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 ( 893 )
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Moses Finley's Persecution by McCarthyism
MI Finley (1912-1986) played a transformative role in the development of studies of the ancient world in the 1960s through the 1980s. Read more
Posted on 31 August 2023 SOCIETY -
Memory and Culture After 1989 in Central Europe
The years following the collapse of the socialist-Stalinist regimes of eastern Europe were not comfortable for the people of the GDR, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary... Read more
Posted on 21 August 2023 SOCIETY -
Are Organizations Emergent?
Do organizations have properties that are in some recognizable way independent from the behaviors and intentions of the individuals who inhabit them? Read more
Posted on 15 August 2023 SOCIETY -
Marxism and British Historiography
It is noteworthy that some of the very best historical research and writing of the 1930s through 1970s in Britain was carried out by a group of Marxist... Read more
Posted on 14 August 2023 SOCIETY -
A Curious Convergence Between Social Ontology and Process Metaphysics
For the past six months or so I've been wrestling with how to reformulate my own thinking about the nature of the social world -- the nature of "social... Read more
Posted on 04 August 2023 SOCIETY -
A New Course on the Terrible Twentieth Century
I've spent the last several weeks designing a new honors course for juniors on the catastrophes of the twentieth century. It's not a "history" course, and it's... Read more
Posted on 30 July 2023 SOCIETY -
The Generation of the Freedom Riders
The courageous Catherine Burks-Brooks passed in early July in Birmingham, Alabama, at the age of 83. The New York Times ran an extensive and moving obituary... Read more
Posted on 24 July 2023 SOCIETY -
Regulatory Failure in Freight Rail Traffic
On any given day some 7,000 freight trains are in motion around the United States, with perhaps 70,000 individual freight cars and intermodal units in transit... Read more
Posted on 22 July 2023 SOCIETY -
Trump, Hitler, and the Politics of Legality
Christopher Browning is a noted and respected historian of the Nazi period and the Holocaust (link). His October 2022 article in the Atlantic on "the politics o... Read more
Posted on 18 July 2023 SOCIETY -
The Air Traffic Control System and Ethno-cognition
Diane Vaughan's recent Dead Reckoning: Air Traffic Control, System Effects, and Risk is an important contribution to the literature on safety in complex... Read more
Posted on 09 July 2023 SOCIETY -
Life and Memory in Lviv
The tragic death of Victoria Amelina in Kramatorsk, Ukraine on June 27 in a Russian missile attack against civilian targets makes me think of her writings... Read more
Posted on 08 July 2023 SOCIETY -
Asian Network for the Philosophy of Social Sciences
The third meeting of the Asian Network for the Philosophy of Social Sciences (ANPOSS) took place in Bangkok last week (link). It was a highly stimulating... Read more
Posted on 30 June 2023 SOCIETY -
Eric Hobsbawm's History of the Historians' Group
photo: Hobsbawm at workThe British historian Eric Hobsbawm was a leading member of the British Communist Party-affiliated Historians' Group. Read more
Posted on 11 June 2023 SOCIETY -
Aldon Morris on the Civil Rights Movement
Aldon Morris's Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (1984) is a highly valuable treatment of the US civil rights... Read more
Posted on 10 June 2023 SOCIETY -
How "micro" Does the Sociology of Social Movements Need to Go?
Doug McAdam's Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 is recognized as a leading sociological study of the US Civil Rights movement. Read more
Posted on 08 June 2023 SOCIETY -
Touraine's Method of "sociological Intervention" Applied to Contentious Politics
Alain Touraine has been one of the most prolific sociologists in France for at least six decades. Of particular interest to me is his study of the Solidarity... Read more
Posted on 06 June 2023 SOCIETY -
Photographs from the Holocaust
image: Warsaw Ghetto Memorial 1948 (detail)An earlier post analyzed Wendy Lower's stunningly original treatment of a single photograph of a 1941 mass killing... Read more
Posted on 02 June 2023 SOCIETY -
Key Premises of Analytical Sociology
Image: residential segregation by race, NYC 2010In Dissecting the Social Peter HedstroĢm describes the analytical sociology approach in these terms: Although th... Read more
Posted on 31 May 2023 SOCIETY -
Meso-foundational Explanations
One of the catechismal ideas of analytical sociology is the microfoundations model of explanation: to explain a social fact we should provide an account of the... Read more
Posted on 20 May 2023 SOCIETY -
New Thinking About How Authoritarian Rule Works
image: Russian police arrest Moscow anti-war protesterThe risk to democracy in the United States is more serious than it has ever been (link, link, link). Read more
Posted on 13 May 2023 SOCIETY
