In this article I generalize ecological theory by developing the notion of separate but linked ecologies. I characterize an ecology by its set of actors, its set of locations, and the relation it involves between these. I then develop two central concepts for the linkage of ecologies: hinges and avatars. The first are issues or strategies that "work" in both ecologies at once. The second are attempts to institutionalize in one ecology a copy or colony of an actor in another. (...) The article investigates the first of these concepts using two detailed examples of hinge analysis between the professional and political ecologies. Both concern medical licensing, the first in 19th-century New York and the second in 19th-century England. For the avatar concept, the article analyzes four less detailed cases linking the professional and university ecologies: computer science, criminal justice, clinical psychology, and applied economics. (shrink)

The paper considers some of the implications of Coleman Diagrams in the context of the study of social interaction at the microlevel. Such studies cannot be adequately modeled without improved theoretical rigor. The Theory of Comparative Narratives is advanced as one possible analytical framework of the modeling of interactions.

Both U.S. and Mexican sociologies allege that they are in the business of making true scientific knowledge claims about the social world. Conventional conceptions of science notwithstanding, I demonstrate that their claims to truth and scientificity are based on alternative epistemological grounds. Drawing a random sample of nonquantitative articles from four leading journals, I show that, first, they assign a different role to theories, and indeed they have dissimilar understandings of what a theory should consist of. Second, whereas U.S. sociology (...) actively struggles against subjectivity, Mexican sociology maximizes the potentials of subjective viewpoints. Third, U.S. sociologists tend to regard highly and Mexican sociologists to eagerly disregard the principle of ethical neutrality. These consistent and systematic differences raise two theoretical issues. First, I argue that Mexican and U.S. sociologies are epistemologically, semantically, and perceptually incommensurable. I contend that this problem is crucial for sociology's interest in the social conditioning of scientific knowledge's content. Second, I suggest four lines of thought that can help us explain the epistemological differences I find. Finally, I argue that sociologists would greatly profit from studying epistemologies in the same fashion they have studied other kinds of scientific and nonscientific beliefs. (shrink)

Among the founders of classical German sociology, Ferdinand Tonnies is still relatively neglected. Many reasons are given, but the most widespread and the most damning is that Tonnies is a pessimist who wished, in the face of modernity, to return to the supposed Golden Age of rural Germany, when the community, ruled by patriarchs, gathered on the land. This interpretation is fundamentally flawed: although Tonnies wanted to describe the rootless, ruthless, calculating individuals of modern society, he wished to recall the (...) past primarily in order to develop a blueprint for the future, in which the so-called feminine traits of conscience, empathy, and care would govern the community. Rather than yearning for the past, Tonnies was a utopian who had a vision of the future and tried to make it a reality. (shrink)

Ulrich Beck's best selling Risk Society established risk on the sociological agenda. It brought together a wide range of issues centering on environmental, health and personal risk, provided a rallying ground for researchers and activists in a variety of social movements and acted as a reference point for state and local policies in risk management. The Risk Society and Beyond charts the progress of Beck's ideas and traces their evolution. It demonstrates why the issues raised by Beck reverberate widely throughout (...) social theory and covers the new risks that Beck did not foresee, associated with the emergence of new technologies, genetic and cybernetic. The book is unique because it offers both an introduction to the main arguments in Risk Society and develops a range of critical discussions of aspects of this and other works of Beck. (shrink)

By focusing on the unique velocity and over-stimulation of metropolitan life, Georg Simmel pioneered an interpretation of cultural boredom that has had a significant impact on contemporary social theory by viewing it through the modern experience of time-pressure and social acceleration. This paper explores Simmel's account of boredom by showing how--in the frenzy of modern life--it has become increasingly difficult to qualitatively distinguish which choices and commitments actually matter to us. Furthermore, this emotional indifference invariably pushes us towards more excessive (...) and risky behavior, towards, what I call, "extreme aesthesia." Insofar as novel experiences quickly become routine in the technological age, it appears that only extreme sensations and experiences can break the spell of boredom, allowing us to momentarily feel strongly for something. (shrink)

