It’s time for March Madness again, the scrambling tournament to determine the number one men and women’s National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I collegiate basketball teams in the United States. Teams from universities all over the U.S. will compete for 19 days, and every game will be televised. For the men’s division 68 teams…

Language and Culture “To put it simply, culture is about ‘shared meanings.’  Now, language is the privileged medium in which we ‘make sense’ of things, in which meaning is produced and exchanged.  Meanings can only be shared through our common access to language.  So, language is central to meaning and culture and has always been…

A Human Science Approach to Engaging in Transformational Social Chang JoAnn McAllister, PhD Abstract This essay outlines a framework grounded in the Human Science tradition for sensitive and engaged participation in addressing today’s critical environmental and social justice challenges. Elements of this tradition – acknowledgment of multiple perspectives, appreciation of the meaning of ordinary human…

Human Sciences are embodied with multiple features that distinguish its approach and body of work from the natural sciences.  “We can identify three main intentions in the modern human sciences: description, interpretation and the reconstruction of meaning structures” (Rothberg, 1991, p. 1). Each of these aspects or intentions gives clarity and definition to the pursuit…

 If you look at a testimony of love from 2,000 years ago it can still exactly speak to you, whereas medical advice from only 100 years ago is ridiculous. – Jennifer Michael Hecht, on poetry versus science   It would seem that human sciences emerged as a rejection of the philosophical, methodological and epistemological underpinnings…

As human science’s project is to transform the world, so is it the task of persons who are engaged in the pursuit of human science. I would go so far as to say that if you are a human scientist, you are by definition a revolutionary intellectual. As Edward Said so eloquently stated, “the challenge…

At every turn we face a complicated world of different perspectives, whether in our everyday or virtual worlds, where conflicting opinions demand our attention. The reality is that much of the dialogue and few of the opinions are based on news, that is, “noteworthy information.” Friday afternoon (3/22/19) it was announced that the ‘Mueller Report,’…

Last week the focus of the news and political commentary was all about the submission of the Mueller report on Friday, March 17, and then the release of the four-page summary from Attorney General William Barr on Sunday. A lot of energy, as I pointed out in my previous post, was expended on conjecture during…

This is my third question about the unfolding Mueller report controversy. First I asked of the initial flurry if it was news, that is, information we can use. I focused on the alternatives of conjecture, supposition, and assumptions that were taking the place of thinking, or creating knowledge. A point of view reflects our knowledge,…

I have described three strategies for listening, thinking, and responding to the news: asking if it is really news, identifying the point of view, and questioning who wins and who loses. There is a fourth dynamic that requires a strategic response, as well, and it is how our attention is captured and why. On air,…

It is time to ask, is it all just a story? Yes, but a story is never just a story. There are a lot of layers to stories and why and how we tell them. Once again the Mueller Report provides a window into how to understand the news, which is delivered through a cascade…

Stories come to us as a cascade of words. The words are, usually, intentionally selected to make the story work, that is, to convey the perspective of the storyteller. A word can convey opinion, emotion, or feelings that listeners may resonate with or not. This week was full of stories about violence, particularly violence at…

There are now multiple conversations at cross-purposes on the fall out from the Special Counsel’s report and it has been an excellent example of how to analyze and reflect on what is presented as the news. It is time to move on, however, and wrap up the process of asking questions that I have walked…

The questions asked about the Mueller Report over the last seven weeks represent a framework to learn, analyze, and act on social and political issues from a grounded perspective. So often our passion to respond to some immediate injustice takes us off on a journey for which we do not have a map. One of…

The questions that I have been asking the last several weeks can be important tools when integrated into a framework to facilitate effective social change. Whether you are an engaged scholar, a practitioner, a nonprofit leader, staff or volunteer at a community organization, or you are an advocate or movement activist responding to a specific…

There are three concepts in the framework I have been using to pose questions about the events, policies, and positions reported in the news. In summing up the several essays prompted by the Mueller Report, I described the concepts as questions about knowledge, that is, what we believe; the role of people’s ordinary experience in…

Dear friends of the Human Science Institute we have learned a lot about communicating with you through this new (to us) format of the blog. We are going to take some time – a break from the news, yes – but also some time to learn more about how to support you and others who…