How do Americans acquire the impression that their political foes have some understandable basis for their views, and thus represent a legitimate opposition? How do they come to believe that reasonable people may disagree on any given political controversy? Given that few people talk regularly to those of opposing perspectives, some theorize that mass media, and television in particular, serve ...

We propose a geography that pluralizes the sites, practices and politics of authority. defend an approach tracks less perceptible forms authority emerging through everyday micropolitics experimental practices. In contrast to dominant definitions as institutionalized legitimate power, we define relation guidance from recognition inequalities in access truth, experience or objectivity. Analysing ...

Heterodox mystics and heretics of any kind can be sometimes dangerous and other times reliable depending upon political situations, as was the case with Bektashis in Ottoman Anatolia or in early independent Albania. The historical anthropology perspective taken in this article appears helpful in revealing that Bektashism is probably the mystical order of Islam that best exemplifies a transforma...

Exposure to conflicting political viewpoints is widely assumed to benefit the citizens of a democratic polity. Nonetheless, the benefits of exposure to heterogeneous political viewpoints have yet to be demonstrated empirically. Drawing on national survey data that tap characteristics of people's political discussion networks, I examine the impact of heterogeneous networks of political discussio...

The underdetermination argument establishes that scientists may use political values to guide inquiry, without providing criteria for distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate guidance. This paper supplies such criteria. Analysis of the confused arguments against value-laden science reveals the fundamental criterion of illegitimate guidance: when value judgments operate to drive inquiry to a ...

Forecasters in firms are expected to employ mathematical techniques encoded in information systems in order to predict the future demand for a firm=s goods. In practice, many forecasters have eschewed statistical methods of forecasting and depend instead on human expertise. This resistance to the ideals and technologies of forecasting has largely been understood in the literature as a failure o...

Quality improvement (QI) efforts affect a broader range of people than we often assume. These are the potential stakeholders for QI and its evaluation, and they have valuable perspectives to offer when they are consulted in planning, conducting and interpreting evaluations. QI practitioners are accustomed to consulting stakeholders to assess unintended consequences or assess patient experiences...