NEW AGE CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITY IN SOCIAL SCIENCE

Challenges to a dynamic understanding of history are mounting, with changes in media technologies, consumerism, and human consciousness playing a central role. More positively, however, research has discovered ways to document our cognitive experiences as both historically bound and yet increasingly autonomous entities. Moreover, understanding how these dualistic tensions influence contemporary life may provide the impetus for research on self-regulation, particularly in our professional practices. I suggest that cognitive anthropology can benefit from more sustained interaction with philosophy, history, sociology, psychology, political science, economics, and literature. These diverse perspectives all show us the extent to which humans participate in history and hence our impact on it. They also give us insights into how humans (i) assess their pasts, (ii) regulate their behaviour, and (iii) build new possibilities into the future. The intersection of the subjective and the objective world creates challenges for traditional methods of studying historical change.  New methodologies are needed that will aid scholars in acquiring better knowledge of social phenomena. While many questions remain unanswered, social scientists need to ask themselves if they can effectively employ knowledge derived from varied fields of inquiry to enhance the interpretive quality of their work . Such efforts would foster deeper engagement with communities in diverse parts of the world. It is my hope that such engagements will inspire anthropologists to enrich their contributions to scholarship by fostering dynamic thinking about human action and practices. This book presents some initial steps toward building this dialogue between different perspectives in order to stimulate productive conversations between researchers from different disciplines. This book consists of 23 chapters which provides an insight into different key issues and challenges of new age social science and provide a holistic view on various challenging issues.