From its very beginnings, the social study of culture has been polarized between structuralist theories that treat meaning as a text and investigate the patterning that provides relative autonomy and pragmatist theories that treat meaning as emerging from the contingencies of individual and collective action-so-called practices-and that analyze cultural patterns as reflections of power and material interest. In this article, I present a theory of cultural pragmatics that transcends this division, bringing meaning structures, contingency, power, and materiality together in a (...) new way. My argument is that the materiality of practices should be replaced by the more multidimensional concept of performances. Drawing on the new field of performance studies, cultural pragmatics demonstrates how social performances, whether individual or collective, can be analogized systematically to theatrical ones. After defining the elements of social performance, I suggest that these elements have become "de-fused" as societies have become more complex. Performances are successful only insofar as they can "re-fuse" these increasingly disentangled elements. In a fused performance, audiences identify with actors, and cultural scripts achieve verisimilitude through effective mise-en-scène. Performances fail when this relinking process is incomplete: the elements of performance remain apart, and social action seems inauthentic and artificial, failing to persuade. Refusion, by contrast, allows actors to communicate the meanings of their actions successfully and thus to pursue their interests effectively. (shrink)

After introducing a perspective on terrorism as postpolitical and after establishing the criteria for success that are immanent in this form of antipolitical action, this essay interprets September 11, 2001, and its aftermath inside a cultural-sociological perspective. After introducing a macro-model of social performance that combines structural and semiotic with pragmatic and power-oriented dimensions, I show how the terrorist attack on New York City and the counterattacks that immediately occurred in response can be viewed as an iteration of the performance/counterperformance (...) dialectic that began decades, indeed centuries, ago in terms of the relation of Western expansion and Arab-Muslim reaction. I pay careful attention to the manner in which the counterperformance of New Yorkers and Americans develops an idealized, liminal alternative that inspired self-defense and outrage, leading to exactly the opposite performance results from those the al-Qaeda terrorists had intended. (shrink)

"Neofunctionalism and After" brings together for the first time in one volume all of Alexander's writings on neofunctionalism, the present volume also contains ...

One of the most important contributions of the Parsonian tradition has been its conceptualization of the relative autonomy and mutual interpenetration of culture and social systems. The first part of this chapter defines three ideal types of empirical relationships between culture and society: specification, refraction, and columnization. Each is related to different configurations of social structure and culture and, in turn, to different degrees of social conflict. The second part of the chapter uses this typology to illuminate critical aspects of (...) the relationship between conflict and integration in the Watergate crisis in the U.S. (shrink)

The task of speaking the truth is an infinite labor: to respect it in its complexity is an obligation that no power can afford to shortchange, unless it would impose the silence of slavery (Foucault 1989, p. 308).... the attainment of truth is the outcome of the development of complex and elaborate methods of searching, methods that... in many respects go against the human grain, so they are adopted only after long discipline in a school of hard knocks (Dewey [1925] (...) 1988, pp. 234-35). (shrink)

By any standard, nonrationality is an undertheorized concept in sociology. This paper attempts to open a discussion on nonrationality by analyzing one of the most fruitful theorizations of the concept: Simmel's. Simmel developed a theory that placed nonrationality on the same plane with rationality and attributed to the former a role as fundamental as the latter's in the foundations of action, and as central as the latter's in the generation of existential meanings. The gradual eclipse of the nonrational elements of (...) life in the expanses of a modern, highly rationalized world imply, then, an impoverishment of being. I argue that Simmel's theory of the nonrational can serve as a model capable of enriching our understanding of society and of the person and can, in this sense, serve as a counterpoint to current sociological theories that emphasize the rational elements of life and conceive the person in primarily rational terms. (shrink)

Ethnomethodology has been torn between scientific and "radical" aspirations insofar as it moves discoursive practices from resources to the topic of the study. Scientific ethnomethodology, such as conversation analysis, studies discoursive praxis as its topic and resource. Standard scientific criteria are accepted to assess the merits of its findings. "Radical" ethnomethodology addresses mundane reasoning exclusively as its topic without recourse to standardized science. I will show that insofar as "radical" ethnomethodology succeeds in bracketing everyday resources, it loses its phenomenon with (...) the very technical skills it uses for this task. This reconsideration enables the development of ethnomethodological social science. Key Words: conversation analysis • discoursive praxis • ethnomethodology • radical ethnomethodology • social studies of science. (shrink)

