Dan Silver

On the way, I reflect on the subjective experience of working with Codex and what it means for my own internal heuristics about what is worth publishing in an academic journal.

There is also pretty strong evidence of fairly significant neighborhood impacts, in that zip codes that receive grants show stronger growth in total businesses, hospitality sector, restaurants, community orgs, and arts orgs, relative to otherwise similar zip codes that did not receive a grant.

The main results show that over time projects shifted away talking about their work as supporting economic growth (likely due to concern about gentrification criticisms).

Exploring NEA's Our Town with Codex I’ve been using LLMs as coding aids for some time, and they have definitely enhanced my abilities, both through speeding up things I could have otherwise done, and also allowing me to try out analyses...

This post summarizes results from using Codex to analyze a dataset of NEA project reports from its Our Town program. Our Town is a place-based initiative that supports arts groups to work with various civic organizations to enhance local community vitality.
open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...

Even granting that, there is a lot to learn, especially for the problem of sustaining groups you mention at the end.

But that is my own perhaps idiosyncratic concern, on the bigger project and ideas about the F-word this is an important contribution, congratulations!

The only significant critical reaction I have is that I think you could read Parsons-era work more generously, rather than take the Mills critique at face value. Yes there are problems, though the significance of organicism to the entire program is I think often overstated.

Finally got around to reading this, it is terrific! Very timely and important. I found the classification of types of functional explanations very helpful.

When and why a society opens up one or the other channels is, as the great sociologist Talcott Parsons put it with considerable understatement in his examination of German society, “a most important question.”

This sociological theory of romanticism implies that responding to and channelling romantic impulses is a fundamental challenge of modern times. There are many ways of responding to this challenge, depending on the vessel into which the romantic stream flows: politics, love, work, art.

The basic source of strain is in the fundamental challenge of coordinating personality, society, and culture. Because size and complexity create more sources of strain, modernity tends to bread romanticism. Subject to this strain, the Romantic says: “Anywhere out of this world.”

Romanticism: a sociological perspective How modern societies channel the romantic impulse, from Baudelaire to Bon Jovi.

This post examines romanticism from a sociological perspective. In this point of view, romanticism is a perennial possibility because all societies experience strain and tension.

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The iron cage of authenticity Why there can be no more traditionalists, only Trads

What do the Protestant Ethic and the Ethic of Authenticity have in common? Both are disciplining, internally and externally.

open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...

The iron cage of authenticity Why there can be no more traditionalists, only Trads

Soc Theory Nerds should check out @dsilver432.bsky.social's always illuminating Substack. The most recent missive, on "The Iron Cage of Authenticity" is fun into Tay Tay's philosophy (Charles Taylor, of course. Did you think Taylor Swift?). thesilverlining3.substack.com/p/the-iron-c...

A Sandbox for Artificial Social Intelligence Chatstorm: harness the sociality of mind!

open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...

A Sandbox for Artificial Social Intelligence Chatstorm: harness the sociality of mind!

And read more here: substack.com/home/post/p-...

What would Claude, Deepseek, Gemini, Grok, and ChatGPT say if they walked into a bar?
You can explore these questions and more with R.B. Griggs' chatstorm, here: chatstorm.io

Mind is social, and so disorganized sociality produces disorganized mind. What are the social capabilities of current models? How do their capabilities change depending on their interaction environments?

AI is exiting its early psychological phase and maturing into its sociological moment. We can all see the potential in networked and distributed intelligences. At the same time, throwing them all together and watching the sparks fly tends to produce mush.

A Sandbox for Artificial Social Intelligence Chatstorm: harness the sociality of mind!

A Sandbox for Artificial Social Intelligence
open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...

Two Invitations To Sociology Bourdieu vs. Garfinkel

In this post, I articulate two invitations to sociology. One is predominant, represented by Pierre Bourdieu. The other is a persistent undercurrent and can be usefully formulated via a look at Harold Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology.

open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...

Another excellent piece from a sociologist I truly admire. As one of "those" in the Parsons camp, this essay spoke volumes to me. But, its value is in its attempt at transcending the (very) small contemporary pro-Parsons faction in the field. Erudite and insightful...check it out.

Awwww, thanks Seth, much appreciated, and the feeling is mutual!

1) I consider Parsons' theoretical value within the fractal logic of disciplines 2) Discuss his political complexity, and 3) trace the later development of his thought to examine parallels between the social reciprocity of the sick role with a cultural reciprocity between symbols of life and death.

The Sick Role and the Gift of Life Comment on Heath, Parsons, and Social Construction

This essay responds to Joseph Heath’s recent post on social construction and the “sick role.” It offers three comments on Talcott Parsons. open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...

Fear and Fair. Nietzsche, Rawls, and the Eternal Recurrence of the Other A parable about liberalism and the search for existential meaning

What would happen if John Rawls ran into Nietzsche’s demon while shopping at a grocery store for breakfast cereal? I try to answer that question with a little parable that tells us something about the problem of existential meaning and aesthetics for liberalism.

open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...

So ends an era of ASA’s public facing journal as @contexts.org officially leaves print behind and moves completely online.
I've somehow spent 1/3 of my life w/ @contexts.org starting on the grad board under the leadership of @chrisuggen.bsky.social, Douglas Hartmann, and @lettapage.bsky.social

Oh wow very cool I didn’t see that, will take a look asap, congrats this seem very important !

“Functionalism” has become a kind of F Word in sociology and the social sciences. This is very strange, since if you read social science research, much of it implicitly relies on some sort of functionalist motif.

The f-word Give functional explanation a chance!

In this post I discuss the logic of functionalist explanation and argue we should not be afraid to use it, when appropriate.

Bonus points if you can recognize the image and see the connection!

open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...

Social Capitalist Ethics: beyond the morality of the gentleman A Market-Failure Approach to Platform Ethics. The first in a series of posts on why social media is a staged competition for influence, and how to decide what counts as fair play.

A Market-Failure Approach to Platform Ethics. The first in a series of posts on why social media is a staged competition for influence, and how to decide what counts as fair play.
#sociology #platforms

open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...