Charles Tilly,German Historicism,and the Critical Realist Philosophy of Science

This paper examines Charles Tilly’s relationship to the schools of thought known as historicism and critical realism. Tilly was committed to a social epistemology that was inherently historicist, and he increasingly called himself a “historicist.” The “search for grand laws in human affairs comparable to the laws of Newtonian mechanics,” he argued, was a “waste of time” and had “utterly failed.” Tilly’s approach was strongly reminiscent of the arguments developed in the first half of the 20th century by Rickert, Weber, Troeltsch, and Meinecke for a synthesis of particularization and generalization and for a focus on “historical individuals” rather than abstract universals. Nonetheless, Tilly never openly engaged with this earlier wave of historicist sociology, despite its fruitfulness for and similarity to his own project. The paper explores some of the possible reasons for this missed encounter. The paper argues further that Tilly’s program of “relational realism” resembled critical realism, but with main two differences: Tilly did not fully embrace critical realism’s argument that social mechanisms are always co-constituted by social meaning or its normative program of explanatory critique. In order to continue developing Tilly’s ideas it is crucial to connect them to the epistemological ideas that governed the first wave of historicist sociology in Weimar Germany and to a version of philosophical realism that is interpretivist and critical.     

Antipolitics and Counterpolitics in Nepal’s Civil Society: The Case of Nepal’s Citizens’ Movement

This article considers the relationship of civil society to the domain of the political from the actors’ perspectives. It explores the attempt by a citizens’ movement (CMDP) in Nepal to construct new political realities in the context of the autocratic regime of king Gyanendra and then during the democratic transition. This was, paradoxically, to be achieved through the construction of an apolitical space. Theoretically, this production of apoliticality by civil society actors shows that civil society is not only implicated in the expansion of what is understood as ‘political’ but also in setting its boundaries. The broader aims of the article are to contribute to the ethnography of civil society and to add to current understandings of the relationship of actually existing civil societies to the political domain. Practically, it argues that debates over whether civil society is or is not political in the Nepal case and normative positions within development circles that it should not be political are misconceived since civil society is a site for the production of both politicality and apoliticality.     

Glassblowing Tools: Extending the Body Towards Practical Knowledge and Informing a Social World

Understanding tools in the development of practical knowledge and in the formation of social worlds is critical for the sociology of culture insofar as they reveal how matter, or material, informs practice and discourse. This article is an ethnographic exploration of the variations of the maker-tool-material relation in glassblowing, informed by Bourdieu's logic of practice as well as phenomenological considerations of the body's dispositions towards and interactions with the material world. These relations form the backbone of the glassblowing studio, and more importantly provide the subject matter of ‘tool talk,’ studio talk about tools, which forges feelings of empathy and consequently contributes to the formation of the glassblowing social world. Through this exploration, we come to understand how material, the subject of much studio discourse, is a structuring force of a lifeworld, the glassblowing studio.

没有历史的民族志——从马凌诺斯基出发

马凌诺斯基被认为是现代民族志方法的奠基人。今天,严格意义上的民族志仍然遵循马氏的基本准则。后现代主义的人类学对人类学家的自我身份及其专业实践进行了深刻反思,而功能主义人类学也在后继者那里得到了修正,但是,现场的主客互动依旧是民族志研究方法的核心特征。在人类学走进文明社会后,文献成为田野作业里重要的补充。不过,笔者认为,其实只有田野研究中对于文献的利用,不存在所谓"走进历史田野"之说,历史民族志仅仅是文献而已,其现场感是"别人的",并非使用这份民族志的人的,而作为当事人的作者没有将其当成"历史民族志";真正的民族志是要有主—客面对面互动的、有切实的伦理问题的。     

Merton’s Sociology 215-216 Course

For many years, Robert K. Merton taught a famous, year-long graduate course at Columbia called The Analysis of Social Structures. His lectures have been recalled for their dazzling intellectual effects by those who took the course, but none of these former students has described what Merton actually said in specific lectures. I do this now, using my extensive lecture notes from 1952–53 when I took it for credit, and from later years when I sat in on the course. The core of the course at that time was Merton’s Paradigm for Functional Analysis in Sociology. Each concept in the paradigm—subjective dispositions, objective consequences, functional requirements, structural constraints, etc.—was elaborated in its relationship to a wide variety of sociological problems in the published theoretical and empirical literature. I also recount how Merton’s relationship to Talcott Parsons appeared to us in the course.     

