Analysis

Reading these articles and glancing over the titles, these theories seem really smart. Crucially there must be some real theoretical progress. Empirics are interesting but not the centerpoint of the paper.

I shouldn’t really be aiming for a paper like that right now. I should create a useful dataset, and do descriptives. I should test a few theories in sociology of science, and present measures.

This thought process leads me to consider another journal, namely Social Studies of Science

Summaries of most recent papers

Abend (2019): What are ‘thick concepts’ and ‘social facts’ and how are they related?

Knight (2019): Talks about the incongruity between conflicting “mechanism models” and argues that multiple incongruous explanatory models can co-exist productively.

Winchester (2019): Explores a grey area between expressing intentions and reconstructing a narrative, using info from two social settings.

Bouzanis (2019): Suggesting how to do better theory evaluation. Gives us methods of interpretation which systematically put theories in some relation to one another.

Greenberg (2019): Working on the theory of networked exchange with strong and weak ties. Adding some qualities

Serafin (2019): Linked ecologies, linking cab fares to religious time, state time, and family time. Sexy

Jijon (2019): Linking the macro globalization to the micro translation happening within cultural brokers (immigrants). “hermeneutic model of cultural globalization” wow

Last 10 abstracts in Sociological Theory

Thick Concepts and Sociological Research (2019)

Abend, G

I consider how to do sociological things with thick concepts, what’s the relation between thick concepts and social facts, what’s unique about thick concepts, and what’s unique about creatures in whose lives there are thick concepts.

Meaning and Modularity: The Multivalence of “Mechanism” in Sociological Explanation (2019)

Knight, CR; Reed, IA

Mechanisms are ubiquitous in sociological explanation. Recent theoretical work has sought to extend mechanistic explanation further still: into cultural and interpretative analysis. Yet it is not clear that the concept of mechanism can coherently unify interpretation and causal explanation within a single explanatory framework. We note that sociological mechanistic explanation is marked by a crucial disjuncture. Specifically, we identify two conflicting mechanistic approaches: Modular mechanism models depict counterfactual dependence among independent causal chains, whereas meaningful mechanism models depict relational interdependence among semiotic assemblages. This disjuncture, we argue, is grounded in incompatible causal foundations and entails mechanistic models with distinct and conflicting evidentiary standards. We conclude by proposing a way forward: a sociological pluralism that is attentive to the productive incongruity of our distinct explanatory models.

Talking Your Self into It: How and When Accounts Shape Motivation for Action (2019)

Winchester, D; Green, KD

Following Mills, several prominent sociologists have encouraged researchers to analyze actors’ motive talk not as data on the subjective desires that move them to pursue particular ends but as post hoc accounts oriented toward justifying actions already undertaken. Combining insights from hermeneutic theories of the self and pragmatist theories of action, we develop a theoretical position that challenges dichotomous assumptions about whether motive accounts reflect either justifications or motivations for action, instead illustrating how they can migrate from one status to the other over time. We develop this perspective through a comparative analysis of actors’ involvements in two quite different careers of social action-religion and mixed martial arts-documenting both how and when justificatory talk about actors’ motives for initiating a course of action at one point in time became formative of their subjective motivations for sustaining these same courses of action at another.

Residuality and Inconsistency in the Interpretation of Socio-Theoretical Systems (2019)

Bouzanis, C; Kemp, S

This article addresses the interpretation and criticism of theoretical systems. Its particular focus is on how to assess the success of theories in dealing with some specific phenomenon. We are interested in how to differentiate between cases where a theory offers an unsatisfactory acknowledgment of a specified phenomenon and those where a theory offers a deeper, more systematic understanding. We address these metatheoretical issues by developing Parsons’s analysis of positive and residual categories in various respects, including a focus on mutual support as the basis of positivity, differentiating synectic (reconcilable) and antinomic (irreconcilable) residual categories, and distinguishing divisions that are central to systems from those between center and periphery. We also consider how this conceptual toolkit can be put into practice.

What’s Alter Got to Do with It? A Consideration of Network Content and the Social Ties That Provide It (2019)

Greenberg, J

The strength of weak ties is among the most important theories in the social sciences. One paradoxical element of the theory has been widely understood and valued-that weak ties connect disparate regions of social structure. Less appreciated, however, is the arguably more paradoxical implication that someone only weakly connected to another would provide value beyond that which is provided by the recipient’s (ego’s) strong ties. Once this paradoxical feature of the theory and associated empirical literatures is acknowledged, the interests of the resource provider (alter) demand consideration. To do so faithfully requires first, the concession that different types of content can be transmitted across ties (e.g., financial, informational, physical, social) and content varies in important ways that relate to alter’s interests and concerns. This article considers social network content and the strength of ties that provide different forms of it. The case of startups is used as a fruitful strategic research site because of the varied resources required at various stages of the startup process. Novel insights are proposed concerning what content flows across different types of social relationships in the context of “nascent” entrepreneurship. Examples from other contexts such as job search are also discussed to exemplify scope. Importantly, this article takes the perspective of the resource provider, alter, and considers her concerns about trust, misuse, and unauthorized transfer in dyadic exchange. In the process, a second paradoxical feature of the theory is identified and theorized, which usefully reveals the boundaries of exchange.