"...the book is excellent and should do really well. It is well written and comprehensive, and it meets the needs of sociologists." John Scott, University of Essex * What have been the major innovations in contemporary social and political thought in the twentieth century? * How have these ideas challenged the canon? * What are the implications of these new ideas for our understanding of the key theoretical concepts? This new and accessible introduction to contemporary social and political theory examines (...) the impact of new ideas such as feminist theory, poststructuralism, hermeneutics and critical theory. The innovations brought by these currents to the intellectual traditions of Europe and America are outlined and assessed. Designed for the newcomer to theory, no previous knowledge is assumed and a student-friendly approach is adopted throughout. Rather than focus on individual thinkers, the authors take a 'conceptual' approach by examining contemporary theories through themes such as 'critique', 'rationality', 'power', 'the subject', 'the body' and 'culture'. Each chapter considers the evolution of a concept and examines the major debates and transformations that have taken place in that area. The needs of the undergraduate are kept in mind at all times and, in addition to an extensive bibliography, the book contains a useful glossary of key terms and concepts. (shrink)

Several authoritative sources have raised the possibility that computer counting and monitoring of work in automated workplaces will transform offices into electronic sweatshops. This paper examines this idea from the vantage point of industrial sociology and managerial theory. Five theoretical models are developed, each of which generates hypotheses about the contexts in which work monitoring becomes important. A brief history of clerical work is given which shows the antecedents of surveillance and work-measurement in this sphere, and a case study of (...) control in an automated office is presented in order to illustrate certain practical limitations on the use of computer surveillance. These insights are combined into a synthetic model which describes those contexts in which surveillance would be likely to result in speed-ups, and those where it would not. (shrink)

Epistemic situationists (Alfano; Doris and Olin) urge that concerns about the empirical adequacy of different versions of virtue epistemology, and about the psychological realizability of the traits they focus upon, are to be judged in light of the situationsts’ own interpretations of social psychological studies. But these concerns, while real, should instead be judged by the consistency of virtue epistemologies with the leading psychological theory emerging from studies of heuristics and biases, which is not epistemic situationism, but rather dual process (...) theory (Evans; Kahneman; Stanovich; West). I argue that this prescribed shift in understanding the actual burden of the empirical adequacy charge is illuminating in a double sense: Firstly, at least some versions of virtue epistemology appear to be consistent with and perhaps also empirically supported by dual process theory; secondly, “philosophical” situationism’s own empirical adequacy is arguably drawn into question by its systematic failure to recognize or explain the extent of individual differences actually found in the results in experiments they generalize from, such as the Asch line experiments. However, while the thesis of epistemic situationism is shown false and most forms of virtue epistemology are seen to survive the empirical challenges posed by epistemic situationists, fully adapting virtue epistemologies to dual process theories in cognitive and social psychology raises an entirely new set of challenges. The paper’s second half points to ways virtue epistemologies need to evolve to better integrate with leading research on human biases and heuristics, and with the “two systems” hypothesis. For most credit theories of knowledge still tend to presuppose adult agents in regular command of their System 2 thinking. Moreover, heuristic reasoning “in general” seems neither very reliable nor very responsible, yet most of our everyday beliefs are arguably generated and maintained more by System 1 thinking (thinking fast, or the “autonomous mind”), than by System 2 thinking (“thinking slow,” or the “reflective mind”). So why should an agent not be deemed creditworthy when her System 1 thinking is well-adapted to its task and results in non-accidentally true beliefs? We need a better understanding of epistemic credit and blame for beliefs grounded in heuristic reasoning and System 1 processes and in heuristic reasoning. To use an adaptation of Evans’ book title Thinking Twice, virtue epistemologists need to think twice about intellectual virtue in order to avoid the rationalistic error of identifying it solely with beliefs grounded in System 2 thinking. (shrink)

The article shows the affinity of Simmel's formal sociology with Husserl's notion of eidetic science. This thesis is demonstrated by the corroboration of Simmel's revision of neo-Kantian epistemology for sociology with Husserl's phenomenology, and the parallel discussion of Simmel and Husserl concerning cognitive levels and exact and morphological eide. Simmel's analysis of dyads is explored as an exemplar of his eidetic insights. An important consequence of this demonstration is the vindication establishing the scientific legitimacy of Simmel's methodology regarding the sociology (...) of the forms of association. Woven throughout is discussion concerning the doctrine of the complementarity of eidetic and empirical science. Simmel's methodology is shown to have been ahead of its time through conjoining these two modes of scientific investigation. (shrink)

