Dlittle30

LATEST ARTICLES ( 866 )

• Ethical Principles for Assessing New Technologies

  

  Technologies and technology systems have deep and pervasive effects on the human beings who live within their reach. How do normative principles and principles... Read more

  Posted on 29 October 2019 SOCIETY

• Regulatory Delegation at the FAA

  

  Earlier posts have focused on the role of inadequate regulatory oversight as part of the tragedy of the Boeing 737 MAX (link, link). Read more

  Posted on 28 October 2019 SOCIETY

• The Tempos of Capitalism

  

  I've been interested in the economic history of capitalism since the 1970s, and there are a few titles that stand out in my memory. There were the Marxist and... Read more

  Posted on 27 October 2019 SOCIETY

• Experimental Sociology of Norms and Decision-making

  

  The discipline of experimental economics is now a familiar one. It is a field that attempts to probe and test the behavioral assumptions of the theory of... Read more

  Posted on 21 October 2019 SOCIETY

• Organizational Culture

  

  It is of both intellectual and practical interest to understand how organizations function and how the actors within them choose the actions that they pursue. Read more

  Posted on 10 October 2019 SOCIETY

• The Functionality of Artifacts

  

  We think of artifacts as being "functional" in a specific sense: their characteristics are well designed and adjusted for their "intended" use. Read more

  Posted on 30 September 2019 SOCIETY

• Flood Plains and Land Use

  

  An increasingly pressing consequence of climate change is the rising threat of flood in coastal and riverine communities. And yet a combination of Federal and... Read more

  Posted on 30 September 2019 SOCIETY

• Kojève on Freedom

  An earlier post highlighted Alexandre Kojève's presentation of Hegel's rich conception of labor, freedom, and human self-creation. Read more

  Posted on 29 September 2019 SOCIETY

• The US Chemical Safety Board

  

  The Federal agency responsible for investigating chemical and petrochemical accidents in the United States is the Chemical Safety Board (link). Read more

  Posted on 03 September 2019 SOCIETY

• Testing the NRC

  

  Serious nuclear accidents are rare but potentially devastating to people, land, and agriculture. (It appears that minor to moderate nuclear accidents are not... Read more

  Posted on 12 August 2019 SOCIETY

• Hegel on Labor and Freedom

  

  Hegel provided a powerful conception of human beings in the world and a rich conception of freedom. Key to that conception is the idea of self-creation through... Read more

  Posted on 11 August 2019 SOCIETY

• The Sociology of Scientific Discipline Formation

  

  There was a time in the philosophy of science when it may have been believed that scientific knowledge develops in a logical, linear way from observation and... Read more

  Posted on 09 August 2019 SOCIETY

• Pervasive Organizational and Regulatory Failures

  

  It is intriguing to observe how pervasive organizational and regulatory failures are in our collective lives. Once you are sensitized to these factors, you see... Read more

  Posted on 01 August 2019 SOCIETY

• Soviet Nuclear Disasters: Kyshtym

  

  The 1986 meltdown of reactor number 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was the greatest nuclear disaster the world has yet seen. Read more

  Posted on 27 July 2019 SOCIETY

• Safety and Accident Analysis: Longford

  

  Andrew Hopkins has written a number of fascinating case studies of industrial accidents, usually in the field of petrochemicals. Read more

  Posted on 18 July 2019 SOCIETY

• Thai Politics and Thai Perspectives

  

  One of the benefits of attending international conferences is meeting interesting scholars from different countries and traditions. Read more

  Posted on 17 July 2019 SOCIETY

• How Things Seem and Why

  

  The idea that there is a stark separation between many of our ideas of the social world, on the one hand, and the realities of the social world in which we... Read more

  Posted on 13 July 2019 SOCIETY

• ABM Fundamentalism

  

  I've just had the singular opportunity of participating in the habilitation examination of Gianluca Manzo at the Sorbonne, based on his excellent manuscript on... Read more

  Posted on 09 July 2019 SOCIETY

• Herbert Simon's Theories of Organizations

  

  Image: detail from Family Portrait 2 1965 (Creative Commons license, Richard Rappaport)Herbert Simon made paradigm-changing contributions to the theory of... Read more

  Posted on 20 June 2019 SOCIETY

• Gilbert on Social Facts

  

  I am currently thinking about the topic of "organizational actors", and Margaret Gilbert's arguments about social actors are plainly relevant to this topic. Read more

  Posted on 14 June 2019 SOCIETY