In this conversation, we discuss Gita Chadha and Renny Thomas’ edited book Mapping Scientific Method: Disciplinary Narrations (published by Routledge in 2022). The conversation includes the two editors and the series editor – Sundar Sarukkai. Sundar Sarukkai is a founder of the Barefoot Philosophers initiative and he works primarily in the realm of philosophy of natural and social sciences. Gita Chadha teaches Sociology in University of Mumbai. Renny Thomas is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.
Namaste. An interesting discussion in this ‘era of interdiciplinarity’ where the boundaries of science and humanities research are merging. Qualitative methods tend to include the opinions/introspections of individual researcher. Apart from Quantitative methods, science disciplines also use indices such as the Biodiversity Indices, Jaccard Index, etc. When dealing with human-wildlife coexistence situations, often Qualitative methods are employed by conservation researchers. There has been an opening up of the availability of survey and statistical methods to the general public via ‘citizen science’, also aided by the R statistical platform, and the mushrooming of NGOs working to build capacity of researchers/conservation professionals. This has helped in conserving species in urban settings/ outside Protected Areas. What will be the Sociology equivalent of ‘citizen science’? Citizen Journalism perhaps?