“Which One Is Yours?”: Children and Ethnography

This paper explores roles that children play in ethnographic research. Based on the limited literature on children in the field, and drawing on examples from ethnographies across disciplines, I identify four roles for children: 1) as “wedges,” or as instrumentally important in helping adult ethnographers gain access in various ways; 2) as collaborators; 3) as objects of study; and 4) as subjects of study. I also discuss the ways in which these roles illuminate key methodological issues in ethnography, like reflexivity, ethics, and agency. The paper synthesizes and integrates previously disconnected research on the presence of children in the field with ethnographies in which children and childhood are the topics of research. I draw on my own fieldwork experiences for further illustration.

Fostering Global Citizenship Dispositions: The Long-term Impact of Participating in a High School Global Service Club

To assist teachers in fostering students' global citizenship dispositions through service experiences, this article reports findings from a case study that investigated one high school's global service club and its impact on former club members' global awareness and global citizenship dispositions. Data were collected from Web-based documents and interviews with the faculty advisor and four former members. Data were analyzed by using the constant comparison method to elicit the following findings: (1) fundraising and awareness campaigns, when connected to a larger global service network, can act as viable local actions to combat global poverty; (2) club involvement can produce adults who feel more globally aware, but who do not necessary display critical understandings of global issues; and (3) club involvement can have a positive impact on global citizenship dispositions as participants reported feelings of empowerment and personal/social responsibility, yet no former club members continued participation in global service initiates as adults. Findings suggest the need for structural support when establishing high school global service clubs and, to optimize critical justice aims, local service actions should be tied to a more formal global citizenship curriculum.     

The uneven impact of women's retirement on their daughters' employment

This paper studies the impact of women’s retirement on their daughters’ employment. Using SHARE and self-collected historical data on legal ret     

Contested canon: Simmel scholarship at Columbia and the new school

The history of sociology exhibits what might be called, after Gallie (1956), an “essentially contested “ canon. The key figures, sacred texts, and central ideas that constitute the sociological tradition are inherently in dispute. This essay examines the “contested canon “ within a historical framework to provide at least a partial explanation for the restricted interpretation of Georg Simmel as a structuralist sociologist. The sites of this contest are two New York City institutions, Columbia University and the New School for Social Research, both of which offered mid-century readings of Simmel’s works. At Columbia in the mid-1950s, Robert K. Merton advanced a structural reading of Simmel’s work. During the same broad period, the New School’s Albert Salomon championed a phenomenological reading of Simmel in his classes and seminars. Despite penetrating insights into Simmel’s links to the phenomenological tradition, Salomon’s interpretation has had less salience than the approach advanced by Merton. The differential success of these competing interpretations is explained in large measure by the institutionalization and dominance of Merton’s research tradition relative to Salomon’s.     

The Place of Framing: Multiple Audiences and Antiwar Protests near Fort Bragg

Social movement leaders regularly invoke geographic places—such as cities, parks, and monuments—as symbols in strategic efforts to frame social movement activity. This article examines how place affects framing processes inside a movement and counterprotester responses with an ethnography of anti-Iraq War protests in Fayetteville, North Carolina. We show how place attracts the attention of movement leaders, creates opportunities for local community members to assert their interests, suppresses some frames within the movement, and encourages opponents to co-opt the meaning of place for their own ends. The multiple meanings of place can broaden the scope of conflict and reduce a movement leader’s ability unilaterally to define a movement’s agenda and public image.

