Pragmatic inquiry

Intellectuals are sometimes accused of being out of touch with the real world. But there is a strong thread of intellectual life that proceeds on the basis of a commitment to linking thought to action, theory to practical outcomes. Karl Marx and John Dewey had at least this in common: they both urged intellectuals to commit themselves to joining the intellectual realm with the solution of humanity's challenges. This isn't a universal view; pure physicists and mathematicians, many philosophers, and many theorists of the arts would adamantly defend the pure search for truth and creativity, no matter what connection these may have to the improvement of humanity. But at least some thinkers and researchers see the purpose of their work as bringing...

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Posted in: CAT_epistemology,epistemology,philosophy

Microstructure of strife

Let's work backwards in thinking about sustained inter-group violence, and begin by considering some of the street-level incidents that constitute a period of violence against or between groups. What factors are necessary to the occurrence of inter-group violence in a region? And how can an understanding of these factors contribute to better strategies of conflict reduction and prevention?I'm thinking here particularly of ethnic and sectarian violence, including examples like these -- periods of violence in Northern Ireland, upsurges of the Intifada, stone-throwing against vehicles of another group, violent ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, violent settler resistance to resettlement in Israel, ultra-orthodox attacks on more secular Jews in Jerusalem,...

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Posted in: CAT_collective action,social movements,social networks,violence

Conflict as an empirical-practical study

Conflict and peace studies have been a part of academic research since at least the 1970s. Many universities have created major research centers devoted to the study of the causes of conflict and possible pathways of conflict resolution. In some cases the focus of study is on particular zones of inter- and intra-state conflict: recurring civil conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa; the Middle East; Northern Ireland; Hindu-Muslim conflict in South Asia; or US-Soviet conflict during the Cold War. And in other cases the focus is less regionally specific and more concerned about identifying root causes and remedies for social conflict.Causes of large social conflict are widely varied: for example, disagreements about access to resources, including...

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Posted in: CAT_collective action,identity,justice,violence

Israel's complexity

A first visit to Israel has been a fascinating experience in trying to begin to understand a different society.I've met with university administrators and professors; reporters and media people; young people with a passion for social justice in Israel; a senior official in the foreign ministry; and a senior leader in an Israeli NGO devoted to securing greater social equity in East Jerusalem. I've met Israelis of many backgrounds: people with seven generations of family in Israel and Palestine, third-generation Kurdish Jews, recent Ethiopian and Sudanese immigrants, American and Canadian immigrants from the 1970s and 1980s, recent European business immigrants -- even a French producer of Yiddish art performances in Ein Karem.I've seen high-tech...

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Posted in: CAT_misc

China's agricultural history

Consider the discipline of the agricultural history of China. The following represent a sampling of research problems concerning the social and economic history of rural China in recent research:What were the patterns of population growth, growth of cultivated land, and growth of net output, in traditional China? (Perkins 1973)What was the distribution of land tenure arrangements in north China? (Arrigo 1986)What was the structure of rural marketing hierarchies? (Skinner 1964, 1965)What was the urbanization rate in 1893? (Skinner 1977)These are all factual questions about features of economy and social institutions. The findings on these topics are, of course, fallible and revisable.A core study in Chinese economic history is Dwight Perkins'...

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Posted in: agriculture,CAT_China,CAT_history,China,economic development,epistemology

Generalizations in history

Historical generalizations are often suspect: "The Renaissance encouraged innovative thinking," "The Qing state stifled independent commercial activity," "The open frontier created a distinctively American popular culture." The problem with statements like these is their sweep; among other things, they imply that the Renaissance, the Qing state, or American culture were essentially uniform social realities, and they erase the forms of variation that certainly existed -- and that often constitute the most interesting of historical discoveries.So grand generalizations in history are problematic. But then we have to ask a different sort of question. Specifically -- what kinds of generalizations are possible in history? If we can't answer this...

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Posted in: agency,Annales school,CAT_history,localism

Longue durée

Image: Making dikes on the Yellow RiverMany historical changes take place on a human scale -- the Great Depression came and went within the lived experience of many millions of people, and they were able to tell comprehensible narratives of the beginning, middle, and end. Likewise with periods of political transition and upheaval -- the Vietnam war protests, the Reagan revolution, the Cold War. So these events can be scaled within the historical sensibilities of individuals who experienced them. But what about changes that are so extended and so gradual that they are all but imperceptible? How is history of the longue durée to be understood? (This posting picks up the thread from an earlier post on "historical tempo".)The sorts of changes...

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Posted in: Annales school,CAT_history

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 but meaningful percentage of young people who have a significant level of "civic engagement" in their blood.You can identify some of these young people in almost every city and suburb in America. They are the high school and college students who feel passionately about community service, civic engagement, and "giving back". They are involved in activities like alternative spring break, Habitat for Humanity, and the United Way. They are involved in community...

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Posted in: CAT_Michigan,CAT_misc,community,norms,youth

Subsistence ethic as a causal factor

In his pathbreaking 1976 book, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia, James Scott offers an explanation of popular politics based on the idea of a broadly shared "subsistence ethic" among the underclass people of Vietnam and Malaysia. Earlier postings (hidden transcripts, moral economy) have discussed several aspects of Scott's contributions. Here I want to focus on the causal argument that Scott offers, linking the subsistence ethic to the occurrence of rebellion.Scott's view is that the ensemble of values and meanings current in a society have causal consequences for aggregate facts about the forms of political behavior that arise in that society. Speaking of the peasant rebellions in Southeast...

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Posted in: CAT_collective action,causal reasoning,moral economy,norms,rebellion,social movements,Southeast Asia

Farms in historical materialism

Materialist explanations in history generally attempt to discover fundamental features of technology and labor that impose a very deep imprint on the rest of society. Farming is almost always fundamental in this respect; the forces and relations of production are particularly visible, and the products of the farm system are fundamental to the survival of society. The standard of living of a traditional society is largely determined by agricultural productivity and the nature of the farming system -- nutrition, for example, is essentially determined by the ratio of total grain output to population. Finally, virtually all traditional economies are primarily rural; so farm life defines the conditions of ordinary social existence for the majority...

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Posted in: agriculture,CAT_materialism,food,materialism

Being clumsy

We've probably all been clumsy from time to time -- knocking over the teacup on the desk when reaching for a pencil, dropping a jar when moving from the kitchen to the table, tripping on an uneven bit of sidewalk when walking the dog. We sometimes refer to this kind of behavioral mistake as "maladroit".Can we give an explanation of clumsy behavior?Here as elsewhere, a little conceptual work is helpful. We might characterize a clumsy event as "an inadvertent negative result of a series of bodily movements intended to accomplish something else altogether." And, it would seem, we need to add a characteristic of causation into the definition: the negative result came about as a consequence of the agent's series of actions and movements -- not simply...

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Posted in: CAT_agency,mental framework,phenomenology