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In social science, as elsewhere, an elegant design makes all the difference. When I hear a great talk or read a first-rate article, I’m geeked up both by the new discovery and by precisely how the discovery was made. And while I try to stay on top of the latest and greatest methodological techniques, I most appreciate social scientists who can responsibly render the world’s complexity in a simple and comprehensible manner.
Design should never say, ‘Look at me.’ It should always say, ‘Look at this’. – David Craib more...
The following was written by our colleagues Kendra Dupuy, James Ron, and Aseem Prakash, and it was originally published on the site OpenDemocracy.net. It provides a provocative look at the local involvement of international NGOs in projects around the world. You’ll see below that Ron has written an addendum in response to insightful critiques and comments from his network, and I hope that you’ll add your own thoughts in the comments.
The U.S. elections are now over, but crucial foreign policy decisions remain on the table. Foreign aid was hardly discussed in the U.S. presidential elections, and neither Romney nor Obama said whether American assistance should still be funnelled through non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
This neglect is unfortunate, given the current global backlash against externally supported NGOs. The time has come for western and international donors to reconsider the way in which they support human rights, democracy, gender equality, and other liberal causes in the developing and former Communist world. Supporting liberal NGOs can be useful, but it must be done carefully and modestly, lest it undermine the same agendas it seeks to promote.International solidarity is a wonderful idea, and the notion of transferring resources from North to South for good causes is morally attractive. The mechanics of doing this properly, however, are far more complex. more...
Greetings from Chicago, temporary TSP HQ! As dear Doug is off electrifying the Fargo-Moorhead area with his insights into Midnight Basketball and its neoliberal underpinnings, Chris and I are in the City of Broad Shoulders attempting to, I suppose, look broad (posture helps) at the American Society of Criminology meetings. We’re all dumbstruck at the presence of Stephen Pinker and have seen standing room only attendance at many sessions, even when wonderful restaurants and great sights tempt from just outside the conference hotel. At meetings like these, we get a certain jolt of rededication to TSP, meeting with authors as excited about open-access, de-jargon-ified (I’m an editor, let’s call that a word now) social science as we are. Here’s hoping for many very busy Friday Roundups to come, building on the conversations we’re all having on the road. more...
After last week’s flurry of activity, perhaps a rush to get information to our eager readership (indulge me here) before the American general election that’s now just a few days past (unless you happen to live in Florida), things at The Society Pages have returned to a more reasonable, measured pace. That isn’t, however, to say we’ve gone slack; indeed, this week has brought a broad look at the underpinnings of and possible challenges to power, alongside thoughtful teaching activities and solid advice on just what color tracksuit your dog or cat might require. There’s a lot going on—have a look! more...
We hope TSP’s Reading List is both an informative source for cutting-edge research and an aid in strutting your eminently informed stuff at fancy cocktail parties and on The Twitter. We’ve experimented with different writing models, but these days we’re producing reading list items collectively. It turns out to be a lot of fun to go around the room and “pitch” the best and/or coolest thing we’ve read in the past month.
I’m sometimes asked how we find the good stuff to write about. Here’s a little backstage info on how the (vegan andouille) sausage is made. more...
As The Society Pages’ associate editor, I’m in a position to see nearly all of the fantastic content that comes across our transom every day, but it’s recently been pointed out that we don’t offer a super simple way for readers to do the same. To that end, I present the first of our (hopefully) weekly Friday Roundups.
This week, we’ve seen a lot of new work, much of it dealing with next week’s U.S. general election, but with some “palate cleansers,” too. Here are all of this week’s articles from across TSP’s departments, as well as a few highlights from our Community Pages. more...
Politics aren’t always scintillating, even if they are important. The AP famously caught even the Vice President dozing off at a public event.
I think I am. Part of the reason involves the usual, nearing-the-finish line fatigue of our once-every-four-years Presidential elections. Another reason for my weariness is that we’ve featured so much political content on the site in recent weeks that it seems like TSP has become the social scientific equivalent of Fox News or MSNBC! “All politics, all the time.” It’s all great stuff, mind you (see for yourself!), and in fact we are in the process of compiling the best of it into a special volume to be published with W.W. Norton, replete with website tie-ins and supplementary teaching and learning content. Nevertheless, I just don’t like to get pigeon-holed or hemmed in—and politics is still far from the only thing we do, or aspire to do.
Still, I think my ennui might go deeper. I guess I’m feeling kind of stuck, moored by a perverse culture of and attitudes about politics in the United States. On the one hand, I’ve got all of these intellectual colleagues, collaborators, and contributors—those I hang out with on campus, meet with at conferences, and work with as contributors to TSP—who are so interested and passionate about politics. On the other, there are many other people in my life—from students and neighborhood friends to parents I see at youth sporting events, those I go to church with, family members, and even my own kids—who have no interest in politics. In this political season, they are kind of fed up with the topic and process altogether, and maybe they’re starting to take me with them! more...
We’ve found a friend! No, really, The Society Pages would like to formally introduce you (assuming you haven’t yet met) to the Scholars Strategy Network.
Let us explain. By now, our readers know a few things about The Society Pages (TSP, as we like to call it; social science that matters and all that):
We ask scholars to share their knowledge in a way that’s publicly accessible, but never dumbed-down
We give away our content for free online
We’re non-partisan and our authors speak for themselves
Well, as it turns out, these are just a few of the things we share with Theda Skocpol’s big new initiative, the Scholars Strategy Network (of course, these are also a few reasons we signed on as SSN members ourselves earlier in the year). more...
The success of TSP owes a great deal to the rise of public sociology. And no single individual played a bigger role in facilitating that rise than Berkeley sociologist Michael Burawoy who basically invented the term almost a decade ago and then made it the focus of the annual sociology meetings he organized during his presidency of the ASA back in 2004. In recent years, Burawoy has been devoting his considerable energies to another project: that of building a more truly global, international sociology. To that end Burawoy, now President of the International Sociological Association, has launched a new online publication called “Global Dialogue.” more...
Have you seen or heard about this piece in the Chronicle on Higher Education last week calling (sort of) for a moratorium on doing peer review for academic journals published by big, for-profit companies? I think I’ve lost count of how many people have mentioned it to me or sent me the link.
The piece is by Hugh Gusterson, a professor of cultural studies and anthropology at George Mason University. Gusterson is fed up with how much free labor we academics provide to the for-profit presses that publish so many of our peer-reviewed scholarly publications these days. Basically, according to Gusterson, we continue to do review prospective journal articles without compensation even as the presses that benefit from our labor are making huge dollars. For example, publishing giant Elseveier, according to Gusterson, recorded profits of 36% on revenues of $3.2 billion (yes, “b” not “m”) this past year. Their CEO’s salary was $4.6 million. And we get nothing back. Talk about labor exploitation. Adding insult to injury, Gusterson was recently required by one of these operations to pay $400 for the right to reprint his own writing in a book of his own essays. more...
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