Dlittle30

LATEST ARTICLES ( 891 )

• 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

• Economic Observations

  

  Oskar Morgenstern was one of the founders of mathematical game theory, as co-author with John von Neumann in 1944 of Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. Read more

  Posted on 07 August 2013 BUSINESS, ECONOMICS, SOCIETY

• Eurasian Population Project

  

  In the historical demography hall of fame there is but a single bust -- that of Thomas Malthus. (I'm joking -- there is no historical demography hall of fame. Read more

  Posted on 04 August 2013 SOCIETY

• Nelson Goodman on Psychology

  

  Nelson Goodman is best known within philosophy as an iconoclast within the logical empiricist tradition. He published Fact, Fiction and Forecast in 1954,... Read more

  Posted on 01 August 2013 PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIETY

• A New History of China

  

  James Lee and Byong-Ho Lee have created a remarkable new course on Coursera titled "A New History for a New China, 1700-2000: New Data and New Methods, Part 1". Read more

  Posted on 31 July 2013 SOCIETY

• Quine's Indeterminacies

  

  W.V.O. Quine's writings were key to the development of American philosophy in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. His landmark works ("Two Dogmas of Empiricism,"... Read more

  Posted on 29 July 2013 SOCIETY

• Marx and the Physiocrats

  

  An earlier post highlighted an interesting piece of Marx scholarship by Regina Roth, included in a Routledge collection of important articles on the history of... Read more

  Posted on 18 July 2013 SOCIETY

• Adelman on Albert Hirschman

  

  Jeremy Adelman's detailed and illuminating biography of Albert Hirschman in Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman is an excellent example of... Read more

  Posted on 15 July 2013 SOCIETY

• Life-course Histories and Methods

  

  source: G. Alter, "Completing Life Histories with Imputed Exit Dates" (link) I talked recently with George Alter, a leading historical demographer at the... Read more

  Posted on 12 July 2013 SOCIETY

• Graphing Metadata

  

  One element of the NSA revelations of the past month is the apparent fact that the NSA's PRISM program enables the agency to collect wholesale the transactions... Read more

  Posted on 07 July 2013 SOCIETY

• Marx's Thinking About Technology

  

  It sometimes seems as though there isn't much new to say about Marx and his theories. But, like any rich and prolific thinker, that's not actually true. Read more

  Posted on 05 July 2013 SOCIETY

• Causal Concepts

  

  source: D. Little, “Causal Explanation in the Social Sciences,” Southern Journal of Philosophy (1995) (link) It may be useful to provide a brief account of... Read more

  Posted on 04 July 2013 SOCIETY

• Social Causation

  

  The idea of social causation is a difficult one, as we dig more deeply into it. What does it mean to say that "poor education causes increased risk of... Read more

  Posted on 01 July 2013 SOCIETY

• Institutional Design for Democracies

  

  How can we design practical, effective, and fair institutions for making the basic decisions that are needed within a democratic government? Read more

  Posted on 27 June 2013 SOCIETY

• Institutional Designs for Progressive Reform

  

  One place where Jon Elster's philosophical thinking intersects with empirical social science is in the field of institutional design. Read more

  Posted on 22 June 2013 SOCIETY

• Alford Young on Race and Sociology

  

  Alford Young is professor of sociology at the University of Michigan and an expert on the life experience of inner-city African-American men. He is also chair o... Read more

  Posted on 20 June 2013 SOCIETY