Cabdrivers and Their Fares: Temporal Structures of a Linking Ecology (2019)

Serafin, M

The author argues that behind the apparent randomness of interactions between cabdrivers and their fares in Warsaw is a temporal structure. To capture this temporal structure, the author introduces the notion of a linking ecology. He argues that the Warsaw taxi market is a linking ecology, which is structured by religious time, state time, and family time. The author then focuses on waiting time, arguing that it too structures the interactions between cabdrivers and their fares. The author makes a processual argument that waiting time has been restructured by the postsocialist transformation, but only because this transformation has been continually encoded through the defensive and adaptive strategies of cabdrivers responding to the repetitive and unique events located across the social space. The author concludes with the claim that linking ecologies are a recurring structure of the social process and that they form the backbone of globalization, financialization, and mediatization.

Toward a Hermeneutic Model of Cultural Globalization: Four Lessons from Translation Studies (2019)

Jijon, I

Many scholars study the global diffusion of culture, looking at how institutions spread culture around the world or at how intermediaries (or “cultural brokers”) adapt foreign culture in the local context. This research can tell us much about brokers’ “cultural-matching” or “congruence-building” strategies. To date, however, few scholars have examined brokers’ interpretive work. In this article, the author argues that globalization research needs to pay more attention to interpretation. Building on translation studies, the author shows that brokers’ work is shaped by (1) how they imagine their dual roles, (2) how they imagine different parts of the world, (3) how they interpret a text’s intertextuality, and (4) how their audience imagines the foreign Other. In this way, the author lays the groundwork for a hermeneutic model of cultural globalization.

Profit as Social Rent: Embeddedness and Stratification in Markets (2019)

Muennich, S

This article shows how research on the social structure of markets may contribute to the analysis the growing income inequality in contemporary capitalist economies. The author proposes a theoretical link between embeddedness and social stratification by discussing the role of institutions and networks in markets for the distribution of economic profits between firms. The author claims that we must understand profit and free competition as opposites, as economic theory does. In the main part of the article the author illustrates six typical mechanisms of rent extraction from networks or formal and symbolic rules that embed markets. They emerge from material as well as symbolical access to and influence on the orientation of other market actors. Social structures in markets lead to unequal chances for rent extraction, even if actors produce them for coordination rather than for accumulation purposes. This is how market sociology and theory of capitalism can be linked more closely.

Overflowing Channels: How Democracy Didn’t Work as Planned (and Perhaps a Good Thing It Didn’t) (2019)

Markoff, J

When eighteenth-century revolutionary elites set about designing new political orders, they drew on commonplace theoretical understandings of “democracy” as highly undesirable. They therefore designed government institutions in which popular participation was to be extremely limited. The new political constructions, in both France and the United States, never worked as planned. The mobilizations of the revolutionary era did not vanish as the constitutional designers hoped. More profoundly, challenging social movements were unintentionally woven into the fabric of modern democracy due to the confluence of three processes: The legitimacy claims of democratic powerholders also legitimate protest; the institutional architecture of modern democracy, especially the allocation of office through elections, provides structural support for social movements as well; and the practices of democracy recurrently trigger politically powerful emotions that energize protest. Understanding democracy therefore demands a theory of the interplay of social movements and governing institutions from the foundational moment.

Living One’s Theories: Moral Consistency in the Life of emile Durkheim (2019)

Abbott, A

This article investigates the relation between a theorist’s theories and his daily life practices, using emile Durkheim as an example. That theory and practice should be consistent seems not only scientifically proper but also morally right. Yet the concept of consistency conceals several different standards: consistency with one’s own theoretical arguments, consistency with outsiders’ judgments of oneself, and consistency within one’s arguments (and actions) across time and social space. Analysis of 750 pages of Durkheim’s letters shows that Durkheim lived a life consistent with and informed by his theories for most of his career. In his professional relations, his personal relations, and his political positions, Durkheim’s moral activity usually proceeds from his theoretical commitments. However, the death of his son in combat could not be theorized within the Durkheimian system, and it broke up this long stable pattern. The analysis concludes that under modern conditions, the issue of moral consistency relates closely to the general problem of solidarity and invites more complex theorization.

