The value of social research methods is that it produces independent evidence on the nature of society, social-economic problems and challenges, and potentially agreed ways of reaching effective solutions. There are two challenges to social research methods: one is the epistemic fracture of societies, where awkward evidence is mistrusted or …
Crime is designed in. Organised crime is intertwined in society and its institutions, its character reflects them, and it uses society’s technical affordances. Digital capitalism provides tools to increase the reach and impact of criminal activity Risks are distributed along with social vulnerabilities. Some crime is required and necessary because …
Life is generic, and therefore so is our AI. Botcopalypse postponed for now. Technofear can stand down. As with Zombie move tropes, the real threat is from the humans. Interacting with ChatGPT is not that different from talking to any bureaucracy. I have in the past set out a few …
Illicit markets face problems with valuation, coordination and cooperation (Beckert and Wehinger, 2012) and cannot rely on institutions of of law and state to fix these problems for them. Therefore they turn to other mechanisms – interpersonal trust, reliance on corrupt state and policing actors for enforcement, and sometimes complex …
Research is a process of constantly theorizing from evidence. In order to give our findings life and meaning we can apply frames that allow us to do that and also help us work together and react to practical problems as they come up. One frame is normalization. As sociologists we …
I’ve read and written enough to know when I see a masterclass in not saying anything, while appearing to say a lot. Documents show the conditions of their creation – the way they are stitched together from different drafts, sometimes by different authors, tells you a lot about how they …
US president Dwight Eisenhower warned in 1961 ‘we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex’ (MIC). The idea that there is a grouping of lobbyists and industry desperate to suborn public money for their agenda is a persistent one in Western …
Don’t hate us because we are an island, there are much better reasons. Just one of those odd details of life. A funny little quirk of urban left wing discourse that goes way back, why my child even to the days before Twitter, is they have a reflex resentment about …
Drones have had a bit of a moment with Ukraine, where they are presented as evening up the fight, providing a cheap way of countering Ukraine’s disadvantages in remote strike capability. I was thinking of the shift in how drones are normally seen in liberal Western circles, as weapons that …
One of the predictions made in global health was that as low/mid income countries became wealthier, their populations would adopt the illnesses characteristic of high income counties. Causes of death would shift away from neonatal conditions, violence and communicable disease to obesity, heart disease, stroke, cancer and other what are …
