The Micro-macro Link

The Micro-macro Link
Author: Jeffrey C. Alexander
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 414
Release: 1987-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780520060685

The work of fifteen nationally and internationally known theorists in sociology, this volume demonstrates an exciting new trend in sociological thinking. Each essay proposes a link between the two distinguishable traditions of sociological theory--the microscopic, which stresses the self and the interaction among persons, and the macroscopic, which concentrates on the institutional, cultural, and societal levels. Each mode of analysis has had its champions, and the proponents of each have often taken positions of polemic opposition to one another.

Sociology Since Midcentury

Sociology Since Midcentury
Author: Randall Collins
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2013-10-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1483261050

Sociology Since Midcentury: Essays in Theory Cumulation is a collection of essays dealing with major intellectual developments in sociology since the mid-twentieth century. Topics covered include a macrohistorical theory of geopolitics, intended somewhat as an alternative to the Wallerstein economic theory of world-systems; a microtheory that provides a basis for linking up to and reconstructing macrosociological theories; structuralism, ritual violence, and solidarity; and the symbolic economy of culture. Comprised of 20 chapters, this book begins with an introduction to the major historical and comparative sociologies, the traditions of Karl Marx and Max Weber with their subsequent transformations. The next section is devoted to structuralism and conflict that includes a discussion on a theory of violence and Claude Lévi-Strauss's structural history. Subsequent chapters explore the sociology of education and consider class, codes, and control; cultural capitalism and symbolic violence; schooling in capitalist America; breakthroughs in microsociology; and the microfoundations of macrosociology. Erving Goffman's scholarly methods and the theoretical traditions to which he contributes are also examined. This monograph will be of interest to sociologists.

The Rope, The Chair, and the Needle

The Rope, The Chair, and the Needle
Author: James W. Marquart
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0292773277

In late summer 1923, legal hangings in Texas came to an end, and the electric chair replaced the gallows. Of 520 convicted capital offenders sentenced to die between 1923 and 1972, 361 were actually executed, thus maintaining Texas’ traditional reputation as a staunch supporter of capital punishment. This book is the single most comprehensive examination to date of capital punishment in any one state, drawing on data for legal executions from 1819 to 1990. The authors show persuasively how slavery and the racially biased practice of lynching in Texas led to the institutionalization and public approval of executions skewed according to race, class, and gender, and they also track long-term changes in public opinion up to the present. The stories of the condemned are masterfully interwoven with fact and interpretation to provide compelling reading for scholars of law, criminal justice, race relations, history, and sociology, as well as partisans on both sides of the debate.

The SAGE Handbook of Sociology

The SAGE Handbook of Sociology
Author: Craig Calhoun
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 608
Release: 2005
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0761968210

Providing an authoritative guide to theory and method, the key sub-disciplines and the primary debates in contemporary sociology, this work brings together the leading authors to reflect on the condition of the discipline.

Socionics

Socionics
Author: Klaus Fischer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2005-12-14
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3540307079

This book includes contributions from an interdisciplinary field of research we call Socionics. Based on a close cooperation between sociologists and researchers from distributed artificial intelligence and multiagent systems, Socionics deals with the exploration of the emergence and dynamics of artificial social systems, agent societies, as well as hybrid man-machine societies. The aim is both to develop intelligent computer technologies by picking up theoretical concepts and methods from sociology and to improve sociological models of societies and organizations by using advanced computer technology. The 15 articles in this state-of-the-art survey combine selected contributions from sociology and informatics on the modeling, construction, and study of complex social systems with special regard to the problem of scaling multiagent systems. The discussion focuses on four specific research areas: multi-layer modeling, organization and self-organization, emergence of social structures, and paths from an agent-centered to a communication-centered perspective in modeling multiagent systems.

Ritual, Emotion, Violence

Ritual, Emotion, Violence
Author: Elliott B. Weininger
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2018-07-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0429874782

