While recent years have seen a substantial increase in research on clientelism, nearly all of it pertains to clientelism as an electoral strategy. This paper offers a general stocktaking of our understanding of the key issues in how clientelism arises, performs and (perhaps) diminishes, drawing on electoral studies while recognizing that findings in this realm do not always generalize to others. The specific questions addressed are: (1) What are the commonalities between electoral and non-electoral clientelism, and in what respects is (...) the former distinctive? (2) What is the salience of the “commitment problem”—uncertainty over the future performance of clientelist offers—in both electoral clientelism and clientelism in general? (3) Given that clientelism entails exchanges over status inequalities, what is its relevance for studies of prosocial and dominant/submissive behaviors, and vice versa? (4) How should we view the relationship between the extent of clientelist practices in a given society and its degree of social, political and economic development or institutionalization? (5) Does clientelism require voluntary participation, or can it accommodate aspects of coercion? (6) How should clientelism be viewed normatively according to commonly applied criteria? The paper concludes with a few issues that deserve greater attention in future research. (shrink)

The great upsurge of witch trials in early modern Europe remains a historical puzzle. Popularly known as the “witch craze”, this eruption of persecution is puzzling because belief in witchcraft had existed for centuries, but large-scale witch-hunting appeared rather abruptly, spread widely, and was remarkably brutal in comparison with the past. We define a theory of ideational diffusion to describe the general process of the emergence and spread of a new idea along with its prescribed behavioral change, in this case (...) the adoption of witch-hunting. Ideational diffusion distinguishes between the adoption of new ideas, which lead social actors to reinterpret the world and thus to change their behavior, and the adoption of behavior alone. We relate how a new theory of witchcraft appeared in the fifteenth century and show that its widespread propagation, owing to the new technology of printing, matches our description of ideational diffusion. We then analyze the diffusion of witch trials in Central Europe by combining data on the publication of demonological treatises alongside climate, state capacity, religious economy, and city network variables. We find that cities adopted persecution after demonological treatises were printed, and that nearby trials induced neighbors to adopt persecution. Tracing the print vectors and social interdependence spurring witch-hunting helps us understand the general mechanisms behind the spread of persecution. (shrink)

Concealment, or the deliberate withholding of information from others, is of fundamental sociological interest. Yet, a general theoretical framework of concealment is missing from the sociological canon. This paper specifies a model that builds on and goes beyond existing accounts of concealment by emphasizing the desire for autonomy. I propose that the desire for autonomy, and the subjective assessment of concealment as the best route to achieve autonomy, lead individuals to attempt concealment. After specifying a dyadic model based on the (...) concealer (ego) and the target of concealment (alter), I incorporate ego-alter power differentials, network dynamics, and norms about privacy and concealment into a multilevel model of how concealment is initiated and maintained. (shrink)

The literature on listening and daily discourse often describes an overly romanticized conception of listening, meaning what it should be in its ideal form. However, at most, this ideal is realized through the ‘masks’ that listeners ‘carry’ during their performance of listening. The ideal version that is being projected through the performance of listening is not cognruent with what actually happens behind the mask and performance. Individuals do not have the cognitive capacities to realize this unrealistic and unattainable ideal, but (...) they have the capacity to act as if they do. Using Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical account this paper reveals the psychological and social world that hides behind the mask and performance of listening in order to ground the theorizing of listening in a more realistic perspective. This account gives rise to novel and indispensable listening concepts: the definition of the situation, the sincere and cynical listener, undercurrent listening, and misrepresentations of listening. These concepts demonstrate that the study of interpersonal listening cannot be isolated from the dramaturgy of listening as (expressed) manners of listening are intricately and inherently embedded in social structure. This account also strongly contests the psychocentric and simplistic definition of listening as proposed by Kluger, A. N., & Mizrahi, M. (2023). Defining Listening: Can We Get Rid of the Adjectives? Current Opinion in Psychology, 101639.). (shrink)

In explaining national identity as an indicator of subjective belonging to the nation-state, researchers have examined factors such as occupational structure, economic discrimination, competition, and political recognition. However, the influence of cultural factors has often been neglected. By investigating the moderating effect of Shia and Sunni rituals on national identification, I find that the nature of rituals significantly influences the strength of national identity among subordinate ethnic groups. In Shia culture, the solidarity generated through ritual practices extends into national identity, (...) fostering the formation of a confessional supra-identity. In contrast, rituals centered on personal piety in Sunni Islam do not produce the same effect. I propose a theory of interethnic solidarity based on ritual processes. A qualitative analysis of the cases of Turkey and Iran shows that in Turkey, the absence of cross-ethnic ties forged through less intense rituals leads to weaker national identity among Sunni Kurds and higher perceived ethnic discrimination. In Iran, however, the frequent practice of interactive rituals that transcend ethnic boundaries strengthens national identity among Shia ethnic minorities and reduces perceived ethnic discrimination. This research underscores how communal, intensive rituals play a key role in explaining variations in national identification. (shrink)

This interview with Randall Collins explores the role of interaction rituals (IR) in our increasingly digital world. For Collins, IR is a micro-sociological mechanism that provides both the glue that holds social groups together and the energy that fuels disputes and domination. Crucially, Collins posits that IRs are most effective under face-to-face or “bodily copresent” conditions. The pivotal question of this interview is how well this proposition holds in an age where interaction increasingly takes place through and with technologies. The (...) interview begins with Collins explaining how he became interested in IR, before moving on to consider topics such as whether bodily copresence is as important today as it was when he wrote Interaction Ritual Chains (2004); the relative importance of online and offline IRs; how AI might change our ritual landscape; the role of materiality in the ritual process; and whether IR theory will continue to be as relevant in the future. (shrink)