"I think this is an outstanding book. The coverage is comprehensive, the lines of thought and exposition are clear, and the level of discussion is very high yet remarkably lively and accessible. It has an underlying intellectual seriousness and engagement which shines out through the individual chapters, and the author's unwillingness to make do with secondary analyses and received ideas gives it a strength and freshness of approach which is extremely welcome." -- Professor William Outhwaite, University of Sussex Social Theory (...) in the Twentieth Century offers an easy-to-read but provocative account of the development of social theory. Patrick Baert covers a wide range of key figures and schools of thought, including Giddens, Foucault and Habermas. Written in a lively style and avoiding jargon, this book is aimed at students who wish to understand the main debates and dilemmas driving social theory. Rather than providing a neutral summary of the different thinkers and theories, Baert challenges the conventional readings of social theory with new and original interpretations. In effect, he bridges the gap between philosophy and social theory by placing the theoretical views within wider historical traditions. Social Theory in the Twentieth Century will undoubtedly become the standard introduction to social theory for students in sociology, politics, and anthropology. (shrink)

Dual labor market theory, developed as an explanation of underemployment and poverty within the economy, may also be applied to the illicit economy of crime. Criminal careers are differentiated into a primary sector, with occupational stability, low failure rate, and high chances of advancement; and a secondary sector, with instability, high failure rate, and lack of "market" control. The attraction of criminal careers, the likelihood of incarceration, and the effects of law enforcement are best understood in these contexts.

Emotion inheres simultaneously in individuals and in the social structures and relationships in which individuals are embedded. Beginning with a critical examination of T.H. Marshall's account of class resentment, this paper considers the emotional patterns of resentment in class inequality, in trade cycle changes in costs and opportunities for income, and in class cultures. Arising from social relationships, emotion is the basis of action that subsequently affects the structure of social relationships. Thus emotion connects phases of social structure separated by (...) time. (shrink)

This introduction provides an overview of the life, career, and social thought of Gerhard Lenski. Following a preliminary description of Lenski's contributions, this essay is divided into two sections. The first section examines the origins, education, and biographical influences on Lenski as a major social theorist as well as the intellectual foundation of his sociological theories. The second section presents Lenski's work, impact, and legacy and sets the stage for the original essays that are grouped around four of six key (...) areas of Lenski's work, which has had enormous impact on both American and international sociology: (1) teaching sociology; (2) "status crystallization" and "status inconsistency"; (3) sociology of religion and "the religious factor"; (4) social stratification, "power and privilege"; (5) gender stratification in comparative-historical perspective; and (6) ecological-evolutionary theory. While these six areas do not correspond neatly to the progressive phases of Lenski's theory development and sociological career, they are interconnected and reflect Lenski's central concerns in asking the big questions about human societies and in providing explanations for understanding the processes of social change, differentiation, and inequality among and within human societies, across time and space, from hunting and gathering to postindus trial societies. (shrink)

The concept of honor links reputation and self-esteem with interaction in social groups and provides a promising way to approach questions about the release of aggression in economic exchange. While the internalization of conventional honor codes offers the hope of peaceful, if not just, exchange, competing codes of honor coexist within various aspects of the self and among members of various status groups. When a person's sense of individual or group honor is repeatedly violated in economic interaction, the reaction may (...) include the release of aggression to repair damaged honor and establish self-respect. The narrative proceeds with an exploration of the concept of honor followed by a brief review of the association of honor with rational action in pursuit of economic success. The problematic inscription on the self of conventional codes of honor is then discussed. A brief discussion of staged role performance and the display of alternative codes of honor in workplace interaction and in extralegal market exchange illustrates the argument. A final section considers alternative approaches to the problem of self-control as social control. (shrink)

This article argues that Habermas and Garfinkel present complementary perspectives on the dynamics of ordinary language and the ways in which communication is configured and prefigured in interactive settings. Together they provide a basis for thinking about action and its environments not simply in terms of the in situ or formal conditions in isolation from one another, but as extensions of an integrated dependency between the local (indexical) contexts in which interactions occur and the rational (pretheoretical) presuppositions that make such (...) interactions possible. The conditions on which actors are identified as rational agents or as being bound by the structured environments in which they move are not differentiated in the course of everyday life. Communication consists of produced events that admit both rational presuppositions and practical accomplishments. Taken concomitantly, these properties constitute the necessary and sufficient conditions for creating the intersubjective links that individuals rely on when interacting. (shrink)

