions that motivate Kurdish, Tamil, and Tigre guerrillas or Basque, Corsican, Irish, and Palestinian terrorists.” As Chateaubriand noted in the 18th century: “Men don’t allow themselves to be killed for their interests; they allow themselves to be killed for their passions.” Prof. Connor adds that group loyalty is evoked “not through appeals to reason but through appeals to the emotions (appeals not to the mind but to the blood).” Academics do not like the unquantifiable, the emotional, the primitive—even if these things drive men harder than the practical and the rational—and are therefore inclined to downplay or even disregard them.”

RaceTrustConflictDiversityEvidenceMarxismSocial SciencesEthnonationalism
Book:White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century
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“The depiction of human nature embedded in the NPP isn't science; it's a marketing campaign for the status quo. The politics of perpetual fear is corrosive to our well-being and our innate capacities for cooperation, community, and kindness. Fear of terrorists, fear of running out of money, fear of getting old, fear of strangers, fear of death, fear of sharks, fear of being hit by lightning, fear of fear itself. It keeps us quiet and complacent in our supposedly protective cages.”

Human NatureCivilizationSocial SciencesHunter GathererHobbesianNarrative Of Perpetual Progress
Book:Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress
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“Against Nothing (The Sonnet) I am not against consumerism, I am not against corporations. I am not against politics and policy, I am not against politicians. I am not against fame and fortune, I am not against celebrity. I am not against entrepreneurship, I am not against technology. I am not against bureaucrats, I am not against red tape. I am not against bibles and comics, I am not against prayers and faith. I ain't against anything that serves human welfare. The moment they go astray, I'll be their nightmare.”

ProgressHumanismHumanitarianSocial ChangePolitical ScienceSonnetSocial StudiesSocial DevelopmentPoetry BooksSocial Sciences
Book:Giants in Jeans: 100 Sonnets of United Earth
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“A 2008 Wall Street Journal article entitled “America’s Universities are Living a Diversity Lie” summed up findings in this area: 'To this day, few colleges have even tried to establish that their race-conscious admissions policies yield broad educational benefits. The research is so fuzzy and methodologically weak that some strident proponents of affirmative action admit that social science is not on their side. In reality, colleges profess a deep belief in the educational benefits of their affirmative-action policies mainly to save their necks. They know that, if the truth came out, courts could find them guilty of illegal discrimination against white and Asian Americans.' The New York Times agrees, noting that decades of promoting diversity have not succeeded in getting students to mix. The article concludes: 'No one has a formula for success; there is not even a consensus about what success would look like. Experts say that diversity programs on college campuses amount to a constantly evolving experiment, which in some cases in the past may have done more harm than good.”

RaceEducationDiversityResearchDiscriminationMarxismAcademiaSocial Sciences
Book:White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century
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“Early biologists were the social scientists of their times, because their racial descriptions of the human species contain explicit behavioral correlations. Racial attributes were cited to explain social conditions, which then became a natural state of affairs. In the process of their construction, races are deemed part of nature; they are alleged to have been “discovered,” not constructed by an emphasis on particular anatomical attributes. This assumption of the naturalness of race is connected with the pursuit of an explanation of a particular social condition—inequality. Races, as unequal biological entities, must be said to have their peculiar cultures, psychologies, and unequal economic circumstances.”

InequalityRacesSocial Sciences
Author:Yehudi O. Webster
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“La sociedad neofeudal hispanoamericana no es ni guerrera ni inestable. Al contrario: desde la consumación de la conquista hasta las guerras de independencia, en Hispanoamérica va a existir una asombrosa paz, mantenida casi sin tropas [...]. Dentro de este orden, la hacienda es desde luego una institución política a la vez que económica. El hacendado colonial es un factor de producción, y a la vez un agente del orden. La hacienda misma es una molécula del organismo social. Sobre ella reina el hacendado o, en su ausencia, el mayordomo. Los castigos son brutales, y pueden ir hasta la muerte bajo los azotes. También hay paternalismo, benevolencia y, desde luego, relaciones sexuales de los amos y sus hijos legítimos con todas las mujeres de los siervos y esclavos. La institución de la hacienda puede ser hasta defendida, para el momento de su consolidación, como una mejora substantiva con relación a la brutalidad de la "encomienda", donde el indio era una máquina que se usa hasta que se rompe. Pero para el futuro de Hispanoamérica, el costo del a hacienda es alto, el lastre terrible. El molde social se cristaliza. Casi toda la tierra cultivable se concentra en manos de una ínfima minoría. Y esta es la normalidad. Esta situación de todo el poder y toda la riqueza para unos pocos y ningún derecho o propiedad para la mayoría, es considerada justa, y el hacendado, un personaje digno de admiración y hasta de veneración. Sin embargo, la insurrección haitiana y la masacre de los hacendados franceses de esa isla, va a demostrar, a fines del siglo xviii, cómo tales extremos de sumisión pueden, de la noche a la mañana, convertirse en sangrientas explosiones de odio.”

HistoryHistoriaPolíticaLatin AmericaLatinoaméricaSocial SciencesCiencias SocialesHispanoaméricaEsclavosHacendados
Book:Del buen salvaje al buen revolucionario: Mitos y realidades de América Latina
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“Since the beginning of neanderthal man, personal branding has existed. Many choose to believe that personal branding is a new concept and is something that globalization and the expansion of the internet and new technologies have created. Because it is not new, it means we have hundreds of years, as a matter of fact, thousands, to learn and study.”

HistoryPersonal BrandingVisionaryPersonal BrandManifestoSocial SciencesHuman GeoHuman Geography
Book:Personal Branding: A Manifesto on Fame and Influence
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“Till we successfully build a meritocratic society, the integrity of a democracy remains predicated on the integrity of the civil servants. Civil servants are the first defenders of democracy, against crooked politicians as well as angry, mindless mobs.”

DemocracyPolitical ScienceSocial StudiesMeritocracyPublic ServantsCivil ServantsCivil ServiceSocial Sciences
Book:Good Scientist: When Science and Service Combine
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“Women have been brought up with the false sense that they have all the options in the world. We don’t understand that the culture really isn’t offering us all of these options – there still are very strong pressures to conform. We have to step outside the culture to be able to make choices that will really give us what we want. But we lack the psychic mechanisms to do this, to really choose.”

LoveRelationshipsPowerSocial SciencesDalma Heyn
Author:Dalma Heyn
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“A nation with a thousand awakened citizens and a corrupt leader, is much more alive than a nation with an awakened leader and a thousand corrupt citizens.”

InspirationalPoliticalPoliticsLeadershipInspiringSocietyCitizensBrainy QuotesLeadership DevelopmentSocial ChangeSocial WorkPolitical PhilosophyPolitical ScienceSociety QuotesSocial PsychologySocial WorkerSocial ReformSocial ReformerSocial ScienceSocial NormsSociety ProblemSociety ThinkingSocial SciencesSocial WorkersCitizen PowerResponsible Citizen
Book:When Humans Unite: Making A World Without Borders
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“He [Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, 1795], coined the term Caucasian on the basis of a favorite skull of his that had come into his possession from the Caucasus Mountains of Russia. To him, the skull was the most beautiful of all that he owned. So he gave the group to which he belonged, the Europeans, the same name as the region that had produced it. That is how people now identified as white got the scientific-sounding yet random name Caucasian.”

PowerRacismEthnicityCasteSocial SciencesSocial Stratification
Book:Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
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