Daniel Little
Biographic Data
| ID | 3628444 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Daniel Little |
| GIVEN NAMES | Daniel |
| FAMILY NAME | Little |
| SIGNATURE | LITTLE D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Michigan–Dearborn |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3162-2614 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 59 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 117 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 59 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
My Diabetes My Way: A self-management platform for people living with diabetes
Background: My Diabetes My Way (MDMW) is an online platform for people living with diabetes that the University of Dundee operates and manages for NHS Scotland. It has been live since 2008 and offers multimedia educational materials, video testimonials, 13 online structured learning courses and patient access to their own data. The service is accessible through a web browser or mobile app. We aimed to report current utilisation figures and evalua…
Rethinking Analytical Sociology
Rethinking Ontological Individualism
The paper offers a critique of ontological individualism as a framework for social ontology. The phrase gives unjustified priority to facts about individuals over facts about higher-level social features. The paper reviews several important contributions to more nuanced views, including Giddens, Archer, Granovetter, Mahoney, and Thelen. It is argued that our guiding “map” of the social world needs to reflect the unavoidable reciprocal dependency …
Diane Vaughan, Dead Reckoning: Air Traffic Control, System Effects, and Risk
Understanding society: An interview with Daniel Little
In this interview, Daniel Little provides an overview of his life and work in academia. Among other things, he discusses an actor-centred approach to theory of social ontology. For Little, this approach complements the assumptions of critical realism, in that it accords full ontological importance to social structures, causal mechanisms, and enduring and influential normative systems. The approach casts doubt, however, on the idea of ‘strong emer…
Analytical sociology, analytic philosophy and analytical Marxism
This chapter considers the relationships between analytical sociology and two cognate fields, analytic philosophy and analytical Marxism. Analytic philosophy rests upon commitment to clarity and precision, reluctance to engage in large speculative theorizing, and interest in breaking philosophical questions down into their component parts. These features of intellectual style create affinities with analytical sociology. Research traditions encomp…
Do Organizations Adapt? 1
This chapter considers a specific kind of social entity, a formal organization through which various social activities are managed and directed. Social functionalism maintains that social features – institutions, values, laws – have the characteristics they possess because they serve important needs of the social order. Robert Merton offered a much more qualified and careful theory of social functions as a limited and empirically testable notion.…
Organizations as Actors: Microfoundations of Organizational Intentionality
The article addresses the topic of “group agency” with respect to large organizations. It undertakes to analyze some of the concrete micro- and meso-level processes (microfoundations) through which large organizations arrive at collective “knowledge” and “action.” The article makes use of the theory of strategic action fields to analyze processes of knowledge and the implementation of organizational intentions. The article describes some of the d…
The Continuing Need for Unmasking
Social Ontology De-dramatized
The article responds to Richard Lauer’s (2019) “Is Social Ontology Prior to Social Scientific Methodology?” The article concurs that “social ontology matters” for the conduct of research and theory in social science. It argues, however, that neither of the interpretations of the status of social ontology offered by Lauer is satisfactory (either apriori philosophical realism or pragmatist anti-realism). The article argues for a naturalized, fallib…
The Paradox of Wealth and Poverty: Mapping the Ethical Dilemmas of Global Development
We live in a time of human paradoxes. Scientific knowledge has reached a level of sophistication that permits understanding of the most arcane phenomena and yet religious fundamentalism dominates in many parts of the world. We witness the emergence of a civil, liberal constitutionalism in many regions of the world and yet ethnic violence threatens the lives and dignity of millions. And we live in a time of rapid economic and technological advance…
Nation, Region, and Globe: Alternative Definitions of Place in World History
Juan Wang, Sinews of State Power: The Rise and Demise of the Cohesive Local State in Rural China
Entangling the social: Comments on Alexander Wendt, Quantum Mind and Social Science
Alexander Wendt suggests that an emerging field of research on quantum consciousness may have important implications for our understanding of the social world as well. He wants us to consider that the operations of the brain are not “classical” but rather quantum‐mechanical, and that this sheds light on the social worker as well. This article casts doubt on these claims. First, the idea of panpsychism (all physical things possess features of cons…
Mechanisms and Method
Causal mechanisms theory (CMT) has provided an important contribution to the theory of social explanation. This article considers whether CMT also makes a contribution to improvement of social science methodology. Methodology serves as a guide to the construction of research questions and explanatory hypotheses. Research is guided by background assumptions about the ontology of the domain of investigation. CMT provides a valuable ontology for soc…
