Spectral Variables (Social Sciences and Humanities)

The foundational insight that studying human meaning, culture, and society requires attending to the ghosts that quantitative methods miss. These spectral variables include historical trauma that shapes community responses, unspoken power dynamics in an interview, the researcher's own positionality relative to those studied, the language gaps that lose meaning in translation, and the silenced voices that never make it into the archive. In social sciences and humanities, spectral variables aren't noise to be eliminated—they're the signal, or at least the key to understanding what the signal means. Good humanistic research maps the ghosts rather than pretending they aren't there.

Spectral Variables (Social Sciences and Humanities) "Your survey data shows 80% satisfaction. But the Spectral Variables tell a different story: people were afraid to be honest with government researchers, the translator softened critical responses, and the community's historical experience with surveys made them tell you what they thought you wanted. Your data is accurate and completely wrong—haunted by ghosts you never asked about."

by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal February 23, 2026

Critical Social Sciences

The application of critical theory to the study of society: examining how power, ideology, and social structures shape human life, and how knowledge about society can serve emancipatory interests. Critical Social Sciences don't just describe society—they critique it, revealing oppression, exposing ideology, and working toward transformation. Sociology, anthropology, political science, and economics, when done critically, become tools for understanding and changing unjust structures, not just documenting them.

"Your study describes inequality, but Critical Social Sciences ask: why does it exist? Who benefits? How could it be different? Description without critique is just photography of a car crash—interesting but useless to the victims."

by Abzugal February 23, 2026