Journal ArticleDOI
The Reaches of the Social System: Six Channels
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TLDR
The authors argue that the social system impacts agents via six distinct though interacting channels: constraining and enabling by purely material forces, constraining/enabling by the interplay of material and ideational forces, learning, artificial selection, constituting/constructing, and anti-socialization.Abstract:
How the social system impacts agents is a central problematique in sociology. I argue that the social system impacts agents via six distinct though interacting channels: constraining and enabling by purely material forces, constraining/enabling by the interplay of material and ideational forces, learning, artificial selection, constituting/constructing, and “anti-socialization”. Explicitly identifying the six channels and underscoring their interactions adds clarity and coherence to our understanding about how the social system shapes agents. The discussion sheds new lights on old and new debates, from the poverty of structural functionalism and the rational choice approach to the promises of figurational/relational sociology. The framework also points to directions for future theoretical and empirical endeavors, from how to link the “macro” with the “micro” and the “(external) society” with the “(internal) individual” to how to synthesize the two theories of identity and how to appreciate the impact upon agents of mega-trends in the social system.read more
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Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste
TL;DR: Bourdieu as mentioned in this paper presents a combination of social theory, statistical data, illustrations, and interviews, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judg..., which is a collection of interviews with Bourdieu.
Journal ArticleDOI
On Evolutionary Epistemology
TL;DR: Eichinger et al. as discussed by the authors pointed out the utter implausibility of all attempts to explain continued lactase activity throughout life by reference to survival and reproductive advantages, and pointed out that if the Danes who are among the best lactose absorbers in the world, had acquired this trait through selection for fitness, they would have to have lived for thousands of years in such precarious nutritional conditions that drinking or not drinking fresh milk made a difference to their survival and reproduction, which is obviously absurd.
Journal ArticleDOI
Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law
TL;DR: Martens et al. as discussed by the authors observed that the increasing institutionalization and professionalization of NGOs in UN affairs can exacerbate the divide between the NGOs with financial resources and those without, and that this imbalance presents a formidable challenge for governments, foundations, and civil society to promote greater access in international forums for opinions and facts coming from developing countries.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness
TL;DR: In this article, the extent to which economic action is embedded in structures of social relations, in modern industrial society, is examined, and it is argued that reformist economists who attempt to bring social structure back in do so in the "oversocialized" way criticized by Dennis Wrong.
Book
Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste
TL;DR: In this article, a social critic of the judgement of taste is presented, and a "vulgar" critic of 'pure' criticiques is proposed to counter this critique.
Book
A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance
TL;DR: Cognitive dissonance theory links actions and attitudes as discussed by the authors, which holds that dissonance is experienced whenever one cognition that a person holds follows from the opposite of at least one other cognition that the person holds.
Journal ArticleDOI
Outline of a Theory of Practice
TL;DR: Bourdieu as mentioned in this paper develops a theory of practice which is simultaneously a critique of the methods and postures of social science and a general account of how human action should be understood.
Book
The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge
Peter L. Berger,Thomas Luckmann +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present an analysis of knowledge in everyday life in the context of a theory of society as a dialectical process between objective and subjective reality, focusing particularly on that common-sense knowledge which constitutes the reality of everyday life for the ordinary member of society.
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