free dinner @ ASA?
The Kickstarter project for the antiwar movie has almost completed its goal, but we’re about $400 short. Free dinner @ ASA on me to the first person who provides that sum. Just send me the receipt. Here’s the URL:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/melofilms/the-activists-war-peace-and-politics-in-the-street
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where your iphone comes from
The latest episode of This American Life is a breathtaking first-person account of a Mac aficionado’s visit to an electronics manufacturing plant in Shenzhen, China. Here he meets some of the workers who put iPhones together and discovers that the entire manufacturing process is done by hand! He learns of the incredible toll this process of constructing little electronics goods has on their health and lives. The account, partly due to Mike Daisey’s engaging monologue style, is really unforgettable and disturbing. One of my favorite lines from Daisy’s account:
How often do we wish more things were hand-made? Oh, we talk about that all the time, don’t we? I wish it was like the old days. I wish things had that human touch. But that’s not true. There are more hand-made things now than there have ever been in the history of the world. Everything is hand-made. I know, I have been there. I have seen the workers laying in parts thinner than human hair, one after another after another. Everything is hand-made.
In typical TAL style, they try to get the other side of the story and the last ten minutes of the episode really grapple with the effects of sweatshop labor on economic mobility. Still, the voices that will remain in your head after the podcast are those of the mistreated workers whose bodies are souls are slowly being sacrificed on the factory line.
musical pain
Aurus Apothecary is “a not-for-profit micro-label hailing from Bloomington, IN which embraces obscure formats, innovative packaging and do-it-yourself ethics.” So of course, I trot on down to Landlocked Music and check it out. I’m that kind of music snob. And, of course, I like what I hear and it’s affordable. Aurus Apothecary is run by hipsters with good taste.
I bought the most recent release: Glass Torn and War Shortage: The Purposeful Poisoning of a Shardless Society, an “anti-cassette” by Mike IX Williams. What is an “anti-cassette?” Well, I think the concept is that the act of playing the music results in a permanent alteration and potential destruction of the cassette. But Mike IX takes it a step further. The cassette is coated in glass shards. Popping it into the tape deck will destroy it. You may cut your fingers just by picking it up.
Not only does Mike IX promise to ruin my fingers and tape deck, he wants to assault me with the power of music. According to the package, “The enclosed cassette holds the potential to harm the purchaser physically, mentally and spiritually. It has been sealed shut for protection to guarantee that the only bloodshed is that of the interacting listener.” At least Mike IX spares the innocent. A seal on the box says: “… containing spoken word over destructive audio. Harsh sounds with an even harsher message.” This’ll have to wait til I’m done with my Chuck Mangione marathon.
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PS. The picture is from the Aurus Apothecary website. I’m too afraid to open my copy.
common as air: the commons snare
There’s lots of scholarly interest in the commons these days. The free software movement has led many to call for the broadening of the commons from software to all information and culture-based production: music, movies, books, journals, and so forth. Many argue that intellectual property can’t meaningfully be treated as “property” – it should be free. I disagree (with lots of qualifications: e.g., it’s up to authors and outlets) – though I think this is a fascinating topic (and I’ll follow up with a future post).
So, one of my pet peeves is when an author strongly advocates for the information commons (e.g., that the peer-to-peer sharing of all music is perfectly reasonable) but then their own book itself is not in the commons. Here’s one example (there are many others): Hyde, Lewis, 2010. Common as Air: Revolution, Art and Ownership. Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Here’s an interview with the author a few years ago (where the commons are discussed). A review of the book. A Creative Commons interview. Here’s the book talk at the Berkman Center (watch the first five-six minutes and you’ll get a sense).
(I may well be wrong, perhaps the above book indeed is out there in the commons somewhere. If so, I need to pull this post.)
Here’s also Lewis Hyde’s 1979 book The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property. This book inspired the organizers of Burning Man.
Thankfully some of the commons advocates, like James Boyle, also walk the talk and post their books into the commons. Here’s his The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. Yale University Press.
Bottom line: if your book advocates the commons (for others), then it should be in the commons. Seems reasonable. (Sorry for the rant.)
hipster sociology
The media is picking up a new study of Facebook data that examines hipsterism – demonstrating cultural tastes that are different than your friends. From Livescience:
A person’s pattern of “likes” and “friends” on Facebook may betray their hipster tendencies, suggests a new study that found when more of your friends like the same alternative and indie bands as you, you are more likely to stop liking the bands.