At key moments in history, political understanding and action are irrevocably transformed. What makes such moments of transformation possible? This article examines the emergence of African nationalism in South Africa, following the multivocal appeal to African nationhood made by proto-nationalist leaders and intellectuals. In doing so I examine how new political imagination can reconfigure the structure of political relations and create powerful new possibilities for political organizing and action. African proto-nationalist leaders were ‘intermediary intellectuals’ who used African nationhood to speak (...) to three different political logics of their key audiences: a ‘progressive nationhood’ to their white colonial audience, a ‘unifying nationhood’ to their missionary-educated African audience, and a ‘traditional nationhood’ to their rural African audience. African nationhood thus had a multivocal appeal which allowed proto-nationalist leaders to bring otherwise divided audiences to support a common political project. By bridging these divided communities, proto-nationalist leaders were able to combine resources and strategies from once separated domains into novel forms of political power. Transformation in political understanding was thus a critical enabler of innovation in organization and action because it built a political project where new connections between African and colonial worlds were made politically ‘thinkable’. Speaking to the scholarship on political repertoires and the sociology of anti-colonial intellectuals, this study has broader implications for the role political ideas play in political transformation. (shrink)

This study employs Bayesian inference to explore class-based differences in moral judgment. Based on the dual-process perspective in interdisciplinary action theory, we estimate in a first step a process model which differentiates parametrically between emotionally driven deontological, deliberatively driven utilitarian, and residual judgmental inclinations. In a second step, our estimates of these parameters are correlated via beta regressions with indicators of social class and thinking dispositions. We find a considerable association between social class, specifically income, and deontological inclinations, whereas consequentialist (...) inclinations correlate with thinking dispositions but not with social class. This research underscores the utility of Bayesian estimation in closing the gap between theoretical and statistical modelling. Employing this approach enhances our understanding of the nuanced interplay between intuitive and deliberative processes in moral judgment and, more generally, offers a promising direction for advancing sociological action theory. (shrink)

Self-identified adherents of freedom and democracy (hereafter ‘liberals’) increasingly accuse each other as being harmful, illiberal actors. To explain, I argue that present day liberals adhere to different sets of rules on public discourse (discourse regimes), and that adherents of one regime frame those of another as false liberals, who allow or commit rights violations. I illustrate with diverging discourse regimes within and among advanced, OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) democracies.

While democratic societies experience intense conflicts about topics such as migration and climate action, there is no sound theory of democratic conflict. Agonistic theories emphasize the importance of conflict for democracy, but disregard conflict dynamics. Conflict sociology has focused on international or violent conflicts and neglects democratic conflicts. This article shows how this lacuna can be overcome. First, it develops an innovative, empirically informed processual approach to democratic conflicts. To this end, it draws on a broad range of scholarship from (...) sociology and social psychology, and integrates relevant insights into a processual framework for analyzing democratic conflicts that explores mechanisms of escalation, de-escalation, and reconciliation. Second, the article illustrates how this approach can ground a more elaborated democratic theory of conflict that concretizes how and when conflicts are beneficial to democracy, and explores the practices and institutions that democracies employ to cope with different conflict dynamics. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom situates the historical origins of social movements in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by attributing their emergence to the rise of democracy, capitalism, and the nation-state. In this article, I challenge this scholarly orthodoxy by presenting primary sources and historical scholarship that demonstrate how the German Peasants’ Revolt of 1524 and 1525 meets Charles Tilly’s criteria for a modern social movement. By challenging the standard narrative of social movements as a product of modernity, this article breaks with the (...) dichotomy between modern and premodern social movements and encourages us to rethink the concept of social movements. (shrink)

Sexual violence is explained using a social psychological theory of aggression that emphasizes bounded rationality. The approach challenges feminist approaches that examine violence against women in isolation and attribute it to sexism. It suggests that sex differences in sexuality lead men to attempt to influence women to have sex using various means. Sex differences in physical strength create opportunities for them to use violence while chivalry encourages them to act like “gentlemen.” Research on the age of victims, sexual arousal, self-reported (...) motives, legalized prostitution, and modus operandi support the commonsense notion that most incidents are sexually motivated. As a result of sexual motivation, rape is as much a crime against teenagers as it is a crime against women. However, evidence suggests that some rapes–like other violent crimes– are motivated by real or imagined grievances. The role of grievances is supported by research on self-reported motives and justifications, and the offender’s use of gratuitous violence during the incident. It is argued that sexual assault can be explained by bounded rationality and well-established social psychological processes. (shrink)

The sociological literature on race operates under the progressive ideological assumption that systemic racism is the predominant cause of racial disparities. This assumption has become “paradigmatic,” shaping the selection of research questions and the interpretation of research results. Consequently, the literature offers a rather narrow “Overton window” concerning what we, as sociologists, know about: (1) the causes of racial disparities, (2) the accuracy and motivation behind the public’s views on race-related issues, and (3) race-related policy preferences. A paradigm shift is (...) needed to improve our understanding of racial disparities and devise more effective ways to address them. To achieve this end, sociologists should broaden their perspectives beyond attributing all racial disparities to systemic racism and consider additional hypotheses. From a policy perspective, to reduce racial disparities we should reconsider addressing social class and related factors early in life. (shrink)

