There is no god independent of human goodness.

A friend of mine, who does not like social media or public attention, said I could post this quote from him. He is reading two books presently. John Julius Norwich's Sicily and Anna Reid's Borderland: A journey through the history of the Ukraine. 

Both countries, as most know, have suffered tremendously at the hands of others. Millions upon millions of people being killed, exiled, or left living lives of desperation because of the terrible inhumanity and indifference of others.

My friend said something profound that I wanted to share:

"If you think there is a god, independent of human kindness and compassion, you are mistaken. All that stands between cruelty and suffering is the goodness of everyday people, willing to make a difference. The universe is otherwise silent." 

 

Time and Process in QCA (Qualitative Comparative Analysis) and Case-based Reasoning

Interest in Qualitative Comparative Analysis is burgeoning and has sparked a wide range of methodological developments. One area that deserves attention is the integration of time and process into the logic and workings of OCA as a research approach and technique.

 

 

In Fall of 2022, Lasse Gerrits and Sofia Pagliarin, both of the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, organized the first Time-in-QCA (TiQ) workshop.  

It was a fantastic session and I was honoured to get to present as part of the day's events. I presented on the links between a case-based computtional modelling approach and QCA for modelling longitudinal trajectories of cases and their corresponding complex causality.

 

Sofia and Lasse have now produced a corresponding report of the workshop. You can find it on the COMPASS website (Comparative Methods for Systematic Cross-Case Analysis).

HERE IS THE LINK

 

More than just reviewing the workshop itself, this report is essential reading for anybody interested in longitudinal QCA: it summarizes existing conceptualizations of the relationships among time and QCA, provides a high-level overview of methodological techniques for incorporating time and process into QCA, and identifies avenues and areas for future exploration.

 

See also their paper: Pagliarin, S., & Gerrits, L. (2020). Trajectory-based Qualitative Comparative Analysis: Accounting for case-based time dynamics. Methodological Innovations, 13(3), 2059799120959170.