Micro-level dynamics revolve around face-to-face interactions among individuals. What occurs within encounters is constrained by their embedding with corporate and categoric units and, by extension, institutional domains, stratification systems, community networks, societies, and inter-societal systems. In this Handbook, the author explores the effect of microdynamics on these larger social systems.
This Handbook provides the hidden common threads that tie sociological inquiry together and featuring eminent scholars, it separates itself from its predecessors in substance and organization. Rather than rehashing old debates or longingly gazing at the past, this book presents sociologists with new ways of conceptualizing the organization and presentation of sociological theory. At the heart of this Handbook’s vision is the twin goals of making theory a viable enterprise by reconceptualizing how we teach theory and keeping theory closely tied to its empirical applications. Three strategies are offered: (1) Elucidating how classic issues like integration or interaction are interrogated today; (2) Presenting a coherent vision of the social levels of reality that theorists work on such as communities, groups, and the self as well as how the coherence of these levels speaks to the macro-micro link; and, (3) Theorizing the social world rather than celebrating theorists or theories; that is, one can look at how theory is used holistically to understand the constraints the social world places on our lived experience or the dynamics of social change. Hence, in the second decade of the 21st century, it has become clear that sociology is at a crossroads as the number of theorists and amount of theory available is increasingly unmanageable and unknowable by the vast majority of professionals and students. As such, this Handbook of Contemporary Sociological Theory presents the novice and the expert with the a roadmap for traversing this crossroad and building a more coherent, robust, and cumulative sociology.
The meso-level realm of social reality is structured by corporate and categoric units, along with their respective cultures. Unlike the macro and micro realms of social reality, the meso-level does not reveal its own unique forces. Rather, the dynamics of meso-structures and cultures are driven by macro- and micro-level forces pushing on individual and collective actors as they build corporate units and develop parameters defining membership in particular social categories.
This comprehensive collection of classical sociological theory is a definitive guide to the roots of sociology from its undisciplined beginnings to its current influence on contemporary sociological debate. Explores influential works of Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Mead, Simmel, Freud, Du Bois, Adorno, Marcuse, Parsons, and Merton Editorial introductions lend historical and intellectual perspective to the substantial readings Includes a new section with new readings on the immediate "pre-history" of sociological theory, including the Enlightenment and de Tocqueville Individual reading selections are updated throughout
In a general study of Sociological Theory, social processes are usually broken down into three tiers: macrodynamics (societies and large-scale institutions), microdynamics (interpersonal encounters), and mesodynamics (corporations, communities, smaller organizations). In this seminal work, the author pulls these separate areas of research into one comprehensive general theory of social reality. More than analytical distinctions or research terminology, the author demonstrates that the social world actually unfolds along these three (macro, micro, and meso) levels of interaction. By developing a set of explanatory, testable, repeatable principles, the author creates a general empirical framework for sociological research. The three volumes of Principles of Sociology explore each level of social dynamics individually, with cross-references to bring the three together. This work will be essential for researchers in Sociological Theory and Social Psychology. Individual volumes will present new research of interest for researchers in Race and Ethnicity, Stratification, Demography, Political Sociology, Organizations and Community Movements, Motivation and Emotions.
This is the first handbook focussing on classical social theory. It offers extensive discussions of debates, arguments, and discussions in classical theory and how they have informed contemporary sociological theory. The book pushes against the conventional classical theory pedagogy, which often focused on single theorists and their contributions, and looks at isolating themes capturing the essence of the interest of classical theorists that seem to have relevance to modern research questions and theoretical traditions. This book presents new approaches to thinking about theory in relationship to sociological methods.
This handbook provides researchers and students with an overview of the field of sustainability indicators (SIs) as applied in the interdisciplinary field of sustainable development. The editors have sought to include views from the center ground of SI development but also divergent ideas which represent some of the diverse, challenging and even edgy observations which are prominent in the wider field of SI thinking. The contributions in this handbook: • clearly set out the theoretical background and history of SIs, their origins, roots and initial goals • expand on the disciplines and modalities employed to develop SIs of various kinds • assess the various ways in which SI data are gathered and the availability (over space and time) and quality issues that surround them • explore the multiplex world of SIs as expressed in agencies around the world, via examples of SI practice and the lessons that have emerged from them • critically review the progress that SIs have made over the last 30 years • express the divergence of views which are held about the value of SIs, including differing theories on their efficacy, efficiency and ethics • explore the frontier of contemporary SI thinking, reviewing ante/post and systemic alternatives This multidisciplinary and international handbook will be of great interest to researchers, students and practitioners working in sustainability research and practice.
There may not be a concept so central to sociology, yet so vaguely defined in its contemporary usages, than institution. In Revisiting Institutionalism in Sociology, Abrutyn takes an in-depth look at what institutions are by returning to some of the insights of classical theorists like Max Weber and Herbert Spencer, the functionalisms of Talcott Parsons and S.N. Eisenstadt, and the more recent evolutionary institutionalisms of Gerhard Lenski and Jonathan Turner. Returning to the idea that various levels of social reality shape societies, Abrutyn argues that institutions are macro-level structural and cultural spheres of action, exchange, and communication. They have emergent properties and dynamics that are not reducible to other levels of social reality. Rather than fall back on old functionalist solutions, Abrutyn offers an original and synthetic theory of institutions like religion or economy; the process by which they become autonomous, or distinct cultural spaces that shape the color and texture of action, exchange, and communication embedded within them; and how they gain or lose autonomy by theorizing about institutional entrepreneurship. Finally, Abrutyn lays bare the inner workings of institutions, including their ecology, the way structure and culture shape lower-levels of social reality, and how they develop unique patterns of stratification and inequality founded on their ecology, structure, and culture. Ultimately, Abrutyn offers a refreshing take on macrosociology that brings functionalist, conflict, and cultural sociologies together, while painting a new picture of how the seemingly invisible macro-world influences the choices humans make and the goals we set.