Discussions of modes of analysis, as well as the received wisdom about which categories to place scholars in, often obscure the breadth and nature of inquiry a particular figure engaged in. This examination of Reinhard Bendix's various uses of comparison suggests that, beyond the sociohistorical comparison he was known for, one should also consider his reflexive works, his work on the role of social science and claims for knowledge, and his reflections on the history of ideas, the need for conceptual (...) clarification of terms, and the search for regularities and universals. (shrink)

This is the first book in the new series, is a comprehensive introduction to philosophical problems in the social sciences, encompassing traditional and contemporary perspectives. It is readily accessible, with a firm emphasis on communicating difficult philosophical ideas clearly and effectively to those from outside this discipline. Ted Benton and Ian Craib move systematically through major topic areas, from positivism to post-structuralism, using a wide variety of examples and cases to illustrate key themes.

Introduction There are (at least) two questions which readily arise in the minds of sociology students when they begin courses in the philosophy of social ...

Postmodernism charges that sociological methods project ways of thinking and being from the past onto the future, and that sociological forms of presentation are rhetorical defenses of ideologies. Postmodernism contends that sociological theory presents reified constructs no more based in reality than are fictional accounts. Kenneth Burke's logology predates and adequately addresses postmodernism's valid charges against sociology. At the same time, logology avoids the idealistic tendencies and ethical pitfalls of radical forms of postmodernist deconstruction, which acknowledge neither pretextual and extratextual (...) worlds nor the ways in which experience is embodied. While not fully articulated. Burke's logology gives primacy to an embodied, social world prior to text (Body-as-World). Sociology can strengthen both its theoretical arsenal and its response to postmodernism by reacknowledging and reclaiming Burke's logology. (shrink)

Social theory remains puzzled by the relation between practices and structures, or the link between ‘micro’ and ‘macro’. Grand theorists including Giddens and Bourdieu have gained distinction for their writings on these questions, trying to marry insights and concerns of a ‘micro’ sociological nature with traditional ‘macro’ structural questions including inequality, power relations, and social reproduction. These theorists arguably fail, however, in their attempts to move social theory beyond traditional dualisms. Relevant but neglected contributions from ethnomethodology are introduced and compared (...) to the work of Giddens and Bourdieu in an attempt to identify and outline an approach to practices and structures that more reliably avoids problems of dualism and reification, and at the same time offers an understanding of structures and their relations to practices that can be much more closely grounded in empirical studies. Key Words: micro-macro link • reification • ethnomethodology • Pierre Bourdieu • Jeff Coulter. (shrink)

I describe in this paper some of my efforts in developing formal theories of social processes. These include work on models of occupational mobility, on models to describe the emergence of expectations out of performance evaluations, and on the graph theory formulation of the Status Characteristics theory. Not all models have been equally significant in developing theory. However, the graph theory formulation has played a central role in the growth of the Expectation States program. It has been involved in the (...) generalization of theories, the integration of theories, and in the construction of highly sensitive tests of theories that would be impossible without the inferential capacities of formalization. (shrink)

Beliefs about diverse status characteristics have a common core content of performance capacities and qualities made up of two features: hierarchy (superior/inferior capacities) and role-differentiation (instrumental/expressive qualities). Whatever the status characteristic, its more-valued state tends to be defined as superior and instrumental, and the less-valued state tends to be defined as inferior but expressive. We account for this in terms of the typification of differences in behavioral inequalities and profiles that emerge in task oriented social interaction. Status construction theory argues (...) that new configurations of the states of a nonvalued discriminating characteristic, status values, and status typifications of actors possessing these states arise from a similar process. The theory we present here makes new predictions on the construction and institutionalization of status characteristics and generalized beliefs about the relation of status characteristics to social rewards, called referential structures. This theory, we argue, integrates micro and macro elements in a way that may be applicable to explaining the social construction of cultural objects more generally. (shrink)