The opposite was found on classical music tastes, which seem to be contagious between friends. Overall, however, the research found that most tastes aren’t spread among friends, with most people seeking out Facebook friends who are already similar in their tastes.
“In the past three years we’ve been pounded over the head with the idea that everything spreads and everything is contagious, and your peers can influence you in so many ways,” study researcher Kevin Lewis of Harvard University said, referring to recent studies, including one that suggested obesity is socially contagious. “Once you disentangle these things, you find that peer influence plays a minimal role,” at least in the Facebook setting.
This shows the subtly of networks – contagion (peer effects), as opposed to homophily (self selection), appears to be context dependent.
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the iowa cuacus in republican politics
Now that the dust has settled on the 2012 cycle, I’d like to speculate on the different roles that the Iowa caucuses have in the Democratic and Republican parties. The observation is that Iowa often picks Democratic winners, but GOP losers. mike3550 writes:
What impresses me about your list, Fabio, is how many of those people (former IA GOP winners), while not winning the nomination in the year they ran well, ended up shaping the Republican party in the future. Huckabee started a pipeline to opinion-making on Fox News, Dole ended up the Republican nominee in ’96, Bush I was VP and then President and Robertson is now a widely known “non-establishment” voice among conservatives. In other words, doing well in Iowa gives one a national platform to help influence conservative policy or politics in the future.
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the diffusion of….whatever
I just can’t stop chuckling about the graph in this cartoon.
From Pictures for Sad Children (HT: Tastefully Offensive)
punching-bag disciplines
Bill Gross says – “Philosophy, sociology and liberal arts agendas will no longer suffice” – “skill-based education is a must, as is science and math.”
Virginia Postrel comes to the defense of the “punching bag disciplines” -”How Art History Majors Power the US Economy.”
steve jobs at work
For Apple fan boyz and girlz, a short television feature from 1988 focusing on Jobs as new CEO of NEXT. HT: Ben Casnocha.
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communitarianism
Entry for “communitarianism” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, written by Daniel A. Bell.
larry ribstein, the uncorporation and organization theory
The legal scholar Larry Ribstein passed away a few weeks ago (here’s a post by Bainbridge with many links, here’s a tribute by Roberta Romano).
I was reading through some of his work and much of it links with important issues in organization theory. For example, one of Ribstein’s areas of focus was “uncorporations” — see his book The Rise of the Uncorporation (Oxford University Press). Uncorporations are forms of association and governance like limited liability corporations (LLCs), partnerships etc. These uncorporations represent 1/3 of all tax-reporting entities (the stat is from the above book) and the form is growing rapidly. These forms deserve attention given their unique structure, approach to contracts and incentives, etc.
So if you want a very good primer on corporations and uncorporations (frankly, this should really be part of the “yleissivistys” of any good org theorist), then get this book (here’s Chapter 1 on SSRN). While we have some good work on partnerships and related forms (e.g., I like this piece by Royston Greenwood and Laura Empson), nonetheless I think there is much opportunity to do further research in this area.
Another piece that might interest org theorists is Ribstein’s 2010 piece on the Death of Big Law, Wisconsin Law Review. The article discusses the many pressures faced by big law firms: deprofessionalization, competition from small law firms, the rise of in-house council, diseconomies, changing incentive structures, etc.
For more, here’s Larry Ribstein’s bepress page.
first movers and the sociology of markets
I often think about the difference between the economic and sociological approaches to markets. If I were to summarize it, I’d say that contemporary economics views a market as a social domain where actors are achieving some sort of goal and everything else is treated as parameter in some sort of optimization problem. In contrast, sociologists are more interested in how people collectively define markets as social domains. Not incompatible, but these perspectives lead to different questions.
There’s a recent article by Dobrev and Gotsopoulos called “Legitimacy Vacuum, Structural Imprinting, and the First-Mover Disadvantage” in the AMJ that nicely illustrates my point about the sociological approach to markets. Using auto industry data, the authors show that first movers have a lower survival rate. As I’ve argued in the past, the ecological theory of markets makes a distinct prediction than standard IO approaches. In standard IO, first movers have a huge advantage. They have no competition. In ecological theories, first movers are bringing a product that consumers may not understand. Think about the first home computer (not the Apple) or the first social networking site (not Facebook or even Friendster). There’s a lot of learning. Consumers learn about new products, sellers learn to make a version people can afford and use. That’s why first movers don’t do well and it’s a sociological insight.
