Exploring the many Facets of Failure in Academia
Most of the people working in academia who watched The Chair, which aired this summer, were probably filled with a bittersweet feeling; indeed, Netflix’s comedy-drama...
Branding of cities: to whom is the city advertized and what fundamental idea lies behind it?
“Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief”, is one of the famous quotations of 20th century-advertisement...
How Postmodernism Advanced Populism: An Inside Story From The Netherlands
There are many factors that explain the upheaval of populism. Postmodernism is one of them. In the Netherlands, certainly the columnist represented and helped to...
Why Does Fieldwork Matter? Reflections On Immersion, The Everyday & Knowledge Creation In Hong Kong
“If the RMB depreciates, Southbound trading goes through the roof!” A conversation overheard in Central Ideas about the borderless world have been around since the...
The Limits Of Survey Data: What Questionnaires Can’t Tell Us
All research methodologies have their limitations, as many authors have pointed before (see for example Visser, Krosnick and Lavrakas, 2000). From the generalisabilty of data...
Intellectual monocultures, black swans & the failure of economics: lessons from the global financial crisis and austerity
One of the most pressing challenges to the global economy has been the global financial crisis of 2007 – 2009 which morphed into a...
Keeping Social Science Relevant: Society Needs Clear Prose
If somebody were to ask me what I do all day as a student of the social sciences, my answer would be plain: Most of...
What Do Education Scholars Know?
Some time ago Martin Spiewak stated in the German quality-weekly Die Zeit that an awful lot of undisputed knowledge existed about the best ways to...
Are There Too Many PhDs?
In all OECD countries, but in particular in Germany, there seems to be an enormous overproduction of PhDs – in case one sees a PhD...
Academic Conferences Should Be Outlawed
It’s conference season! Thousands and thousands of social scientists are flying around to visit conferences. The American Sociological Association gathers with more than 4000 participants...
Economists Looking For God
A science is not called a discipline by coincidence: its students are actively and deliberately disciplined to think and behave in the specific ways that...