Sophie Merit Müller
Biographic Data
| ID | 165819 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sophie Merit Müller |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sophie Merit |
| FAMILY NAME | Müller |
| SIGNATURE | MÜLLER S M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Johannesburg |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5892-0609 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 27 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Crowd-sourced peer review
Does research integrity matter
A recent strand of literature argues that the importance of epistemic virtues is overstated and that knowledge generation and transmission benefit from traits that can be characterised as epistemic vices. This goes against the stance of the research integrity literature, which takes it as given that epistemic vices are bad and should be combated. Arguments ‘in defence of vice’ utilise qualitative, historical cases of epistemic vice that contribut…
Randomised Trials As A Dead-End For African Development
Randomised Control Trials (RCTs) have been presented as a method for identifying interventions that will improve the lives of residents of economically poorer countries. I argue that RCT-driven development policy is unlikely to achieve even its narrower objectives and, instead, is likely to hinder the attainment of long-term economic and social development objectives in African countries. The article examines two fundamental methodological proble…
Equitable Evaluation
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines equity as the absence of preventable or remediable disparities among various groups of individuals, regardless of how these groups are delineated, whether by social, economic, demographic or geographic factors. The goal of equity is to eliminate the unfair and avoidable circumstances that deprive people of their rights. Therefore, inequities generally arise when certain population groups are unfairly de…
Econometric methods and Reichenbach’s principle
Masks, mechanisms and Covid-19
Evidence for a Yeti? A Cautionary Tale from South Africa's Youth Employment Tax Incentive
In 2014 the South African government implemented a youth employment tax incentive (YETI) scheme to address the high rate of youth unemployment. Its adoption has been hailed as a success story for evidence-based policy. This article critically assesses that claim, focusing on the randomized trial of a wage-subsidy voucher that was used to justify the adoption of the policy and econometric analyses of the incentive's efficacy that were used to just…
The Incentivised University
The dangers of performative scientism as the alternative to anti-scientific policymaking
Body Boundary Work
In everyday life, we usually go by the one - body - one - person rule : one person has one body (and vice versa). This social belief builds on two assumptions: bodies are individual units and they (and ‘their’ person) are the same in different situations. This is also the conceptual resource for social theories that build on the notion of individuals. In this article, we turn it into a sociological topic. We develop a vocabulary for reconstructin…
The implications of a fundamental contradiction in advocating randomized trials for policy
Distributed corporeality
Various specialist cultures configure bodies as complex technological devices. We know little about how exactly this is done. I focus on one of these cultures, classical ballet, to praxeologically reconstruct the conceptual, situational and material configuration of bodies as particular instruments. The technologization of the body is closely intertwined with the scientification of the practice - its ladenness with scientific knowledge about the …
Beyond the Body’s Skin. Describing the Embodiment of Practices
The economics and philosophy of the brain drain
The paper provides a critical perspective on recent contributions to the economics literature, and associated philosophical arguments, that downplay negative effects of skilled migration on developing countries. The assertion that such migration incentivises investment in human capital is shown to rely on shaky theoretical foundations and weak empirical evidence. The associated economic literature suggesting a net positive effect of brain drain i…
Körperliche Un-Fertigkeiten
Übung macht bekanntlich den Meister. Was aber, wenn ein Tun als zu perfektionierende Kunst aufgebaut wird, so dass das Üben nie in ein definitives Können mündet? Wenn dieselbe Pirouette, so glänzend sie auf der Bühne erscheint, im Training doch immer unvollkommen bleibt? Diese Ethnografie erkundet das Üben als einen grundlegenden Aspekt aller menschlicher Praxis am Fall des klassischen Balletts, wo es sozial ausdifferenziert, dramatisiert und als…
Academics as rent seekers
Becoming the Phenomenon? An Alternative Approach to Reflexivity in Ethnography
This article presents a praxeologically informed approach to "transgressing the researcher-subject" in ethnography. I unfurl a concept of "strong" reflexivity as developing a perspective of unfamiliarity toward one's own practices and beliefs. By drawing on my study on practicing ballet, I illustrate how I dealt with my own bodily involvement as a professional dance student. Comparing my approach with evocative autoethnography, I not only emphasi…
The transmission of longevity across generations
Das Sammeln populärer Heftserien zwischen Kanon, Archiv und Fanszene
Academics as rent seekers
Becoming the Phenomenon? An Alternative Approach to Reflexivity in Ethnography
This article presents a praxeologically informed approach to "transgressing the researcher-subject" in ethnography. I unfurl a concept of "strong" reflexivity as developing a perspective of unfamiliarity toward one's own practices and beliefs. By drawing on my study on practicing ballet, I illustrate how I dealt with my own bodily involvement as a professional dance student. Comparing my approach with evocative autoethnography, I not only emphasi…
The transmission of longevity across generations
The implications of a fundamental contradiction in advocating randomized trials for policy
The dangers of performative scientism as the alternative to anti-scientific policymaking
Distributed corporeality
