Sociology

27 May 2008 10:32

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Somewhat unfairly, this notebook also serves as my dumping-ground for general issues related to all the social sciences, as well as "social theory" (so far as I can make out: sociology unburdened by any but the most stylized facts).

See also: Agent-Based Modeling; Archaeology; Collective Cognition; Complex Networks; Cultural Criticism; Cultural Minorities; Economics; Historical Materialism; Human Ecology; the Information Society; Institutions and Organizations; Memes; Methodology for the Social Sciences; Nationalism; Non-Rational Persuasion; Peasant Revolts, Rural Insurgenices; Political Elites; Psychoceramics; Religion; Social Networks; Social Neuroscience; Sociology of Science; Technology and Society; Thought and Society; World History

Recommended:
• Stanislav Andreski
  • Elements of Comparative Sociology
  • Military Organization and Society
  • Social Science as Sorcery
• Raymond Aron
  • Progress and Disillusion
  • The Century of Total War
• Jenna Bednar and Scott Page, "Games Theory and Culture" [SFI Working Paper 04-12-039]
• James Beniger, The Control Revolution: Technical and Economic Origins of the Information Society [Review]
• Raymond Boudon [Ideology and Self-Persuasion are excellent books which show people can have good reasons to believe bad ideas, due to their training and experience, social position, etc. ("Satisfying" is a very compressed summary of the main argument of Self-Persuasion.) It's a "cold" theory of ideology, and a quite convincing one, especially since it shows why some of the most effective ideologies are ones with actual scientific content, which "hot" theories must find puzzling. Social Change is a sensible plea to give up theories of social change, development, etc. in general, in favor of models which can account for particular processes through the aggregation of individual adaptive actions.]
  • The Analysis of Ideology
  • The Art of Self-Persuasion
  • "A `satisfying' theory of social knowledge" [Online]
  • "The Sense of Values" [Online]
  • Theories of Social Change: A Critical Survey
  • The Unintended Consequences of Social Action
• William Bruce Cameron, Informal Sociology: A Casual Introduction to Sociological Thinking [Informal as to presentation; the thinking and research is sound]
• Manuel DeLanda, A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity
• Ernest Gellner
• Jon Elster
  • "Marxism, Functionalism and Game Theory: The Case for Methodological Individualism," Theory and Society 11 (1982): 453--482 [online; academic readers probably have access to the original via JSTOR]
  • Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences
• Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
• Peter Hedström, Dissecting the Social: On the Principles of Analytical Sociology
• 'Abd-ar-Rahmân Abû Zayd ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah [There's a fine translation available from Princeton UP. See also Muhsin Mahdi's Ibn Khaldûn's Philosophy of History]
• Gary King, A Solution to the Ecological Inference Problem: Reconstructing Individual Behavior from Aggregate Data [Review]
• Stanley Lieberson, A Matter of Taste: How Names, Fashions, and Culture Change [A detailed, empirical examination of changing fashions in names, mostly in developed western countries in the 20th century, which succeeds, I think, in demonstrating that the causes of these changes were largely endogenous; that these cultural changes were not signs of any social changes. One way to think of this --- though it is not how Lieberson puts it, at any rate not here --- is by analogy with neutral models in evolutionary biology. A neutral model specifies a set of evolutionary mechanisms other than natural selection and adaptation, and so lets us see what kind of evolutionary changes we would expect if everything were adaptively neutral (hence the name); deviations from neutral models let us identify actual adaptive evolution. (Neutral models, ideally anyway, provide severe tests of hypotheses about adaptation.) When dealing with cultural evolution, people have generally supposed either that cultural changes are adaptations to something else ("society"), or at least that it reflects changes in something else. This has led to an awful lot of just-so stories, and uncritical analogy-mongering, often under the name of "critical theory". No doubt things have sometimes happened "just so", but when? A good set of neutral models --- which Lieberson begins to construct here --- provides a good battery of tests for separating the base shaping the superstructure (or whatever) from culture doing its own oblivious thing.]
• Michael W. Macy and Robert Willer, "From Factors to Actors: Computational Sociology and Agent-Based Modeling," Annual Review of Sociology 2002
• Otto Neurath, Empiricism and Sociology
• Ned Polsky, Hustlers, Beats, and Others
• S. Popkin, The Rational Peasant
• Thomas Schelling, Micromotives and Macrobehavior
• Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons
• W. G. Runciman, The Social Animal [See under memes]
• Stephen Turner [Social theory. But useful for figuring out what could possibly count as good sociological explanations, and what attempts really are question-begging, or even mind-boggling. In particular, he nicely punctures the whole shared-mental-objects idea, found in Durkheim, Bourdieu, etc., etc.]
  • The Social Theory of Practices: Tradition, Tacit Knowledge, and Presuppositions
  • Brains/Practices/Relativism: Social Theory after Cognitive Science [But most of the arguments he bases on connectionist learning would work just fine with symbolic learning systems]
• Terry Williams [Exemplary field-work, harrowingly related]
  • The Cocaine Kids
  • Crackhouse: Notes from the End of the Line
• William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears

To read:
• Andrew Abbott
  • The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor [Blurb]
  • Time Matters: on Theory and Method [Blurb]
• Richard Newbold Adams, Energy and Structure: A Theory of Social Power
• Elijah Anderson
  • Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City [Blurb]
  • Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community
• Margart S. Archer
  • Being Human: The Problem of Agency [Blurb]
  • Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach [blurb
  • Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation [Blurb]
• Raymond Aron
  • Democracy and Totalitarianism [=Sociologie des societes industrielles]
  • The Elusive Revolution; Anatomy of a Student Revolt
  • The Imperial Republic; The United States and the World, 1945--1973
  • In Defense of Decadent Europe
  • On War
• Roger Bartra and Claire Joysmith, The Imaginary Networks of Political Power
• E. Ben-Naim and S. Redner, "Dynamics of Social Diversity", cond-mat/0503451
• Clifford Bob, The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media, and International Activism [From the blurb: "How do a few Third World political movements become global causes celebres, while most remain isolated? This book rejects dominant views that needy groups readily gain help from selfless nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Instead, they face a Darwinian struggle for scarce resources where support goes to the savviest, not the neediest. Examining Mexico's Zapatista rebels and Nigeria's Ogoni ethnic group, the book draws critical conclusions about social movements, NGOs, and 'global civil society'."]
• Raymond Boudon
  • The Crisis in Sociology
  • Education, Opportunity and Social Inequality
  • Mathematical Structures of Social Mobility
  • The Uses of Structuralism
• Steven Brint, In an Age of Experts
• William A. ("Buzz") Brock and Steven N. Durlauf, "Interaction-Based Models," SFI Working Paper 00-05-028 ["By interactions, we refer to interdependencies between individual actions that are not mediated by markets"]
• Sun-Ki Chai, Choosing an Identity: A General Model of Preference and Belief Formation
• Matthew A. Chamberlin, "Symbolic Conflict and the Spatiality of Traditions in Small-scale Societies", Cambridge Archaeological Journal 16 (2006): 39--51
• James S. Coleman, The Foundations of Social Theory
• Lewis Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict [Seems a clear case of functionalism gone mad to me, but Coser was supposed to be good, and anyway it deserves a fair trial before being shot.]
• Diana Crane, Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity in Clothing [Blurb]
• Arthur J. Deikman, The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society
• Louis Dumont, Homo hierarchius: The Caste System and Its Implications
• Christofer R. Edling, "Mathematics in Sociology," Annual Review of Sociology 2002
• Jon Elster
  • "Merton's Functionalism and the Unintended Consequences of Action" [online]
  • Sour Grapes
  • Ulysses and the Sirens
• Carel B. Germain, Human Behavior in the Social Environment: An Ecological View
• Robert L. Goldstone and Marco A. Janssen, "Computational models of collective behavior", Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9 (2005): 424--430 [Brief review on agent-based models]
• Jürgen Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society
• Russell Hardin, One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict [blurb]
• Geoffrey Hawthorn, Enlightenment and Despair: A History of Social Theory
• Michael Hechter, Principles of Group Solidarity
• Peter Hedstrom and Richard Swedberg (eds.), Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory
• Frank Henderson, Honor [blurb]