Italy and ‘Balkan Greece’: Albanian Immigration in the 90s

The article proposes an interview with Mr. M. Baldwin Edwards—director of the Mediterranean migration observatory (MMO) based in Athens—made in January 2007. Interview object was the analysis of the way Greece faced the Albanian migration flow in the 90s. Critically he points out the actors, the strategies, the historical and sociological reasons of this response. The protection of human rights and the role of the European Union are also pointed out. The overall picture gives the impression of a Greek answer that makes a confusion between a ‘border policy’ and a ‘migration policy’ leading to a (more or less conscious) ‘non immigration policy’.     

The strength of weak programs in cultural sociology: A critique of Alexander’s critique of Bourdieu

Jeffrey Alexander’s recent book on cultural sociology argues that sociologists must grant the realm of ideas autonomy to determine behavior, unencumbered by interference from instrumental or material factors. He criticizes the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu as “weak” for failing to give autonomy to culture by reducing it to self-interested behavior that immediately reflects class position. However, Alexander’s arguments seriously distort and misstate Bourdieu’s theory, which provides for the relative autonomy of culture through the concepts of habitus and field. Because habitus is a set of durable dispositions conditioned by past structures, it may contradict the changed structures of the present. Further, the influence of the habitus is always mediated by the structure and strategies of the field of contest in which it is deployed, so that the same habitus may motivate different actions in different circumstances. However, Alexander is correct to argue that in Bourdieu’s theory culture generally serves to reproduce, not contradict social structures. Yet Bourdieu addresses this and other problems in his later work, in which he argues for the existence of certain cultural universals transcending particular structures.

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Interdisciplinary foundations of urban ecology

Researchers have identified urban ecology as a new field integrating social and ecological science. Critics have portrayed the field as under-theorized with negative implications for research and urban environmental planning. Unprecedented urbanization and historical bias against research integrating social and ecological systems are identified as driving this deficit. Researchers have called for new integrative approaches to address this issue. In response, this paper applies ecology’s analytic framework of “patch dynamics”, Kuhn’s concept of “normal science” and Mazoyer and Roudart’s “evolutionary series” to demographic data and historical texts to perform an analysis of interdisciplinary contributions to theory applicable in the field of urban ecology. The subsequent exploration reveals a rich history of interdisciplinary inquiry along the nature/society divide. The paper concludes that these “largely ignored” contributions offer urban ecology the opportunity to claim much broader depth as a field gaining access to precedents and innovations accomplished during the field’s early theoretical development. Drawing upon this history, a framework for ecological urban development is suggested to inform and assist contemporary research in urban ecology and planning.

The Production of Distinctions: Class,Gender, and Taste Work in the Lifestyle Management Industry

Drawing on participant observation and interviews, this paper analyzes the paid labor of lifestyle production. In particular, I look at jobs in the lifestyle management industry that involve making consumption-related aesthetic choices with and for clients. This is taste work, and workers are taste brokers, who mediate between clients and markets, between clients and other people, and between clients and their own desires. Taste brokers shape not only clients’ consumption decisions but also their class performances and dispositions. I argue that taste brokers also reproduce legitimate social differences in three ways: by fostering distinctions between “good” and “bad” taste; by reinforcing the association between particular tastes and particular class positions; and by casting women as both better at and responsible for making aesthetic decisions.     

Social gerontology as public sociology in action

Burawoy (2005) argues that sociology needs to re-establish a public sociology oriented toward society’s problems and the practice of its unique knowledge if it is to again be taken seriously by the public, policymakers, and others. Yet, it is unclear how best to achieve these goals. We argue that the relatively young field of social gerontology provides a useful model of successful public sociology in action. As a multidisciplinary field engaged in basic and applied research and practice, social gerontology’s major aim is to improve the lives of older people and to ameliorate problems associated with age and aging. Thus social gerontology has routinely reached beyond the academy to engage with its publics. We review the field’s historical and theoretical development and present four examples of public sociology in action. Several factors have contributed to social gerontology's success in achieving the goals of public sociology: (1) Working in multidisciplinary teams which promote collaboration and respect for diverse perspectives. (2) Its ability to advocate “professionally” for its publics without favoring one group at the expense of another. (3) The unique affinity of its theories and practices with its disciplinary values. (4) The constructive effects of its ongoing questioning of values and ethics. Working in a multidisciplinary field with multiple publics, social gerontologists have been able to blend professional, critical, policy, and public sociologies to a considerable degree while contributing toward improvements in well-being.     

