In 2008, French physicist Serge Galam wrote a review article about “Galam models,” in which he cited 71 papers, all of which were written or cowritten by him. Galam specializes in a topic known as “social physics” (or “sociophysics” for short), an area of complex systems that concerns the use of ideas and tools from physics to study collective social […]
Tag: sociology
Raven: Lunatic
In 1929, Alice Raven wrote a distinctive essay about lunatics: “Murder and Suicide as Marks of an Abnormal Mind,” Alice Raven, The Sociological Review, vol. a21, no. 4, October 1929, pp. 315–333. The article is prefaced by a warning from the editor. The author then begins by saying: “One of the most disturbing features of […]
“Finding a Mate With No Social Skills”
Computer scientists Chris Marriott of the University of Washington and Jobran Chebib of the University of Zürich recently posted a paper on the arXiv preprint server with the provocative title of “Finding a Mate With No Social Skills.” Well, that title gives many of us a lot more hope, doesn’t it? In fact, there is […]
Angry people for sociologists
Sociologists will find much data, useful or not, in the Angry people in local newspapers blog, which features photographs, culled from local newspapers, of angry people. The photo reproduced here is from the Bournemouth Echo, accompanied by the headline “Newsagent’s anger as big stores ‘kill his trade’“. Many of the other photos in the blog […]
Tom Lehrer sings of sociology and mathematics
Tom Lehrer, master of many trades, sings here about sociology and mathematics, a mixture that is not always a solution: (HT Vaughn Tan)
Reflections on Sociology as a science (*)
John Levi Martin [pictured here], sociologist at the University of Chicago offers his “Reflections on Sociology as a science“: I am often asked to give my opinion as to whether and how sociology should be a science, provoking the following reflections on science as an enterprise. Basically, I have to say that science has let me […]
Mutiny, research about
A University of Washington press release heralds Steve Pfaff‘s research on mutinies: Risking one’s neck for better grog: Mutinies reveal tipping points for collective unrest …Another seemingly odd reason for rebellion occurred in 1793 aboard the Minerva as it returned from the East Indies. Captain Whitby insisted the men exercise by fiddle-dancing, be quiet when […]
Wacquant, furious-fisted sociologist
Loic Wacquant, perhaps the only French sociologist who spent at least three years in the Woodlawn Gym in Chicago, Illinois, boxing with both amateurs and professionals, emerged from the experience strong, spry and of a mind to punch out some books and papers. Wacquant is now a researcher at the Centre de Sociologie Européenne in […]
Sociology and Phycology
Yahoo Answers accepts questions that few other answer-all-questions services do. Here’s an example: “What is the difference between sociology and phycology?” Yahoo Answers says that the former “tends to examine groups of persons (societies), communities, and nations” while the latter “examines more of the workings of the human mind, why persons think and behave as […]