(This post summarizes a paper I presented at the British Society for the Philosophy of Science Annual Meeting in 2012.) Here and elsewhere I want to defend the theoretical possibility of attributing causal powers to meso-level social entities and structures. In this I follow a number of philosophers and sociologists, including many critical realists (e.g. …
Merchant capital
Karl Marx was very interested in capital -- an abstract concept referring to society's wealth. And he was interested in the persons who owned and controlled capital -- the capitalists. But the primary focus of his lifelong analysis was upon one particular species of capital, what he referred to as "industrial capital." This is the form …
Ian Hacking on chance as worldview
Ian Hacking was one of the more innovative and adventurous philosophers to take up the philosophy of science as their field of inquiry. The Taming of Chance (1990) is a genuinely fascinating treatment of the subject of the emergence of the idea of populations of events rather than discrete individuals. Together with The Emergence of Probability: A …
Poverty and economics
How important should the subject of poverty be within the discipline of economics? Some economists appear to think it is a very small issue compared to the magnificent mathematics of general equilibrium theory. Others believe that economics should fundamentally be about the sources of human well-being and misery, and that understanding poverty is absolutely fundamental …
Social structures and causal powers
The idea of a causal power has been appealing to the realist tradition within the philosophy of science, and especially so for the philosophy of social science. Proponents of this idea include Nancy Cartwright (Nature's Capacities and Their Measurements), Margaret Archer (Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach), and Dave Elder-Vass (The Causal Power of Social …
The March on Washington, August, 1963
African-American citizens and a host of supporters made some of this country's most important history fifty 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 many of us are remembering Dr. King's legacy today on …
Friedman on racial discrimination
It is interesting to re-read Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom some fifty years after its original publication. There are many aspects of the book that are likely to catch a contemporary reader's attention, but mine was drawn to Friedman's analysis of racial discrimination. In general, Friedman believes that capitalism is fundamentally good for promoting categorical equality. It …
Youth studies
One of the smaller sub-fields within sociology is "youth studies." This strikes me as an intriguing area of research, and it seems as though the possible questions for inquiry here have only begun to be tapped. Youth issues have come up in earlier posts, including disaffected youth (link), engaged youth (link), and the problem of …
The street and the ring
Loïc Wacquant offers a fascinating piece of urban ethnography in Body & Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer. It is his account of his three-year experience while a sociology graduate student at the University of Chicago of participating in the Woodlawn Boys and Girls Club, a boxing club for young men who are serious about …
Expert knowledge
We often want the judgment of "experts" as we make important decisions in life, health, and business. But what exactly is an expert? One aspect of the idea is the possession of a large fund of specialized knowledge. A civil engineer specializing in bridge design is an expert in part because he or she has …
