This archive report was first published on 21 May 2020.
As the world grapples with the Covid-19 pandemic, it is time for social scientists to take up their role in guiding us towards a better understanding of human society.
Published on May 21, 2020, Dr. Steve Akoth's article in The Nation highlights the need for social scientists to rethink their theories, research methods, and societal imaginations in the face of the pandemic.
Dr. Akoth argues that social sciences, particularly sociology, have been replicating the logic and methods of natural sciences, leading to a focus on empirical data and modelling. This has resulted in individuals being treated as free beings, with the society controlling the individual.
However, Dr. Akoth suggests that this perspective is limited and that structure and agency must be separated. He argues that social theories, methods of social science research, and imaginations are done in the imagination of society and how it gets to be understood and related to human beings as individuals and groups.
Dr. Akoth also critiques the undue influence of post-European enlightenment thoughts and its leftovers on social sciences and academic teaching. He argues that the disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic are an invitation for universities to rethink the premises for their social theories, methods of research, and imaginations.
He calls for a shift away from empiricism, presentism, and modelling, and towards imagining the unknown and invisible future. Dr. Akoth suggests that social sciences should take up their role of an apocalyptic critique of society, considering the certainties and problematizing them with futuristic imaginations.
He argues that social scientists should pose questions such as how society would be disrupted and what adjustments would be required to defend themselves from pandemics, and how governance relations, families, and schooling would be organized in a post-pandemic world.