Fallibilism and Ontology in Tuukka Kaidesoja's Critical Realist Social Ontology
This article addresses Tuukka Kaidesoja's critique of the philosophical presuppositions of Roy Bhaskar's theories of critical realism. The article supports Kaidesoja's naturalistic approach to the philosophy of the social sciences, including the field of social ontology. The article discusses the specific topics of fallibilism, emergence, and causal powers. I conclude that Kaidesoja's book is a valuable contribution to current debates over critic…
Actor-Centered Sociology and the New Pragmatism
Explanatory Autonomy and Coleman's Boat
The paper addresses the question of whether an actor-centered social ontology can admit of relatively autonomous social causal explanations. It endorses the requirement that social structures and causes require “microfoundations.” It argues that the examples of other special sciences demonstrate the relevance of the idea of “relative explanatory autonomy” in the case of social causal reasoning. These considerations provide a basis for affirming t…
Protest with Chinese Characteristics: Demonstrations, Riots, and Petitions in the Mid-Qing Dynasty
History and Narrative
History of Technology
Introduction: History’s Pathways
Large Structures
Historical Concepts and Social Ontology
Causal Mechanisms
New Contributions to the Philosophy of History
"Insights developed in the past two decades by philosophers of the social sciences can serve to enrich the challenging intellectual tasks of conceptualizing, investigating, and representing the human past. Likewise, intimate engagement with the writings of historians can deepen philosophers' understanding of the task of knowing the past. This volume brings these perspectives together and considers fundamental questions, such as: What is historica…
Microfoundations, Method, and Causation: On the Philosophy of the Social Sciences
The convergence of inexactness and intelligibility in social phenomena makes social and historical inquiry fascinating. The social world is not chaotic and social processes are not unrelated strings of events. We can explain social patterns in ways that illuminate social outcomes. At the same time, the social world does not constitute a closed, determined system of variables and outcomes, in the same way that quantum chemistry systemizes the prop…
Explanatory Autonomy and Coleman's Boat
The paper addresses the question of whether an actor-centered social ontology can admit of relatively autonomous social causal explanations. It endorses the requirement that social structures and causes require “microfoundations.” It argues that the examples of other special sciences demonstrate the relevance of the idea of “relative explanatory autonomy” in the case of social causal reasoning. These considerations provide a basis for affirming t…
On the scope and limits of generalizations in the social sciences
Social Ontology De-dramatized
The article responds to Richard Lauer’s (2019) “Is Social Ontology Prior to Social Scientific Methodology?” The article concurs that “social ontology matters” for the conduct of research and theory in social science. It argues, however, that neither of the interpretations of the status of social ontology offered by Lauer is satisfactory (either apriori philosophical realism or pragmatist anti-realism). The article argues for a naturalized, fallib…
Rational-Choice Models and Asian Studies
The rational-choice paradigm has been attractive to many area specialists in their efforts to arrive at explanations of social and political behavior in various parts of the world. This model of explanation is simple yet powerful; we attempt to explain a pattern of social behavior or an enduring social arrangement as the aggregate outcome of the goal-directed choices of large numbers of rational agents. Why did the Nian rebellion occur? It was th…
Mechanisms and Method
Causal mechanisms theory (CMT) has provided an important contribution to the theory of social explanation. This article considers whether CMT also makes a contribution to improvement of social science methodology. Methodology serves as a guide to the construction of research questions and explanatory hypotheses. Research is guided by background assumptions about the ontology of the domain of investigation. CMT provides a valuable ontology for soc…
Understanding society: An interview with Daniel Little
In this interview, Daniel Little provides an overview of his life and work in academia. Among other things, he discusses an actor-centred approach to theory of social ontology. For Little, this approach complements the assumptions of critical realism, in that it accords full ontological importance to social structures, causal mechanisms, and enduring and influential normative systems. The approach casts doubt, however, on the idea of ‘strong emer…
Books in Review
Testing the Testers: A Reply to Barbara Sands and Ramon Myers's Critique of G. William Skinner's Regional Systems Approach to China
Commentary| February 01 1989 Testing the Testers: A Reply to Barbara Sands and Ramon Myers's Critique of G. William Skinner's Regional Systems Approach to China Daniel Little; Daniel Little Daniel Little is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Colgate University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Joseph W. Esherick Joseph W. Esherick Joseph W. Esherick is Professor of History at the University of Oregon. Search for other …
Organizations as Actors: Microfoundations of Organizational Intentionality
