In December 2014, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard brought together 40 scholars from a wide range of disciplines in the social and natural sciences to talk about the future of “big data” in social science research. Major technical advancements have given social scientists access to new forms of data and sophisticated analytical […]

1. A different perspective on social isolation In 1987, William J. Wilson centered his argument about the consequences of deindustrialization and poverty concentration on the idea of social isolation. Wilson (2012[1987]) believed that the concentration of poverty in cities had created a population of low-income African Americans who lacked social connections, particularly to mainstream Americans. […]