Dlittle30

LATEST ARTICLES ( 891 )

• Gradual Institutional Change

  

  Here are some very fundamental questions that we can ask about social institutions -- the relatively durable sets of rules, practices, and norms through which... Read more

  Posted on 10 April 2013 SOCIETY

• Are There Online Solutions to Rising College Costs?

  

  There are many, many voices offering observations and criticisms of universities in face of rising costs and tuitions. But none is more qualified than Bill Bowe... Read more

  Posted on 07 April 2013 SOCIETY

• Organizations and Strategic Action Fields

  

  image: Hierarchical modularity of nested bow-ties in metabolic networks, Jing Zhao, Hong Yu, Jian-Hua Luo, Zhi-Wei Cao and Yi-Xue Li (link) Neil Fligstein and... Read more

  Posted on 05 April 2013 SOCIETY

• Moral Intuitions as Evolutionary Modules

  

  People have moral reactions to the situations they observe around themselves -- within the work environment, in the family, on the street, or in international... Read more

  Posted on 02 April 2013 PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY

• Critical Theory in the Frankfurt School

  

  An earlier post raised the question of the meaning of the word "critical" in Roy Bhaskar's theory of critical realism. The most extensive discussions of the... Read more

  Posted on 30 March 2013 SOCIETY

• Michael Mann on Power

  

  In 1986 Michael Mann began a strikingly ambitious project -- to give a theoretical and historical account of the history of power in human history. Read more

  Posted on 27 March 2013 SOCIETY

• What is "critical" About Critical Realism?

  Critical realism is an approach to the philosophy of social science advocated centrally by Roy Bhaskar. Other contributors include Margaret Archer and Andrew... Read more

  Posted on 24 March 2013 SOCIETY

• Mechanisms of Racial Disparities

  

  A fundamental fact about American society is the persistence of disparities between African-American and European-American populations. Read more

  Posted on 18 March 2013 SOCIETY

• Moral Emotions

  

  Why do people act morally? Why do people act altruistically, keep their promises, or act fairly? It is sometimes held that a part of the answer is that people... Read more

  Posted on 16 March 2013 SOCIETY

• What Became of Detroit?

  

  As Detroit approaches a new turn in its difficult journey over the past several decades, the imposition of an Emergency Financial Manager by the governor of... Read more

  Posted on 09 March 2013 SOCIETY

• Crozier on Actors and Organizations

  

  I ran across a book by Michel Crozier and Erhard Friedberg I hadn't read before in a Dijon bookstore, L'acteur et le système: Les contraintes de l'action... Read more

  Posted on 07 March 2013 SOCIETY

• Decline of French Universities

  

  France has 83 state-supported universities and well over a million undergraduate students in university. After visits over several years to one of these... Read more

  Posted on 03 March 2013 SOCIETY

• New Thinking About Social Systems

  

  There is a great deal of important international work underway today within the philosophy of social science on the general topic of social ontology. How do... Read more

  Posted on 02 March 2013 SOCIETY

• Sociology of Soccer?

  

  What might be involved in doing sociological research on an extended and multilayered social phenomenon like soccer? It might seem as though the answer to this... Read more

  Posted on 27 February 2013 SOCIETY

• Is "soccer" an Extended Social Thing?

  

  Some social entities are compact and well bounded -- FEMA as a federal emergency bureau, the IBM Corporation, the Southern Poverty Law Center. Read more

  Posted on 22 February 2013 SOCIETY

• Supervenience of the Social?

  

  I have found it appealing to try to think of the macro-micro relation in terms of the idea of supervenience (link). Supervenience is a concept that was develope... Read more

  Posted on 18 February 2013 SOCIETY

• Anarchism?

  

  Is there anything still of interest in the political ideas of anarchism? Can anarchist thinking help contribute to solutions for the conundrums we face in... Read more

  Posted on 15 February 2013 SOCIETY

• The Ontology of Power

  

  There have been quite a few posts on the concept of power over the years in this blog (link). This continues to be an intriguing subject for me. Read more

  Posted on 12 February 2013 PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY

• Character and Authenticity

  

  image: Molière's Tartuffe, Comédie Française When we judge that a person has acted on the basis of character in a given situation, we are implying a judgment... Read more

  Posted on 09 February 2013 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Heterogeneous Social?

  

  image: screenshot from video, "A Bird Ballet" I've argued in several places that we need to think of the social world as being radically heterogeneous (link,... Read more

  Posted on 05 February 2013 SOCIETY