Some sociologists argue that sociological theory does not grow and the reason why it does not grow is that the discipline lacks a core of highly developed, almost universally accepted, paradigms; even worse, because it is reflexive, its criteria of problem and theory choice are so noncognitive that there are no paradigms, hence no progress, in its future. We do not question that sociology lacks a core of almost universally accepted paradigms, nor that highly developed paradigms may be a sufficient (...) condition of theory growth, but we question both that universal acceptance of them is necessary and that sociology has nothing like them. We argue that theoretical research programs-sets of strategies, sets of interrelated theories embodying these strategies, and empirical models interpreting these theories-are sufficient for theoretical growth. An examination of three theoretical research programs in this article shows that they perform some of the same functions for theory growth as, in Kuhn, are performed by paradigms. Sociology may lack a universally accepted core, but there are theoretical research programs in sociology, and therefore already there is theory growth if it is looked for in the right place. Nor is there any warrant for the view that because its criteria of problem and theory choice are inescapably noncognitive, there are no paradigms, hence no progress, in sociology's future. If that were true, not only would sociology lack paradigms, but also theoretical research programs. We conclude from our study that sociology need not wait on the emergence of a universally accepted core. It is sufficient for the growth of theory that it develops further its existing theoretical research programs and that it encourages the creation of new programs. (shrink)

Art is a language. Art objects are therefore decipherable into more or less elaborated and restricted codes. These codes change with the relative solidarity of the community in which they are produced. The more solidary the group, the more restricted the code; the less solidary the community, the more elaborated the artistic codes they produce. In general, realism is a more elaborated code and abstraction a more restricted code, and accordingly more solidary communities should produce more abstract art and less (...) solidary groups should produce more realistic art. This theoretical relationship between artistic codes and group solidarity is captured in the idea of a "semantic equation" and is applied to changes in the styles of New York art from the 1940s through the mid 1980s. (shrink)

Contemporary theory is increasingly concerned with macro-micro integration. An attempt is made to integrate these levels of analysis in Durkheim's theory of egoistic suicide. Does Durkheim's theory, which is a social system analysis designed to explain differences in suicide rates between groups, have micro implications for specifying which particular individuals within the group will take their lives? In attempting to answer this question by exploring the causal linkages between integration and suicide, Durkheim's theory of egoistic suicide was revealed not to (...) be a singular theory but rather contained several different explanations. The numerous interpretations have resulted from his incompletely specified, inconsistent, unsystematized, and inadequately tested theory. These ambiguities also account for the historically inconsistent research findings that have limited sociologists' ability to advance beyond Durkheim's century-old formulations. Further areas for new research and illustrative hypothesis are suggested. (shrink)

The social quality approach (SQA) can be considered as a specific collective representation that has the possibilities to be used as a policy instrument, thus as a method of social, cultural and economic change. The SQA contains important conditional factors: socioeconomic security, social cohesion, social inclusion and social empowerment. These factors seem to be in the first place objectives of social and economic change. In reference to the constructionalist factors, this article also analyses the specific nature of collective representations and (...) their many variations. They are regarded as fundamental elements in social quality studies. In the last part, this study assesses the relevance of social quality studies and their usefulness in relation with various issues in a democratic society or in societies that are on the road towards a democratic future. (shrink)

Argues for an evolutionary mechanism to underpin the functional explanations at the center of Karl Marx's theory of history.

Contemporary sociology conceptualizes religion along two dimensions: the institutional and the individual. Lost in this dichotomy is religion's noninstitutional, but collective and public, cultural dimension. As a result, theories of religious modernity, including both sides of the secularization debate, are unable to recognize or evaluate the social power of noninstitutionalized religious communication. This article offers a reconceptualization of religion that highlights its cultural, communicative dimension. Original research on religious talk provides an empirical ground for a theoretical discussion that highlights: (1) (...) the "invisible" nature of religion in modern societies, as theorized by Thomas Luckmann and (2) the social power attributed to communication by contemporary cultural sociologists and cultural theorists. I argue that conceptualizing religion as an evolving societal conversation about transcendent meaning broadens the empirical and theoretical grasp of the religion concept. (shrink)

