Victor Lieberman is probably the leading historian of Southeast Asia writing in English today. His primary focus is Burma, and throughout his career he has done a masterful job of piecing together the political, cultural, and economic history of the succession of Burmese polities over a millennium, using materials in many local languages. His current …
Transmitting technology
How do large technological advances cross cultural and civilizational boundaries? The puzzle is this: large technologies are not simply cool new devices, but rather complex systems of scientific knowledge, engineering traditions, production processes, and modes of technical communication. So transfer of technology is not simply a matter of conveying the approximate specifications of the device; …
Three years of UnderstandingSociety
Today marks the end of the third year of publication of UnderstandingSociety. This is the 481st posting, with prior posts covering a range of themes from "social ontology" to "foundations of the social sciences" to "globalization and economic development." In beginning this effort in 2007 I had envisioned something different from the kinds of blogs …
Merton’s sociological imagination
Robert Merton began life as Meyer Schkolnick, son of impoverished Eastern European Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia, and he became one of the most influential American sociologists of his generation. He is most often associated with a couple of phrases that came to embody common knowledge in the social sciences -- "theories of the middle range," …
Super-high-density Shanghai
Shanghai is a city approaching 20 million people, and it is arguably the most economically dynamic city in Asia. This concentration of population and economic activity surely has important long-term consequences. There was an interesting piece in the Shanghai Daily recently by Nate Stein, called "Sky's the limit for well planned city of Shanghai." Stein makes a …
Three years of UnderstandingSociety
Today marks the end of the third year of publication of UnderstandingSociety. This is the 481st posting, with prior posts covering a range of themes from "social ontology" to "foundations of the social sciences" to "globalization and economic development." In beginning this effort in 2007 I had envisioned something different from the kinds of blogs that …
Fresh thinking about government
The eminent neo-Confucian scholar Tu Weiming argues for the importance of bracketing our Western-centric ideas about society, progress, and justice when we think about our global futures. (Here is an interesting article by Tu titled "Mutual Learning as an Agenda for Social Development"; link.) So for a moment let us put aside the familiar rhetoric …
China’s confidence
Traveling in China for the past two weeks has given me a different perspective on the country. The most powerful impression I've had is one of collective national confidence; the sense that China is on the move, that the country is making rapid progress on many fronts, and that China is setting its own course. …
The global talent race
We have a lot of anxiety in the United States about the quality and effectiveness of our educational system, particularly at the elementary and secondary levels. And the anxiety is justified. A large percentage of our school-age population lives in high poverty neighborhoods, and they are served by schools that fail to allow them to …
Toyota in Guangzhou
I got a chance to visit Guangdong this week, and it's a pretty amazing place. You get a very vivid feeling for globalization when you see dozens of container ships lined up off Kowloon, preparing to off-load and reload in several container ports in eastern Guangdong and the lower Pearl River delta. I visited the …
Understanding Society 