Microsociologists seek to capture social life as it is experienced, and in recent decades no one has championed the microsociological approach more fiercely than Randall Collins. The pieces in this exciting volume offer fresh and original insights into key aspects of Collins’ thought, and of microsociology more generally. The introductory essay by Elliot B. Weininger and Omar Lizardo provides a lucid overview of the key premises this perspective. Ethnographic papers by Randol Contreras, using data from New York, and Philippe Bourgois and Laurie Kain Hart, using data from Philadelphia, examine the social logic of violence in street-level narcotics markets. Both draw on heavily on Collins’ microsociological account of the features of social situations that tend to engender violence. In the second section of the book, a study by Paul DiMaggio, Clark Bernier, Charles Heckscher, and David Mimno tackles the question of whether electronically mediated interaction exhibits the ritualization which, according to Collins, is a common feature of face-to-face encounters. Their results suggest that, at least under certain circumstances, digitally mediated interaction may foster social solidarity in a manner similar to face-to-face interaction. A chapter by Simone Polillo picks up from Collins’ work in the sociology of knowledge, examining multiple ways in which social network structures can engender intellectual creativity. The third section of the book contains papers that critically but sympathetically assess key tenets of microsociology. Jonathan H. Turner argues that the radically microsociological perspective developed by Collins will better serve the social scientific project if it is embedded in a more comprehensive paradigm, one that acknowledges the macro- and meso-levels of social and cultural life. A chapter by David Gibson presents empirical analyses of decisions by state leaders concerning whether or not to use force to deal with internal or external foes, suggesting that Collins’ model of interaction ritual can only partially illuminate the dynamics of these highly consequential political moments. Work by Erika Summers-Effler and Justin Van Ness seeks to systematize and broaden the scope of Collins’ theory of interaction, by including in it encounters that depart from the ritual model in important ways. In a final, reflective chapter, Randall Collins himself highlights the promise and future of microsociology. Clearly written, these pieces offer cutting-edge thinking on some of the crucial theoretical and empirical issues in sociology today.

Rethinking Sociological Theory

Rethinking Sociological Theory
Author: Stephen K. Sanderson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2015-11-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317252780

Stephen K. Sanderson s latest book recaptures a scientific theoretical sociology, one whose fundamental aim is the formulation of real theories that can be empirically tested. Sanderson reviews the major theoretical traditions within contemporary sociology, explicating their key principles, critically evaluating these principles and their applications, and showcasing exemplars. He judges each tradition by asking whether it has generated falsifiable research programs. Although principally a work of theoretical critique, "Rethinking Sociological Theory" is also a valuable textbook for both undergraduate and graduate courses in sociological theory."

Cultural Complexity

Cultural Complexity
Author: Ulf Hannerz
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 1992
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780231076234

A rich, witty, and accessible introduction to the anthropology of contemporary cultures, Cultural Complexity emphasizes that culture is organized in terms of states, markets, and movements. Hannerz pays special attention to the interplay between the centralizing agencies of culture, such as schools and media, and the decentering diversity of subcultures, and considers the special role of cities as the centers of cultural growth. Hannerz discusses cultural process in small-scale societies, the concept of subcultures, and the economics and politics of culture. Finally, he presents the twentieth-century globalization of culture as a process of cultural diffusion, polycentralism, and local innovation, focusing on periods of intensive cultural productivity in Vienna, Calcutta, and San Francisco.

Rethinking Social Movements

Rethinking Social Movements
Author: Jeff Goodwin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2003-10-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1461642078

This landmark volume brings together some of the titans of social movement theory in a grand reassessment of its status. For some time, the field has been divided between a dominant structural approach and a cultural or constructivist tradition. The gaps and misunderstandings between the two sides—as well as the efforts to bridge them—closely parallel those in the discipline of sociology at large. This book aims to further the dialogue between these two distinct approaches to social movements and to show the broader implications for sociology as a whole as it struggles with issues including culture, emotion, and agency.

Educating Tomorrow's Valuable Citizen

Educating Tomorrow's Valuable Citizen
Author: Joan N. Burstyn
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 1996-07-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0791498093

The authors discuss the dilemmas that face those who would educate tomorrow's valuable citizens and describe the day-to-day commitment needed to maintain a community. Important questions are asked: How do our public schools educate children to become members of our particular "public?" What problems face citizens of a democracy committed to both pluralism and equity? How has the meaning of citizenship changed as our society has evolved? In a world made interdependent through technology, how can one best define citizenship? The book's various perspectives provide guidelines for action through examples of current programs, and the reader is invited to join new forums to discuss questions raised—forums that allow for heated, but civil, disagreement. Only by engaging in such discussions can a public consensus be reached on the best ways to educate for tomorrow. Contributors include John Covaleskie, Ellen Giarelli, James Giarelli, Jerilyn Fay Kelle, Thomas Mauhs-Pugh, Barbara McEwan, Mary B. Stanley, Donald Warren, and Zeus Yiamouyiannis.