Social science and participation

This free course, Social science and participation, looks at how social science investigates participation, and uses this topic to look in particular at how social science helps to enact social worlds. As you work through the course, you will see that social science enactment of participation is closely related to social science descriptions of, for example, voting or other citizenly practices, and related also to social science understandings of, for example, just how to define and evaluate poverty.

Course learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

Identify the ways in which social scientific descriptions and understandings are related to the enactment of social worlds

Understand the enactment of social science in terms of informing public debates and shaping the social worlds it investigates

Identify the ways in which social science investigates participation as a topic and the uses to which social science research on participation is put

Understand how social scientific ideas about participation in social worlds have impacted on public debates and policies about poverty

Provide examples of how ordinary people are themselves involved in participating in social science.