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Conventional accounts of liberal democracy tend to obscure a basic fact: the phenomenon of administration. The American reception of the administrative state was self-consciously imitative of Continental models of state bureaucracy, as a remedy for the ills of democratic politics, but construed as a means of saving democracy from itself, from populism, and from lawyers and legalism, in the name of efficiency. This produced its own ideology, which pervades the present discussion of populism. This…Read more
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The problem of objectivity has deep roots in the history of sociology, reaching back to the pre-sociological era of social and labor statistics. The admissibility of the section on statistics to the British Association for the Advancement of Science had already raised this issue in the 1840s, and it continued with the labor statistics movement of the later 19th century. The repeated conflicts involved what can be seen as two competing concepts: objectivity as fairness and objectivity as pure fac…Read more
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3The idea that the technologies one uses and the work experiences one has influence cognition is old, but somewhat vague, focused on how technology induced generalisable habits of mind. Technology creates a familiar world, which changes in large and small shocks, rather than in rational steps. This kind of change, at the tacit level, has characteristics of liminality. Cognitive science provides a vocabulary for discussing this problem that connects with several different strands of social theory,…Read more
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10From the Gutenberg Galaxy to the Digital CloudsThe American Sociologist 47 (2-3): 131-138. 2016.Publishing is changing rapidly, though these changes are concealed from academics, who are presented the appearances of the old world of print. The economic incentives and consequently the strategies of publishers have, however, changed. Where quality was once the road to profit, content now is, and novel digital delivery systems are the key to sales. Academic libraries have become storefronts for digital sales. Editors have become content collectors. At the same time publishing has attempted to…Read more
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7Cognitive Science, Social Theory, and EthicsSoundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 90 (3-4): 135-160. 2007.
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14The Method of Antinomies: Oakeshott and OthersCosmos and Taxis 6 (1-2): 54-63. 2018.Michael Oakeshott employed a device of argument and analysis that appears in a number of other thinkers, where it is given the name “antinomies.” These differ from binary oppositions or contradictories in that the two poles are bound together. In this discussion, the nature of this binding is explored in detail, in large part in relation to Oakeshott’s own usages, such as his discussion of the relation of faith and skepticism, between collective goal-oriented associations and those based on cont…Read more
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4Practices as a New Fundamental Social Formation in the Knowledge SocietyDružboslovne Razprave 59 49-64. 2008.The author analyses the concept of practices which has only recently come to prominence in social theory. The ‘rules’ or ‘norms’ model of society is a misleading abstraction and ‘practices’ better captures the fact that living in society is not simply a matter of rules but of the practical mastery of the cues and expectations of others. The locus of explanation shifts from culture as a determinant in the social system to a more pragmatic understanding of the ongoing effects of practices. Practic…Read more
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5Schmitt, Telos, the Collapse of the Weimar Constitution, and the Bad Conscience of the LeftFast Capitalism 5 (1). 2009.
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8Modelling and Evaluating Theories Involving Sequences: Description of a Formal MethodQuality and Quantity 14 (4): 511-518. 1980.
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14The Critique of Positivist Social Science in Leo Strauss and Jürgen HabermasSociological Analysis and Theory 7 185-206. 1977.
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16The Political Philosophy of Science in Historical Perspective: The Road Through Popper and Polanyi to the PresentIn Raphael Sassower & Netanel Laor (eds.), The Impact of Critical Rationalism, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 257-271. 2019.One of Ian C. Jarvie’s most interesting contributions is his discussion of the thinking of Karl Popper and Michael Polanyi on the nature and workings of the scientific community and their relation to politics : 545–564, 2001). The self-image these thinkers contributed to still lingers, but their accounts capture a historical moment that has passed and was idealized even when they were written. In this chapter, I examine this tradition and identify the central themes which dominated this literatu…Read more
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6The Conservative Disposition and the Precautionary PrincipleIn Corey Abel (ed.), The Meanings of Michael Oakeshott's Conservatism, British Idealist Studies, Seri. pp. 204-217. 2010.
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12Thinking About Think Tanks: Politics by Techno-Scientific MeansIn José Esteban Castro, Bridget Fowler & Luís Gomes (eds.), Time, Science and the Critique of Technological Reason: Essays in Honour of Hermínio Martins, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 347-365. 2018.The creation of think tanks has in part been motivated by the desire for an apolitical politics, a politics of facts and standards rather than a politics of interests and public ignorance, and opposed to political machines. This chapter brings out some of the features of this kind of politics in the USA through the historical example of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, which illustrates the place of the construction of a factual world by think tanks as part of policy processes. The …Read more
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1Weber's Foray into GeopoliticsIn A. Sica (ed.), Anthem Companion to Max Weber, Anthem Press. pp. 145-173. 2016.