This paper investigates the intersection of cognitive sciences and social network theory and its counterpart, the complexity sciences, aiming to shed light on the compatibility and potential integration of these frameworks into institutional theory. Institutional scholars have for long selectively adopted notions linked with the cognitive sciences and complexity sciences, such as the notion of path dependence, without exploring the broader implications of systematically integrating such perspectives into institutionalism. This paper aims to advance such a comprehensive theoretical integration, by investigating (...) the effective combination of these approaches and their significant implications. It shows how the complexity sciences contribute to dissolving the barriers between the cognitive and social realms and illustrates how this impacts notions of human agency and reflexivity. Theoretical integration also involves acknowledging considerable diversity in individual human agency, which in turn prompts a reconsideration of how notions of institutional stability, change, diffusion and adaptation are understood. Furthermore, the paper addresses the epistemological challenge presented by the complexity sciences, before it highlights the general relevance of institutional theory in analyzing complex social phenomena. Finally, the paper explores implications for research methodology, proposing that a fusion of institutional theory and the complexity sciences provides a metatheoretical framework for assessing the contextual suitability of different theoretical and methodological approaches. (shrink)

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are a major success story, promising to improve science and policy. Despite some controversy, RCTs have spread toward Northern and Southern countries since the early 2000s. How so? Synthesizing previous research on this question, this article argues that favorable institutional conditions turned RCTs into “hinges” between the fields of science, politics, and business. Shifts toward behavioral economics, New Public Management, and evidence-based philanthropic giving led to a cross-fertilization among efforts in rich and poor countries, involving states, (...) international organizations, NGOs, researchers, and philanthropic foundations. This confluence of favorable institutional conditions and savvy social actors established a “global interstitial field” inside which support for RCTs has developed an unprecedented scope, influence, operational capacity, and professional payoff. However, the article further argues that the hinges holding together this global interstitial field are “squeaky” at best. Because actors inherit the illusio of their respective fields of origin—their central incentives and stakes—the interstitial field produces constant goal conflicts. Cooperation between academics and practitioners turns out to be plagued by tensions and contradictions. Based on this analysis, the article concludes that the global field of RCT support will probably differentiate into its constituent parts. As a result, RCTs may lose the special status they have gained among social science and policy evaluation methods, turning into one good technique among others. (shrink)

The well-researched sociological concept known as Zero Acquaintance Judgment frames first impression scenarios and highlights their prevalence and importance to our everyday lives, yet sociology so far overlooks how these might be affected by the built environment where first impressions are typically situated. Broadly, spatial discriminatory discourse investigates how spaces can affect social judgments, yet no research has investigated how this dynamic might unfold within a first impression scenario. Using the Zero Acquaintance Judgment concept as a lens of inquiry, a (...) comprehensive review of feminist, queer, racial, and disability frameworks (which comprise spatial discriminatory discourse) was undertaken. From this investigation, three broad theoretical themes were articulated and rationalized as to how the built environment can potentially affect first impressions between strangers. The discussion bears relevance for researchers and designers of spaces where first impressions are paramount to function as well as highlights how the settings of research into first impressions may affect outcomes. (shrink)

Apart from polarized feminist theorizing, which is abundant in the literature, much of the scholarship on sex work is atheoretical and based on single-case studies. This paper argues that theorization can be advanced by systematic comparison of multiple settings and types of prostitution at the structural, interactional, and experiential levels. I show that certain structural and interactional characteristics, specific to each sector, can be linked to corresponding patterns in participants’ routine or modal experiences and meanings. Drawing on the empirical literature, (...) I show that some of the most important meanings revolve around the degree to which a sector is conducive to rebranding and decommodification by participants, bordering on normalization. In the sociology of deviance, this is known as norm “neutralization” and “deviance disavowal.” It is argued that the social organization of one of the sectors is most favorable to destigmatization by the actors involved. (shrink)

The history of Credit Rating Agencies [CRAs], commonly called Rating Agencies, has a long and distinguished trajectory marked by influence, reputation and power. Due to the ability of this field to instigate significant changes in market regulations and actions of economic actors, this subject is extensively debated within the literature. In economic sociology, while some studies have focused on perceptions of performativity and market devices to understand how the calculability of its methods influences the economy, others, along relational lines of (...) sociology, aim to understand them through a more complex constructive process. In this study, we attempt to fill a gap by exploring the complementarity between two theoretical approaches to sociology: theory of fields and performativity. Thus, we mobilize theory of fields to understand the inter-field relationship between the State and CRAs. Specifically, this paper sets out to i) analyze the co-constitution of the state and market fields with the field of CRAs; ii) describe the existing regulation and situate the CRAs and their classification devices in the broader history of the State and the market; iii) analyze how the legitimation of the CRAs by the State generates broader social contexts that assist in the performative work of the CRAs. Based on historical documentary research, we analyze some of the main milestones and regulatory events in the field of CRAs. This research reaffirms the assumption that even after credibility crises, the State is the most significant predictor of legitimacy, power, and influence that CRAs hold to date. The legitimacy of this power and influence has yet to be exhausted because the reputation of CRAs is rooted in the reputation of the State itself. This happens because the State provides essential actions (such as regulations) for the existence of the financial market. Thus, results suggest that the State, through regulatory measures, can engage several other fields to promote the legitimacy of performative work of the CRAs, whose purpose is to provide calculation tools to shape markets. (shrink)

