This open access book provides practical guidance for non-profits and community sector organisations about how to get started with data analytics projects using their own organisations’ datasets and open public data. The book shares best practices on collaborative social data projects and methodology. For researchers, the work offers a playbook for partnering with community organisations in d…
This open access book provides an essential guide to value sets for anyone working with EQ-5D-5L data. The EQ-5D-5L is one of the most widely used health related quality of life questionnaires around the world, with applications in clinical trials, population health surveys and routine outcomes measurement. In addition to providing a concise, generic way of describing health, the EQ-5D-5L facil…
Life is increasingly governed and mediated through digital and smart technologies, platforms, big data and algorithms. However, the reasons, practices and impact of how the digital is used by different institutions are often deeply linked to social oppression and injustice. Similarly, the ability to resist these digital impositions is based on inequality and privilege. Challenging the ways in w…
In the history of education, the question of how computers were introduced into European classrooms has so far been largely neglected. This edited volume strives to address this gap. The contributions shed light on the computerization of general education from a historical perspective, by looking closely at the different actors, political rationales and ideologies, as well as financial, politic…
Ralph James Savarese showcases the voices of autistic readers by sharing their unique insights into literature and their sensory experiences of the world, thereby challenging common claims that people with autism have a limited ability to understand language, to partake in imaginative play, and to generate the complex theory of mind necessary to appreciate literature.
Algorithms are a form of productive power – so how may we conceptualise the newly merged terrains of social life, economy and self in a world of digital platforms? How do multiple self-quantifying practices interact with questions of class, race and gender? This edited collection considers algorithms at work – for what purposes encoded data about behaviour, attitudes, dispositions, relation…
Following the critical principles as they were articulated in an earlier article on South African literature (Buikema, 2009), the paper discusses a more recent call for literary engagement in the context of contemporary debates on world novel and world literature. In a dialogue with Buikema’s reading of two South African novels, Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee and Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk, the p…
This open access edited volume introduces the concept of causal mechanisms to explore new ways of explaining the global dynamics of social policy, and shows that a mechanism-based approach provides several advantages over established approaches for studying social policy. The introductory chapter outlines the mechanism-based approach, which stands out by modularisation and a clear focus on acto…
This volume contends that Evidential Pluralism—an account of the epistemology of causation, which maintains that in order to establish a causal claim one needs to establish the existence of a correlation and the existence of a mechanism—can be fruitfully applied to the social sciences. Through case studies in sociology, economics, political science and law, it advances new philosophical fou…