[Dave Elder-Vass accepted my invitation to write a response to my discussion of his recent book, The Reality of Social Construction (link). Elder-Vass is senior lecturer in sociology at Loughborough University and author as well of The Causal Power of Social Structures: Emergence, Structure and Agency, discussed here. Thanks, Dave!] Social construction and the reliability of knowledgeby Dave Elder-Vass …
What is the good of a university education?
Martha Nussbaum is one of the most exceptional voices in philosophy and public policy we have today, and she has contributed to a wide range of topics. Her work on the ethics of development has proven to be a very important contribution (for example, Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach), through which she has significantly deepened …
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Universities and the world
Many universities have significant international relationships with educational institutions in other countries. In some instances these are intended to support students who are interested in study abroad; in other instances they establish the foundation of faculty-to-faculty research collaboration; and in yet other cases they involve the coordination of specific academic programs for the benefit of …
Many capitalisms?
Professor Luciano Segreto lectured in Michigan this week on the subject of a comparison between US and European capitalisms. Segreto is professor of International Economic History, Financial History, and the History of Regional Economic Development at the University of Florence. His lecture was fascinating in many ways, but of special interest here is whether there …
Elder-Vass on social realism
Dave Elder-Vass's arguments for the real causal powers of social structures have been considered here several times (link, link). Elder-Vass's recent book, The Reality of Social Construction, addresses this subject from a different point of view. Here he is interested in the question of the collision of social realism and social constructivism, generally thought of as being …
Social embeddedness
To what extent do individuals choose their courses of action largely on the basis of a calculation of costs and benefits? And to what extent, on the contrary, are their actions importantly driven by the normative assumptions they share with other individuals with whom they interact? Mark Granovetter formulated this foundational question for the social …
Woodward Avenue
How does a rust belt city relaunch itself? How can the stakeholders of Detroit, Cleveland, or Milwaukee begin to reinvent their cities and get on a track that leads to greater prosperity, health, and educational attainment that can eventually result in opportunity and quality of life for the urban majority? The factors that led to …
Durable inequalities
Chuck Tilly was an enormously creative historical sociologist, and he also had a knack for a good title. This is certainly true of his 1998 book, Durable Inequality. The topic is of particular interest today, in the contemporary environment of ever-more visible and widening inequalities that pervade American society. The contemporary facts in the United States …
Readers’ list of innovative social science writing
Image: graph of relationships among the social sciences, Eigenfactor.org To the readers of UnderstandingSociety, I am writing directly to you to ask your thoughts about innovative work in the social sciences today. What books or new areas of inquiry in the social sciences are you particularly excited about right now? The context -- One of the …
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Regulatory thrombosis
Charles Perrow is a leading researcher on the sociology of organizations, and he is a singular expert on accidents and system failures. Several of his books are classics in their field -- Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies, The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters, Organizing America: Wealth, Power, and the Origins of …
Understanding Society 