image: theorem from Russell and Whitehead, Principia Mathematica In what ways do the abstract features of symbolic logic reflect characteristics of thought? The syntax of symbolic logic is illustrative. First order predicate theory provides syntactic categories for individuals (a, b, c; x, y, z), properties (Fx, Gx), relations (xRy), n-place relations (R(x1, ..., xn)), logical connectives (∧, ∨, ~, ⊃), and quantifiers (∀x, ∃x). We also need …
"Theory" in sociology
What is a sociological theory? And how does it relate to the challenge of providing explanations of social facts? In the natural sciences the answer to this question is fairly clear. A theory is a hypothesis about one or more entities or processes and a specification of their operations and interactions. A theory is articulated …
Works councils and US labor relations
image: Diego Rivera, Rouge Plant mural, Detroit Institute of Arts The United States has one of the lowest rates of union representation of all developed countries. The 1994 level of unionized workers in the US had fallen to about 12 percent of private sector employment, and the trend is downward. And the sole institutional form …
Scott’s social imagination
Image: Le Corbusier, Paris plan What is most remarkable about Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed is the texture and grain of the argument that Scott makes. This is a high-resolution argument that leaves little to doubt. The guiding thesis is original and striking enough -- that …
The inexact science of economics
Image: social accounting matrix, Bolivia, 1997 Economics is an "inexact" science; or so Daniel Hausman argues in The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics (Google Books link). As it implies, this description conveys that economic laws have only a loose fit with observed economic behavior. Here are the loosely related interpretations that Hausman offers for …
Conceptual schemes and social ontology
What does grammar tell us about the nature of our representations of the world? Do the linguistic categories that we use fundamentally shape the way we organize our understanding of the world? Do different cultures or different linguistic communities possess different "conceptual schemes"? Are different conceptual schemes incommensurable or can we translate from one to …
Relations, processes, and activities
An earlier post asked what sorts of social entities exist. Posing the question this way leads us to think of persistent abstract things populating the social world -- for example, structures, organizations, or institutions. But as a commentator to the earlier post pointed out, there are persistent phenomena in the social world that don't look …
What exists in the social realm?
What sorts of social things exist? Does the "proletariat" exist as a social entity? There are certainly workers; but is there a "working class"? What is needed in order to attribute existence to a social agglomeration? We might want to say that things exist when they have enough persistence over time to admit of re-identification …
Defining and specifying social phenomena
Insect (df): a class within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax, and abdomen), three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae. What is involved in offering a definition of a complex social phenomenon such as "fascism", "rationality", "contentious politics", "social capital", or "civic engagement"? Is there any …
The March on Washington, August 1963
African-American citizens and a host of supporters made some of this country's most important history almost forty-seven years ago in the mobilization that resulted in the March on Washington in August, 1963. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his most famous speech on the occasion, and of course many of us are remembering Dr. King's …
Understanding Society 