Return Chasing as a Driver in Individual Retirement Savings Investment Choices: Evidence from Australia

Australia’s retirement savings regime requires employers to make contributions to a superannuation fund for their employees. Workers who may have no experience of investment are asked to make relatively complex decisions, which have significant implications for their retirement lifestyle. Evidence suggests individuals may be unduly influenced by recent historical returns when making investment choices. Such a bias may produce sub-optimal results over the longer-term. This paper uses a large database from four not-for-profit retirement savings funds to investigate members’ investment choices using logistic regression and multi-variate tests. We find evidence that choices are driven by recent historical returns. We also investigate demographics and find a link between age and return chasing behaviour.     

Educate or serve: the paradox of “professional service” and the image of the west in legitimacy battles of post-socialist advertising

This article investigates a puzzle in the rapidly evolving profession of advertising in post-socialist Hungary: young professionals who came of age during the shift to market-driven practices want to produce advertising that is uncompromised by clients and consumers, and to educate others about western modernity. It is their older colleagues—trained during customer-hostile socialism—who emphasize that good professionals serve their clients’ needs. These unexpected generational positions show that 1) professions are more than groups expanding their jurisdiction. They are fields structured by two conflicting demands: autonomy of expertise and dependence on clients. We can explain the puzzle by noting that actors are positioning themselves on one or the other side based on their trajectory or movement in the field relative to other actors. Old and new groups vie for power in the transforming post-socialist professional field, responding to each other’s claims and vulnerabilities, exploiting the professional field’s contradictory demands on its actors. 2) The struggle is not between those who are oriented to the west and those that are not. Rather, the west is both the means and the stake of the struggle over historical continuity and professional power. Imposing a definition of the west is almost the same as imposing a definition of the profession on the field. In this historical case, “field” appears less as a stable structure based on actors’ equipment with capital, than as dynamic relations moved forward by contestation of the field’s relevant capital.     

The Polish Peasant in Oberlin and Chicago

This paper examines the historical sources for W. I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki’s celebrated monograph on The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. It first characterizes the work itself, a monumental interpretive casebook of largely biographical material about individuals and groups. It then seeks the origins of these qualities, looking first at Thomas’s prior work, then at the personal influence of Florian Znaniecki and Robert Park. Since these sources do not sufficiently account for the unique qualities of the work, we then turn to three other important sources: 1) the casebook tradition in the social reform literature and beyond, 2) the psychiatric concept of the life history, and 3) the literary sources that Thomas had taught in his prior career as an English professor. We close by identifying the autobiographical roots of the work in Thomas’s own life history.     

Pitirim A. Sorokin’s integralism and public sociology

Major features of the thought of Pitirim A. Sorokin are related to Michael Burawoy’s four forms of sociology. The article develops the theme that Sorokin’s system of sociology makes major contributions to identifying standards of excellence for professional, critical, policy, and public sociology and for their interrelationships. Sorokin’s integral ontology and epistemology are described and identified as sources of the distinctive characteristics of his system of thought.     

The transition to mid-life divorce

How long do older divorcees deliberate divorce? The answer identifies factors that either slow or hasten divorce. By comparison, extant studies investigate only marriage durations and fail to account for an individual’s maturity. To control for maturity, I focus on divorcees over 40 years old. Outside interference from stepchildren and/or in-laws significantly hastens the divorce decision, followed by sexual issues and/or a poor match. Intolerance of outside interference is explained by Hamilton’s rule on genetics, with other problems explained by Becker’s insights on the gains from marriage. Studying marital problems among older divorcees yields lessons for all age groups.