Theories of intense national emotions have focused on affection for the home nation and antagonism for national others but overlooked antagonism for fellow nationals. The article introduces a comprehensive theory of intense national emotions. It first discusses the sources of the potential energy stored in national identities, pointing to a combination of two factors: the nation is at once potent due to its capacity to shield against existential threats and precarious due to its dependence on the reproduction of contested narratives. (...) The article then explains that events that—through a construction process elaborated in the text—seem to threaten or promise to alter perceived core elements of the nation (i.e., “nation-disrupting events”) evoke intense emotions. Next, the article explains why some periods of "hot" nationalism increase national division rather than unity. The conclusion proposes a promising direction for future research on intense national emotions as a mechanism of eventfulness. (shrink)

The postwar welfare state provides social insurance against economic, health, and related risks in an uncertain world. Because everyone can envision themselves to be among the unfortunate, social insurance fuses self-interest and solidarism in a normative principle Friedman (2020) calls probabilistic justice. But there is a competing principle of status defense, where the aim is to erect boundaries between socioeconomic strata and discourage cross-class mobility. We argue that this principle dominates when inequality is high and uncertainty low. The current moment (...) is one of high inequality and high uncertainty, which results in intense status anxiety, yet does not rule out solidaristic solutions. Our contributions are to diagnose the causes of our current malaise, and to theorize the normative bases for the political choice facing contemporary western democracies. (shrink)

The presence of parents or other guardians (commonly termed ‘supervision’) and parental knowledge are factors that are both robustly negatively associated with a range of anti-social and risky behavioural outcomes such as adolescent crime. However, parental presence/supervision and parental knowledge are both (i) regularly used inaccurately as proxies for parental monitoring, (ii) poorly defined and operationalised, and (iii) rarely linked to negative behavioural outcomes with plausible mechanisms that adequately explain their association. These problematic aspects of the parental monitoring literature are (...) a barrier to research into adolescent outcomes and the varied role of parents. This theoretical paper facilitates solutions these problems by clarifying the concepts of parental presence, supervision and knowledge. This discussion delineates presence from supervision and knowledge from monitoring. It specifies how presence and knowledge are not parenting actions, and neither constitute parental monitoring. These concepts are clarified within the parameters of a recent framework of goal-directed parental action and parental monitoring. Doing so constitutes under-labouring that facilitates future discovery of their distinct and yet inter-related mechanisms of influence on adolescent action and development. These structured conceptual developments are also of benefit for our better future understanding of parenting and parental monitoring by providing a framework within which to re-situate existing empirical research findings. (shrink)

This paper examines how scholars of Greek and Roman antiquity in the German-speaking territories in the first half of the nineteenth century define scientificity (Wissenschaftlichkeit). I will argue that antiquity studies in this period of its foundation as a discipline is an instructive case to examine with regard to questions as to how scientific knowledge is established as different from other forms of knowledge, how scientific fields establish relative autonomy from other fields and what forms scientific autonomy can take. Widely (...) recognised as important for the history of the modern research university, the case is not only interesting because it is influential. It is also interesting because the discussions in this period are so different to discussions in the later nineteenth century in the social sciences and the humanities, which have shaped debates about scientificity in sociology and cognate disciplines: We find here a notion of social and cultural research as a scientific endeavour, discussed not primarily with reference to or in defence against the natural sciences, but rather defined against imitative learning and the expectation that research provide moral support for the emerging Germany by idealizing the Greeks. The case highlights moralization as a source of heteronomy in cultural fields in addition to the more widely discussed forces of the market and the influence of the state. (shrink)

The article develops an explanation of corporal punishment (CP) as an expression of family violence by developing a multi-level, conciliatory model of human behavior. The synthesis builds upon a review of the relevant analytic approaches and empirical evidence spanning multiple levels of human behavior to include five interrelated frameworks: (1) behavioral investment; (2) socialization; (3) cultural justification; (4) social location; and (5) societal context. The analytic levels highlight the various explanatory principles that address questions relevant mainly to investigators who study (...) behavior in terms of different levels of informational complexity. The paper outlines the most important factors that shape the use and non-use of CP within family settings. The model identifies key ontogenetic and biophysiological factors linked to the fitness of parents’ offspring, along with primary socialization processes and cultural justification mechanisms that increase the probability of the intergenerational transmission of violence. In addition, the model identifies the sociological dimensions of family relationships and the importance of social locational variables in shaping parental usage of CP, as well as the importance of communities and institutions as situated within sociocultural contexts. The main conclusion suggests that to understand and explain more fully why human beings use violence in the context of familial relationships—including corporal punishment practices—analysts must consider the different influences and possible impacts of factors across all five levels. (shrink)

