فصلنامه مطالعات میان رشته ای در علوم انسانی
سال پانزدهم شماره 3 (پیاپی 59، تابستان 1402)

"Relational perspectives" have been proposed since the 1990s as an alternative approach to the philosophical foundations of social sciences, rejecting hierarchical or binary modes of thought of conventional traditions and avoiding deficiencies of moderate theories. Emphasizing "complexity", "interconnectivity" and "uncertainty" of the world, these views provide accounts of human and social dynamics and processes of "becoming". The latest of these perspectives is "flat ontology" or "deep relationalism". This article provides a comprehensive account of the "flat ontology" concept, its key ideas, and fundamental assumptions through the Research Synthesis, and explores its contributions to co-disciplinary, often suffering from eclectic gaps and the absence of a coherent methodological framework. "Flat ontology" implies "relationality," "multiplicity," "heterogeneity," "contingency," and "spatiotemporality" of reality; and regards entities in a deeply relational way, as dynamic intertwined associations and configurations. This perspective proposes a fluid interpretation of "power", whether among humans or between human and non-human entities, and responds to critical concerns about the necessity of social and environmental inclusiveness. Recent global crises such as the Coronavirus pandemic and climate change confirm the validity of this perspective. According to this view, knowledge fields are deeply interconnected, underscoring the necessity of the co-disciplinary, including multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary. Furthermore, flat ontology redefines the philosophical foundations of the co-disciplinary, towards the transdisciplinarity. Applying such a perspective is important and necessary both in social sciences, which deal with social phenomena, and in public decision -making which prescribes generally in a co-disciplinary way.

Investigating and solving the problem of innovative research at universities can help improve the role of these institutions in developing technology and knowledge exchange among different social and economic audiences as well as contribute to more effective interactions between universities and society. The purpose of this article is to identify and report innovation in the field of research, technology, and knowledge exchange in major universities located in Tehran. This research has been carried out quantitatively based on institutional registration data in two steps. First, the components of the model or conceptual framework were identified through an unsystematic review of the documents. The components include innovation in inputs, processes, and outputs. Inputs encompass human and financial resources aw well as infrastructure; processes involve structures, organizations, mechanisms, and procedures; and outputs comprise of creation and application of knowledge and technology, demand-oriented research projects, the quantity and quality of published scientific articles, books, journals, faculty members' scientific ranks, honors they possess, the expansion of postgraduate education, technological units, start-ups, knowledge-based companies and accelerators, international scientific mobility, and income in the field of research, technology, and knowledge exchange. Second, the state of innovation in eight universities under study has been analyzed in the context of research, technology, and knowledge exchange. In these universities, innovation was found to exist in both concept and perspective: innovation in the research and technology system and its elements and components, and the support of universities and the university research and technology system for transformation and innovation to address stagnation, stasis, and recession. Universities have undergone significant transformation and innovation in research inputs, processes, and outputs, technology, and knowledge exchange, hence, they actively support and promote innovation.

This article aims to address some of the important consequences of the Anthropocene for social relations from a sociological perspective. Stressing on the multidimensionality of environmental changes globally, the paper argues that understanding the new conditions requires interdisciplinary studies and a reevaluation of existing approaches to nature and environmental issues in general. It uses the notion of the Anthropocene to criticize the well-established modernist view distinguishing between nature and society and to discuss that sociology must include nature as an active and constructive agent in its explanations and problem-definition processes. Additionally, this article proposes “the human-nature-society web” as an analytical framework to explain social conditions in the Anthropocene at micro and macro levels. This proposed framework is applied to shed new light on the concept of agency in social theory and to criticize the neglect of the notion of nature in shaping the agency. It also serves to underline the constructive power of nature in society in three significant areas of institutional arrangement, risk, and technology.

The individual-community relationship has always been one of the most fundamental topics of social sciences. In sociology, this is known as the micro-macro relationship while in economics it refers to the processes, through which, individual actions lead to macroeconomic phenomena. Based on philosophical discourse and systems theory, many sociologists even use the term "emergence" in their understanding of micro-macro relationship, which refers to collective phenomena that are created by the cooperation of individuals, but cannot be reduced to individual actions. "Emergence" theories attempt to explain the nature of society as a complex system by examining how individuals and their relationships lead to the creation of integrated and macro-social phenomena such as markets, educational systems, cultural beliefs, and shared social practices. As a prelude to activity, every researcher has to answer the question from the methodological point of view, how is it possible to study the behavior of social groups and how can we gain knowledge about the laws related to social groups? Anyone who deals with humanities and social sciences or any reality and phenomenon that affects human beings, inevitably deals with the reality that is emerging. In fact, emergence occurs when one level of reality emerges radically from another level. Examples of emergent levels of reality include how the mind emerges from the body; or the way society emerges from human beings. Therefore, when there is an emerging factor, different scientific disciplines should be used, because it is inevitable to talk about social affairs, psychology and neurobiology, as well as physical and even chemical.

In achieving frameless art within the scope of conceptual one, the approach of contemporary art is to utilize the technological revolution and emphasize interaction between audience and the work of art, taking into account the environmental concepts. Ecological art, as one of the most contemporary art forms, represents a new avant-garde style through its treatment of the environmental crisis. The environmental degradation has created a common space for the actors to represent the interaction of different discourses of knowledge, including the different dimensions of science in understanding this issue. By this way, this research is necessary to explain the art-science interaction in ecological art and understand the discursive relations in contemporary art; hence, it is carried out by studying the representation of the interaction between the above two with a critical approach to the environmental crisis as well as the discursive formation in Foucault's reading of episteme. This paper tries to study the discursive formation of ecological art based on science with the assumption of the synergy of art-science as the discursive platform of contemporary art in representing the environmental crisis. The research method in explaining the discursive rules of ecological art is based on the epistemological description in the theory Foucault, which is based on library resources. Using a variety of experimental, interactive, and participatory techniques, contemporary ecological art can regenerate the discursive space of the environmental crisis through interaction between scientific institutions based on scientific research. The art-science relationship can be considered a schema of the epistemology of our time.

The theory of learned helplessness was presented by Martin Seligman in the late 60s and the early 70s. According to this theory, the previous mental learning had a tremendous impact on future performance. Learned helplessness is a cognitive process that teaches people that staying in such a state leads them to passivity and inactivity, and can keep people stuck in the quagmire of backwardness. Previously, some authors presented articles on the theory of learned helplessness and development, but in this article, the connection between the two and the effect that learned helplessness has on self-concept is discussed. The purpose of this article is to identify the factors that play a role in the lack of development of societies in order to guide them to the path of development by raising developed people. In this research, there is a kind of correlation and causal relationship between two variables: the independent variable - the role of learned helplessness - on the dependent variable - development process. The method of collecting data is in the form of library and documentary studies. The difference between the real self and the ideal self is the beginning of tension and intellectual conflict, and such a process is associated with the thinking that no matter how much effort is made to get out of helplessness, success and progress will not be achieved, and this is exactly the basics that Seligman teaches us in Learned Helplessness.