Kevin Passmore's short introduction to fascism comes out at a good time (Fascism: A Very Short Introduction). Passmore does a great job of framing the problem. He poses a definitional question -- what is fascism -- and demonstrates that this apparently semantic issue requires careful historical and theoretical analysis. Arriving at a good definition of …
Social structures as causal factors
The continuing question here is this: how and through what mechanisms do various social entities exercise causal influence with respect to social outcomes? (This will also be relevant to the question: how does power work in a given society?) We think the Gulf Stream wields influence with respect to weather and climate change, but not …
Social properties: Persistence, change, and stochastic social processes
How can we explain social change and social persistence? Society is a complex, compositional entity. Both persistence and change require explanation in such entities. Because there is a third alternative condition of such an entity: chaos, randomness, and Brownian motion of individuals in interaction with each other. Succinctly -- the current state of the ensemble …
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What is a social structure?
Are there such things as "social structures"? In what do they consist? What sorts of social powers do they exercise? Consider a few candidates: the global trading system, the Federal government, the Chinese peasantry of the 1930s, the English class system, the Indian marriage system, race in the United States, the city of Chicago. Are …
Are there historical structures?
The French Revolution began in 1789. It was caused by conflict between the aristocracy and the monarchy. Eventually it developed into violent conflict in every region of France. It created more lasting change in French society than did the Russian Revolution. These statements purport to refer to an extended but unified historical thing, the French …
The heterogeneous social: institutions
Populations and groups are inherently diverse; virtually any property that might be attached to an individual shows variance across the group. So we have to pay special attention to specifying what we mean when we ask for a "measurement" of a property of a group. This is the basic ontological fact that undergirds a critical …
Understanding Society 