The article addresses the topic of “group agency” with respect to large organizations. It undertakes to analyze some of the concrete micro- and meso-level processes (microfoundations) through which large organizations arrive at collective “knowledge” and “action.” The article makes use of the theory of strategic action fields to analyze processes of knowledge and the implementation of organizational intentions. The article describes some of the d…
Explaining Large-Scale Historical Change
A prominent historiographic theme in the past decade has been a movement away from causal explanation of large-scale processes and outcomes and toward narrative interpretation of singular historical processes. This article argues for the continued vitality of large-scale historical inquiry and surveys the historiographic issues that arise in large-scale historical explanation. The article proceeds through an examination of several important recen…
Protest with Chinese Characteristics: Demonstrations, Riots, and Petitions in the Mid-Qing Dynasty
Collective action and the traditional village
Rethinking Ontological Individualism
The paper offers a critique of ontological individualism as a framework for social ontology. The phrase gives unjustified priority to facts about individuals over facts about higher-level social features. The paper reviews several important contributions to more nuanced views, including Giddens, Archer, Granovetter, Mahoney, and Thelen. It is argued that our guiding “map” of the social world needs to reflect the unavoidable reciprocal dependency …
The Continuing Need for Unmasking
Entangling the social: Comments on Alexander Wendt, Quantum Mind and Social Science
Alexander Wendt suggests that an emerging field of research on quantum consciousness may have important implications for our understanding of the social world as well. He wants us to consider that the operations of the brain are not “classical” but rather quantum‐mechanical, and that this sheds light on the social worker as well. This article casts doubt on these claims. First, the idea of panpsychism (all physical things possess features of cons…
Fallibilism and Ontology in Tuukka Kaidesoja's Critical Realist Social Ontology
This article addresses Tuukka Kaidesoja's critique of the philosophical presuppositions of Roy Bhaskar's theories of critical realism. The article supports Kaidesoja's naturalistic approach to the philosophy of the social sciences, including the field of social ontology. The article discusses the specific topics of fallibilism, emergence, and causal powers. I conclude that Kaidesoja's book is a valuable contribution to current debates over critic…
Commercialization and Agricultural Development: Central and Eastern China, 1870-1937. Loren Brandt
Countervailing Tendencies and Falsifiability in Capital
Countervailing Tendencies and Falsifiability in Capital
Mill on Liberty
Naturalism and Social Science--A Post-Empiricist Philosophy of Social Science
Preface Introduction 1. Complexity and social science 2. Common sense and social science 3. Meaning and social science 4. Values and social science 5. Paradigms and social science Conclusion References Index
Reflective Equilibrium and Justification
Arguing for Socialism
The scientific Marx
Dialectics and Science in Marx's Capital
Collective action and the traditional village
Marx's Theory of Scientific Knowledge
Testing the Testers: A Reply to Barbara Sands and Ramon Myers's Critique of G. William Skinner's Regional Systems Approach to China
Commentary| February 01 1989 Testing the Testers: A Reply to Barbara Sands and Ramon Myers's Critique of G. William Skinner's Regional Systems Approach to China Daniel Little; Daniel Little Daniel Little is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Colgate University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Joseph W. Esherick Joseph W. Esherick Joseph W. Esherick is Professor of History at the University of Oregon. Search for other …
The Scientific Marx
Books in Review
Varieties of social explanation: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Social Science
Understanding Peasant China: Case Studies in the Philosophy of Social Science
Rethinking Democracy: Freedom and Social Cooperation in Politics, Economy, and Society
Rational-Choice Models and Asian Studies
The rational-choice paradigm has been attractive to many area specialists in their efforts to arrive at explanations of social and political behavior in various parts of the world. This model of explanation is simple yet powerful; we attempt to explain a pattern of social behavior or an enduring social arrangement as the aggregate outcome of the goal-directed choices of large numbers of rational agents. Why did the Nian rebellion occur? It was th…
Commercialization and Agricultural Development: Central and Eastern China, 1870-1937. Loren Brandt
Remaking Peasant China: Problems of Rural Development and Institutions at the Start of the 1990s. Jørgen Delman , Clemens Stubbe Østergaard , Flemming Christiansen
Rents, Taxes, and Peasant Resistance: The Lower Yangzi Region, 1840-1950.
Books in Review
On the scope and limits of generalizations in the social sciences
To Lead as Equals: Rural Protest and Political Consciousness in Chinandega, Nicaragua, 1912-1979 . Jeffrey L. Gould
Reconstructing Marxism: Essays on Explanation and the Theory of History
State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Political Economy of Village Government . Jean C. Oi
Objectivity, Truth and Method: A Philosopher's Perspective on the Social Sciences
Sociology (38 works) · Epistemology (37 works) · Philosophy (33 works) · Political science (30 works) · Law (23 works) · Social science (19 works) · Economics (16 works) · Computer Science (15 works) · History (15 works) · Politics (15 works)