Dlittle30

LATEST ARTICLES ( 896 )

• Political Polarization?

  

  Is the American electorate "polarized" with regard to sets of political issues? McCarty, Rosenthal, and Poole accept the common view that we have in fact... Read more

  Posted on 22 August 2012 POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Social Obligations and Markets

  

  The vice presidential pick for the Republican ticket is an extreme voice on the question of whether individuals have obligations to others in society that... Read more

  Posted on 17 August 2012 SOCIETY

• Mobilizing the Masses

  

  One of the books on the Chinese Revolution that I particularly respect is Odoric Wou's 1994 Mobilizing the Masses: Building Revolution in Henan. As noted in... Read more

  Posted on 13 August 2012 SOCIETY

• Civil Rights History

  

  What is involved in assembling the history of a complicated period like the US civil rights movement? This is a difficult question for any complex historical... Read more

  Posted on 10 August 2012 SOCIETY

• Mayer Zald

  

  I am sorry to share the news with readers that Mayer Zald passed away today in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Mayer was a brilliant sociologist, a founding contributor... Read more

  Posted on 08 August 2012 SOCIETY

• Response to Little by Dave Elder-Vass

  

  [Dave Elder-Vass accepted my invitation to write a response to my discussion of his recent book, The Reality of Social Construction (link). Read more

  Posted on 08 August 2012 SOCIETY

• What is the Good of a University Education?

  

  Martha Nussbaum is one of the most exceptional voices in philosophy and public policy we have today, and she has contributed to a wide range of topics. Her wor... Read more

  Posted on 05 August 2012 PHILOSOPHY, SCHOOLING, SOCIETY

• Many Capitalisms?

  

  Professor Luciano Segreto lectured in Michigan this week on the subject of a comparison between US and European capitalisms. Segreto is professor of... Read more

  Posted on 03 August 2012 DEBATE, SOCIETY

• Elder-Vass on Social Realism

  

  Dave Elder-Vass's arguments for the real causal powers of social structures have been considered here several times (link, link). Elder-Vass's recent book,... Read more

  Posted on 01 August 2012 SOCIETY

• Social Embeddedness

  

  To what extent do individuals choose their courses of action largely on the basis of a calculation of costs and benefits? And to what extent, on the contrary,... Read more

  Posted on 31 July 2012 SOCIETY

• 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