Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper is part of panel 031015: Questioning the
Applicability of the Natural Science Model to Political Science
In the spirit of contemporary science studies, as they might be
represented by Andrew Pickering, Karin Knorr Cetina, Bruno Latour, John
Law, or Michel Callon, this paper follows the actors into the mangle of
practices to examine critically the extraordinary understanding of, as
well as the high regard for, the natural science model in contemporary
American political science. Many critiques have been made of this
model, but it remains fairly well-entrenched in most subfields of the
discipline. By looking at this issue from the perspectives of actor
network theory, the social construction of knowledge, or the political
economy of knowledge production, this paper explores how and why the
natural science model continues to be accepted as natural, scientific,
and a model, especially in the modern American research university. It
makes these moves in order to point toward other understandings of how
political scientists as actors might, and, in fact, do operate in many
other different networks of knowledge production that do not perpetuate
the mythologies of model natural sciences as the natural science model
favored in the modern research university. It asks if, in fact, the
same clusters of educational and scientific institutions, which have
helped to create and sustain such model sciences, are themselves
changing. And, since they do seem to be changing considerably, then
American political scientists must rethink their disciplinary practices
as they enter their second century as an organized
professional-technical society of scholars.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: A rise in time and cost pressure has led to video news releases (“footage”) becoming increasingly popular in television editorial offices. Footage represents broadcastable video material which is made available to television stations by companies and institutions for reasons of public relations (PR). Its use is, however, problematical since editorial contents can thus be influenced by third parties. Against the background of the intereffication model of journalism and PR the question of the influence of footage on television reporting is explored on the basis of the example of science journalism. To this end, in a case study 44 German science journalists were asked how they dealt with this material. The results lead to the conclusion that footage is handled pragmatically. In addition, within the framework of a contents analysis of transmission data relating to reporting on the Max Planck Society, the influence of footage material over a period of nine and a half months was determined (n=274). It was revealed here that almost one third of the reporting was directly attributable to PR material whereby contributions induced by footage were represented to a greater extent and were longer than reports based on news releases. The influence on private stations was greater than that on public-service channels. This therefore raises the question about binding rules on how to deal with footage.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: National Science Foundation
Division of Social and Economic Sciences
Presenter: Patricia White, Sociology Program, National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, 995 SBE, Arlington, VA 22230; phone: (703) 292-8762; fax: (703) 292-9195 e-mail: pwhite@nsf.gov; homepage: http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/ses/sociol /.
The Sociology Program at the National Science Foundation (NSF) supports research on human social organization, demography, and processes of individual and institutional change. The Program encourages theoretically focused empirical investigations aimed at improving the explanation of fundamental social processes. Included is research on organizations and organizational behavior, population dynamics, social movements, social groups, labor force participation, stratification and mobility, family, social networks, socialization, gender roles, and the sociology of science and technology.
The Sociology Program resides in NSF’s Division of Social and Economic Sciences. The Division supports disciplinary and multidisciplinary research, data collection, measurement, and methodological research. Its goal is to develop basic scientific knowledge of social, behavioral, and economic systems, organizations and institutions, and human interaction and decision-making. It also provides support for research conferences, doctoral dissertation research, international group travel, and data resource development.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In a well-known passage in the Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein writes: "A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in language and language seemed to repeat it inexorably." The thesis of this paper is that for most of the past century views about the nature of the scientific enterprise, the relationship between the social and natural sciences, and the nature, configuration and aims of social scientific inquiry have similarly been held captive by series of pictures. The most recent picture, I will maintain, is not quite the Wittgensteinian picture of knowledge generally but rather a more specific picture of natural scientific inquiry. Along Wittgensteinian lines, however, I contend that this misleading picture frames our understandings of science in ways that foreclose consideration of a number of promising options for rethinking the nature of social and political inquiry. Indeed, so powerful is this image that many of those who strive to resist the impulse to pattern political inquiry on one or another model of natural scientific inquiry remain in the grip of it. If one attends, for example, to some of the recent analyses of political inquiry advanced by supporters of the Perestroika movement, it is evident that aspects of this picture continue to shape and color their arguments. Consequently, even when these writers aim to vindicate what are in my view generally laudable ideals of theoretical and methodological pluralism, they do so in ways that threaten to perpetuate a variety of distortions and oppositions and to blunt the critical force and effectiveness of their own arguments. In what follows I shall therefore maintain that if the recent issues raised by the Perestroika controversy are to succeed in prompting a discussion about the nature and aims of political inquiry that yields something more than yet another dreary reenactment of the methodenstreit, it may be important to make this picture explicit and to show how it misleadingly figures both our view of natural science and our understanding of the enterprise of political inquiry.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper seeks to achieve two objectives. First, I broadly surveyed 193 liberal arts and sciences colleges and universities across ten (10) Midwestern states (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio and Wisconsin) to see how many political science programs structure their majors in ways similar to the recommendations made by the Wahlke (1991) report. In general it was found that only a small proportion of programs have adopted the structural recommendations of those reports. Further, it was found that the political science programs that were administratively housed in combined departments were less likely to be structured programs than those programs that were housed in single discipline, political science departments. This might suggest that introducing a curriculum structured along the lines of recommended by the Wahlke and AACU reports in combined departments may face special challenges.