Dlittle30

LATEST ARTICLES ( 893 )

• 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

• Social Change and Leadership

  

  Historians pay a lot of attention to important periods of social change -- the emergence of new political movements, the development of a great city, the end... Read more

  Posted on 01 June 2017 SOCIETY

• Proliferation of Hate and Intolerance

  

  Paul Brass provides a wealth of ethnographic and historical evidence on the causes of Hindu-Muslim violence in India in The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence... Read more

  Posted on 27 May 2017 SOCIETY

• Democracy and the Politics of Intolerance

  

  A democracy allows government to reflect the will of the people. Or does it? Here I would like to understand a bit better the dynamics through which radical... Read more

  Posted on 24 May 2017 SOCIETY

• Is There a New Capitalism?

  

  An earlier post considered Dave Elder-Vass’s very interesting treatment of the contemporary digital economy. In Profit and Gift in the Digital Economy Elder-Vas... Read more

  Posted on 20 May 2017 SOCIETY

• Brian Epstein's Radical Metaphysics

  

  Brian Epstein is adamant that the social sciences need to think very differently about the nature of the social world. In The Ant Trap: Rebuilding the... Read more

  Posted on 12 May 2017 SOCIETY

• Generativism

  

  There is a seductive appeal to the idea of a "generative social science". Joshua Epstein is one of the main proponents of the idea, most especially in his... Read more

  Posted on 09 May 2017 SOCIETY

• Snippets from the Roman World

  

  image: Arch of Septimius Severus, Forum (203 CE)The history of Rome has a particular fascination for twenty-first century readers, especially in the West. Read more

  Posted on 05 May 2017 CULTURE

• Strategies for Resisting Right-wing Populism

  

  Social Europe is a vibrant publisher of current progressive thought in Europe. Readers can find data, opinion, and policy analysis on the site, highly relevant... Read more

  Posted on 29 April 2017 SOCIETY

• Perspectives on Transportation History

  

  I view transport as a crucial structuring condition in society that is perhaps under-appreciated and under-studied. The extension of the Red Line from Harvard... Read more

  Posted on 27 April 2017 SOCIETY

• New Understandings of Populism

  

  It is apparent, on this first round of the presidential elections in France, that we urgently need to understand better the dynamics and causes of radical... Read more

  Posted on 24 April 2017 SOCIETY