The Big Questions
The study of the social sciences provides an excellent forum for big questions regarding the social life of human groups and individuals. Social science inquiry is concerned with societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. We can ask about our place on this planet Earth. The social science disciplines include: anthropology, economics, geography, history, political science, psychology, and sociology. Each provides a lens for seeing the world. The big questions we ask reflect a commitment to understanding the ways in which we see our world(s). How do we know what we know? These questions sometimes take on the tone of “metaquestions” and help contextualize our pursuit of knowledge. Just like the natural sciences, humanities or the Arts, the social sciences help frame our perspective and are grounded in the age-old tradition of inquiry. The big questions act then as ways to organize our thinking within disciplinary boundaries. But they also provide us with opportunities to pursue multi-disciplinary thinking. While many of our big questions are already part of the curriculum and can be found in our textbooks, some others find their ways into many discussions from our own experiences and outside reading. This is an active list that will grow with time. I will highlight some of the big questions here:
- What is the difference between a consumer and a citizen? How do we define these differences? Can we locate them along a continuum rather than create another duality where the options are only two–one or the other?
- What does it mean to have a geographical imagination? How does this imagination affect the way I understand the world, nations, peoples? For example, what is my image of [insert country name]? How is my image of [insert country name] formed? Why do I think this way about [insert country name]?
- What is the process by which we learn about the world? What is my own learning process?
- What is critique? What does it help us accomplish?
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