The Dilemma of Empirical Evidence (Theory Ladenness) (original) (raw)
Taking Part: Muslim Participation in Contemporary Governance (2013) - Final Report
This final report provides the main findings from the most comprehensive study to date on UK Muslim-government relations, which included an analysis of public policy since 1997, a total of 112 interviews with key policymakers and Muslim civil society actors, and in-depth local case studies of Birmingham, Leicester, and Tower Hamlets, London. The Report describes how British Muslims have been taking part in governance in the three policy fields of equality, diversity & cohesion; faith sector governance; and security (including the Prevent Strategy). It describes how modes of Muslim representation have developed into a broader 'democratic constellation.'
Occupation, worker co-operatives and the struggle for power: Britain in the 1970s
The bursting of the financial bubble has also been the bursting of the expectations of the ‘neo-liberal’ dream, the vision of the good society which had gained dominance in the 1970s and 1980s. What we have seen internationally is a return to collective mobilisation by workers facing the ultimate consequences of this vision in the form of job cuts and closure. Resistance has often taken the form of workplace occupations such as Republican Windows and Doors in the USA, Prisme in Scotland, Visteon in the UK, Waterford Crystal in Ireland, the more widespread reclaimed factories of Argentina (see Laval Collective, 2007), or boss-napping in France. Workers in occupation have been besieged by police at the Ssangyong car plant in Pyeongtaek in Korea and at the Vestas wind turbine plant in Newport on the Isle of Wight in the UK. Such developments have meant a revision of interest in worker industrial action and previous periods of crisis which also saw similar worker mobilisation and particularly as workplace occupation; the occupation of factories in Italy in 1920, the sit-downs in the USA in 1936-7(Fine 1969), of the Popular Front and 1968 in France (Danos & Gibelin 1986), as well as in the UK (Coates 1981) and elsewhere in the 1970s. The essence of occupation as a form of industrial action is that it inherently challenges the basis of private property under capitalism, that workers appropriate the means of production. The temporary occupation of the workplace immediately raises the issue of the commodification of labour in the form of ‘job rights’ of the worker investment of their labour. Even when they occur individually or in small number, occupations often requires a renegotiation of relations with the dominant economy as worker cooperative or nationalised enterprise be it with the demand of being ‘under worker control’ on their conclusion. Waves of occupation, such as in both France and the USA around 1936/37, define the condition of compromise between capital and labour for subsequent decades. Other waves may spark reactionary forces. The rise to power of Mussolini in Italy may be attributed to a reaction to the apparent weakness of the state and employers in the face of the occupations in 1920. The very condition of such workplace occupation is the crisis within capitalism. Such a crisis undermines the conditions of both economic and ideological reproduction and therefore is also the conditions for political polarisation. This paper draws on these experiences in the 1920s and 30s but concentrates on Britain in the 1970s which was just such a period of crisis and polarisation. Crisis and workplace closure led to resistance by workers, initially in the Upper Clyde Shipyard work-in, with more than 250 further occupations in the next decade. Quickly, also, the occupation entered the mainstream of industrial action deployed by workers in over fifty plants during the 1972 engineering dispute (Darlington & Lyddon 2001). Extending the spirit of radicalism into the workplace, debate opened into new forms of ownership and control. Some of the occupied factories transforming to worker cooperatives and bridges seemed to be emerging between 1960s alternative politics, including an emergent feminism (Wajcman 1983; Cunnison & Stageman 1995), and an increasingly militant workers movement. The paper indicates, however, that this more represented a polarisation with the reaction to the movement, and particularly state support for the establishment of worker cooperatives mobilising neo-liberalism within the Conservative opposition seeing the pattern of events a vindication of Hayek’s view that all state intervention in the market being the (Hayek 1944) and thus establishing the base for the leadership of Margaret Thatcher by the end of the decade. The paper, however, while a cautionary warning to possible reaction also indicates that