I have mentioned Saskia Sassen in previous postings, as one of the world's leading theorists of the global city. Here is an interesting lecture that she presented at the UrbanAge India conference in Mumbai in 2007. The lecture is very interesting, and it is also "self-illustrating," in that its availability on YouTube illustrates the remarkable …
Arguments for social holism
The topic of methodological individualism (MI) came up in a recent posting, and I underlined the connection between MI and some version of reductionism. Here I'd like to take a different approach and ask the question, what considerations can be offered in support of some version of social holism? Here are a couple of arguments …
Higher education and social mobility
There is an appalling level of inequality in American society; and even more troubling, the multiple dimensions of inequality seem to reinforce each other, with the result that disadvantaged groups remain disadvantaged across multiple generations. We can ask two different kinds of sociological questions about these facts: What factors cause the reproduction of disadvantage over …
Explaining rodeos
Suppose we have visited quite a few rodeos in Arizona and Texas and have observed a couple of things: there are more injuries in rodeos than in stock car racing or football, the stakes for the winners are lower than in golf, the rodeo riders score higher than average on the "introverted" component of the …
Methodological individualism
Methodological individualism (MI) is a doctrine in the philosophy of the social sciences about the relationship between "society" and individuals. The idea can be formulated in several related but somewhat different ways: social facts are constituted by facts about individuals; social entities are composed of individuals and their properties and relations; social structures and entities …
Education choices and personal futures
Why do people pursue education -- whether through secondary school or through post-secondary school? It seems like a very simple question with an obvious answer: education adds to one's skills and productivity; these enhanced skills make one more attractive in the employment market; and therefore, pursuing education is a rational investment in future lifetime earnings. …
Wittgenstein and "understanding society"
Does Wittgenstein's philosophy in the Philosophical Investigations have anything distinctive to add to better ways of understanding society? And is there anything in Wittgenstein's philosophy that contributes to the philosophy of social science? (These are different questions, even though they seem to be closely related; the first question is conceptual or ontological, whereas the second …
Trust and corruption
The recent collapse of a major skyscraper crane in New York City last month led to a surprising result: the arrest of the city's chief crane inspector on charges of bribery. (See the New York Times story here.) (The story indicates that the facts surrounding the charges are unrelated to this particular crane collapse.) Several …
The professions as an object of study
Several gifted sociologists over the past thirty years have made innovative contributions to the study of the "sociology of professions." Most recent among these is Andrew Abbott, whose book, The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor, is a superlative contribution to sociological theory formation. Abbott has also given attention to …
Is publicity an important source of power?
What is publicity in the sense intended here? It is shared public knowledge of a given state of affairs. It stands in contrast to secrecy and deception, and it is cognate to transparency. Public knowledge is shared knowledge. And philosophers such as Rawls and Habermas have given great moral importance to this circumstance of publicity …
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Understanding Society 