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sociology is harder than you think
A few weeks ago, I noted that Indiana sociology is one of the stingiest graders in the university. About 30% of our grades are A’s, making us the 10th toughest grader in the university. From internal data, I know sociology gives lower grades than the rest of the College of Arts and Sciences, which gives lower grades than the rest of the university. It also turns out that I’m a GPA Terminator. In my large lecture in social theory, about 10% got any version of an A, with a single unadorned A.
I am not alone. The comments on the original post suggest that at a number of schools sociology tends to be harder than most majors in terms of grades. One commenter noted that sociology might just be graded harder. True. Sociology isn’t nuclear physics, but there some reasons to think that sociology is harder than it looks.
- Most sociology programs requires one semester of statistics, which can’t be faked.
- You have to take social theory – which is reading hard original texts from authors like Weber, Marx, Durkheim, and so forth. It’s like taking a course in Western civ. at a place like Chicago.
- A lot of sociological research is not narrative, like history. Rather, it’s about variables, even when it’s historical.
- Sociology instructors expect writing that combines variables/analytic thinking with college level expository writing.
Students are attracted to sociology because it’s accessible and many think it will be easy. Instead, they get this Frankenstein major that requires some math, some philosophy, analytical/deductive thinking, and clear writing. Few students possess all of these skills at once, which is why the grades are lower than in comparable majors.
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a little perspective on the iowa santorum thing…
You’ll see a few articles on how Tuesday’s caucus results undermine Romney or give the anti-Romney a real shot. Reality is complicated. It might be the case that somehow Romney suffers. But Romney’s support has been consistent, if not great, and it is unlikely that Santorum will present a credible threat.
Iowa has a history of going for people who have no chance of winning the GOP nomination: Santorum (’12), Huckabee (’08), Dole (’88), Bush I (’80). There’s also a pattern of strong showings by people who have no chance – Paul (strong third place – ’12), Forbes (second place – ’00), Pat Robertson (second place – ’88). In most of these cases, the more established front runner just shrugged it off by winning New Hampshire or some other states.
This is in contrast to the Democratic caucus, where the winner has a good track record. I could only see two modern Iowa winners who didn’t make it (Muskie ’72 and Iowa Senator Tom Harkin ’92). Also, the Democrats rarely support fringe candidates by giving them strong second or third place showings.
Bottom line: No viable alternative to Romney has appeared. According to political science research, party elite endorsements are the best predictor of nomination success. Thus, Romney and Perry were the only plausible candidates because they were the only ones with any notable number of elite endorsements and only one of them is left. Everyone else will fade in about a month. So ignore all the hype around Santorum or how Romney is now on the ropes. The general election has now begun.
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iowa cuacus reactions
Right now, Romney, Santorum, and Paul are close to each other but it seems that either Romney or Santorum are slightly leading by about a thousand votes over Paul. That’s with 48% of votes tallied.The political science research showing that conservatives over perform in Iowa seems to be holding.
If this result holds up – Paul comes in a close third – then I think the following will happen:
- Paul will suffer a Dean-style collapse, minus the scream.
- Romney will see no resistance in New Hampshire
- Santorum will not win many more states, if any. There are three more elections in January and seven in February. Then, March hits and you get Super Tuesday, with about ten states on one day. Santorum has little money and little organization. And you need both to compete when the nomination goes national. It’s simply not enough time to go national.
Sadly, this means that all discussion of antiwar views within the Republican party will now disappear for a generation. The professional politician can now safely switch to general election mode as the fire and brimstone family values conservative yelps in the background, safely ignored.
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gender puzzle: women in the early film industry
These Amazing Shadows is a documentary about the National Film Registry. It raises an interesting point. Before the rise of the studio system in Hollywood, there were many prominent film directors. They were not obscure figures. They were directors who made popular films that got critical acclaim. For example, Mabel Normand was a big director during the silent era. The documentary lists others.
