Abstractions on steroids: A critical realist approach to computer simulations

Computer simulations are increasingly used within various fields of the social sciences, including analytical sociology and computational social science. However, the method has yet to fully find its place within critical realism, generally regarded as reductionist and methodological individualist and thus inadequate to the task of grasping the full and enigmatic complexity of social life. This article contributes to the discussion by suggesting an alternative approach to computer simulations in the social realm. Instead of representing reality, simulations are seen as a way of boosting abstraction by enabling us to isolate and study the effects of emergent mechanisms. The need for such tools is growing more urgent in an age characterized by rapid change and global networks of causal interrelation. Hence there is a need not only for new tools to deal with causal complexity within critical realism, but also for a critical realist perspective to fill the meta‐theoretical vacuum on which the simulation approach is largely based. The approach developed here provides a challenge to the predominant ways in which simulations are utilized today, with increasingly sophisticated models aiming towards realistic representation on the basis of empirical data.     

“百年未有之大变局”之哲学分析

当今世界正处于“百年未有之大变局”中。这是中国共产党对于世界新的时代特征的全新、科学和准确的研判。“百年未有之大变局”这一重大论断，具有深厚的马克思主义哲学的本体论基础、认识论基础、矛盾论基础和历史观基础。作为科学世界观与方法论，马克思主义哲学的辩证唯物主义和历史唯物主义为我们深刻认识和精准把握“百年未有之大变局”的深层本质和哲学依据提供了重要的认知性引导、方法论基础和实践智慧支撑。     

认知问题和群知识浅析

研究群知识的形式模型有助于澄清抽象的哲学概念以及概念之间的关系。然而，目前群知识的形式化的处理方法和哲学所讨论的群知识是相脱离的。对群知识的形式化的定义可称为集体知识，是关于公共问题的分布知识以及公共知识和全分布知识之间的桥梁。所有的知识都是基于对主体的不同概念的区分而获得的。为了对认知群和集体知识进行模型，需要引入新的克里普模型，即认知群模型。定义一个好的群知识有助于对基于群知识的更高层次的哲学讨论。     

马克思主义新世界观的天才萌芽--读《关于费尔巴哈的提纲》

作为包含着马克思主义新世界观的天才萌芽的第一个文件，《关于费尔巴哈的提纲》吸引了国内外众多学者的研究目光。《提纲》第一条作为全文的总论，集中体现了马克思主义哲学的伟大变革；第二条不仅是马克思主义认识论革命性变革的成果，同时具有重要的历史观意义；第三条探讨了人与环境、教育的相互关系；第四至十条可以看做是对新唯物主义历史观的论述和对费尔巴哈哲学的彻底批判；第十一条彰显着马克思主义哲学的本质特征和马克思人生的真实写照。     

技术设计：技术认识的形象化

技术设计是运用设计理论和方法，在创制和改造技术人工物的过程中，把思维中的技术构思规范化、定量化，把它们以标准的图纸或说明书的形式展现出来的创造性活动。技术设计是解决技术问题的关键，通过分析问题、综合取舍、实践评估等环节使得抽象的技术认识得以形象化、具体化，从而形成切实的技术问题解决方案。在不同的认识情形下，技术设计或者被当作一个黑箱，或者被当作一个白箱，或者被当作一个系统，这三种不同的设计方式分别反映出技术设计的创造性、合理性和过程控制。     

Fuzzy epistemology: Decolonizing the social sciences

This article first argues that the social sciences need to be decolonized, as the current epistemologies and research methodologies are too narrowly based on the European and North American experiences and hence unable to adequately capture non-European experiences and realities. I then argue that decolonizing dominant social science epistemology means freeing it from its Aristotelian foundation. The next step undertaken is to discuss five non-Western epistemologies from West Africa, China, Melanesia, India, and South America. Building on the work of Jimi Adesina (2002), I find that all five share a fuzzy perception of reality, allowing for statements that are non-exclusive, non-discrete, and hence fuzzy. I propose an operationalization of these fuzzy epistemologies by applying Charles Ragin's Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fscqa).     

“Sassy Queens”: Stylistic orthographic variation in Twitter and the enregisterment of AAVE

Recent computational sociolinguistic analyses of social media have emphasized the potential of using orthographic variation as a proxy for speech, thereby permitting macro‐level quantitative studies of regional and social variation (e.g. Eisenstein, 2015). However, the extent to which stylistic variation may affect these analyses remains largely unexplored. In this paper, I explore how authors use variant spellings stylistically to deploy personae and characterological figures (Agha, 2003), by examining the presence of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) features in a corpus of 15,804 tweets extracted from the timelines of 10 gay British men. I argue that the stylization of AAVE signals the development of a very specific persona—the “Sassy Queen”—which relies on an essentialized imagining of Black women as “fierce” and “sassy.” Concluding, I emphasize the value of micro‐level analyses in complementing quantitative analyses of linguistic variation in social media.     

Introduction: making the case for qualitative interviews

ABSTRACT

We introduce four papers comprising a Themed Section for this issue of the International Journal of Social Research Methodology, which together ‘Make the Case for Qualitative Interviews’. Here our aim is to show how this collection provides a timely contribution to key debates concerning the value of qualitative interviews, particularly as these are employed and analysed in much recent social scientific thinking. We explore ways to move beyond recent, sometimes constraining and occasionally dismissive, approaches to interviews in the social sciences through reframing and reconfiguring central questions germane to these debates. We also seek to challenge a broader neo-liberal trend towards valuing quantitative over depth qualitative research. Through this Introduction, and the collection of papers that follows, we seek to re-establish the value of qualitative interviews by shifting the focus from a preoccupation with what interviews can be said to do, towards questions centring on what can be done with interviews.     

Some notes on robust sure independence screening

Sure independence screening (SIS) proposed by Fan and Lv [4 J. Fan and R. Li, Variable selection via nonconcave penalized likelihood and its oracle properties, J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 96 (2001), pp. 1348–1360. doi: 10.1198/016214501753382273[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]] uses marginal correlations to select important variables, and has proven to be an efficient method for ultrahigh-dimensional linear models. This paper provides two robust versions of SIS against outliers. The two methods, respectively, replace the sample correlation in SIS with two robust measures, and screen variables by ranking them. Like SIS, the proposed methods are simple and fast. In addition, they are highly robust against a substantial fraction of outliers in the data. These features make them applicable to large datasets which may contain outliers. Simulation results are presented to show their effectiveness.     

Gender identity and lexical variation in social media

We present a study of the relationship between gender, linguistic style, and social networks, using a novel corpus of 14,000 Twitter users. Prior quantitative work on gender often treats this social variable as a female/male binary; we argue for a more nuanced approach. By clustering Twitter users, we find a natural decomposition of the dataset into various styles and topical interests. Many clusters have strong gender orientations, but their use of linguistic resources sometimes directly conflicts with the population‐level language statistics. We view these clusters as a more accurate reflection of the multifaceted nature of gendered language styles. Previous corpus‐based work has also had little to say about individuals whose linguistic styles defy population‐level gender patterns. To identify such individuals, we train a statistical classifier, and measure the classifier confidence for each individual in the dataset. Examining individuals whose language does not match the classifier's model for their gender, we find that they have social networks that include significantly fewer same‐gender social connections and that, in general, social network homophily is correlated with the use of same‐gender language markers. Pairing computational methods and social theory thus offers a new perspective on how gender emerges as individuals position themselves relative to audiences, topics, and mainstream gender norms.