"Sullivan is an esteemed sociologist who specialized in class dynamics and the role of debt"

Actually kind of a revealing sentence.

Indeed. I may have to look her up.

The most interesting things I've seen written about debt in the past 20 years comes from an anthropologist, David Graeber. Debt, the first 5000 years. Insights I've never seen from an economist.

I'm curious as to what a sociologist has come up with.

What I've seen of Graeber's stuff is interesting. Economics is too important to be left to the economists.

But I've always regarded sociology as undisciplined and people studying it unrigorous. I haven't missed much by those rules of thumb.

A number of Sullivan's books were written with one Elizabeth Warren. When other academics tried to examine their data they came up short. Look her up if you like, but you're more likely to learn more elsewhere.

I share some of your sentiments for the softer social sciences. I've also grown increasingly skeptical of significant portions of economics as well. Another author I've recently learned of, still need to start chewing into his work, is Jonathan Nitzan, whose Capital as Power is predicated on the notion that splitting Economics and Political Science apart was a mistake. I'd been leaning that way myself.

Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture notes that much recent copyright wrangling is really a return to feudalism. I've been suspecting that it's rather more than just copyright.