image: Molière's Tartuffe, Comédie Française When we judge that a person has acted on the basis of character in a given situation, we are implying a judgment about his or her inner constitution, and we are judging that the action derived "authentically" from the individual's underlying traits. Character and authenticity go hand in hand. So what …
The heterogeneous social?
image: screenshot from video, "A Bird Ballet" I've argued in several places that we need to think of the social world as being radically heterogeneous (link, link, link). There are multiple processes, things, structures, and temporalities at work, and what we perceive at a moment in time in the social world is a complex composite of these …
Historians of Past and Present
by Stephen Frederick Godfrey Farthing, oil on canvas, 1999 image: "Historians of Past and Present," National Portrait Gallery, London A recent article on J. H. Elliott in the New York Review of Books includes a very striking portrait of the founders of the British history journal, Past and Present. The painting includes Eric Hobsbawm, Rodney Hilton, Lawrence Stone, …
Rationale for the philosophy of social science
The philosophy of social science is one of the smaller sub-disciplines of philosophy, and many universities have only a single course in the subject. In contrast to larger fields such as ethics or epistemology, the philosophy of social science involves a much smaller part of the intellectual spectrum and audience within the field of philosophy. …
Continue reading "Rationale for the philosophy of social science"
Social embeddedness and methodological localism
Methodological localism emphasizes two ways in which actors are socially embedded. Actors are socially situated and socially constituted. Socially situated. In any given situation individuals are embedded within a set of social relations and institutions that create opportunities and costs for them. They have friends and enemies, they have bosses and workers, they have neighbors and …
Continue reading "Social embeddedness and methodological localism"
SSHA Call for Papers
SSHA CALL FOR PAPERS Macrohistorical Dynamics Network 38th Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association Chicago, IL 21-24 November 2013 Submission Deadline: 15 February 2013 "Organizing Powers" We invite you to take part in Macrohistorical Dynamics (MHD) panels of the 38th annual meeting of the Social Science History Association, November 21-24, 2013 in Chicago. …
Mayer Zald on his development as a sociologist
I had the opportunity to have lunch with Mayer Zald in July last summer, a few weeks before his death. Our conversation was wide-ranging, but one segment in particular warrants publishing here. In this segment I asked Mayer how he thought about the connections among social psychology, organizational behavior, and social movements theory in the …
Continue reading "Mayer Zald on his development as a sociologist"
Mayer Zald on organizations and bureaucracy
Mayer Zald helped to shape the field of organizational behavior in the United States, beginning with his time as a faculty member at Vanderbilt and continuing through his long career in sociology at the University of Michigan. In 1971 he published an early version of some of his thinking on this subject in a short …
Continue reading "Mayer Zald on organizations and bureaucracy"
Remembering the civil rights struggle
We celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on January 21. Here is a curated set of film clips that serve to recall the major challenges of inequality, segregation, and violence that faced the African American community in the Jim Crow racial system of the 1940s and 1950s. These videos capture some of …
Methodological localism and actor-centered sociology
I've advocated in earlier posts for two related ideas: the idea of actor-centered sociology and the idea of methodological localism. The first idea recommends that sociologists couch their research and theories in terms of more specific and nuanced theories of the actors whose thoughts and actions make up the social processes of interest. The second …
Continue reading "Methodological localism and actor-centered sociology"
Understanding Society 