METHODOLOGY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES
Year:2010 | Volume:15 | Issue:61|Papers Count:8

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the most important principles of an Islamic sociology in the form of a paradigm compared with the working sociological paradigms in which human nature, social reality, social research goal and method and values in sociology are the most important elements. These principles are as follows:1) acceptance of innate attributes of humans, 2) rejection of social determinism and stressing on free-will, 3) mixing methodological individualism and holism, 4) emphasizing on human-God relationship, 5) emphasizing on divine laws as parts of social reality, 6) explaining social relations with regard to struggle and relying on some features such as kindness and mutual employing of others, 7) explanation and comprehension of the causes and meanings of behavior, criticizing social conditions and the purposes of social phenomena in term of their relation with God 8) distinguishing between experimental and meta-experimental levels in sociology as a discipline, 9) emphasizing on scientific method in the context of justification., in the experimental level 10) emphasizing on value-freedom in the experimental level.

Recent evaluation of the educational system of economics in Iran shows that different views have been presented in this regard. Lately, the view that got popular, is the segregating approach. This approach, which yet continues, believes that the lessons which are related to economics must be taught all together and the lessons that are related to Islamic Economics must be separated from these lessons and be taught as a whole. This paper criticizes this segregating approach and proves theoretically that this approach faces different philosophical, methodological and practical challenges. After that, it suggests a synthetic approach as a substitute for the segregating approach and shows that this approach has different theoretical merits. In this approach, Islamic economics is not confined to some special lessons but is widened considerably in a way to include conventional lessons, as well.

The formation of Islamic economics is one of the serious challenges of Islamic economy. Martyr Sadr thinks that there are two ways for settling this problem.1- If the fundamental principles of Islamic economy school have achieved, changes will take place in the field of economy.2- When Islamic economy school begins its activity in establishing the economic relations of society, objective economic events will happen. When economists analyze these events, economics will take from.Martyr Sadr selects another way to achieve this goal. The present article seeks to show that martyr sadr's preference of another way is influerced by his view of the function and aim on economics.The article sheds light of this view and offers another way of giving form to Islamic economics.

Over the recent few decades we have observed a new wave of methodological attempts for the revival of the concept of causality, especially the mechanismic understanding of causation in social sciences. Many social scientists, despite their major differences in significant theoretical and methodological issues, have jointly laid an increasing emphasis on explaining phenomena through causal mechanisms. Despite the relatively voluminous literature on mechanismic understanding of causation, there are a number of questions about the meaning and application of causal mechanisms in social sciences. The present article is an attempt to offer a conceptual anatomy of the term of mechanism and demonstrate why scholars of social sciences, particularly sociologists who study macro-level phenomena crucially need to study causal mechanisms. In other words, attempts have been made to demonstrate how mechanisms can, to a great extent, solve the longstanding and enduring problems in sociological studies. Also the relationship between mechanismic understanding of causation with methodological individualism in social sciences have been analyzed.

The aim of this article is to examine Blumer's point of view related to methodology of qualitative research. He is one of the famous thinkers of Chicago School and the first to introduce the term of symbolic interactionism term. He advocates a qualitative methodology named naturalistic method. This his view was a reaction against the hegemony of functional-structutal sociology and quantative methods used in social sciences. His idea reinforces and expands interpretative approach to social sciences. Blumer's works focus on the relation between natural and social sciences. He also criticizes the positivistic approach and the use of quantative techniques in sociological research. He argues that quantative methods are not more than variable analysis and concludes that using variable analysis ignores the dominant role of the pracesses of interpreting human behaviour. Finally, Blumers'ideas have been criticized in this paper.

At the outset of this paper, the Islamic management's knowledge development (IMKD) and it's technical and contextual circumstance has been briefly discussed and it has been found that under the present circumstances exploration, drawing out, and analysis of relevant data and information, and extracting knowledge from them requires some particular qualitative research methods. Then the Cyclical Process of Analysis (CPA), as a qualitative research method, propounded by Sarantakos (1998), consists of data reduction, data organization, and interpretation. The author could, through reasoning, develope CPA as a qualitative research method that could be effective in the course of IMKD, taking into account its special capabilities, contextual condition and contingencies of IMKD, and making use of his experiences in utilizing the mentioned method in some researches. Consequently, a new applied version of CPA of four steps: data gathering, revival data reduction, data analysis and organization, interpretation and conclusion has been explained. Finally, a brief acconunt of a fulfilled research has been reported.

In this paper the author suggests a practical way to strengthen the moral faculty of children by means of literature and play. Firstly, two examples of cognitive moral development approach, Piaget's and Kohlberg's, are briefly introduced and discussed. by considering some feminists' objections to this approach, the author reviews Gilligan's alternative, narrative/hermeneutic approach to moral development. Then he defines metaphor, both conceptual and non-linguistic and concludes that play, especially pretend play, is a kind of extended conceptual metaphor. This definition can help us realize the potentiality of literature and play as two main sources of children's moral development in the context of a narrative-based approach.