Social science perspectives on climate change and development

University of Copenhagen

Xaquín S. Pérez-Sindín López

Category: Methodology

  • Critique to sociology and related disciplines by Bastos

    But the idea is that there is a kind of determinism, that there is a series of statistical data from the past that can be used to predict the future, and from those statistics, from that data, a deterministic vision is born. So, for example, everything that is forecasting, futures analysis, and things like that…

  • What is the mission of the university?

    José Ortega y Gasset, in his magnificent work “Mission of the University,” launches a devastating critique: the hyper-specialized professional, incapable of understanding the world beyond their discipline, is the new barbarian of the 20th century. They know how to operate but not how to think; they build machines but do not understand history or the…

  • The Black Swan: Understanding the Power of the Unexpected

    We like to believe the world is predictable. We build plans, forecasts, strategies, and expectations based on what we already know. We look at the past and assume it can help us understand the future. Most of the time, this works well enough. But every so often, something happens that breaks our assumptions completely. This…

  • Types of literature review

    One of the most common problems I see when supervising research students is that they approach the literature review as if it were a neutral, generic, and almost mechanical academic exercise. They assume that a literature review simply means reading a large number of papers, summarising what other scholars have said, arranging those summaries into…

  • 🎓 What is university for, really?

    At the start of a course on Social Science Perspectives on Climate Change, I asked students to complete a short questionnaire. The aim was simple: to understand their expectations and, in pedagogical terms, begin establishing a kind of didactic contract for the course. One question was inspired by a debate that has become increasingly visible…

  • New Publication: Ethnography as Method, Practice, and Ethical Commitment

    I’m pleased to share my latest publication, which explores ethnography as a vital method within qualitative research. The article examines what makes ethnography so enduring and so necessary: its ability to capture the complexity, depth, and lived meaning of social life through immersive engagement in the field. Rather than treating people as abstract data points,…

  • How Discourse Shapes Society

    Words, language, discourse: these are the typical terms people use in everyday life. “It is what it is,” one might say. However, their definition within sociological discourse involves some difficulties. Discourse is, above all, the set of stories we use to describe the world around us. Sometimes those stories are idealized, that is, they are…

  • Doing research as if participants mattered

    Almost all qualitative and quantitative research into human society involves the participation of other humans. However, they are frequently rendered passively in research outputs as ‘research subjects’. In this post, Helen Kara, argues that the way we define participants in research is outdated and presents three ways in which research participants can be made more central…

  • Decolonizing research methods

    Linda Tuhiwai Smith remains the central reference in any serious discussion of the decolonization of research. This post grows out of listening her in this video lecture, but also out of my own experiences in the field. What follows is not a systematic reconstruction of her work, but an attempt to expand some of the…

  • Fieldwork in a village in Central Nepal

    I was watching this video as part of a seminar on ethnography at the Comillas Institute at Columbia University, and while taking notes I began to organize its insights around what can be understood as the different stages of fieldwork. What follows is not a rigid model, but a way of presenting the process more…