Dlittle30

LATEST ARTICLES ( 866 )

• Polarization

  

  Suppose a country had come to the brink of financial catastrophe because the two parties in its legislature were unable to find compromises in the public... Read more

  Posted on 18 October 2013 SOCIETY

• Purposive Social Action

  

  How can citizens strive to bring about significant social change?So many of the changes we have witnessed in the past forty years have happened to us, not by us. Read more

  Posted on 12 October 2013 SOCIETY

• Why a War on Poor People?

  

  American conservatives for the past several decades have shown a remarkable hostility to poor people in our country. The recent effort to slash the SNAP food... Read more

  Posted on 09 October 2013 SOCIETY

• Issues About Microfoundations

  

  I believe that hypotheses, theories, and explanations in the social sciences need to be subject to the requirement of microfoundationalism. Read more

  Posted on 06 October 2013 SOCIETY

• Beyond Stagnation

  

  source: Lane Kenworthy, Consider the Evidence blog (link) Thirty years ago Sam Bowles, David Gordon and Tom Weisskopf published a book with a provocative... Read more

  Posted on 02 October 2013 SOCIETY

• How to Probe Public Attitudes?

  We are almost always interested in knowing how the public thinks and feels about various issues -- global warming, race relations, the fairness of rising... Read more

  Posted on 29 September 2013 SOCIETY

• What is Reduction?

  

  The topics of methodological individualism and microfoundationalism unavoidably cross with the idea of reductionism -- the notion that higher level entities... Read more

  Posted on 25 September 2013 SOCIETY

• Large Predictions in History

  

  To what extent is it possible to predict the course of large-scale history -- the rise and fall of empires, the occurrence of revolution, the crises of... Read more

  Posted on 20 September 2013 SOCIETY

• Response to Little by Tuukka Kaidesoja

  [Tuukka Kaidesoja accepted my invitation to write a response to my discussion (link) of his recent article in Philosophy of the Social Sciences, “Overcoming... Read more

  Posted on 19 September 2013 SOCIETY

• The Global City -- Saskia Sassen

  

  Saskia Sassen is the leading urban theorist of the global world. (Here are several prior posts that intersect with her work.) Her The Global City: New York,... Read more

  Posted on 15 September 2013 SOCIETY

• Culture Change Within an Organization

  

  It is often said that culture change within an organization or workplace is difficult -- perhaps the most difficult part of trying to reform an organization.... Read more

  Posted on 13 September 2013 SOCIETY

• Meso Causes and Microfoundations

  In earlier posts I've paid attention to the need for microfoundations and the legitimacy of meso-level causation. And I noted that there seems to be a prima... Read more

  Posted on 11 September 2013 SOCIETY

• Social Mechanisms and Meso-level Causes

  

  (This post summarizes a paper I presented at the British Society for the Philosophy of Science Annual Meeting in 2012.) Here and elsewhere I want to defend the... Read more

  Posted on 05 September 2013 SOCIETY

• Ian Hacking on Chance as Worldview

  

  Ian Hacking was one of the more innovative and adventurous philosophers to take up the philosophy of science as their field of inquiry. Read more

  Posted on 02 September 2013 SOCIETY

• Poverty and Economics

  

  How important should the subject of poverty be within the discipline of economics? Some economists appear to think it is a very small issue compared to the... Read more

  Posted on 29 August 2013 SOCIETY

• Social Structures and Causal Powers

  The idea of a causal power has been appealing to the realist tradition within the philosophy of science, and especially so for the philosophy of social science. Read more

  Posted on 28 August 2013 SOCIETY

• Friedman on Racial Discrimination

  

  It is interesting to re-read Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom some fifty years after its original publication. There are many aspects of the book that... Read more

  Posted on 22 August 2013 SOCIETY

• Youth Studies

  

  One of the smaller sub-fields within sociology is "youth studies." This strikes me as an intriguing area of research, and it seems as though the possible... Read more

  Posted on 18 August 2013 SOCIETY

• The Street and the Ring

  

  Loïc Wacquant offers a fascinating piece of urban ethnography in Body Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer. It is his account of his three-year experience... Read more

  Posted on 11 August 2013 SOCIETY

• Expert Knowledge

  

  We often want the judgment of "experts" as we make important decisions in life, health, and business. But what exactly is an expert? One aspect of the idea is... Read more

  Posted on 09 August 2013 SOCIETY