Dlittle30

LATEST ARTICLES ( 896 )

• 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

• Historians of Past & Present

  

  image: "Historians of Past and Present," National Portrait Gallery, London A recent article on J. H. Elliott in the New York Review of Books includes a very... Read more

  Posted on 03 February 2013 SOCIETY

• Rationale for the Philosophy of Social Science

  

  The philosophy of social science is one of the smaller sub-disciplines of philosophy, and many universities have only a single course in the subject. Read more

  Posted on 01 February 2013 SOCIETY

• Social Embeddedness and Methodological Localism

  

  Methodological localism emphasizes two ways in which actors are socially embedded. Actors are socially situated and socially constituted. Socially situated. Read more

  Posted on 30 January 2013 SOCIETY

• SSHA Call for Papers

  Macrohistorical Dynamics Network 38th Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association Chicago, IL 21-24 November 2013 Submission Deadline: 15 February... Read more

  Posted on 27 January 2013 SOCIETY

• Mayer Zald on His Development as a Sociologist

  I had the opportunity to have lunch with Mayer Zald in July last summer, a few weeks before his death. Our conversation was wide-ranging, but one segment in... Read more

  Posted on 27 January 2013 PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY

• Mayer Zald on Organizations and Bureaurcracy

  

  Mayer Zald helped to shape the field of organizational behavior in the United States, beginning with his time as a faculty member at Vanderbilt and continuing... Read more

  Posted on 25 January 2013 SOCIETY

• Remembering the Struggle for Racial Equality

  

  We celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on January 21. Here is a curated set of film clips that serve to recall the major challenges of... Read more

  Posted on 20 January 2013 SOCIETY

• Methodological Localism and Actor-centered Sociology

  

  I've advocated in earlier posts for two related ideas: the idea of actor-centered sociology and the idea of methodological localism. Read more

  Posted on 16 January 2013 PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY

• Character and Personality

  

  If we want to have a more adequate theory of the actor (link), we need to broaden our understanding of the factors and capacities that affect action. Read more

  Posted on 13 January 2013 HEALTH, PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIETY

• Character and Historical Experience

  

  Source: Gilles Mora and Beverly Brannan, FSA: The American Vision; photos by Dorothea Lange We often think that some historical periods have deep effects on... Read more

  Posted on 09 January 2013 CULTURE, HISTORY, SOCIETY

• Simon on Complexity

  

  Herbert Simon's The Sciences of the Artificial - 3rd Edition provided an alternative model for thinking about society. We can think of social institutions as... Read more

  Posted on 06 January 2013 PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY

• The Human Sciences

  

  Nomenclature isn't everything -- but it is important nonetheless. What we call the areas of research that examine history, action, and social life makes a... Read more

  Posted on 03 January 2013 SOCIETY

• World History

  

  is more timely today than ever. “Globalization” is almost a cliché, from “The world is flat” to “the homogenization of cultures” to the “commodification of... Read more

  Posted on 01 January 2013 SOCIETY

• Epicurus's Philosophy

  The philosophy of Epicurus wielded great influence, both in the ancient world and in the early modern world (as Steven Greenblatt shows in The Swerve; link). Read more

  Posted on 29 December 2012 SOCIETY

• Behavioral Science

  

  (1958-59 class of Fellows at Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; link) Sometimes the rubric "behavioral science" is used to capture some of th... Read more

  Posted on 26 December 2012 CURRENT, DEBATE, PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS, SOCIETY