Dlittle30

LATEST ARTICLES ( 899 )

• Did Marx Invent "class Conflict"?

  

  Marx offered several theories of the modern world that he observed around him in mid-nineteenth-century Britain that have influenced much of turmoil that... Read more

  Posted on 01 May 2020 SOCIETY

• The Democratic Dilemma of Trust

  

  In 2007 Chuck Tilly published an intriguing historical and theoretical study of the politics of equality and voice, Democracy. Read more

  Posted on 28 April 2020 SOCIETY

• Social Factors Driving Technology

  

  In a recent post I addressed the question of how social and political circumstances influence the direction of technological change (link). Read more

  Posted on 25 April 2020 SOCIETY

• The Malthusian Problem for Scientific Research

  

  It seems that there is a kind of inverse Malthusian structure to scientific research and knowledge. Topics for research and investigation multiply geometrically... Read more

  Posted on 20 April 2020 SOCIETY

• Literature and Memory

  

  As a way of finding some interesting distraction in the social isolation of Covid-19 I have been reading Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory. Read more

  Posted on 17 April 2020 SOCIETY

• Thomas Hughes on Electric Power as a Sociotechnical System

  

  We have quite a few ideas about how technology affects us personally and socially. But we are less aware of the ways in which facts about the contemporary socia... Read more

  Posted on 10 April 2020 SOCIETY

• Gross Inequalities in a Time of Pandemic

  

  Here is a stunning juxtaposition in the April 2 print edition of the New York Times. Take a close look. The top panel updates readers on the fact that the city... Read more

  Posted on 04 April 2020 SOCIETY

• Brass on anti-Muslim Violence in India

  

  The occurrence of anti-Muslim violence, arson, and murder in New Delhi last month is sometimes looked at a simply an unpredictable episode provoked by protest... Read more

  Posted on 25 March 2020 SOCIETY

• A Course on Democracy and Intolerance

  

  I am teaching a brand new honors course at my university called “Democracy and the politics of division and hate”. The course focuses on the question of the... Read more

  Posted on 22 March 2020 SOCIETY

• An Existential Philosophy of Technology

  

  Ours is a technological culture, at least in the quarter of the countries in the world that enjoy a high degree of economic affluence. Read more

  Posted on 19 March 2020 SOCIETY

• Explaining Large Historical Change

  

  Great events happen; people live through them; and both ordinary citizens and historians attempt to make sense of them. Examples of the kinds of events I have i... Read more

  Posted on 14 March 2020 SOCIETY

• The Assault on Democracy by the Right

  

  A democracy depends crucially upon a core set of normative commitments that are accepted on all sides -- political parties, citizens, government officials,... Read more

  Posted on 13 March 2020 SOCIETY

• Fascist Attacks on Democracy

  

  The hate-based murders of at least nine young people in Hanau, Germany this week brought the world's attention once again to right-wing extremism in Germany... Read more

  Posted on 22 February 2020 SOCIETY

• Slime Mold Intelligence

  We often think of intelligent action in terms of a number of ideas: goal-directedness, belief acquisition, planning, prioritization of needs and wants, oversigh... Read more

  Posted on 20 February 2020 SOCIETY

• Methods of Causal Inquiry

  

  This diagram provides a map of an extensive set of methods of causal inquiry in the social sciences. The goal here is to show that the many approaches that... Read more

  Posted on 18 February 2020 SOCIETY

• Generativity and Emergence

  

  Social entities and structures have properties that exercise causal influence over all of us, and over the continuing development of the society in which we... Read more

  Posted on 16 February 2020 SOCIETY

• The Future of Our Democracy

  

  How can the United States recover its culture of civility and mutual respect among citizens after the bitter, unlimited toxicity of the first three years of... Read more

  Posted on 07 February 2020 SOCIETY

• Alain Touraine on Social Movements

  

  Alain Touraine, now in his tenth decade, published Défense de la modernité in 2018 as a statement of his current thinking about the meaning of modernity, and... Read more

  Posted on 04 February 2020 SOCIETY

• Responsible Innovation and the Philosophy of Technology

  

  Several posts here have focused on the philosophy of technology (link, link, link, link). A simple definition of the philosophy of technology might go along... Read more

  Posted on 26 January 2020 SOCIETY

• What Are the Prospects for a Progressive Movement in the US?

  

  It is hard to remember that American politics has experienced times of profound reflection upon and criticism of the premises of modern urban, capitalist,... Read more

  Posted on 18 January 2020 SOCIETY