Social relation

Abstract: How behavior and institutions are affected by social relations is one of the classic questions of social theory. This paper concerns the extent to which economic action is embedded in structures of social relations, in modern industrial society. Although the usual neoclasical accounts provide an "undersocialized" or atomized-actor explanation of such action, reformist economists who attempt to bring social structure back in do so in the "oversocialized" way criticized by Dennis Wrong. Under-and oversocialized accounts are paradoxically similar in their neglect of ongoing structures of social relations, and a sophisticated account of economic action must consider its embeddedness in such structures. The argument in illustrated by a critique of Oliver Williamson's "markets and hierarchies" research program.

Abstract: In his landmark study of exchange and power in social life, Peter M. Blau contributes to an understanding of social structure by analyzing the social processes that govern the relations between individuals and groups. The basic question that Blau considers is: How does social life become organized into increasingly complex structures of associations among humans. This analysis, first published in 1964, represents a pioneering contribution to the sociological literature. Blau uses concepts of exchange, reciprocity, imbalance, and power to examine social life and to derive the more complex processes in social structure from the simpler ones. The principles of reciprocity and imbalance are used to derive such processes as power, changes in group structure; and the two major forces that govern the dynamics of complex social structures: the legitimization of organizing authority of increasing scope and the emergence of oppositions along different lines producing conflict and change.

Abstract: Suggests a new approach to describing both stability and change in social systems by linking the behavior of individuals to organizational behavior.

Abstract: Erving Goffman will influence the thinking and perceptions of generations to come In Frame Analysis, the brilliant theorist writes about the ways in which people determine their answers to the questions What is going on here? and Under what circumstances do we think things are real? "