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

Proposition structure in framed decision problems: A formal representation.

Framing effects, which may induce decision-makers to demonstrate preference description invariance violation for logically equivalent options varying in semantic emphasis, are an economically significant decision bias and an active area of research. Framing is an issue inter alia for the way in which options are presented in stated-choice studies where (often inadvertent) semantic emphasis may impact on preference responses. While research into both espoused preference effects and its cognitive substrate is highly active, interpretation and explanation of preference anomalies is beset by variation in the underlying structure of problems and latitude for decision-maker elaboration. A formal, general scheme for making transparent the parameter and proposition structure of framed decision stimuli is described. Interpretive and cognitive explanations for framing effects are reviewed. The formalism’s potential for describing extant, generating new stimulus tasks, detailing decision-maker task elaboration. The approach also provides a means of formalising stated-choice response stimuli and provides a metric of decision stimuli complexity. An immediate application is in the structuring of stated-choice test instruments

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)

The Split-Apply-Combine Strategy for Data Analysis

Many data analysis problems involve the application of a split-apply-combine strategy, where you break up a big problem into manageable pieces, operate on each piece independently and then put all the pieces back together. This insight gives rise to a new R package that allows you to smoothly apply this strategy, without having to worry about the type of structure in which your data is stored. The paper includes two case studies showing how these insights make it easier to work with batting records for veteran baseball players and a large 3d array of spatio-temporal ozone measurements.

Reshaping Data with the reshape Package

This paper presents the reshape package for R, which provides a common framework for many types of data reshaping and aggregation. It uses a paradigm of 'melting' and 'casting', where the data are 'melted' into a form which distinguishes measured and identifying variables, and then 'cast' into a new shape, whether it be a data frame, list, or high dimensional array. The paper includes an introduction to the conceptual framework, practical advice for melting and casting, and a case study.

J.R.R. Tolkien: the Forest and the City (2013), edited by Helen Conrad-O’Briain and Gerard Hynes.

J.R.R. Tolkien: the Forest and the City (2013), edited by Helen Conrad-O’Briain and Gerard Hynes. Book Review by Kelley M. Wickham-Crowle

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