Dice Bauman:

La posibilidad de convertirse en “víctima colateral” de cualquier emprendimiento humano, por noble que se declare su propósito, y de cualquier catástrofe “natural”, por muy ciega que sea a la división en clases, es hoy una de las dimensiones más drásticas e impactantes de la desigualdad social.

Tomado de: Daños Colaterales. Desigualdades sociales en la era global. p17

¿Cómo huir del mundo siendo sociólogo?

“Cuando se quiere huir del mundo tal y como es, uno puede ser músico, puede ser filósofo, puede ser matemático. Pero ¿cómo huir de él siendo sociólogo? Para lograr ver y hablar del mundo tal cual es, hay que aceptar estar siempre en lo complicado, lo confuso, lo impuro, lo vago, etc., e ir así contra la idea común del rigor intelectual.”

Cita: El Oficio del Sociólogo. 

Apartados: Sobre el Método de Estudios de Caso (Yin)

Apartados de lo que propone Yin en el artículo Case Study Methods:

First and most important (e.g., Shavelson and Townes, 2002, pp. 99-106), the case study method is pertinent when your research addresses either a descriptive question (what happened?) or an explanatory question (how or why did something happen?);

Compared to other methods, the strength of the case study method is its ability to examine, in-depth, a “case” within its “real-life” context. 

To begin understanding the case study method, for each topic you should ask:  what is the “case” (unit of analysis), and what related subtopics need to be covered as part of the related case study?  

Unlike most other methods, when doing case studies you may need to do data collection and data analysis together.  For instance, a field interview of one person may produce information that conflicts with that from an earlier interview.  Doing the interview is considered data collection, but surfacing the conflict is considered data analysis.  

A good case study investigator may even appear to mimic the role of a good detective.

Three Basic Steps in Designing Case Studies

1. The first step  is to define the “case” that you are studying
2. A second step calls for deciding whether to do a single case study or a set of case studies.
3. A third step involves deciding whether or not to use theory development to help to: select your case(s), develop your data collection protocol, and organize your initial data analysis strategies.  

A good case study design, at a minimum, involves:  defining your case, justifying your choice of a single- or multiple-case study, and deliberately adopting or minimizing theoretical perspectives.

Good case studies benefit from having multiple sources of evidence.  (…) In collecting case study data, the main idea is to “triangulate” or establish converging lines of evidence to make your findings as robust as possible.

Some researchers, either by training or preference, can only deal comfortably with a single type of evidence—e.g., interviews.  (…) You should avoid relying on such a narrow evidentiary base. 

Regardless of its source, case study evidence also can include both qualitative and quantitative data.

A final but essential comment on case study evidence:  You need to present the evidence in your case study with sufficient clarity to allow the reader to judge independently your interpretation of the data.  Older case studies frequently mixed evidence and interpretation.  This practice may still be excusable when doing a unique case study or a revelatory case study, because the descriptive insights may be more important than knowing the strength of the evidence for such insights.  However, for most case studies, mixing evidence and interpretation may be taken as a sign that you do not understand the difference between the two, or that you do not know how to handle data (and hence proceeded prematurely to interpretation).

In doing your case study, you should follow the classic way of presenting evidence: arraying data through tables, charts, figures, other exhibits (even pictures), and vignettes.  Footnotes, quotations from interviews, chronologies and narrative questions-and-answers also are suitable—as long as these are set apart from your interpretive narrative.

If selecting your case(s) to be studied is the most critical step in doing case study research, analyzing your case study data is probably the most troublesome.  Much of the problem relates to false expectations:  that the data will somehow “speak for themselves,” or that some counting or tallying procedure (e.g., “Q-sorts,” regression models, or factor analyses) will be sufficient in producing the main findings for the case study.  Wrong.

Several analytic techniques can help and can be planned during the case study design. One possibility is to stipulate some pattern of findings at the outset of your case study.Other analytic techniques include:  explanation-building, time-series analysis, the use of logic models, and cross-case synthesis.  

The presentation of your analysis can interact with the structure or composition of your case study report. Such a linear sequence mimics the reporting of most quantitative research (i.e., hypotheses -method -data analysis -findings -interpretations and conclusions).  However, for case study research, the linear sequence is not the only way.  You also might present your analysis throughout the reporting of your case study—as a history is presented or as much sociological fieldwork has been reported.

As a final note, your ability to be convincing increases the more that  you also incorporate rival explanations or alternative perspectives into your analysis.

Make no mistake about it:  if you want to do case studies, be sure that you also enjoy composing.

How much time and effort should I devote to collecting the case study data?  How do I know whether I’m finished collecting the data?

Unlike other methods, there is no clear cut-off point.  You should try to collect enough data so that:  1) you have confirmatory evidence (evidence from two or more different sources) for most of your main topics; and 2) your evidence includes attempts to investigate major rival hypotheses or explanations.  What do you think are some of the cut-off points for other methods, and why wouldn’t they work in doing case study research?

(Paper) Entrepreneurship and Economic Development: Theory, Evidence and Policy

This paper provides an overview of the state of the art of the intersection of development and  entrepreneurship. Given the neglect of entrepreneurship by development scholars it deals with (i)  recent theoretical insights from the intersection of entrepreneurship and development studies; (ii)  the empirical evidence on that relationship between entrepreneurship and development; and (iii)  fresh insights for entrepreneurship policy for development that emerges from recent advanced in  this area, including female entrepreneurship in developing countries.

Disponible aquí .

The BoP Approach: Sinner or Savior?

The Centre for New Economies of Development - established by social anthropologists at the Universities of Oxford, Edinburgh and Sussex – sets out to critically engage with the claims and counter-claims made about ‘bottom of the pyramid’ approaches.

Rather than assume BoP models are either a palliative for poverty or a smokescreen for business the Centre aims to examine the distribution of gains and losses, risks and vulnerabilities in BoP markets, asking what processes of inclusion and exclusion they give rise to, and whether they can deliver development that is both ethical and sustainable.

This means exploring relationships of production, marketing, and financing, It means asking about the impact of BoP businesses on local systems of production and on the lives of entrepreneurs, workers, and consumers. And it means asking about the potentially uneven distribution of social goods mediated through markets.  

Extracto. Disponible por aquí. 

What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic

“What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

“When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

— Excerpts from “Where Do We Go From Here?” Martin Luther King Jr., 1967

Via: Acumen Fund

Desafíos de los programas de vivienda sustentable en México

Con este artículo se pretende contribuir a la reflexión sobre los desafíos que enfrentan los programas de vivienda en México en su afán de promover la sustentabilidad en tres dimensiones: la fragilidad social y financiera de las familias para asimilar el uso de ecotecnologías en sus viviendas e impulsar prácticas más sustentables en el proceso de habitar; el rezago habitacional y las características del entorno urbano; así como el incipiente esfuerzo de ecoinnovación para promover un sistema de normas e incentivos orientados a los distintos actores que confluyen en la construcción de la ciudad, bajo la perspectiva de modificar el diseño de la vivienda y las prácticas de consumo de las familias. Como perspectiva analítica se adopta la ecoinnovación, dimensión frecuentemente desdeñada en los estudios sobre la vivienda y la ciudad.

Disponible aquí.