Expanding the Domain of Policy-Relevant Scholarship in the Social Sciences

In this paper the author argues that social scientists need to do more to provide policy-relevant research. Rapid technological and economic change raise new issues about how policy should adjust that are not adequately addressed by older and narrower approaches. The author suggests two ways in which the domain of policy-relevant scholarship can be expanded. First, social scientists should be more flexible about the kinds of data they use and the ways they use them. Preliminary data can suggest new hypotheses, which can widen debate, and ethnographic and other qualitative methods can uncover patterns of behaviour invisible in quantitative sources. Second, social theories, concepts and ideas should play a greater role in the policy arena, shaping the way policy actors think about how the world works.social science, policy debates, research approaches

When Work Disappears: New Implications for Race and Urban Poverty in the Global Economy

This paper discusses the impact of growing joblessness and dwindling work opportunities on inner-city areas in America. The lack of low-skilled manual work in the inner city is linked to poverty, crime, family dissolution and the social life of neighbourhoods. The paper discusses this impact at a neighbourhood-wide, family and individual level, noting the interaction between these levels and the intergenerational repercussions that result. The paper goes on to look at race in this context, identifying a new form of cultural racism. It examines the way race becomes an issue as black people become disproportionately represented in neighbourhoods where there is a high ratio of joblessless and very few work opportunities. The paper shows how this segregation plus its interaction with other changes in society, escalates rates of neighbourhood joblessness and compounds existing problems in these neighbourhoods. Finally the paper examines the role of public policy, the way it has exacerbated inner-city joblessness and how it attempted to resolve the problem, but failed. The paper concludes by pointing to a way forward to improve work opportunities for all sectors of society that are struggling to make ends meet, including inner-city poor and the working- and middle- classes.joblessness, race, urban poverty

Social exclusion and the future of cities

In both Britain and the United States, people have been moving away from the inner cities to suburban developments, often leaving behind concentrations of poverty and decaying neighbourhoods. Anne Power's paper focuses on the British situation. As Britain comes to terms with the implications of urban renaissance, a new way must be found of looking at regeneration based on rebuilding urban neighbourhoods. The key points for the future are: limiting suburban land supply and creating higher density in depleted urban neighbourhoods; equalising the incentives to recycle old buildings and used land rather than greenfield sites; improving public transport; managing neighbourhoods to encourage a social mix; and protecting green spaces. William Julius Wilson, looking at the American situation, addresses the rediscovery of 'metropolitan solutions' as answers to the common problems of America's cities and suburbs. This rediscovery reflects the recognition that metropolitan areas constitute the real competitive units in the new economy and that competitiveness requires a healthy urban core; the growing awareness that complex issues such as pollution and traffic congestion cross boundaries and are immune to localised fixes; and the co-existence of persistent joblessness in the central cities and labour shortages in the suburbs

Social Exclusion and the Future of Cities

In both Britain and the United States, people have been moving away from the inner cities to suburban developments, often leaving behind concentrations of poverty and decaying neighbourhoods. Anne Power's paper focuses on the British situation. As Britain comes to terms with the implications of urban renaissance, a new way must be found of looking at regeneration based on rebuilding urban neighbourhoods. The key points for the future are: limiting suburban land supply and creating higher density in depleted urban neighbourhoods; equalising the incentives to recycle old buildings and used land rather than greenfield sites; improving public transport; managing neighbourhoods to encourage a social mix; and protecting green spaces. William Julius Wilson, looking at the American situation, addresses the rediscovery of 'metropolitan solutions' as answers to the common problems of America's cities and suburbs. This rediscovery reflects the recognition that metropolitan areas constitute the real competitive units in the new economy and that competitiveness requires a healthy urban core; the growing awareness that complex issues such as pollution and traffic congestion cross boundaries and are immune to localised fixes; and the co-existence of persistent joblessness in the central cities and labour shortages in the suburbs.Social exclusion, urban poverty, area regeneration, urban development

The dynamics of highly excited electronic systems: Applications of the electron force field

