At the End of That First Year or So I Would Say That I Became as Close to Erving as Anyone Else in the Sociology Department

Dr. Neil Smelser, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California Berkley, wrote these memoirs at the request of Dmitri Shalin and gave his permission to post them in the Erving Goffman Archives

Social sciences as learning systems

Die Studie analysiert den Funktionswandel im Selbstverständnis der Sozialwissenschaften vor dem Hintergrund einer fortschreitenden Proliferation und Spezialisierung der Wissenschaften. Erörtert wird dabei die Frage, ob heute die Forderung nach einer Integration und Vereinheitlichung des fragmentierten Wissens noch machbar ist oder wir sie als eine "romantische Illusion" verabschieden sollten. Der Autor sucht unterhalb der Schwelle einer integrativen "grand theory" nach den Möglichkeiten der Vernetzung des Wissens durch interdisziplinäre Forschung und der Schaffung spezifischer institutioneller Arrangements in den Sozialwissenschaften, die interdisziplinäre Lernprozesse begünstigen. Von diesem Ansatz her erscheint das System der Sozialwissenschaften insgesamt als ein lernendes, umweltoffenes und adaptives System, das durch selbstorganisierende Mechanismen seine Identität und damit auch Anschlussmöglichkeiten durch Wissenstransfer wahrt. (ICA

A non-ending struggle: making difficult choices in contending terrorism

"Terrorismus entzieht sich aufgrund seines wechselhaften Charakters einer klaren Definition – und fordert demokratische Gesellschaften in besonderem Maße heraus. Es gilt, eine Balance zu finden zwischen Überreaktion und Nachlässigkeit, Offenheit in der Kommunikation und Geheimniskrämerei, zwischen Sicherheit und Wahrung bürgerlicher Freiheiten. Eine gewisse Routine im Umgang mit Terror hat sich inzwischen entwickelt, und es hat den Anschein, dass diskrete internationale Zusammenarbeit auf Dauer erfolgreicher ist als quasimilitärische Kriegführung."[Autorenreferat]"Terrorism is almost impossible to define and difficult to address because of its irregularity and changing nature. Governments and citizens are confronted with tough challenges, like finding a balance between security and liberty, between transparent communication and secrecy, between alarmism and stoicism. It seems that for foiling terrorism cooperative efforts show more results than aggressive, warlike strategies. But there will always be remaining risks for free societies."[author´s abstract

SPECIAL COMMUNICATION Health Industry Practices That Create Conflicts of Interest A Policy Proposal for Academic Medical Centers

market incentives in the United States is posing extraordinary challenges to the principles of medical professionalism. Physicians’ commitment to altruism, putting the interests of the patients first, scientific integrity, and an absence of bias in medical decision making now regularly come up against financial conflicts of interest. Arguably, the most challenging and extensive of these conflicts emanate from relationships between physicians and pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers. 1 As part of the health care industry

Familie und Schule: zwei Orte der Erziehung.

B

Dynamika „tworzenia-rynków” w szkolnictwie wyższym

This paper examines what to some is a well worked furrow; the processes and outcomes involved in what is typically referred to as ‘marketisation’ in the higher education sector. We do this through a case study of Newton University, where we reveal a rapid proliferation of market exchanges involving the administrative division of the university with the wider world. Our account of this process of ‘market making’ is developed in two (dialectically related) moves. First, we identify a range of market exchanges that have emerged in the context of wider ideological and political changes in the governance of higher education to make it a more globally–competitive producer of knowledge, and a services sector. Second, we explore the ways in which making markets involves a considerable amount of micro–work, such as the deployment of a range of framings, and socio–technical tools (Çalışkan and Callon 2009, 2010; Berndt and Boeckler 2012). Taken together, these market–making processes are recalibrating and remaking the structures, social relations and subjectivities, within and beyond the university and in turn reconstituting the university and the higher education sector.W niniejszym artykule przedstawiamy wyniki badania tego, co wiele osób uznało za dobrze już opracowaną niszę, a mianowicie procesów i rezultatów czegoś, co najczęściej określa się mianem ‘urynkowienia’ sektora szkolnictwa wyższego. Podejmujemy tę kwestię w oparciu o przygotowane przez nas studium przypadku Newton University, w kontekście którego odsłaniamy gwałtowne rozpowszechnienie się wymiany rynkowej między administracyjnymi sekcjami  uniwersytetu i jego szerszym otoczeniem. Nasze podejście do procesu „tworzenia-rynku” rozwinięte zostało w dwóch (dialektycznie powiązanych ze sobą) krokach. Po pierwsze, rozpoznajemy zakres wymian rynkowych, wyłonionych w kontekście szerszych ideologicznych i politycznych przemian obszaru ładu instytucjonalnego szkolnictwa wyższego, których celem było uczynienie go bardziej konkurencyjnym wytwórcą wiedzy w skali globalnej, jak również sektorem usługowym. Po drugie, badamy sposoby, w jakie tworzenie rynków wymaga dużego nakładu mikro-pracy, takiej choćby jak zastosowanie szerokiego zakresu określonych ram czy narzędzi socjo-technicznych (Çalışkan, Callon 2009, 2010; Berndt, Boeckler 2012). Ujęte łącznie, wspomniane procesy tworzenia-rynku dokonują ponownego dopasowania i przekształcenia struktury, stosunków społecznych i podmiotowości w obrębie uniwersytetu i poza nim, w ten sposób z kolei konstytuując uniwersytet i sektor szkolnictwa wyższego w nowej formie

What Mechanism Design Theorists Had to Say About Laboratory Experimentation in the Mid-1980s

Thanks to the recent studies of the history and philosophy of experimental economics, it is well known that around the early 1980s, experimental economists made a case for the legitimacy of their laboratory work by emphasizing that it was a nice and indispensable complement to mechanism design theorists' mathematical study of institutions. The present paper examines what mechanism design theorists thought of laboratory experimentation, or whether they were willing to form a coalition with experimental economists circa the mid-1980s. By exploring several dimensions of the relationship between mechanism design theory and experimental economics, the present paper shows that a close rapport had been established by the early 1980s between the representative members of the two camps, and also that mechanism design theorists were among the strongest supporters of laboratory experimentation in the economics profession in the mid-1980s