Literature Review

Lesson video-please check: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrqpIJFldOQ&feature=youtu.be

WEEK 7 POLITICAL ECONOMY, AUTHORS, AND JOURNALS

This week, we will be analyzing the "political economy" of our article, a concept we often overlook. Like the term "hot dog" (wherein we know the words "hot" and "dog," but put them together and the term means something unrelated to the individual words), "political economy" takes on a new meaning than the original words might suggest. Yes, "political economy" is about politics and about economics, but more specifically, it's about interests and ownership, and how these interests and channels of ownership influence social institutions.

Political economy is a really cool term that originated in the field of moral philosophy, but today it's also used in the social sciences.

That said, this week, in 2-3 paragraphs, address the following prompts:

-APA citation of your article

-Who is/are your author(s)? Look them up. What is their job? Do they work at a university? Which one? Or do they work for a think tank or organization? Which one?

-See if you can find their website or CV. What field do your researchers hail from? Are they economists? Sociologists? Does this match the field that they're researching in? Do any red flags come up for you (e.g. their Ph.D. is in a totally different subject than their research; this is their first article in eight years despite holding a tenure-track position at a research university)? Anything else of interest?

-Does the university, university department, organization, or individual have any obvious bias (e.g. implicit bias) we should be aware of (e.g. is it a religious school? Does it have any obvious interests (e.g. pro-Zionist, anti-authoritarian)? Are these biases identified as biases in the article, or are they treated as neutral positions?

-How was the research funded? Can you tell? Do they disclose this/make this apparent? If they do, research the funder. Do they have any bias we should be aware of (e.g. if they are a commission on/foundation supporting public schools, and they are funding your research study which tests the effectiveness of public schools, you can imagine they would have an interest/stake in the results coming out in favor of public schools).