The Detroit Regional Chamber Leadership Conference at Mackinac has come and gone. Leaders from all sectors in Southeast Michigan participated in discussions about how the state might move forward and regain the vitality and quality of life that the state has lost in the past decade. All agree that the state faces very tough challenges. …
Real Utopias
It is worth thinking a bit about the intellectual project of envisioning a utopia. By definition, a utopia is a vision of a social order that is profoundly different from the real historical circumstances and institutions in which we live. It would correct important flaws in the social world we currently inhabit. It is a social …
Prosperity based on commodities
An earlier post looked at economic prosperity and standard of living from the point of view of a grain-based agricultural economy. There I singled out intensive, extensive, and technology-based growth, and the effects these scenarios had on the standard of living for a farming population. This is a particularly simple case, since it equates standard …
Varieties of economic progress
The study of economic history reveals a number of different patterns when it comes to agricultural production and the standard of living of a given population in a region. Let's think about the issue in very simple terms. Imagine that the standard of living for a population in a region is determined by the amount …
Doug McAdam on contentious politics and the social sciences
Doug McAdam is hard at work shedding new light on the meso-dynamics of contention. What are the specific social and psychological mechanisms that bring people into social movements; what factors and processes make mobilization more feasible when social grievances arise? Recently he has done work on the impact of Teach for America on its participants, …
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The dropout crisis
The United States faces a huge dropout crisis. In some cities the high school graduation rate is less than 50% -- sometimes as low as 25%. And this means devastating poverty for the dropouts, as well as continuing social blight for their communities. We might say, though, that the graduation rate is only the symptom …
Red shirts as a social movement
The redshirts in Thailand have moved onto the world stage in the past several months. Massive protests in Bangkok have stymied the Thai government and have held the army and police forces at bay for months. Demands from redshirt leaders and posters include removal of the military-backed government of Prime Minister Abhisit and a commitment …
Underdetermination and truth
We say that a statement is underdetermined by available facts when it and an alternative and different statement or theory are equally consistent with that body of facts. It may be that two physical theories have precisely the same empirical consequences -- perhaps wave theory and particle theory represent an example of this possibility. And …
Social theory and the empirical social world
How can general, high-level social theory help us to better understand particular historically situated social realities? Is it helpful or insightful to "bring Weber's theory of religion to bear on Islam in Java" or to "apply Marx's theory of capitalism to the U.S. factory system in the 1950s"? Is there any real knowledge to be …
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System safety engineering and the Deepwater Horizon
The Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, fire, and uncontrolled release of oil into the Gulf is a disaster of unprecedented magnitude. This disaster in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be more serious in objective terms than the Challenger space shuttle disaster in 1986 -- in terms both of immediate loss of life and in …
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Understanding Society 