Many organizations express the goal of embracing diversity and inclusiveness. This is an admirable goal, but it is often only weakly pursued in practical terms. Efforts towards this end will be stronger in enhancing diversity and inclusiveness if we think carefully about what we have in mind when we think of that better future we …
Responding to hate
The Southern Poverty Law Center documents that hate groups and hate-based mobilization are on the rise in the United States (link, link). Here is a current map of hate-based groups monitored by SPLC: Through provocative epithets, slogans, and extremist demonstrations a variety of hate groups -- white supremacists, neo-Nazis, anti-muslim bigots, anti-immigrant activists, anti-LGBTQ extremists, …
What is anchor individualism?
Brian Epstein has attempted to shake up some of our fundamental assumptions about the social world in the past several years by challenging the idea of "ontological individualism" -- the idea that social things consist of facts about individuals in action, thought, and interaction, and nothing else. Here is how he puts the idea in …
Social obligations and markets
The vice presidential pick for the Republican ticket is an extreme voice on the question of whether individuals have obligations to others in society that justify taxing them to maintain their basic human needs. Paul Ryan is a fan of Ayn Rand's philosophy, which is an extreme version of individualism against social obligations. According to …
Rousseau the democrat
Rousseau's political philosophy probably represents the richest and most adequate view of the moral foundations of the state of any of the great figures in the history of political thought. But it is also complex and opaque. Rousseau is usually cast as falling within the social contract tradition, according to which the legitimacy of the …
Civic engagement and formative institutions
A disposition towards civic engagement and community service seems to be a very fundamental component of social psychology that differs significantly across cohorts and populations. But the frequency of this motivation across the population is also surely a key component of the health of social order. One would hypothesize that this is an aspect of …
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What is a diasporic community?
There are many diaspora populations in the world: the African diaspora, with populations in the Caribbean, North and South America, and Europe; the Chinese diaspora, from Indonesia and Malaysia to Cuba and the United States and Canada; the Jewish diaspora, from eastern Europe and Spain across all of Europe, to South Africa and North America …
Engaged youth
A while ago I posted on the subject of "disaffected youth". I don't have a basis for estimating the percentage of the youth population that falls in this category, but surely it's a fairly small number in most places. Here I want to focus on the other end of the spectrum -- the relatively small …
Primitive accumulation
Marx's treatment of the "so-called 'primitive accumulation'" is one of the most historically detailed sections in Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (Volume 1). And it is one of the most interesting parts of Capital to read as a separate piece. (Here is an electronic text of the section.) It is Marx's account of the …
Social entrepreneurs
Social entrepreneurs are people who want to bring about non-routine projects, collaborations, or organizations where they didn't previously exist in order to solve a perceived social problem. This is very different from working within an existing organization and using its official resources to bring about a particular result. An example might be a community activist …
Understanding Society 