Platform companies use techniques of algorithmic management to control their users. Though digital marketplaces vary in their use of these techniques, few studies have asked why. This question is theoretically consequential. Economic sociology has traditionally focused on the embedded activities of market actors to explain competitive and valuation dynamics in markets. But restrictive platforms can leave little autonomy to market actors. Whether or not the analytical focus on their interactions makes sense thus depends on how restrictive the platform is, turning (...) the question into a first order analytical concern. The paper argues that we can explain why platforms adopt more and less restrictive architectures by focusing on the design logic that informs their construction. Platforms treat markets as search algorithms that blend software computation with human interactions. If the algorithm requires actors to follow narrow scripts of behavior, the platform should become more restrictive. This depends on the need for centralized computation, the degree to which required inputs can be standardized, and the misalignment of interests between users. The paper discusses how these criteria can be mobilized to explain the architectures of four illustrative cases. (shrink)

We develop an account of societal democratization that synthesizes cultural sociology and deliberative democracy. Cultural sociologists emphasize the symbolic inclusion of marginalized groups into the civil sphere. Deliberative democrats stress growth in the deliberative capacity of society. We argue that democratization entails the co-evolution of culture and reason. The basis of co-evolution is the performative construction of an inclusive demos, which requires a deliberative background but is also a source of the moral emotions that motivate deliberation. Since moral emotions can (...) also sweep people up and make them do reckless things, they must in turn be redeemable in inclusive deliberation. This synthesis sharpens a normative position for the evaluation of episodes of inclusion, extends current accounts of the place of emotion in cultural sociology and deliberative democracy, and provides a frame for comparative analyses of democratization. We illustrate with an examination of the exclusion and inclusion of Indigenous Australians. (shrink)

The article takes the first steps towards a general theory of civil society elites, a concept not fully developed in either elite or civil society research. This conceptual gap hampers academic and public understanding of the dynamics at the top of civil society. To address this, the authors rely on the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu to build a theory of civil society elites as managers of civic capital. This role is illustrated through examples from the differently institutionalised UK and (...) Nordic civil societies. The first part of the article introduces the notion of civic capital and its emergence during the 19th century. The second part focuses on elite positions in civil society fields, demonstrating how civil society elites, as managers of civic capital, navigate between their constituents and other elite groups. These elites wield the power to consecrate social relations while misrecognising their own symbolic and economic gains. Recent scandals in the climate movement and UK and Nordic civil societies shed light on the symbolic aspects of the positions of civil society elites. This comprehensive analysis contributes to elite and civil society research and enriches public discussions about the role of civil society leaders in society. (shrink)

Scholars theorize the effect of modernization on religious and familial institutions in a parallel way. Some argue that both are irreversibly in decline—as secularization and deinstitutionalization, respectively—while others argue that they have either merely changed or are in fact growing stronger. However, correctly interpreting institutional change depends not only on how one evaluates the empirical starts and endpoints but also on how one defines the domains under change themselves. In this paper, I examine these debates, detail the structural similarities in (...) their arguments, and outline a new analytical approach informed by recent work in institutional logics to better answer the definitional questions. Theorizing both institutions together and their parallel trajectories in modernity reveals unique insights about the scholarly discourse on modernization and is especially important given the unique influence of religion and family on one another as (seemingly) privatized spheres of social life. (shrink)

There have been significant changes in what economists include in the category of investment over the last six decades. The US government agency that compiles national income date, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, has tried to keep up with these changes, but it has not succeeded. The resulting tension between economic theory and official data can be overcome by adopting a different theoretical lens. Work on social reproduction and social investment suggests a more coherent definition of investment than that offered (...) by mainstream economists. The paper then contrasts the measurement of investment in the government data with a calculation of investment derived from this new approach. The results show that business investment is dwarfed by the combined investment made by government and households. This finding suggests that business investment is not the key engine that powers the economy. This has significant implications for economic and social policies. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze which concept describes the central theme in Max Weber’s works — the rationalization processes — best: disenchantment, alienation, or anomie. I first describe how Weber’s rationalization processes were understood in the past. Most scholars have interpreted these processes as disenchantment, although some have seen a stronger affinity to the Marxist concept of alienation. Since the majority have regarded disenchantment as the central theme of Weber’s legacy, I discuss Weber’s rare statements about the (...) disenchantment process, most of which appear in a speech that was published later as Science as a Vocation. I then introduce definitions of key concepts (Hegelian alienation, Marxist alienation, Durkheimian anomie, and de-magification) to provide a more varied and precise vocabulary. This will aid in describing at least two different rationalization processes that can be derived from Weber’s theoretical framework (Economy and Society) and his historical studies. The first, in the economic and political sphere, can be characterized as Marxist alienation, whereas the second, in the religious sphere, can be interpreted as de-magification and Hegelian alienation. It is possible to regard Weber’s statement in Science as a Vocation as a third rationalization process, in the sphere of knowledge production, which would suggest the concepts of de-magification and anomie. However, such a reading would seem to contradict the greater body of Weber’s methodological writings. Finally, it is concluded that the term disenchantment is not a very useful concept for portraying Weber’s intended view. (shrink)

