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Archive for July 2024

NJ lawmaker looks to ban algorithms blamed for jacking up your rent

The Gothamist | N Chernishev/Getty
The Gothamist | N Chernishev/Getty

Assemblymember Yvonne Lopez, a Democrat from Perth Amboy, said she is crafting legislation that would prohibit landlords from using RentPage and other similar rent-setting software. The services collect data on rents from participating landlords, then use their algorithms to suggest rates — a practice the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Justice argue amounts to price-fixing.

School of Social Welfare Receives $2M Award Through New York’s Opioid Settlement Fund

SUNY Stony Brook
SUNY Stony Brook

Building on the Stony Brook University School of Social Welfare’s (SSW) strong partnership with the Office of Addiction Services and Supports (OASAS), the SSW has been awarded an additional, new contract that will provide support for master of social work (MSW) students interested in working in the field of addiction and substance use.

The legacy of Conservative rule for adult social care

CommunityCare | G Brigden
CommunityCare | G Brigden

Labour’s return to power last week was greeted with a chorus of welcomes from adult social care organisations in England – along with a chorus of demands of the new government. Broadly, these were for significant investment in, and reform to, the sector to address issues including unmet need, workforce shortages and inadequate care. For many, these challenges are the legacy of the Conservatives’ 14-year period in office.

The specter of authenticity: Social science after the deconstruction of Romanticism

History of the Human Sciences, Ahead of Print.
In a long-forgotten essay, Alvin Gouldner defended the distinctive contributions of Romantic social science. Today, half a century later, very few would risk making a similar plea. Owing to its deconstruction, the discourse of Romanticism has increasingly fallen out of favor in the social sciences, meaning social scientists have progressively come to see Romanticism as less a resource for critique than a bourgeois ideology warranting critical scrutiny. Yet the truth is quite a bit more complicated. For despite its disapproval at the level of social science’s explicit culture, Romanticism continues to serve, at the level of implicit culture, as a potent resource for social analysis. We start with a clarification of what we mean by Romanticism. While Romanticism may be an amorphous and multifaceted structure of thought and feeling, like Gouldner, we do not think it lacks coherence. Thus, we outline what we take to be the core dimensions of the ‘Romantic syndrome’, and then survey some of its key figures in Western social thought. Next, we move to a discussion of three select studies about the infiltration of Romanticism into the capitalist heartland—the sphere of work. We demonstrate how, consistent with our argument that Romanticism has become increasingly symbolically polluted within social science, each of these studies critiques the Romantic turn at work, while nevertheless anchoring their critiques in Romanticism, albeit in increasingly implicit fashion. We conclude by offering some reflections on why Romanticism continues to haunt contemporary social science—and why this matters.

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The American People Need An Anti-Price-Fixing Division

The American Prospect | B Clark/CQ Roll Call/AP
The American Prospect | B Clark/CQ Roll Call/AP

While some inevitably blame President Biden, there is also a bipartisan belief among the electorate, including 45 percent of Republicans, that corporate greed is playing a large role in inflation. There are countless examples that bear out this assessment. RealPage’s algorithmic rent-setting, which is simply collusion by corporate landlords via a third party, has wreaked havoc in rental markets across the country. Oil and gas companies attempted to collude to artificially inflate prices.