An earlier post laid out a case for a modest social holism, in the form of a set of arguments for the idea that there are social forces and causal powers that are relatively autonomous from the features of the individuals who constitute them (link). These ideas parallel some of those offered by Dave Elder-Vass …
Structures and structuration
Several recent posts have focused on new thinking about how to characterize "agency". Much of that thinking is aimed at dissolving the distinction between agency and structure. So what remains to be said about "structure"? Has the structure side of the debate developed much in the past decade or so? One of the important exponents …
Picturing social consciousness
Here is a schematic effort at capturing some of the main factors involved in the socially constituted agent. There are the "influencers" that impact the development of the person and his/her "social brain" -- that is, the neurophysiological infrastructure we have evolved through our evolutionary history for gaining knowledge, representing the world, interacting with other …
Studying the socially constituted agent
We think we know quite a bit about being an "agent". It is to be an intervener in the world: a being capable of changing things around him or her through physical action; a subjectivity (consciousness, feelings, thoughts, desires); a user of language for thought and for communication. We also think we are well prepared …
Why peasant activism?
I have long been interested in peasant struggles as an historical phenomenon -- for example, the causes and outcomes of the peasant rebellions in China in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Understanding Peasant China: Case Studies in the Philosophy of Social Science). But it is also true that peasant movements are still visible in contemporary …
Andreas Glaeser on agency
Andreas Glaeser is another gifted contemporary sociologist who takes a different approach to providing a sociological analysis of agency. Glaeser's most recent scholarship is a careful and detailed study of the end of communism in the German Democratic Republic. This research appears in a book that is just now being published, Political Epistemics: The Secret Police, …
New thinking about agency and structure
The social sciences have chosen up sides around a number of dichotomies -- quantitative versus qualitative research methods, macro versus micro, ethnographic versus causal. A dichotomy that spans many of the social sciences is the opposition of structure versus agency. "Structures" are said to be the objective complexes of social institutions within which people live …
Social brains
Here is a foundational question that is worth asking periodically in the philosophy of social science: what is the relationship between the evolutionary history of the human species and our current social and cultural behavior? The sociobiologists had one answer to the question: many of our current social behaviors are an expression, through the medium …
Social justice and democratic stability
One thing I find interesting about the sustained demonstrations and protests in Madison, Wisconsin is the fact that people on the streets do not seem to be chiefly motivated by personal material interests. Rather, the passion and the sustainability of the protests against Governor Walker's plans seem to derive from an outrage felt by many …
Education a leveler?
The role of education in social inequalities is difficult to assess, because it seems to have contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, improving access to education at all levels -- from elementary school to graduate school -- levels the playing field because it enhances the ability of everyone affected to realize their human talents and …
Understanding Society 