My question: how did film directing become so male dominated during the studio era? Low barriers to entry, people probably don’t care whether a man or woman directed the film, etc. I find this an interesting puzzle in the sociology of gender and labor markets.
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orgtheory poll: iowa caucus prediction
The GOP caucus is on Tuesday. You will win nothing but honor for a correct guess. Nate Silver raises some interesting points about Iowa. In the GOP caucus, according to political scientists, moderates under perform their poll numbers while conservatives over perform. Makes sense. The caucus is a high commitment political act, which favors intense activists. If you believed in polls “as is,” expect a Romney win. But if you weight by ideology, then someone like Paul might win. But, according to polls, Paul is dropping while Santorum is picking up a little, possibly robbing Paul of the win that a more hard core conservative might normally get in this contest.
UPDATE: As of 2pm EST, the orgtheory readers rank Romney > Paul > Felin > Santorum. Check in late this evening for an update.
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orgtheory in 2011
Here are some 2011 stats for orgtheory:
- There were 583 posts in 2011.
- In 2011, about 2,100 people (on average) visited orgtheory each day.
- We turned five in 2011 and got some praise and critique.
- Lots of very cool people guest blogged in 2011:Steve Borgatti, Shehzad Nadeem, David Meyer, Chris Winship, Celeste Watkins-Hayes, Jeff Sallaz, Steve Kahl, Hilary Levey Friedman, Michael Ryall, and David Kirsch.
- We got 17,181 spam comments (thankfully WordPress’s technology captured well over 99% of that).
- The most commented post was Fabio’s “should I drop post-modernism from the theory course?“ (136 comments).
- The top post of 2011 was snake oil or cure all?
- 2,145 follow orgtheory via google reader.
Thanks everyone for a great year. We look forward to more discussion, debate and frivolous posts in 2012.
Happy New Year! May your data yield fantastical results and may your papers be accepted “as is.”
support this movie or the dog gets it!
Donate to “The Activists,” the movie about the antiwar movement, and no one gets hurt!
The original National Lampoon cover.
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graeber book forum part 3: the attack on economics continues
In the last installment of this book forum, I argued that Debt could be read as an attack on the functionalist view of money, which in turn, I think, is an indirect argument on the current state of economics. In this installment, I’ll delve into the middle section of the book, which can be read as another critique of contemporary economic history and theory.
The crux of Debt is a historical review of the origins of money and credit. The big empirical claim is that barter does not exist in most societies, so money can’t be seen as a naturally evolved institution that solves the problem of barter. The next claim that Graeber makes in the middle of Debt is that there is a very important difference between monetized economies and what he called “human economies,” and that very bad things happen when the two mix. Money is the catalyst for these bad things.
Let’s move on the key distinction in the middle of the book. Graeber views “human economies” as social institutions where people (and objects) are unique and strongly embedded in a web of social relations. Even when money is used, it’s more as a symbol of an obligation or relationship that can’t be payed. It’s not a literal exchange. In contrast, commercial economies are based on using money to exchange impersonal goods that are interchangeable.
In reviewing historical accounts of servitude, slavery, and other forms of domination, Graeber describes how people in human economies become dominated when the come into contact with commercial economies. Essentially what happens is that people participate in spiraling debt traps, which often end up with people pawning themselves and their families in order to seek status, or to pay off “debts” created through violence. Money is what allows people to willingly subjugate themselves to others. Graeber describes this in detail for the Atlantic slave trade and suggests that a similar processes occur in other regions where symbolic debt economies mix up with monetized economies (e.g., Southeast Asian hill people contacting monetized Asian kingdoms).
As you can imagine, Graber (p. 210) makes a striking claim at the end of this section of the book where he claims that modern life is essentially willful subjugation based on a hidden system of violence:
Formal slavery has been eliminated, but (as anyone who works from nine to five can testify) the idea that you can alienate your liberty, at least temporarily, endures. In fact, it determines what most of us have to do for most of our waking hours, except, usually, on weekends. The violence has been largely pushed out of sight. But this is largely because we’re no longer able to imagine what a world based on social arrangements that did not require the continual threat of tasers and surveillance cameras would even look like.
If one were to accept Graeber’s thesis, then one must abandon the view that money is a functional requirement of the economy. Instead, it is a system of illusions that mask the violence that converted pre-modern people into docile modern subjects. Norbert Elias minus the salad fork, but with a credit card, if you will.