In this paper, I seek to caution the increasing number of contemporary sociologists who are engaging with continental phenomenological sociology without looking at the Anglo-American tradition. I look at a particular debate that took place during the formative period in the Anglo-American tradition. My focus is on the way participants sought to negotiate the disciplinary division between philosophy and sociology. I outline various ways that these disciplinary exigencies, especially the institutional struggles with the sociological establishment, shaped how participants defined phenomenological (...) sociology. I argue that despite the supposed theoretical, methodological, and substantial differences between these waves of phenomenological sociology, the contemporary wave could benefit from some of the lessons that were learned by their predecessors. (shrink)

In attempting to learn more about the relationship between social structure and behavior, this chapter identifies the transforming conditions that promote an actor's acquisition of a noninstitutionalized role. The role concept is modified to be seen not only as an aspect of social structure, but connected to the life situation of a performer, constituting a person-role formula. Being defined according to the degree of involvement an actor will have with the proffered role, a person-role formula may be based on embracement, (...) integration, downgrading, or avoidance. Roles are transformed into one of these possible relationships through three stages (1) role discrepancy, (2) role typification, and (3) role validation. (shrink)

This article discusses how the results of infant research challenge the assumptions of the classical sciences of social behaviour. According to A.J. Bergesen, the findings of infant research invalidate Durkheim's theory of mental categories, thus requiring a re-theorizing of sociology. This article argues that Bergesen's reading of Emile Durkheim is incorrect, and his review of the infant research in fact invalidates his argument. Reviewing the assumptions of sociology in the light of the findings of infant research, it is argued that (...) the real challenge is to formulate a research strategy that combines the findings of the two sciences. (shrink)

Unlike older sciences such as physics and biology, sociology has never had a revolution. Modern sociology is still classical-largely psychological, teleological, and individualistic-and even less scientific than classical sociology. But pure sociology is different: It predicts and explains the behavior of social life with its location and direction in social space-its geometry. Here I Illustrate pure sociology with formulations about the behavior of ideas, including a theory of scienticity that predicts and explains the degree to which an idea is likely (...) to be scientific (testable, general, simple, valid, and original). For example: Scienticity is a curvilinear function of social distance from the subject. This formulation explains numerous facts about the history and practice of science, such as why some sciences evolved earlier and faster than others and why so much sociology is so unscientific. Because scientific theory is the most scientific science, the theory of scienticity also implies a theory of theory and a methodology for the development of theory. (shrink)

Positioning Du Bois's arguments in The Souls of Black Folk (1903) within social theory enhances our understanding of the phenomenological dimensions of racial oppression and of how oppressed groups build on members' differences, as well as on what they share, to construct a cosmopolitan and richly textured community. Du Bois wrote Souls just at the beginning of the Great Migration but indicated that geographical dispersion would deepen racial solidarity, enhance the meaningfulness of community, and emancipate individual group members through participation (...) in mainstream society while maintaining their black identity. Du Bois's writings have powerful implications for understanding how to promote racial justice, and contemporary readers might consider that they have implications for social justice more generally. An analysis of black newspapers that were published during the period of 1900 to 1935 illustrates how Du Bois's conceptions were woven into discourse and everyday practices. (shrink)

Although the focus of their work was rarely explicitly sociological, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari developed concepts that have important and often profound implications for social theory and practice. Two of these, sense and segmentarity, provide us with entirely new ways to view sociological problems of meaning and structure. Deleuze conceives sense independently of both agency and signification. That is, sense is neither the manifestation of a communicating subject nor a structure of language-it is noncorporeal, impersonal, and prelinguistic, in his (...) words, a "pure effect or event." With Guattari, Deleuze notes that it is not a question of how subjects produce social structures, but how a "machinics of desire" produces subjects. In Deleuze and Guattari, desire is not defined as a want or a lack, but as a machinery of forces, flows, and breaks of energy. The functional stratification we witness in social life is only the molar effect of a more primary segmentation of desire that occurs at the molecular level, at the level of bodies. In Deleuze and Guattari, bodies are not just human bodies, but "anorganic" composites or mixtures, organic form itself being a mode of the body's subjectification. The problem of the subject, and thus of the constitution of society, is first a problem of how the sense of bodies is produced through the assembly of desiring-machines. The subject, we could say, is the actualization of desire on the incorporeal surface of bodies. (shrink)

