International Relations

Paul Brass provides a wealth of ethnographic and historical evidence on the causes of Hindu-Muslim violence in India in  The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India . His analysis here centers on the city of Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh, and he believes that his findings have broad relevance in many parts of India. His key conclusion is worth quoting: It is a principal argument of this book that the whole political order in post-Independence north India and many, if not most of its leading as well as local actors -- more markedly so since the death of Nehru -- have become implicated in the persistence of Hindu-Muslim riots. These riots have had concrete benefits for particular political organizations as well as larger political uses. Hindu-Muslim opposition, tensions, and violence have provided the principal justification and the primary source of strength for the political existence of some local political organizations in many cities and towns in north India linked ...

A democracy allows government to reflect the will of the people. Or does it? Here I would like to understand a bit better the dynamics through which radical right populism has come to have influence, even dominance, in a number of western democracies -- even when the percentage of citizens with radical right populist attitudes generally falls below the range of 35% of the electorate. There are well known bugs in the ways that real democracies work, leading to discrepancies between policy outcomes and public preferences. In the United States, for example, we find: Gerrymandered Congressional districts that favor Republican incumbents Over-representation of rural voters in the composition of the Senate (Utah has as many senators as California) Organized efforts to suppress voting by poor and minority voters The vast influence of corporate and private money in shaping elections and public attitudes An electoral-college system that easily permits the candidate winning fewer votes to noneth...

An earlier post considered Dave Elder-Vass�s very interesting treatment of the contemporary digital economy. In Profit and Gift in the Digital Economy Elder-Vass argues that the vast economic significance of companies like Google, FaceBook, and Amazon in today's economy is difficult to assimilate within the conceptual framework of Marx�s foundational ideas about capitalism, constructed as they were around manufacturing, labor, and ownership of capital, and that we need some new conceptual tools in order to make sense of the economic system we now confront. (Elder-Vass responded to my earlier post here .) A new book by Nick Srnicek looks at this problem from a different point of view. In Platform Capitalism  Srnicek proposes to understand the realities of our current �digital economy� according to traditional ideas about capitalism and profit. Here is a preliminary statement of his approach: The simple wager of the book is that we can learn a lot about major tech companies by taki...

Brian Epstein is adamant that the social sciences need to think very differently about the nature of the social world. In The Ant Trap: Rebuilding the Foundations of the Social Sciences  he sets out to blow up our conventional thinking about the relation between individuals and social facts. In particular, he is fundamentally skeptical about any conception of the social world that depends on the idea of ontological individualism, directly or indirectly. Here is the plainest statement of his view: When we look more closely at the social world, however, this analogy [of composition of wholes out of independent parts] falls apart. We often think of social facts as depending on people, as being created by people, as the actions of people. We think of them as products of the mental processes, intentions, beliefs, habits, and practices of individual people. But none of this is quite right. Research programs in the social sciences are built on a shaky understanding of the most fundamental...

There is a seductive appeal to the idea of a "generative social science". Joshua Epstein is one of the main proponents of the idea, most especially in his book, Generative Social Science: Studies in Agent-Based Computational Modeling . The central tool of generative social science is the construction of an agent-based model ( link ). The ABM is said to demonstrate the way in which an observable social outcome of pattern is generated by the properties and activities of the component parts that make it up -- the actors. The appeal comes from the notion that it is possible to show how complicated or complex outcomes are generated by the properties of the components that make them up. Fix the properties of the components, and you can derive the properties of the composites. Here is Epstein's capsule summary of the approach: The agent-based computational model -- or artificial society -- is a new scientific instrument. It can powerfully advance a distinctive approach to social...

image: Arch of Septimius Severus, Forum (203 CE) The history of Rome has a particular fascination for twenty-first century readers, especially in the West. Roman law, Roman philosophy, Roman legions, and Roman roads all have a powerful resonance for our imaginations today. Mary Beard's recent SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome is an interesting recent synthesis of the long sweep of Rome's history. Beard affirms the continuing importance of Roman history in these terms: Ancient Rome is important. To ignore the Romans is not just to turn a blind eye to the distant past. Rome still helps to define the way we understand our world and think about ourselves, from high theory to low comedy. After 2,000 years, it continues to underpin Western culture and politics, what we write and how we see the world, and our place in it.... The layout of the Roman imperial territory underlies the political geography of modern Europe and beyond. The main reason that London is the capital of the United ...