• L. J. Henderson, L. J. Henderson on the Social System [Ed. Bernard Barber. Wonderfully hostile lumpen-Marxist review by R. M. Young, rendered into HTML by Google, which inspired me to buy the book.]
• Petter Holme and Andreas Gronlund, "Modelling the dynamics of youth subcultures", physics/0504181
• Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts [Blurb]
• Irving Louis Horowitz, The Decomposition of Sociology
• Allen W. Johnson and Timothy Earle, The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State
• Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications
• Jack Knight, Institutions and Social Conflict
• Elliott A. Krause, Death of the Guilds: Professions, States, and the Advance of Capitalism, 1930 to the Present
• Robert Layton, Order and Anarchy: Civil Society, Social Disorder and War [Blurb]
• H. and R. Lynd
  • Middletown
  • Middletown in Transition
• Peter V. Marsden, "The Sociology of James S. Coleman", Annual Review of Sociology 31 (2005)
• Thomas G. Masaryk, Constructive Sociological Theory: The Forogtten Legacy of Thomas G. Masaryk [ed. Jonathan B. Imber. In addition to being the first president of Czechoslovakia, and an interlocutor of Karel Capek, Masaryk was at the time a sociologist of enough importance for his clash with Durkheim over suicide to be noteworthy...]
• Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention
• Robert K. Merton
  • On Social Structure and Science [Blurb]
  • Social Theory and Social Structure
• Linda D. Molm, Coercive Power in Social Exchange
• Barrington Moore, Moral Aspects of Economic Growth, and Other Essays
• Devah Pager, Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration [blurb]
• Pareto, Mind and Society
• Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study
• Eric H. Rambo, "Symbolic Interests and Meaningful Purposes: Conceiving Rational Choice as Cultural Theory", Rationality and Society 11 (1999): 317--342 [Link]
• T. R. Rochon, Culture Moves: Ideas, Activism and Changing Values [blurb]
• Runciman, A Treatise on Social Theory [I've read vol. 1, and am making my way through vol. 2.]
• Peter St. Jean, Pockets of Crime: Broken Windows, Collective Efficacy, and the Criminal Point of View [blurb]
• Jane C. Schneider and Peter T. Schneider, Reversible Destiny: Mafia, Antimafia, and the Struggle for Palermo [Blurb]
• Edward Shils, The Constitution of Society [Blurb. I had a copy of this, but the Post Office destroyed it...]
• Georg Simmel
  • Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms (ed. Donald N. Levine) [Blurb]
  • George Simmel Online
  • "How Is Society Possible?" [Online]
  • "The Metropolis and Mental Life" [Online]
• Sociological Research On-line
• Ann Swidler, Talk of Love: How Culture Matters [Blurb]
• R. Todd La Porte (ed.), Organized Social Complexity
• Charles Tilly
  • Identities, Boundaries, and Social Ties
  • The Politics of Collective Violence
  • Social Movements, 1768--2004
  • Why? [Blurb, 1st chapter]
• Stefan Timmermans, Postmortem: How Medical Examiners Explain Suspicious Deaths [Blurb]
• Jonathan H. Turner, A Theory of Social Interaction
• John Urry, Sociology beyond Societies: Twenty-First Century Mobilities
• Max Weber, Economy and Society
• Harrison C. White, Identity and Control: A Structural Theory of Social Action [Blurb]
• William F. Whyte, Participant Observer: An Autobiography
• John Willinsky
  • If Only We Knew: Increasing the Public Value of Social Science Research
  • Technologies of Knowing
• Chih-Chien Yang, Chih-Chiang Yang and Kuang-Hui Yeh, "Ecological-Inference-Based Latent Growth Models: Modeling Changes of Alienation", Quality and Quantity 39 (2005): 125--135
• W.-X. Zhou, D. Sornette, R. A. Hill and R. I. M. Dunbar, "Discrete Hierarchical Organization of Social Group Sizes", cond-mat/0403299