some of the counter arguments of the 1970s have now been neutralised. The debate on alternative ownership may have greater resonance in an environment where the state has played a more active role to counter the banking crisis. Also, and illustrated well by the action around the closure of Vesta, the move towards the development of alternative production fostered by the 1970s movement (Cooley 1980; Wainwright & Elliott 1982) now resonates with the environmental movement. Finally, and symbolised by the Obama candidacy, and subsequent presidency attaching themselves to the Republic occupation in his home town of Detroit, like in the 1970s popular support may be mobilised in resistance to plant closures, redundancies and job loss. Coates, K. (ed.) 1976, The New Worker Co-operatives, Spokesman Books, Nottingham. Coates, K. 1981, Work-ins, Sit-ins and Industrial Democracy, Spokesman, Nottingham. Cooley, M. 1980, Architect or bee? The Human/Technology Relationship, Langley Technical Services/Hand and Brain, Slough, UK. Cunnison, S. & Stageman, J. 1995, Feminizing the Unions, Avebury. Danos, J. & Gibelin, M. 1986, June '36: Class Struggle and and the Popular Front in France, Bookmarks, London. Darlington, R. & Lyddon, D. 2001, Glorious Summer: class struggle in Britain, 1972, Bookmarks, London. Fine, S. 1969, Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike of 1936 - 1937, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. Hayek, F. 1944, The Road to Serfdom, George Routledge & Sons Ltd, London. Laval Collective, 2007, Sin Patrón: Stories from Argentina's Worker-run Factories: the Lavaca Collective, Haymarket Books. Spriano, P. 1975, The Occupation of Factories: Italy 1920, Pluto Press, London. Wainwright, H. & Elliott, D. 1982, The Lucas plan: a new trade unionism in the making?, Allison & Busby, London. Wajcman, J. 1983, Women in Control: dilemmas of a workers' co-operative, Open University Press.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: …, 2010
The cell theory – the thesis that all life is made up of one or more cells, the fundamental structural and physiological unit – is one of the most celebrated achievements of modern biological science. And yet from its very inception in the nineteenth century it has faced repeated criticism from some biologists. Why do some continue to criticize the cell theory, and how has it managed nevertheless to keep burying its undertakers? The answers to these questions reveal the complex nature of the cell theory and the cell concept on which it is based. Like other scientific laws, the assertion that all living things are made of cells purchases its universality at the expense of abstraction. If, however, it is regarded as a mere widely applicable empirical generalization with notable exceptions, it still remains too important to discard. Debate about whether the cell or the organism standpoint provides the more correct account of anatomical, physiological, and developmental facts illustrates the tension between our attempts to express the truth about reality in conceptual terms conducive to a unified human understanding.
This research paper attempts to comprehensively examine juvenile delinquency in a sample of ten U.S. states from a structural functionalist perspective by comparing the rates of juvenile delinquency in these states to the relative amount of school funding that these areas receive. The sates that comprise the sample are Illinois, Louisiana, Delaware, Maryland, the District of Columbia, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, South Dakota, and West Virginia. These states were chosen for their relative polarity regarding rates of juvenile arrests, thus allowing school funding to be easily cross compared at the state level. This research is deductive in nature and draws heavily on existing sociological research and classical social theory in an attempt to examine whether or not a causal relationship exists between the rates of Juvenile delinquency and school funding among the sample states. The findings affirm that where children go to school, how much funding their schools receive, and in what form is strongly correlated to their socialization and the frequency of their contacts with the criminal justice system.
Affordances and Children. When Culture Lives Through Artifacts
What is the relationship between nature and culture in the world of artifacts? This work explores affordances, how they are created, communicated and transmitted. Starting from assumptions of cultural-historical psychology, the work converges elements of comparative psychology, neurosciences, anthropology and design in order to make hypotheses on how knowledge is embodied into tools and how this knowledge is available at the beginning of our life.