After the New Year: societies and debt cycles.
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simplify your kwanzaa
It’s that time of the year. Yes, that’s right, it’s the season of hand wringing Kwanzaa articles. The Grio, for example, has a yearly tradition of publishing articles claiming it is actually cool and people really do celebrate it. The issue with Kwanzaa isn’t that the holiday was invented by a black nationalist in 1966. A lot of holidays were invented out of thin air and do pretty well. The real issue is that Kwanzaa is complicated. First, it’s too long. Dec 26 to Jan 1 is the official period. Then, it uses a language (Swahili) that isn’t in use in this country. To top it all off, the rituals are complicated. You have to get these candles and foods and so forth. Even though black educational and cultural movements are one of my research specialties, I still can’t remember all the Kwanzaa rituals. Yes, Christmas and Hanukkah are complicated, but, dude, they had, like, over two thousand years to develop. People need time to grow into a new holiday.
My humble suggestion is that Kwanzaa be drastically simplified:
- Make it one day. December 26 isn’t bad. People are still around for Christmas and it is unclaimed by other holidays.
- Cut it down from seven themes to one or two themes. I suggest “legacy” and “community.”
- Stick to English. If you must use Swahili, just make the two themes Ujima and Kuumba. Don’t use other non-English terms.
- Have one meaningful, but easy to implement, ceremony. My suggestion is that people gather in a circle and testify to either “legacy” or “community.” An elder may give a short recollection of a struggle (“legacy”). A young person may promise to help others in the coming year (“community”). There are other ways to interpret your testimonial.
- Drop the gear, but keep the candles. A nice touch would be to have the candles sit on a cloth made of fabric or pattern associated with the African Diaspora, a practice that is already common among adherents.
If you really love the week long Kwanzaaganza, then, hey, go for it. But I really think a simplified holiday might get a lot more followers.
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book contracts and jobs
The status of books is complicated in sociology. The discipline is heterogeneous in that journal articles and books are both considered valid forms of publication, but the weight given to them varies. For example, I have noticed that book contracts often get you little notice in the job market. There are some good reasons for this.
For example, many presses will give “advance contracts” that do not promise publication. Rather, they only promise that the book will be reviewed by the press once it is written. Presses need such documents so they know an author has committed to them, but job search/tenure committees are justified in giving them little weight. Advance contracts are written, but many books are never produced. However, books do often make it through the review process and then there is the final contract that is an agreement for publication. That usually happens after peer review. The final contract is approved by the press’ board of directors.
Assuming that the text is original research and not an edited volume, books at this stage (final contract/forthcoming/accepted) usually count for tenure. But my informal observation is that they don’t count much for hiring. In sociology, book oriented scholars usually have an article or two done before the book. Personally, I have known only one scholar whose only “publication” pre-PhD was a book contract and managed to get a decent job. More recently, people whose only publication is the contract have told me that they’ve had a tough time on the job market.
Is my observation accurate? If so, do book contracts deserve their low status? I’ve only been faculty at one soc program that leans heavily in favor of articles, so I’d be interested in the views of faculty at other soc programs and related fields like management, education, and social work.
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season’s greetings and a few of my favorite things
Come on, people. Sing along!
Another version, by John Coltrane.
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president paul … rand paul
Previous Ron Paul coverage on orgtheory.
Here’s a an idea. Let’s say that Ron Paul has perfect timing and wins the Iowa caucus, which is on January 3, 2012. It can happen. He’s got good organization, which matters in a small caucus state like Iowa, and a strong brand name. People hate the opposition. After Romney, Paul is the only presidential contender with a remotely decent track record. In 2008, he was getting somewhere between 5% and 15% in various primaries and caucuses. He even came in second place in a few states, like Nevada.
Then Paul hits the “Jesse Jackson ceiling.” Where Jackson could only go so far on the civil rights coalition in the Democratic party, Paul can only go so far on an ideologically pure libertarian platform in the GOP. Fox news hates Paul, as does the GOP establishment which is firmly against Paul. In a best case scenario, Paul wins some more libertarian leaning small states before Romney gets the Northeast, the West and the Mountain states in some sort of Super Tuesday landslide.
