Dlittle30
I am a philosopher of social science with a strong interest in China and Southeast Asia. Paying attention to the logical and conceptual issues raised by the social sciences is key to better understanding the modern world. I think philosophers need to interact seriously and extensively with working social scientists and historians if they are going to be able to make a useful contribution.
MY BLOGS
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Understanding Society
http://understandingsociety.blogspot.com/
Innovative thinking about social agency and structure in a global world
LATEST ARTICLES ( 863 )
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Worker-owned Enterprises as a Social Solution
image: Mondragon headquarters, Arrasate-Mondragon, SpainConsider some of the most intractable problems we face in contemporary society: rising inequalities... Read more
Posted on 17 September 2017 SOCIETY -
Responding to Hate
The Southern Poverty Law Center documents that hate groups and hate-based mobilization are on the rise in the United States (link, link). Read more
Posted on 10 September 2017 SOCIETY -
Erik Olin Wright on Real Utopias
Erik Olin Wright is one of the genuinely important contributors to a progressive sociology in the United States. He was one of the first wave of social... Read more
Posted on 04 September 2017 SOCIETY -
New Thinking About Causal Mechanisms
Anyone interested in the topic of causal mechanisms will be interested in the appearance of Stuart Glennan and Phyllis Illari's The Routledge Handbook of... Read more
Posted on 30 August 2017 SOCIETY -
Guest Post by Dave Elder-Vass
[Dave Elder-Vass accepted my invitation to write a response to my discussion of moral realism. (link). Elder-Vass is Reader in sociology at Loughborough... Read more
Posted on 22 August 2017 SOCIETY -
Moral Progress and Critical Realism
Critical realists share a rejection of the fact-value distinction as a fundamental criterion of scientific rationality -- and rightly so (link). Read more
Posted on 12 August 2017 SOCIETY -
Time for a Critical-realist Epistemology
The critical realism network in North America is currently convened in Montreal in a three-day intensive workshop (link). In attendance are many of the... Read more
Posted on 08 August 2017 SOCIETY -
The Guardian Drops the Ball ...
The Guardian posted a short documentary video on the city where I live, Dearborn, Michigan (link). The video is, frankly, a careless, sensationalized, and... Read more
Posted on 05 August 2017 SOCIETY -
First Generation Anti-positivism: Wellmer
In Critical Theory Of Society (1969) Albrecht Wellmer announced a critique of positivist assumptions in the study of society. Proceeding from the perspective... Read more
Posted on 03 August 2017 SOCIETY -
Dynamics of Medieval Cities
Cities provide a good illustration of the ontology of the theory of assemblage (link). Many forms of association, production, logistics, governance, and... Read more
Posted on 29 July 2017 SOCIETY -
Contingency and Explanation
Social change and historical events are highly contingent processes, in a specific sense: they are the result of multiple causal influences that "could have bee... Read more
Posted on 27 July 2017 SOCIETY -
A New Model of Organization?
In Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World General Stanley McChrystal (with Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and Chris Fussel) describes a... Read more
Posted on 21 July 2017 SOCIETY -
Chinese Modernization c. 1930
At the end of the nineteenth century -- which was also of the end of the Qing Dynasty -- China was not "modern". Its political institutions had crumbled, it... Read more
Posted on 12 July 2017 SOCIETY -
Morphogenesis and Social Norms
Critical realism pays particular attention to the enduring structures that underlie various social orders and processes. But as argued in an earlier post, CR... Read more
Posted on 03 July 2017 SOCIETY -
Jobs, Basic Income, and the Future of the Techno-market Economy
In the dystopian vision of the future described in William Gibson's Sprawl novels, there are few people with normal jobs, regular sources of income, retirement... Read more
Posted on 02 July 2017 SOCIETY -
Guest Post by Guus Duindam
Guus Duindam is a J.D./Ph.D. student in philosophy at the University of Michigan. His primary areas of interest are Ethics and Kant. Read more
Posted on 28 June 2017 SOCIETY -
Sociology of Life Expectations
Each individual has a distinctive personality and orienting set of values. It is intriguing to wonder how these features take shape in the individual's... Read more
Posted on 27 June 2017 SOCIETY -
Explanation and Critical Realism
To explain something is to provide a true account of the causes and circumstances that brought it about. There is of course more to say on the subject, but... Read more
Posted on 22 June 2017 SOCIETY -
Cacophony of the Social
Take a typical day in a major city -- a busy street with a subway stop, a park, a coffee bar, and a large consumer financial office. There are several thousand... Read more
Posted on 16 June 2017 SOCIETY -
Organizational Learning
I've posed the question of organizational learning several times in recent months: are there forces that push organizations towards changes leading to... Read more
Posted on 13 June 2017 SOCIETY