METHODOLOGY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES
Year:2007 | Volume:13 | Issue:50|Papers Count:10

This text attempts to analyze and clarify the nature of ijtihad method, presuming the possibility and necessity of producing religions science by using ijtihad method.We believe that ijtihad method is the only successful and feasible method of producing Islamic humanities. We have strived to explore ijtihad from the view of methodology and to access the epistemological value of the products of ijtihad method.

Social studies and humanities are currently exposed to serious crises, the inclination to achieve a single method and theory in humanities and social sciences has greatly diminished and post-structuralism approaches to finding and applying modem research methods have taken precedence. This new approach, which suggests various methodologies, causes a methodological confusion. Moreover, with its proposal of the idea of encountering the world by cultural and linguistic traditions, any type of direct encounter with the world is eliminated and all branches of human knowledge is introduced as value and theory laden.This article introduces a brief account about structural approach and then criticizes it. Then, following a description of post-structuralism and its similarities and differences with structuralism, the role of method in this approach is discussed.

The use of case study methodology as a research strategy in social studies, especially in small scale research, is spreading out rapidly. The aim of case study is to establish a relation between library research and real life.information, in order to release the principles and scientific theories from universities and research centers.A case or theorem is a written narration of some research which existed before and it is not a kind of situation that has come to existence artificially.Furthermore, it has no similarity with experimental research, in which the variables are manipulated in order to measure the influence of a particular element. A case study is a multilateral and profound research accomplished by using qualitative research methods on a social phenomenon.In this article, it is attempted to analyze the different aspects of the method, background, definitions, characteristics types, advantages and disadvantages of case study and its applications as a research strategy.

In recent decades, a number of research paradigms of humanities have been proposed besides or as supplement to traditional research methods.Hermeneutics which consists of humanities in particular, is one of the current intellectual trends. The researcher attempts to act according to the special nature of human phenomena and does not intend to pursue such goals as recovering universal principles.This intellectual method has some positive effects, such as distinguishing the research method of humanities from natural sciences, opposing simplification and reductionism of human and social phenomena, avoiding statisticism in humanities, attending to human being as a whole, emphasizing on the function of reasoning in human behavior instead of searching for causes, and using introvert methods.

Research is a scientific and systematic activity about a subject, accompanied by its multilateral analysis. In other words, research is a process of knowledge production. A Researcher gathers information, processes it and analyzes it. One of the main obstacles on the way of a researcher's success, especially while the researcher's inefficiency of selecting subject and setting research proposals, is the information and lack of the necessary acquaintance with the methods of systematic research. Nowadays, the level of some research projects in the world as well as in our country, especially in Masters and Ph.D. levels, is so high that after the defense session they become scientific references for those who want to write a book and articles.Therefore, reviewing some of the challenges and proposing strategies for conducting researches in the various fields of humanities can be useful. In view of the teaching experience in this subject and other humanities fields, the article provides an introduction to this important issue.

Psychoanalysis is one of the important scientific theories of the twentieth century that was established by Sigmund Freud. Freud introduced some very important concepts such as the unconscious and the role of the suppressed desires to the field of psychology. The purpose of this essay is to shed light on some philosophical and theological studies on psychoanalysis. At First, the view of Karl Popper (1902-1994), a British philosopher, an advocate of analytic philosophy, is analyzed. Next, the view of Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), a French philosopher of the philosophical tradition of continental philosophy and among those who have tendency to post-modem philosophy that introduced psychoanalysis to philosophy, is studied. Finally, the views of Paul Tillich (1886-1955), a German philosopher and Protestant theologian who has influential views about modem theology and special interest in existentialism a- and psychoanalysis of his theological views, are explored.