Jesse Smith

See my latest at Theory & Society.

There's lots talk about the need for viewpoint diversity in higher ed, but the discussion can be vague. I provide clarity re: what it is, what problem it's supposed to solve, and what it should look like in the context of social science. 1/ 🧵

Great piece laying out a sketch of populist epistemology. Our typical emphasis on possession of propositional or technical knowledge of political affairs a) casts the cognoscenti as superior in virtue by definition, but b) renders even the tip of that class severely deficient since our ignorance will always and necessarily overwhelm our knowledge. Seems like a problematic standard. Hence the need for greater focus on practical knowledge. rbnmckenna86.substack.com/p/what-is-poli…

This is interesting.

Unironically, though. An insight does not need to be novel to be valuable. Updating, rearticulating, applying to some new problem, etc., are all perfectly legitimate scholarly activities. In many cases, probably more worthwhile than struggling to say something genuinely new.

Excellent talk from Shamus Khan at LSE (channeling Nisbet) on sociology’s neglected conservative tradition. Themes of legitimate hierarchy, nature, community, and tradition are central to society, and used to be central to sociology as well. They now represent some pretty glaring blind spots in the discipline. youtube.com/live/NPAJrnai_…