Last 100 titles

Terms in the titles are highlighted and underlined based on that term’s occurrence in the 1,000 most recent articles published in Sociological Theory. They are underlined if they appear more than once (as long as they aren’t stopwords) and are lighter if they occur more frequently (linear HSV scale).

  • Abend, G (2019) Thick
    Concepts
    and
    Sociological
    Research
  • Knight, CR; Reed, IA (2019) Meaning and Modularity: The Multivalence of “Mechanism” in
    Sociological
    Explanation
  • Winchester, D; Green, KD (2019) Talking Your
    Self
    into It: How and When Accounts Shape
    Motivation
    for Action
  • Bouzanis, C; Kemp, S (2019) Residuality and Inconsistency in the
    Interpretation
    of Socio-Theoretical Systems
  • Greenberg, J (2019) What’s Alter Got to Do with It? A Consideration of
    Network
    Content and the
    Social
    Ties That Provide It
  • Serafin, M (2019) Cabdrivers and Their Fares: Temporal
    Structures
    of a Linking Ecology
  • Jijon, I (2019) Toward a Hermeneutic
    Model
    of
    Cultural
    Globalization: Four
    Lessons
    from
    Translation
    Studies
  • Muennich, S (2019) Profit as
    Social
    Rent:
    Embeddedness
    and
    Stratification
    in Markets
  • Markoff, J (2019) Overflowing Channels: How
    Democracy
    Didn’t
    Work
    as Planned (and Perhaps a
    Good
    Thing It Didn’t)
  • Abbott, A (2019) Living
    One’s
    Theories:
    Moral
    Consistency in the
    Life
    of
    emile
    Durkheim
  • Calnitsky, D (2019) The High-hanging Fruit of the
    Gender
    Revolution: A
    Model
    of
    Social
    Reproduction
    and
    Social
    Change
  • Klein, S; Lee, CS (2019) Towards a
    Dynamic
    Theory
    of
    Civil
    Society: The
    Politics
    of Forward and Backward Infiltration
  • Maynard, DW; Turowetz, J (2019) Doing Abstraction: Autism, Diagnosis, and
    Social
    Theory
  • Seamster, L; Ray, V (2018) Against Teleology in the
    Study
    of Race:
    Toward
    the Abolition of the Progress Paradigm
  • Gross, N (2018) The
    Structure
    of
    Causal
    Chains
  • Ramstrom, G (2018) Coleman’s Boat Revisited:
    Causal
    Sequences and the Micro-macro Link
  • Sweet, PL (2018) The
    Feminist
    Question in Realism
  • Wood, ML; Stoltz, DS; Van Ness, J; Taylor, MA (2018) Schemas and Frames
  • Kim, J (2018) Migration-Facilitating Capital: A
    Bourdieusian
    Theory of
    International
    Migration
  • Freese, J; Peterson, D (2018) The
    Emergence
    of
    Statistical
    Objectivity:
    Changing
    Ideas of Epistemic Vice and Virtue in Science
  • Tavory, I (2018) Between Situations: Anticipation, Rhythms, and the
    Theory
    of Interaction
  • Beck, CJ (2018) The
    Structure
    of
    Comparison
    in the
    Study
    of Revolution
  • Hearn, J (2018) How to Read The Wealth of Nations (or Why the
    Division
    of
    Labor
    Is More Important Than Competition in Adam Smith)
  • Erikson, E (2018) Introduction to
    Events
    &
    Networks
    Symposium
  • Erikson, E (2018) How Group
    Events
    Can Shape
    Network
    Processes
  • Martin, JL (2018) Getting off the Cartesian Clothesline
  • Breiger, RL; Smith, JG (2018) Insurgencies as
    Networks
    of
    Event
    Orderings
  • Balian, H; Bearman, P (2018) Pathways to Violence:
    Dynamics
    for the Continuation of Large-scale Conflict
  • Abend, G (2018) The
    Love
    of Neuroscience: A
    Sociological
    Account
  • Patil, V (2018) The Heterosexual Matrix as
    Imperial
    Effect
  • DeLand, M; Trouille, D (2018) Going Out: A
    Sociology
    of
    Public
    Outings
  • Abrutyn, S; Mueller, AS (2018) Toward a Cultural-Structural
    Theory
    of Suicide: Examining Excessive
    Regulation
    and Its Discontents
  • Feinig, J (2018) Beyond Double
    Movement
    and Re-regulation: Polanyi, the Organized Denial of