I present a fragment from thehistory of the Russian reception of HerbertSpencer''s sociology. The discussion concernstwo diametrically opposed but exceptionallyimportant figures in the history of Russianthought, Nikolai Mikhajlovskij (1842–1904) andKonstantin Leont''ev (1831–1891). As one of thechief ideologues of the Populist movementMikhajlovskij turned Spencer''s ideas into anegative frame of reference for his own`romantic socialist utopia''. In turn, Leont''evformulated his extremely conservative politicalviews on the basis of Spencer''s organicistsociology. Though at the opposite ends of thespectrum both standpoints succeeded inexhibiting the political implications (...) of thepositivist and naturalist style of thinking. (shrink)

The process is traced whereby crucially important, multiple denotations of classical sociology's key notion referring to social position-the Weberian German concept of Stand-have been stripped to create a simplified and inaccurate representation of social inequalities. Some historical material from central Europe is surveyed, with a brief look at Japan, to demonstrate validity problems created by blanket application of the culturally specific, streamlined notions of status/class. As an alternative, a notion of contingent social closure argues that relaxing the modernizationist assumptions of (...) a single transition from estate to status/class increases the comparative-historical sensitivity of research on social structure, inequality, and stratification. A dynamic reading of Polanyi suggests a reconceptualization of institutions as the "raw material" of social change. This might help to avoid the outdated contrast of the "West" vs. its "Others.". (shrink)

This article suggests that American sociology has developed a de facto tradition in the sociology of the marked that devotes greater epistemological attention to "politically salient" and "ontologically uncommon" features of social life. Although the "unmarked" comprises the vast majority of social life, the "marked" commands a disproportionate share of attention from sociologists. Since the marked already draws more attention within the general culture, social scientists contribute to re-marking and the reproduction of common-sense images of social reality. This has important (...) analytic consequences. This article argues for developing a stronger tradition in a sociology of the unmarked that explicitly foregrounds "politically unnoticed" and taken-for-granted elements of social reality. Three strategies are proposed toward this end: (1) reversing conventional patterns of markedness to foreground what typically remains unnamed and implicit, (2) marking everything by filling in all the shades of social continua so that each shares the same degree of epistemological ornamentation, and (3) developing an analytically nomadic perspective that observes social phenomena from multiple vantage points. (shrink)

The field of science studies is the site of an explicit reflection on the ontological premises of sociology, with rival approaches defined by distinctive ways of specifying the basic constituents of reality. This article takes advantage of this debate to compare three types of ontological schemes in terms of their internal coherence and their consequences for sociology. Sociological humanism-represented by proponents of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK)-distinguishes between an immanent domain of social relations, a transcendent and meaningless material reality, (...) and an intermediate, socially constructed level of knowledge, meaning, and culture. Symmetrical humanism-as found in the recent writings of Andrew Pickering-insists that society too should be placed among the constructions, thereby disqualifying it as a source of explanations for human agency and leaving a detached and self-moving human agent. The relational ontology-exemplified by the "actor-network" approach of Bruno Latour and others-makes no a priori distinctions between humans and others, or between transcendent reality and construction, treating these properties as outcomes. The two humanist approaches are found to be incoherent as ontological schemes and also, contrary to the assumptions of the current debate, inimical to sociological explanation. And contrary to the antisociological stance of the actor-network approach, it is found that the relational ontology provides a consistent basis for sociological explanations of human practices. (shrink)

Community remains a potent symbol and aspiration in political and intellectual life. However, it has largely passed out of sociological analysis. The paper shows why this has occurred, and it develops a new typology that can make the concept useful again in sociology. The new typology is based on identifying structurally distinct subtypes of community using a small number of partitioning variables. The first partition is defined by the ultimate context of interaction; the second by the primary motivation for interaction; (...) the third by rates of interaction and location of members; and the fourth by the amount of face-to-face as opposed to computer-mediated interaction. This small number of partitioning variables yields eight major subtypes of community. The paper shows how and why these major subtypes are related to important variations in the behavioral and organizational outcomes of community. The paper also seeks to resolve some disagreements between classical liberalism and communitarians. It shows that only a few of the major subtypes of community are likely to be as illiberal and intolerant as the selective imagery of classical liberals asserts, while at the same time only a few are prone to generate as much fraternalism and equity as the selective imagery of communitarians suggests. The paper concludes by discussing the forms of community that are best suited to the modern world. (shrink)

Philosophical debates around reflexivity, identity and intimacy have preoccupied Western social and cultural theorists since the 1990s, and this book examines ...