Schools are interesting as complex organizations in and of themselves but even more so for how they refract the societal dynamics by which inequality is reproduced, an enduringly vexing question (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012:3). Educational attainment is core to socioeconomic status and connected to outcomes in housing, health, and employment. Unequal schools in fields characterized by stratification are often the subject of reform attempts (Tyack, 1974). We examine how a wealthier and a poorer school responded to a state-level regulatory mandate (...) for change, in the U.S. context of schools as putative engines of opportunity. Bourdieu’s “master concepts” of field, habitus, and cultural capital (Swartz, 2008) are often applied, and we used them to answer frequent but still relatively unanswered calls in the literature: first, to use the master concepts together rather than singularly, and second, to attend specifically to the organization level and what it refracts (Dobbin, 2008; Emirbayer & Johnson, 2008; Hallett & Gougherty, 2018; Lounsbury & Ventresca, 2003; Mohr, 2013). For this integrative and organizational level approach, we derived the concept of “class signature,” which enabled us to focus on practices in organizations. This lens revealed “resistant compliance” in the wealthier school and “compliant resistance” in the poorer school, both of which reshaped the stratified field, even if stratification was not rectified. These responses appeared to reproduce inequality, not simplistically, we argue, but along a winding path fraught with practical experiments, protection against penalties, redefinition of the reform’s terms, and some small gains to remedy intra-organizational inequalities. (shrink)

This paper explores the intersection of time and relational economic sociology. Building on Viviana Zelizer’s relational framework, I argue that analyzing the temporal dimensions of exchange provides insight into how social ties gain meaning through economic practices. The paper shows time’s dual role as both an organizing structure bounding action, and a dynamic element that actors leverage to shape transactional contexts. As structure, time offers culturally-available templates like schedules and rhythms that facilitate coordination and signify predictable social meanings befitting particular (...) relational categories. Yet time also constitutes relational work itself; strategic timing, duration, pacing, and sequencing of interactions signal context, manage expectations, and sustain bonds amidst entanglements. Synchronization through temporal agency prevents mismatches between transactions and social contexts that could strain ties. This agency in time ranges from passive adherence to dominant structures to active assertions of power resistance, enabling both domination and defiance across economic contexts. Analyzing shared temporal infrastructure within circuits of commerce further illuminates how actors distinguish those spheres of exchange at various scale from the impersonal market. Ultimately, incorporating temporality strengthens relational economic sociology by identifying a key mechanism through which practices of exchange become relationally meaningful. (shrink)

Utopian dreams of a fundamentally different world would seem to have little place in the de-radicalized political arena of the post-communist age. This article challenges this idea by ethnographically examining three cases of electoral politics in the contemporary United States, which can be seen as a “least likely” context for electoral utopianism. Evidence from these cases – the 2008 Obama campaign, 2016 Sanders campaign, and local organizing work of the Green Party – is used to make three claims: utopianism is (...) present in the US electoral arena; utopianism and electoral instrumentalism are not incompatible and may “need” each other; and the relationship between utopianism and instrumentalism varies, resulting in multiple types of utopian politics. The article’s key contribution is to theorize and illustrate three such types. (shrink)

Existing explanations of political intolerance and partisanship highlight how individuals’ ideological commitments and the homogeneity of their political environments foster intolerance toward other political groups. This article argues that cultural, interactional conditions play a crucial role in how personal and environmental factors work – or do not work – in local groups. Based on a four-year ethnographic study and 12 focus group discussions with two culturally distinct civic associations of American libertarians, I show how groups’ varying patterns of interaction, or (...) “styles,” establish distinct cultural settings, in which different attitudes and behaviors seem sensible and appropriate, particularly regarding other political groups. Thus, when libertarian groups established a “community style” of interaction, viewing the relationship among members in terms of friendship and community bonds, they also opened their social activities to non-libertarians, collaborated with them in political projects, and viewed politics as a matter of advancing shared interests with people from other political groups. Comparisons across and within field sites show how this relationship between style and political tolerance works in different libertarian groups and different social environments. These findings highlight the role of local factors in explaining variations in groups’ levels of political tolerance and present a key mechanism—centered on interaction patterns—to supplement existing analyses of the relationship between political intolerance and changing forms of civic organizing in the US. (shrink)

How have broad patterns of violence and war changed from the dawn of humanity up to present time? In answering this question, researchers have typically framed their arguments and evidence in terms of the polarized debate between Hobbes (or hawks) and Rousseau (or doves). This article moves beyond the stalemated debate and integrates the most robust existing theoretical developments and empirical findings that have emerged from various disciplines over the past 20 years – primarily sociology, political science, anthropology, and archaeology (...) – to answer the question. Drawing on carefully curated violent lethality data for pre historically appropriate hunter-gatherers, as well as historical pre-state and state societies, it shows that simple narratives of violence and war decreasing through history from ostensibly high levels in the human state of nature, on the one hand, and the obverse insistence that the once mostly peaceful communities became highly belligerent with the transition to modernity, on the other, are both wrong. Instead, multiple lines of existing evidence and theoretical perspectives suggest a complex, non-linear, Kuznets-style relationship between violence and the passage of history. (shrink)

Everyday identity change is common after conflict, as people attempt to move away from oppositional group relations and closed group boundaries. This article asks how it scales up and out to impact these group relations and boundaries, and what stops this? Theoretically, the article focusses on complex oppositional configurations of groupness, where relationality and feedback mechanisms (rather than more easily measured variables) are crucial to change and continuity, and in which moral authority is a key node of reproduction. It uses (...) the normatively weighted concept of transformation to augment existing research on boundary and identity change, while elaborating it to recognise the role of everyday agency in furthering change and moral inertia in impeding it. Substantively, the article compares the processes of everyday transformation of groupness in three cases that are very similar in historical depth, social embeddedness, symbolic opposition and everyday change, but very different in time-scale and with contrasting outcomes: successful transformation of reformation religious groupness; partial transformation of national groupness; and failed transformation of complexly-configured ethnic groupness in Northern Ireland. This allows tracing of the patterns and mechanisms at work. To anticipate, the article argues that everyday identity change can erode the moral authority of groupness. Its impact is generational and dependent on institutional linkages. The article highlights the importance of moral mechanisms as drivers of and obstacles to change; and it suggests ways that the obstacles could be overcome by radical policy interventions. (shrink)

