Dlittle30

LATEST ARTICLES ( 866 )

• Woodward Avenue

  

  How does a rust belt city relaunch itself? How can the stakeholders of Detroit, Cleveland, or Milwaukee begin to reinvent their cities and get on a track that... Read more

  Posted on 27 July 2012 SOCIETY

• Durable Inequality

  

  Chuck Tilly was an enormously creative historical sociologist, and he also had a knack for a good title. This is certainly true of his 1998 book, Durable... Read more

  Posted on 22 July 2012 SOCIETY

• Readers' List of Innovative Social Science Writing

  

  Image: graph of relationships among the social sciences, Eigenfactor.org To the readers of UnderstandingSociety, I am writing directly to you to ask your... Read more

  Posted on 19 July 2012 SOCIETY

• Path Dependency and Contingency

  Historical outcomes are rarely determined by some set of antecedent conditions. Instead, the outcome that occurs is the result of an extended series of events... Read more

  Posted on 18 July 2012 SOCIETY

• Regulatory Thrombosis

  

  Charles Perrow is a leading researcher on the sociology of organizations, and he is a singular expert on accidents and system failures. Read more

  Posted on 18 July 2012 SOCIETY

• Problems with Causal Mechanisms

  There are a couple of problems with the theory of causal mechanisms that will be difficult to address. Jim Mahoney raises a general concern in "Beyond... Read more

  Posted on 10 July 2012 SOCIETY

• Polarization of American Politics

  

  If anything seems self-evident about recent American politics, it is the fact that our discourse and policy debates have become more polarized. Read more

  Posted on 07 July 2012 SOCIETY

• Meso Powers and Causal Mechanisms

  

  I've argued in earlier posts for several ideas: Meso-level social structures have causal powers. Meso-level social structures must have microfoundations.... Read more

  Posted on 03 July 2012 SOCIETY

• The Social World as Morphogenesis

  

  Critical realism has progressed far since Roy Bhaskar's early writings on the subject in A Realist Theory of Science. One of the most important thinkers to... Read more

  Posted on 02 July 2012 SOCIETY

• Thinking Poverty in the Inner City

  

  I find the question of how other people think to be one of the most interesting angles we can raise about the social world. By "thinking" I mean breaking down... Read more

  Posted on 01 July 2012 SOCIETY

• Are There Meso-level Social Causes?

  Social structures and other social "things" are ontologically peculiar in some ways. Most especially, they are abstract, distributed, and non-material. Read more

  Posted on 28 June 2012 SOCIETY

• Organizational Failure as a Meso Cause

  

  A recurring issue in the past few months here has been the validity of meso-level causal explanations of social phenomena. It is self-evident that we attribute... Read more

  Posted on 28 June 2012 SOCIETY

• Does "culture" Require Microfoundations?

  

  I have consistently argued for a philosophy of social science that emphasizes the actor and the availability of microfoundations. I argue for an actor-centered... Read more

  Posted on 28 June 2012 SOCIETY

• Giddens on Agents and Structures

  

  Anthony Giddens is one of the theorists whose ideas are most often invoked when the idea of social-structural explanation is in play. Read more

  Posted on 28 June 2012 SOCIETY

• Scaling up

  

  City Year is a pretty unusual and impressive social-entrepreneurial organization (link). Founded in 1988 as a platform for providing young Americans an... Read more

  Posted on 27 June 2012 SOCIETY

• Sociologists on Race

  

  It is apparent that society in the United States is racialized in deep ways that greatly disadvantage the African-American population in the country, from healt... Read more

  Posted on 27 June 2012 SOCIETY

• Michigan's Recovery?

  

  The Mackinac Policy Conference brings forward something new this year -- optimism. The state of Michigan has been hammered in the past eight years by the... Read more

  Posted on 27 June 2012 SOCIETY

• How Much Inequality?

  

  How much inequality is too much? Answers range from Gracchus Babeuf (all inequalities are unjust) to Ayn Rand (there is no moral limit on the extent of... Read more

  Posted on 27 June 2012 SOCIETY

• Priorities for Tax Dollars

  There is a very strong impulse in many state legislatures to cut taxes, no matter what the cost is to the state's ability to provide essential services for its... Read more

  Posted on 27 June 2012 SOCIETY

• How Things Work

  

  Social scientists have a set of abstract goals in approaching their work. They want to formulate specific research questions about limited aspects of the... Read more

  Posted on 27 June 2012 SOCIETY