Dlittle30

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I am a philosopher of social science with a strong interest in China and Southeast Asia. Paying attention to the logical and conceptual issues raised by the social sciences is key to better understanding the modern world. I think philosophers need to interact seriously and extensively with working social scientists and historians if they are going to be able to make a useful contribution.


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LATEST ARTICLES ( 896 )

  • Does "culture" Require Microfoundations?

    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

  • 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

  • Giddens on Agents and Structures

    Giddens Agents 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

  • Organizational Failure as a Meso Cause

    Organizational Failure 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

  • Scaling up

    Scaling

    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

  • Michigan's Recovery?

    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

  • Sociologists on Race

    Sociologists 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

  • Where is Poverty in the National Agenda?

    Where Poverty National Agenda?

    Our elected officials are charged to do their best to create legislation and policies that work best to secure the important life interests of all citizens.... Read more

    Posted on 27 June 2012 SOCIETY

  • How Things Work

    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

  • 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 Much Inequality?

    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

  • Ostrom's Central Idea

    Ostrom's Central Idea

    Elinor Ostrom was a very important contributor to the theory of public rationality and the institutions that underlie cooperation, and she was most deserving... Read more

    Posted on 14 June 2012 SOCIETY

  • Rawls on a Property-owning Democracy

    Rawls Property-owning Democracy

    John Rawls's critique of capitalism was deeper than has been commonly recognized -- this is a central thrust of quite a bit of important recent work on Rawls's... Read more

    Posted on 10 June 2012 SOCIETY

  • Organizations and the Chicago School

    Organizations Chicago School

    Andrew Abbott is a fascinating sociologist, and he is an expert on the Chicago School. His book Department and Discipline: Chicago Sociology at One Hundred... Read more

    Posted on 10 June 2012 SOCIETY

  • Mark Blaug, John Rawls, and the History of Political Economy

    In an earlier post I spent some time trying to determine what the major sources were of Rawls's knowledge of the history of classical political economy. Read more

    Posted on 04 June 2012 SOCIETY

  • Power Within Organizations

    Sociologists have been thinking about organizations in a careful, empirical way for decades. Here is a volume edited by Mayer Zald that results from a 1969... Read more

    Posted on 29 May 2012 SOCIETY