Various specialist cultures configure bodies as complex technological devices. We know little about how exactly this is done. I focus on one of these cultures, classical ballet, to praxeologically reconstruct the conceptual, situational and material configuration of bodies as particular instruments. The technologization of the body is closely intertwined with the scientification of the practice - its ladenness with scientific knowledge about the …
Equitable Evaluation
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines equity as the absence of preventable or remediable disparities among various groups of individuals, regardless of how these groups are delineated, whether by social, economic, demographic or geographic factors. The goal of equity is to eliminate the unfair and avoidable circumstances that deprive people of their rights. Therefore, inequities generally arise when certain population groups are unfairly de…
The Incentivised University
Body Boundary Work
In everyday life, we usually go by the one - body - one - person rule : one person has one body (and vice versa). This social belief builds on two assumptions: bodies are individual units and they (and ‘their’ person) are the same in different situations. This is also the conceptual resource for social theories that build on the notion of individuals. In this article, we turn it into a sociological topic. We develop a vocabulary for reconstructin…
Das Sammeln populärer Heftserien zwischen Kanon, Archiv und Fanszene
The transmission of longevity across generations
Körperliche Un-Fertigkeiten
Übung macht bekanntlich den Meister. Was aber, wenn ein Tun als zu perfektionierende Kunst aufgebaut wird, so dass das Üben nie in ein definitives Können mündet? Wenn dieselbe Pirouette, so glänzend sie auf der Bühne erscheint, im Training doch immer unvollkommen bleibt? Diese Ethnografie erkundet das Üben als einen grundlegenden Aspekt aller menschlicher Praxis am Fall des klassischen Balletts, wo es sozial ausdifferenziert, dramatisiert und als…
Academics as rent seekers
Becoming the Phenomenon? An Alternative Approach to Reflexivity in Ethnography
This article presents a praxeologically informed approach to "transgressing the researcher-subject" in ethnography. I unfurl a concept of "strong" reflexivity as developing a perspective of unfamiliarity toward one's own practices and beliefs. By drawing on my study on practicing ballet, I illustrate how I dealt with my own bodily involvement as a professional dance student. Comparing my approach with evocative autoethnography, I not only emphasi…
Beyond the Body’s Skin. Describing the Embodiment of Practices
The economics and philosophy of the brain drain
The paper provides a critical perspective on recent contributions to the economics literature, and associated philosophical arguments, that downplay negative effects of skilled migration on developing countries. The assertion that such migration incentivises investment in human capital is shown to rely on shaky theoretical foundations and weak empirical evidence. The associated economic literature suggesting a net positive effect of brain drain i…
Distributed corporeality
Various specialist cultures configure bodies as complex technological devices. We know little about how exactly this is done. I focus on one of these cultures, classical ballet, to praxeologically reconstruct the conceptual, situational and material configuration of bodies as particular instruments. The technologization of the body is closely intertwined with the scientification of the practice - its ladenness with scientific knowledge about the …
The implications of a fundamental contradiction in advocating randomized trials for policy
The dangers of performative scientism as the alternative to anti-scientific policymaking
Body Boundary Work
In everyday life, we usually go by the one - body - one - person rule : one person has one body (and vice versa). This social belief builds on two assumptions: bodies are individual units and they (and ‘their’ person) are the same in different situations. This is also the conceptual resource for social theories that build on the notion of individuals. In this article, we turn it into a sociological topic. We develop a vocabulary for reconstructin…
Masks, mechanisms and Covid-19
Evidence for a Yeti? A Cautionary Tale from South Africa's Youth Employment Tax Incentive
In 2014 the South African government implemented a youth employment tax incentive (YETI) scheme to address the high rate of youth unemployment. Its adoption has been hailed as a success story for evidence-based policy. This article critically assesses that claim, focusing on the randomized trial of a wage-subsidy voucher that was used to justify the adoption of the policy and econometric analyses of the incentive's efficacy that were used to just…
The Incentivised University
Econometric methods and Reichenbach’s principle
Equitable Evaluation
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines equity as the absence of preventable or remediable disparities among various groups of individuals, regardless of how these groups are delineated, whether by social, economic, demographic or geographic factors. The goal of equity is to eliminate the unfair and avoidable circumstances that deprive people of their rights. Therefore, inequities generally arise when certain population groups are unfairly de…
Randomised Trials As A Dead-End For African Development
Randomised Control Trials (RCTs) have been presented as a method for identifying interventions that will improve the lives of residents of economically poorer countries. I argue that RCT-driven development policy is unlikely to achieve even its narrower objectives and, instead, is likely to hinder the attainment of long-term economic and social development objectives in African countries. The article examines two fundamental methodological proble…
Crowd-sourced peer review
Does research integrity matter
A recent strand of literature argues that the importance of epistemic virtues is overstated and that knowledge generation and transmission benefit from traits that can be characterised as epistemic vices. This goes against the stance of the research integrity literature, which takes it as given that epistemic vices are bad and should be combated. Arguments ‘in defence of vice’ utilise qualitative, historical cases of epistemic vice that contribut…
Philosophy (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Economics (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Art (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Income, Poverty, and Inequality (4 works) · Law (4 works)