    Money
    Politics, and the Promise of Democratization
  • Parker, JN; Corte, U (2017) Placing
    Collaborative
    Circles in
    Strategic
    Action
    Fields: Explaining
    Differences
    between Highly
    Creative
    Groups*
  • Hill, G (2017) Enchanting Self-discipline: Methodical
    Reflexivity
    and the Search for the Supernatural in
    Charismatic
    Christian
    Testimonial
    Practice
  • Surak, K (2017) Rupture and Rhythm: A Phenomenology of
    National
    Experiences
  • Joosse, P (2017) Max
    Weber’s
    Disciples:
    Theorizing
    the
    Charismatic
    Aristocracy
  • Deener, A (2017) The
    Uses
    of Ambiguity in
    Sociological
    Theorizing:
    Three
    Ethnographic Approaches
  • Leon-Medina, FJ (2017) Analytical
    Sociology
    and Agent-Based Modeling: Is
    Generative
    Sufficiency Sufficient?
  • Auyero, J; Benzecry, C (2017) The
    Practical
    Logic of
    Political
    Domination:
    Conceptualizing
    the Clientelist Habitus
  • Brandtner, C (2017) Putting the
    World
    in Orders: Plurality in
    Organizational
    Evaluation
  • Puetz, K (2017) Fields of Mutual Alignment: A Dual-Order
    Approach
    to the
    Study
    of
    Cultural
    Holes
  • Reed, IA (2017) Chains of
    Power
    and Their Representation
  • Ermakoff, I (2017) Shadow Plays: Theory’s Perennial Challenges
  • Mears, A (2017) Puzzling in Sociology: On Doing and Undoing
    Theoretical
    Puzzles
  • Besbris, M; Khan, S (2017) Less Theory. More Description.
  • Healy, K (2017) Fuck Nuance
  • McDonnell, TE; Bail, CA; Tavory, I (2017) A
    Theory
    of Resonance
  • Wakeham, J (2017) Bullshit as a
    Problem
    of
    Social
    Epistemology
  • Zhang, CD (2017) A Fiscal
    Sociological
    Theory
    of Authoritarian Resilience: Developing
    Theory
    through
    China
    Case Studies
  • Fine, GA; Corte, U (2017) Group Pleasures:
    Collaborative
    Commitments, Shared Narrative, and the
    Sociology
    of Fun
  • Loughran, K (2016) Imbricated Spaces: The
    High
    Line, Urban Parks, and the
    Cultural
    Meaning of
    City
    and Nature
  • Onwuachi-Willig, A (2016) The
    Trauma
    of the Routine:
    Lessons
    on
    Cultural
    Trauma from the Emmett Till Verdict
  • Lizardo, O; Mowry, R; Sepulvado, B; Stoltz, DS; Taylor, MA; Van Ness, J; Wood, M (2016) What Are Dual
    Process
    Models?
    Implications
    for Cultural
    Analysis
    in Sociology
  • Tierney, TF (2016) Toward an Affirmative Biopolitics
  • Fourcade, M (2016) Ordinalization: Lewis A. Coser Memorial Award for
    Theoretical
    Agenda Setting 2014
  • Dromi, SM (2016) Soldiers of the Cross: Calvinism, Humanitarianism, and the Genesis of
    Social
    Fields
  • Lee, CS (2016) Going Underground: The
    Origins
    of Divergent
    Forms
    of Labor
    Parties
    in Recently Democratized Countries
  • Wynn, JR (2016) On the
    Sociology
    of Occasions
  • Swedberg, R (2016) Can You Visualize Theory? On the Use of Visual
    Thinking
    in
    Theory
    Pictures,
    Theorizing
    Diagrams, and
    Visual
    Sketches
  • Rose-Greenland, F (2016) Color Perception in Sociology: Materiality and Authenticity at the
    Gods
    in
    Color
    Show
  • Lawson, G (2016) Within and
    Beyond
    the “Fourth Generation” of Revolutionary Theory
  • Singh, S (2016) What Is
    Relational
    Structure? Introducing
    History
    to the
    Debates
    on the Relation between
    Fields
    and
    Social
    Networks
  • Guhin, J (2016) Why Worry about Evolution? Boundaries, Practices, and
    Moral
    Salience in Sunni and Evangelical
    High
    Schools
  • Mayrl, D; Quinn, S (2016) Defining the
    State
    from within: Boundaries, Schemas, and Associational Policymaking
  • Engman, A; Cranford, C (2016) Habit and the Body:
    Lessons
    for
    Social
    Theories
    of
    Habit
    from the