Highly excited heterogeneous complex materials are essential elements of important processes, ranging from inertial confinement fusion to semiconductor device fabrication. Understanding the dynamics of these systems has been challenging because of the difficulty in extracting mechanistic information from either experiment or theory. We describe here the electron force field (eFF) approximation to quantum mechanics which provides a practical approach to simulating the dynamics of such systems. eFF includes all the normal electrostatic interactions between electrons and nuclei and the normal quantum mechanical description of kinetic energy for the electrons, but contains two severe approximations: first, the individual electrons are represented as floating Gaussian wave packets whose position and size respond instantaneously to various forces during the dynamics; and second, these wave packets are combined into a many-body wave function as a Hartree product without explicit antisymmetrization. The Pauli principle is accounted for by adding an extra spin-dependent term to the Hamiltonian. These approximations are a logical extension of existing approaches to simulate the dynamics of fermions, which we review. In this paper, we discuss the details of the equations of motion and potentials that form eFF, and evaluate the ability of eFF to describe ground-state systems containing covalent, ionic, multicenter, and/or metallic bonds. We also summarize two eFF calculations previously reported on electronically excited systems: (1) the thermodynamics of hydrogen compressed up to ten times liquid density and heated up to 200 000 K; and (2) the dynamics of Auger fragmentation in a diamond nanoparticle, where hundreds of electron volts of excitation energy are dissipated over tens of femtoseconds. These cases represent the first steps toward using eFF to model highly excited electronic processes in complex materials

Excited Electron Dynamics Modeling of Warm Dense Matter

We present a model (the electron force field, or eFF) based on a simplified solution to the time-dependent Schrödinger equation that with a single approximate potential between nuclei and electrons correctly describes many phases relevant for warm dense hydrogen. Over a temperature range of 0 to 100 000 K and densities up to 1 g/cm^3, we find excellent agreement with experimental, path integral Monte Carlo, and linear mixing equations of state, as well as single-shock Hugoniot curves from shock compression experiments. In principle eFF should be applicable to other warm dense systems as well

High-temperature high-pressure phases of lithium from electron force field (eFF) quantum electron dynamics simulations

We recently developed the electron force field (eFF) method for practical nonadiabatic electron dynamics simulations of materials under extreme conditions and showed that it gave an excellent description of the shock thermodynamics of hydrogen from molecules to atoms to plasma, as well as the electron dynamics of the Auger decay in diamondoids following core electron ionization. Here we apply eFF to the shock thermodynamics of lithium metal, where we find two distinct consecutive phase changes that manifest themselves as a kink in the shock Hugoniot, previously observed experimentally, but not explained. Analyzing the atomic distribution functions, we establish that the first phase transition corresponds to (i) an fcc-to-cl16 phase transition that was observed previously in diamond anvil cell experiments at low temperature and (ii) a second phase transition that corresponds to the formation of a new amorphous phase (amor) of lithium that is distinct from normal molten lithium. The amorphous phase has enhanced valence electron-nucleus interactions due to localization of electrons into interstitial locations, along with a random connectivity distribution function. This indicates that eFF can characterize and compute the relative stability of states of matter under extreme conditions (e.g., warm dense matter)

The Declining Significance of Race: Revisited & Revised

I published The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions thirty-two years ago, in 1978. Given the furor and controversy over the book immediately following its publication, I did not anticipate that it would go on to become a classic. Indeed, the book’s impact on the field of race and ethnic relations–its arguments have been discussed in nearly eight hundred empirical research articles, not to mention the non-empirical studies–lends credence to the idea of productive controversy and to George Bernard Shaw’s famous dictum: “[I]t is better to be criticized and misunderstood than to be ignored.” My motivation for this essay is to reflect on responses to the book that claim to provide an empirical test of my thesis. In the process, I indicate the extent to which important findings have influenced my thinking since the book’s publication

Framing Race and Poverty

William Julius Wilson argues it's extremely important to discuss how race and poverty are related in public policy discussions. Policies must be framed to facilitate a frank discussion of the problems that ought to be addressed and to generate political support to alleviate them. And we can do that by combining a powerful discussion of structural inequities with an emphasis on personal responsibility.African and African American StudiesSociolog