This paper examines the impact of a shift in focus from political praxis to trauma work in the context of a failed democratisation movement. It investigates the various phenomena which emerge when intellectuals, under the traumatic impact of violence and atrocities, place trauma narration at the core of their interventions. Drawing on document analysis, participant observation and semi-structured interviews with twenty nine exiled Syrian intellectuals in Paris and Berlin who had participated in the revolutionary movement of 2011, the paper suggests (...) that an inversion of the normative power structures pertaining to how intellectuals relate to their publics occurs when they adopt, under conditions of extreme violence and trauma, what we call a radically embedded positionality vis-à-vis ‘the people’. This results in the dismantling of previous figurations of the ‘militant intellectual’ along with praxis-focused notions of the ‘responsibility of intellectuals’, ultimately undermining their ideational influence upon domestic publics and weakening their political impact and critical role within a revolutionary movement. (shrink)

In this study, I examine the institutional model of data science as a nascent profession undergoing an occupational founding phase. Drawing on interviews with sixty data scientists, senior managers, and professors from Israel as well as observations at the local professional community’s events, I argue that data scientists endorse an open institutional model, upholding largely internet-based institutions focusing on knowledge sharing, networking, and collaboration. This model grants data scientists expertise, autonomy, and authority vis-à-vis clients, employers, and states; provides them with (...) continued credentialing independent of employing organizations; encourages the wide entry of new members; and helps them deal with the accelerated temporality of their field. This open model enables an omnivorous spreading of data science expertise and is used to challenge professionalization as an occupational-institutional model in other professions. Still, this model faces many challenges. (shrink)

This paper presents a new approach to theorizing and empirically investigating a phenomenon variously described by sociologists as internalized oppression or symbolic violence. Located at the intersection of internal worlds and external reality, the intrapsychic and the interpersonal and social, this object of inquiry—here termed self-negation—is crucial to many forms of societal domination. The paper explores its inner workings, analytically disaggregating it into an array of psychosocial processes drawn from the psychoanalytic theory of the defenses. Much of the work’s originality (...) consists in showing how these processes operate across multiple systems of domination and drive many and varied outward manifestations of the phenomenon. (shrink)

An instrument of wealth accumulation and racial segregation in housing markets, the intersections between zoning and labor are often overlooked. Extending theories of space, race, and class, and drawing on historical and archival evidence, I elaborate three ways that American land-use zoning emerged to shape labor markets in the early 20th century: (1) zoning constrained households from engaging in subsistence and direct market activity, acting as a regulatory source of labor commodification; (2) zoning first emerged as a xenophobic tool for (...) regulating labor competition; and (3) zoning introduced racialized boundaries distinguishing formal work from a sphere of economic informality. I illustrate these theoretical-historical propositions with a study of the frontier origins of American land-use zoning laws in late-19th -century Los Angeles. This first and influential approach to residential zoning emerged amid racial dynamics of western settlement and the class politics of a national “free” labor market. I demonstrate how efforts to regulate the settlement and labor practices of poor urban households and Chinese immigrants on in Los Angeles became the direct legal basis for the dichotomous categories of “residential” and “industrial” districts that the city first defended before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1915. By theorizing the intersections of land-use zoning and labor markets, this paper provides a theoretical framework and historical genealogy for future work to consider entanglements of housing and labor politics amid the concurrent flexibilization of work and land use in the present. (shrink)

Theories of race-making have recognized the confusion and contradiction in state-led racial projects but have not sufficiently elaborated their unintended consequences. Focusing on the relationship between the state, racial science, and immigration policy in the early twentieth century United States, this article illustrates how practical challenges in racial projects can jeopardize and thereby eventually trigger innovations in modes of racial governance. The Dillingham Commission (1907–1911) was a Congressional investigative commission that attempted to collect comprehensive data on immigrants in order to (...) provide a scientific foundation of immigration policy. Specifically, the most powerful members of the Commission’s executive committee wanted to single out Southern and Eastern Europeans (SEEs) and portray them as “undesirable races.” Developing such a classification scheme, however, proved to be difficult, and the facts collected from the field did not support their goal, instead demonstrating that in many cases SEEs were not very different from other immigrants and their native-born counterparts. The idea for national quotas, as well as the theoretical foundation for the inclusion of SEEs, emerged in this process, not as an outcome of ideological design but as an unintended byproduct of knowledge production. I highlight the pursuit of facts-based governance and relative autonomy of middle-level managers as key factors that enabled such process. (shrink)

Marx’s theory of ground rent has been widely used to help understand the trinity of land, labor, and capital. However, limited attention has been paid to the role of water within the Marxian rent framework. This lack of attention proves troubling due to the role of surface waters as an essential means of production throughout capitalism. Here I restate Marxian ground rent in the form of water rent and discuss the function of water-rent in the two dominant surface water rights (...) doctrines of the United States—the riparian doctrine and the doctrine of prior appropriation. In doing so, I revise the distinction between differential rent 1 and differential rent 2 to provide more analytically useful categories. Paying special attention to issues of drought and scarcity, I fully articulate the function of Marxian rent and its four forms for both surface water rights doctrines, while clearly stating where they do and do not differ. (shrink)