    Experiences
    of People with Physical Disabilities
  • Liu, SD; Emirbayer, M (2016) Field and Ecology
  • Ridgeway, C (2016) Toward a
    Social
    Topography:
    Status
    as a
    Spatial
    Practice
    (vol 33,
    pg
    347, 2015)
  • King, A (2016) Gabriel Tarde and
    Contemporary
    Social Theory
  • Croce, M (2015) The
    Habitus
    and the
    Critique
    of the Present: A Wittgensteinian Reading of
    Bourdieu’s
    Social Theory
  • Richer, Z (2015) Toward a
    Social
    Topography:
    Status
    as a
    Spatial
    Practice
  • Wohl, H (2015) Community Sense: The Cohesive
    Power
    of
    Aesthetic
    Judgment
  • Aneesh, A (2015) Emerging Scripts of
    Global
    Speech
  • Tang, SP (2015) The Onset of
    Ethnic
    War: A
    General
    Theory
  • Kaup, BZ (2015) Markets, Nature, and Society: Embedding
    Economic
    &
    Environmental
    Sociology
  • Kelley, J; Evans, MDR (2015) Prejudice, Exclusion, and
    Economic
    Disadvantage: A Theory
  • Bail, CA (2015) The
    Public
    Life
    of Secrets: Deception, Disclosure, and
    Discursive
    Framing in the
    Policy
    Process
  • Gemici, K (2015) The
    Neoclassical
    Origins of Polanyi’s Self-Regulating Market
  • Luft, A (2015) Toward a
    Dynamic
    Theory
    of
    Action
    at the Micro
    Level
    of Genocide: Killing, Desistance, and Saving in 1994 Rwanda
  • O’Brien, J (2015) Individualism as a
    Discursive
    Strategy of Action: Autonomy, Agency, and
    Reflexivity
    among
    Religious
    Americans
  • Karpinski, Z; Skvoretz, J (2015) Repulsed by the “Other”: Integrating
    Theory
    with
    Method
    in the
    Study
    of Intergroup Association
  • Strand, M; Lizardo, O (2015) Beyond
    World
    Images:
    Belief
    as Embodied
    Action
    in the World
  • Strang, D; Siler, K (2015) Revising as Reframing: Original Submissions
    versus
    Published
    Papers
    in Administrative
    Science
    Quarterly, 2005 to 2009
  • Brubaker, R (2015) Religious
    Dimensions
    of
    Political
    Conflict and Violence
  • Hirschman, D; Reed, IA (2014) Formation Stories and
    Causality
    in Sociology
  • Gibson, DR (2014) Enduring Illusions: The
    Social
    Organization
    of
    Secrecy
    and Deception
  • Benzecry, C; Collins, R (2014) The
    High
    of
    Cultural
    Experience:
    Toward
    a Microsociology of Cultural Consumption
  • Abrutyn, S; Mueller, AS (2014) The Socioemotional
    Foundations
    of Suicide: A Microsociological View of
    Durkheim’s
    Suicide
  • Maryanski, A (2014) The Birth of the Gods: Robertson
    Smith
    and
    Durkheim’s
    Turn to
    Religion
    as the
    Basis
    of
    Social
    Integration
  • Morning, A (2014) Does Genomics
    Challenge
    the
    Social
    Construction
    of Race?
  • HoSang, DM (2014) On
    Racial
    Speculation and Racial Science: A
    Response
    to Shiao et al.
  • Shiao, JL (2014) Response to HoSang; Fujimura, Bolnick, Rajagopalan, Kaufman, Lewontin, Duster, Ossorio, and Marks; and Morning
  • Fujimura, JH; Bolnick, DA; Rajagopalan, R; Kaufman, JS; Lewontin, RC; Duster, T; Ossorio, P; Marks, J (2014) Clines
    Without
    Classes: How to Make
    Sense
    of
    Human
    Variation
  • Piiroinen, T (2014) For “Central Conflation”: A
    Critique
    of Archerian Dualism
  • McClelland, K (2014) Cycles of Conflict: A Computational Modeling
    Alternative
    to
    Collins’s
    Theory of
    Conflict
    Escalation
  • Goldman, M; Pfaff, S (2014) Reconsidering Virtuosity:
    Religious
    Innovation and
    Spiritual
    Privilege
  • Klett, J (2014) Sound on Sound: Situating
    Interaction
    in Sonic Object Settings
  • Norton, M (2014) Mechanisms and
    Meaning
    Structures
  • Abbott, A (2014) The
    Problem
    of Excess
  • Seeley, JL (2014) Harrison
    White
    as (Not Quite) Poststructuralist