Understanding Society

Anyone interested in the topic of causal mechanisms will be interested in the appearance of Stuart Glennan and Phyllis Illari's The ...

[Dave Elder-Vass accepted my invitation to write a response to my discussion of moral realism ( link ). Elder-Vass is Reader in sociol...

Critical realists share a rejection of the fact-value distinction as a fundamental criterion of scientific rationality -- and rightly ...

The critical realism network in North America is currently convened in Montreal in a three-day intensive workshop ( link ). In attendance a...

The Guardian posted a short documentary video on the city where I live, Dearborn, Michigan ( link ). The video is, frankly, a careless,...

In Critical Theory Of Society (1969) Albrecht Wellmer announced a critique of positivist assumptions in the study of society. Proceedin...

Cities provide a good illustration of the ontology of the theory of assemblage ( link ). Many forms of association, production, logist...

Social change and historical events are highly contingent processes, in a specific sense: they are the result of multiple causal inf...

In  Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World  General Stanley McChrystal (with Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and Ch...

At the end of the nineteenth century -- which was also of the end of the Qing Dynasty -- China was not "modern". Its politica...