Here’s the twist: a semi-successful Paul 2012 run means that there is now a whole network of party activists who love the Paul brand and know the ropes. They’re ready to go if Kentucky Senator Rand Paul – Ron’s son – wants to run. He’s also a fairly pure libertarian in many ways and could easily pick up that wing of the party. If the social conservatives burn out in 2012 and 2016, by running against Democrats during the peak of the business cycle, then the GOP may be ready to let Rand Paul run in 2020 and he might win. The real legacy of Paul’s 2012 primary run may be laying the groundwork for Rand Paul presidency.
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enabling creative chaos wins big prize
Katherine C. Chen is a loyal reader and guest blogger emeritus. It turns out that she’s an award winning author! Her book, Enabling Creative Chaos, won the 2011 Best Book Prize for the Outstanding Book in Nonprofit and Voluntary Action Research from the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action. Required reading for folks interested in volunteers and non-profit organizations. Way to go!!
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scholastica, an iniative to change academic publishing
We all have gripes about the publishing process. Scholastica is a cool initiative by set of grad students at the University of Chicago to take the pain out of academic publishing. Specifically, “Scholastica makes it easy to create and manage peer reviewed journals online by streamlining administrative tasks and helping you find enthusiastic, qualified reviewers.”
Definitely a worthy cause! Be sure to check Scholastica out.
watch the hobbitt trailer … it’s, like, totally relevant to orgtheory
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supporting democracy and neoconservative foreign policy
As far as I can understand it, the neoconservative view of foreign policy is that the United States should use its military force to promote democracy in other countries. It isn’t too far from the truth to summarize the theory as “democracy by bomb.” There are many critiques of this view. Here, I’d like to offer a new one based on recent events.
One must ask, why do we want to support or create democracies through military force? The main reason is that we want to defend our selves. Democracies have not been hostile toward the United States.
If we accept this answer, then we should ask: what can the US do to promote democracy in other countries? We’ve now had a long time to think about these questions. We have historical evidence. There’s been a few cases where military force has lead to something we’d recognize as democracy. The two examples trotted out are post-war Germany and Japan. It does happen, if the nation of completely subjugated and its institutions demolished.
One must then consider all the nations where force was used and democracy did not appear, or took a generation or more to appear, or where democracies disappeared: Haiti, Iraq, Lebanon, Korea in the 1950s (rule by an autocratic president), the Philippines (colonial era, then Japanese occupation, then short term democracy, followed by dictatorship), Panama (US intervention 1903, then a democracy, then a dictatorship). Afghanistan is a work in progress, at best. When you take a long term view, you realize that the *average* military intervention is dicey at best.
In fact, according to political scientists, democracy seems to be preceded by some economic development and cultural preconditions. Some have argued, like Muller and Seligson, that democracy depends on a culture of gradual reform. In other words, hot heads don’t make for good democrats. Seymour and Lipset, and many others, have claimed that a country needs some level of economic development. Beth Simmons and collaborators have argued that there is strong evidence that international institutions help promote the diffusion of democracy. Few authors have found evidence that being invaded or attacked by other countries leads to democracy.
Then there is the role of social movements. There were anti-colonial revolts in the late 18th/early 19th century; the decolonization of the 1960s which birthed a number of short lived democracies; the anti-communist revolts of the 1980s; anti-authoritarian revolts of the 1990s; and now the Arab Spring. While foreign powers have often intervened, it is often the indigenously developed resources that have made these democratic moments possible.
So if we *really* wanted to increase the community of democracy, if for no other reason than self-protection, we have good reason to follow a mellow, low key approach. Whenever possible, encourage non-violence and gradualism. Then, encourage all nations to participate in international conventions that encourage openness and respect for human rights. Don’t embargo any country except for weapons. Allow economic development and encourage the consumption of cultural goods that depict democratic tolerance. Modestly support democracy movements, but don’t co-opt them. This may not be as satisfying as bombing tryants, who deserve it, but it’s a recipe for long term peace that has a good track record and might actually work.
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the world’s tallest tree
According to an NPR story, it’s in a redwood forest in Northern California.
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what is the role of the scholar in movements?
In the clip below, David Graeber discusses the role of the scholar in movements (etc etc) – in conjunction with a seminar on the book The Human Economy (Polity Press).
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Here’s part 2 of the above talk. Here’s Keith Hart introducing the edited book (and part 2).