The existing scholarship has developed six main explanations to account for the success of the Chinese Revolution, which has been anomalous for major paradigms derived from cross-national comparisons. Methodologically, we use a social geographical approach to test these existing explanations systematically by constructing and analyzing a unique dataset of Communist growth in 93 counties in the three most contested provinces during its most pivotal period of ascendence. Theoretically, we advance and test an alternative perspective, based on the groundwork of Tocqueville (...) and Fei Xiaotong, that integrates the state-centric theory, elite theory, and cultural analysis. Our perspective emphasizes the interplay between state centralization and local elite structure, which leads to intensified state extraction and local elite fracturing, thus creating favorable conditions for revolution. The quantitative analysis strongly supports the importance of the Japanese invasion but provides limited support for many other conventional explanations. The analysis largely confirms the Tocqueville-Fei perspective on state centralization, elite fracturing, cultural change, and revolution. The findings are buttressed by a detailed case study of Lianshui County. The study unveils a common structural challenge that a modernizing state faces in an agrarian status society, to recreate its political legitimacy while disrupting local elite structure. It also sheds historical light on the evolution of state-society relationship through the Chinese Revolution. (shrink)

Unprecedented times compel new ways to explore relationships. Using interviews with dating app users quarantined in American cities at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, I show the impacts of digital mediation on the highly scripted interactional patterns in dating. Drawing from the literature on creative action, temporality, digital affordance, and the materiality of cultural objects, I examine how actors access the creative opportunities in digitally mediated interaction. I find that dating partners creatively mobilized the affordances of digital technologies to (...) approximate a dating script in organizing online interactions, which simultaneously allowed them to formulate relational narratives with varying deviation from the scripted temporal structure. I identify three aspects of digital affordances offering creative opportunities: the dissolution of spatial-temporal boundaries, the production and circulation of digital objects, and the connection between contexts. Taking advantage of an extraordinary moment of cultural and interactional rupture that necessitated digital solutions to connect, this article demonstrates how digital technologies unsettle culturally institutionalized interactional patterns and the formation of meaningful relationships. (shrink)

Scholars have revealed how moral evaluation is woven into formal administrative processes. While research examining these dynamics tends to assume that a person’s naturalized identity (such as race and gender) precedes administrative processing, we argue that social categorization by administrators is the tacit precondition upon which further processing takes place. We make this argument by looking at a set of unusual cases: parole hearings where prisoners fall outside of, conflict with, or move between categories of gender, sexuality, race, and ability. (...) We find that categorization acts as a prerequisite to moral evaluation. When administrators cannot easily categorize a prisoner, they resolve this uncertainty by denying parole. Yet, social categorization can also serve as a pathway to moral approval and administrative allocation. In certain situations, administrators encourage prisoners’ identification with a new social category as proof that they are deserving of parole. In both cases, successful administrative categorization occurs through a combination of what we call narrativization, or crafting a narrative around one’s identity that aligns with administrators’ presumptions, and authorization, or marshalling official evidence from prior classification moments to support identity claims. These insights extend our understanding of classification, moral evaluation, and the administrative reproduction of inequality. (shrink)

Given the known hazards of nuclear energy in seismically active Japan after the Fukushima meltdowns as well as the presence of viable conservation and renewable energy options, the question of Japan’s stalled energy transition warrants critical interrogation. To better understand why, after Fukushima, Japan’s energy policy trajectory maintained the nuclear status quo and an increased reliance on fossil fuels, this article employs network and historical analyses to examine the confluence of post-Fukushima political forces connected to Japan’s nuclear energy sector. Our (...) novel network dataset combines with historical analysis to identify a dense network of overlapping executives and officials in Japan that forge long-term ties between the nuclear energy industry, the state, and the leading business federation in Japan. Following the 3.11 disaster and the meltdowns at the Fukushima-Daiichi facility, a long-standing nuclear safety myth and a tightly networked nuclear energy industrial complex provided an ideological and structural context to re-legitimize nuclear energy in spite of widespread public concern. Instead of a bold, ecologically rational policy to quickly phase out nuclear power and phase in renewable energy, well-worn class and state networks aligned to recommit Japan to a nuclear-reliant energy path. These findings support a theoretical synthesis around our concept of an energy industrial complex with applications in environmental and political sociology. (shrink)

In this article, we explore the micro-foundations of elite politics by focusing on changes in network structures that emerge from informal conversations. Empirically, we offer a novel “situational conflict” explanation to account for the puzzle of why reformist leaders were periodically ousted during China’s reform era (1977–1992), emphasizing the unexpected power collision that catalyzed the violent crackdown on the Tiananmen movement in 1989. To do so, we employ network analysis and narrative to utilize an original dataset of elite conversations and (...) primary sources that have only recently been made available. We find that ideological cleavage and manipulative brokerage produced each conflict to varying degrees but were contingent on the relational structure arising from elite conversational interactions. Furthermore, the actual unfolding of those conflicts often resulted from key actors’ discrepant understandings of the changing relationships via ongoing interactions at vital moments, such as during the Tiananmen movement. Integrating micro-sociological theories and network analysis, our work has methodological and theoretical implications for unpacking the black box of elite politics and its role in macro-historical change. (shrink)