Sociology after 9/11

The attacks on New York in September 2001 and subsequent attacks on other Western targets continue to serve as a stimulus for a number of academic disciplines. In this way, in a bid to remain relevant to the needs of post-9/11 Western governments, the likes of international relations, political science, middle eastern studies, and comparative religion have, at least to some extent, reassessed their objects. Sociology has not reacted in anything like the same manner, assuming, it seems, that its object needs no adjustment for the field to be as relevant to post-9/11 Western governments as any of the other disciplines listed. Taking ‘the social’ to be sociology’s fundamental object, this paper will argue that sociology’s stance is much more complacent than it should be. The paper sketches the contours of three understandings of the social that are available to sociology and emphasises three points: one, that while the basic-interaction understanding is still useful to the discipline’s work, it is not helpful in making the discipline relevant to the needs of post-9/11 Western governments; two, that the reason-morality understanding is actually an obstacle to this type of relevance; and three, that the politico-legal understanding needs to be given more credence within the discipline, for it is in fact the key to this type of relevance

Turning the law into laws for political analysis

Two concepts have been (and continue to be) extremely influential in the political analysis of legal relations - the concept of power and the concept of the law (in the singular)

Critical discourse analysis, description, explanation, causes: Foucault's inspiration versus Weber's perspiration

The FOUCAULTian governmentality approach, in relying on a teleology - the ultimate purpose of human endeavour is the quest for ever-growing human reason, a reason that is the universal basis of moral judgements, especially moral judgements about political and legal actions - leads not to description, explanation and the possible identification of causes, but to critique, to the inappropriate conflation of, on the one hand, description, explanation and the identification of causes with, on the other, political criticisms sourced in the teleology. Drawing on some of WEBER's methodological insights, an argument is developed that critical discourse analysis, in taking on the FOUCAULTian approach, gives up the best traditions of description, explanation and the identification of causes in favour of the expression, in many different forms, of the teleology

Protecting Law from Morality’s Stalking Horse: The ‘socio’ in much socio-legal studies

Invited a few years ago by one of the field’s leading journals ‘to stimulate discussion about the nature, role and future of socio-legal studies’ ( JLS Editors 2002: 632), Roger Cotterrell (2002) and Paddy Hillyard (2002), two leading socio-legal scholars, stress the connection between the legal and the moral. Morality, they believe, is the heart and soul of the law. For them, only when socio-legal studies allows the law-morality connection to be its guiding light is it at its strongest. To list five of their examples, this type of morality-to-the-fore socio-legal studies is open to many influences, is flexible in how it interprets these influences, produces a rich diversity of intellectual outcomes, expands the boundaries of what counts as ‘law’, and, in doing so, is a leader in the utilisation of the work of Michel Foucault (Cotterrell 2002: 632–9, Hillyard 2002: 646–50). The field would be lost, they suggest, without the law–morality connection. This high regard for morality — as the driving force of law, as the very raison d’être of socio-legal studies — is hardly unusual: it is the common currency of the highly influential brand of socio-legal scholarship that is consistent with the individual reason-based tradition (exemplified by John Rawls, esp. 1971) or the communitarian tradition (exemplified by Alisdair MacIntyre, esp. 1988). Yet I contend it is very dangerous, threatening the role of the law as a vital cog in modern Western countries

LISA Response Function and Parameter Estimation

We investigate the response function of LISA and consider the adequacy of its commonly used approximation in the high-frequency range of the observational band. We concentrate on monochromatic binary systems, such as white dwarf binaries. We find that above a few mHz the approxmation starts becoming increasingly inaccurate. The transfer function introduces additional amplitude and phase modulations in the measured signal that influence parameter estmation and, if not properly accounted for, lead to losses of signal-to-noise ratio.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, amaldi 5 conference proceeding

Miniature pressure transducer for stressed member application

Miniature pressure transducer responds to static or dynamic pressures acting against a structural surface without introducing errors caused by stresses in the structural surface. This is accomplished by a thin stainless steel pressure sensing diaphragm with an attached foil strain gage

Triangulation Rangefinder and Sight Positioning System

A rangefinder includes an angle sensitive transducer and a programmed data processor to calculate the distance to a target. In one embodiment, the rangefinder also includes a point-to-point measuring device. Another embodiment provides a linear actuator to selectively move a sight indicator vertically. A yet additional embodiment includes a liquid crystal display which displays information to the user

Interrogating a Thin Layer of Heterogeneity with Confocal Transducers

This is an expository summary of our work [1] building a mathematical model of scanned acoustic imaging of complicated solid-solid interfaces comprised of scatterers at several length scales, many of which are less than a wavelength. We construct an approximate two dimensional model of a scanned confocal acoustic imaging arrangement operating in a transmission or reflection mode using anti-plane shear or SH waves. Further, we suggest how the sound scattered from the interface is mapped into the sound collected by the transducers. The scalar approximation, while restrictive, still captures many of the basic ideas, ideas that we are at present extending to a three dimensional calculation

Triangulation Rangefinder for Archers

An archery rangefinder for use from an elevated position comprises a power supply for an electronic digital panel meter and a power supply for two voltage divider circuits that comprise the rangefinding circuit. One voltage divider provides a voltage signal proportional to the elevation distance. This signal acts to supply the second voltage divider to attenuate the voltage further by a factor proportional to the tangent of the inclination angle. A weighted pendulum arm is attached to a potentiometric element in the second voltage divider to effect feedback relevant to the angle of inclination. All circuits and components are housed within an outer protective enclosure. Voltage across a fixed resistor in the second voltage divider is read and displayed by said digital panel meter as the range which is then used by the archer to increase accuracy of shots

Vortex annihilation in the ordering kinetics of the O(2) model

The vortex-vortex and vortex-antivortex correlation functions are determined for the two-dimensional O(2) model undergoing phase ordering. We find reasonably good agreement with simulation results for the vortex-vortex correlation function where there is a short-scaled distance depletion zone due to the repulsion of like-signed vortices. The vortex-antivortex correlation function agrees well with simulation results for intermediate and long-scaled distances. At short-scaled distances the simulations show a depletion zone not seen in the theory.Comment: 28 pages, REVTeX, submitted to Phys. Rev.