An institution is a specific ensemble of interlocked organizations and rules that serve to coordinate and constrain the behavior of a number of individuals; and the specific features of the organization have often been refined to bring about specific effects: enforcement of laws, maximization of tax collections, minimization of corrupt behavior, efficient delivery of services, …
Mentalité?
Is there such a thing as a "mentalité" of a people, group, or nation? Take these young people at an Iowa potluck supper, or the traders pictured below at the Chicago Board of Trade -- is there a midwestern mentalité that they can be said to share? What factors might be comprised by such a …
How much of social life can be explained?
How much of social life can be explained? It may sound like a strange question -- surely everything can be explained! And it's true that nothing that occurs is "inexplicable". But consider this homely example: if I spill my coffee on the desk, is there a scientific explanation of the particular shape that the splash …
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Microfoundations of social practices
By a practice I mean such things as agricultural techniques, craft technologies, and customs of ordinary life -- how to greet a neighbor, how to discipline one's children, how to decorate the home for a holiday. A practice is a combination of concrete knowledge, a string of practical techniques, and a set of attitudes and …
Cities
Cities are fascinating -- individually and in the aggregate. Are there distinct types of cities? Are there specific social processes that are associated with the development of cities in different countries or civilizations? Are there regularities across cities in different settings? Two authors I've particularly admired in their analysis of cities -- at very different …
Logistics as a historical force
The constraint of what people can do often plays a large role in what they actually do. The study of logistics is the study of constraints. Logistics has to do with the intersection of resource, activity, space, and time. A plan is an orchestrated sequence of activities over space and time, provisioned by appropriate resources …
Are there patterns of economic development?
There is an old-fashioned and discredited theory that holds that there are only a small number of development trajectories. Crudely, Western Europe's experience -- agricultural modernization, handicraft manufacture, population growth, urbanization, and large-scale mass manufacturing -- is the paradigm and "normal" case, and different processes in other countries are deviations or abnormalities. This is the …
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Agency and deliberation
People act as a result of a great variety of mental influences: instincts, emotions, impulses, loyalties, norms, as well as reasons, intentions, and plans. A subset of this cacaphony is "rational-intentional action": actions that are the result of deliberation about ends and means, and choice among the set of available options for action. How does …
The reality of society
We sometimes speak of "global society", we refer to "French society"; and we also think of face-to-face organizations and neighborhoods as small societies or social groups. There is an important conceptual point in the background in these common ways of speaking: what are the features of interaction or relationship that must obtain in order for …
Agency, action, and norms
How do norms influence behavior? More fundamentally, what is a norm? The question arises for two separate reasons. First, we are interested in knowing why people behave as they do (agency). And second, we are interested in knowing how large social factors (moral and cognitive frameworks, for example) exert influence over individuals (social causation). The …
Understanding Society 