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5Naturalizing the TacitIn Jassen Andreev (ed.), Das interpretative Universum, Königshausen Und Neumann. pp. 355-376. 2017.
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2The Importance of Social Philosophy to Morgenthau and WaltzIn G. O. Mazur (ed.), Twenty-Five Year Memorial Commemoration to Hans Morgenthau, Semenenko Foundation. pp. 174-193. 2006.
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2Universities and the Regulation of Scientific MoralsIn J. M. Braxton (ed.), Perspectives on Scholarly Misconduct in the Sciences, Ohio State University Press. pp. 116-136. 1999.
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8The World of the Academic Quantifiers: The Columbia University Family and its ConnectionsIn M. Blumer, K. Bales & K. K. Sklar (eds.), The Social Survey in Historical Perspective, 1880–1940, Cambridge University Press. pp. 269-290. 1992.
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5Was “Real Existing Socialism” Merely a Premature Form of Rule by Experts?In Sven Eliaeson (ed.), Building Democracy and Civil Society East of the Elbe: Essays in Honour of Edmund Mokrzycki, Routledge. 2006.The history of Communism in the twentieth century, if the current orthodoxy is to be believed, was no more than a detour in a process in which history ends in a world of civil societies organized as liberal democracies that increasingly relate to each other following the model of liberal democracy itself, through the rule of law, collective discussion, the general recognition of human and civil rights, and so forth. In this image of world history, the worldwide dominance of liberal democracy is …Read more
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5Imitation or the Internalization of Norms: Is Twentieth-Century Social Theory Based on the Wrong Choice?In K. R. Stueber & H. H. Kogaler (eds.), Empathy and Agency: The Problem of Understanding in the Human Sciences, Boulder: Westview Press. 2000.The dispute between simulation theorists and theory theorists follows a basic pattern in philosophical discussions of cognitive science. This chapter brings some of the topics of social theory into the discussion. The discussion of the problem of understanding in social theory has developed in two traditions: Verstehen, or empathy, the German tradition of Wilhelm Dilthey and Max Weber, and in taking the role of the other originating in the thought of G. H. Mead. Each regards understanding as bot…Read more
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8The Strange Life and Hard Times of the Concept of the Concept of General Theory in Sociology: A Short History of HopeIn S. Seidman (ed.), Postmodernism and Social Theory, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 101-133. 1992.
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6Expertise and the Process of Policy-Making: The EU’s New Model of LegitimacyIn S. Eliaeson (ed.), Building Civil Society and Democracy in New Europe, Cambridge Scholars. pp. 160-175. 2008.
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7Scientists as AgentsIn P. Mirowski & E. M. Sent (eds.), Science Bought and Sold, University of Chicago Press. pp. 362-384. 2001.
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6The Pittsburgh Survey and the Survey Movement: An Episode in the History of ExpertiseIn M. Greenwald & M. Anderson (eds.), Pittsburgh Surveyed: Social Science and Social Reform in the Early Twentieth Century, University of Pittsburg. pp. 35-49. 1996.The Pittsburgh Survey was part of the survey movement. The movement was characterized in three key documents of self-interpretation: the fi rst, an article by Paul U. Kellogg, Shelby Harrison, and George Palmer in the Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in 1912; the second, a paper by Kellogg and Neva Deardorff presented to an international social work convention in 1928; and the third, Shelby Harrison’s introductory essay to the catalogue of surveys constructed by Allen Eaton in 1930…Read more
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2Balancing Expert Power: Two Models for the Future of PoliticsIn Nico Stehr (ed.), Knowledge and Democracy: A 21st Century Perspective, Routledge. 2008.The puzzle of the political significance of expert knowledge has many dimensions, and in this chapter I plan to explore a simple Oakeshottian question in relation to it. To what extent is the present role of expert knowledge similar to that envisioned by the “planners” of the 1940s who were the inspiration for Oakeshott’s essay, “Rationalism in Politics”? This role, as Oakeshott and many of its enthusiasts portrayed it, was to replace politics as hitherto practiced with something different. Rati…Read more
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5Polanyi's Political Theory of ScienceIn S. Jacobs & R. Allen (eds.), Emotion, Reason and Tradition: Essays on the Social, Political and Economic Thought of Michael Polanyi, Routledge. pp. 83-97. 2005.
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