Emília Rodrigues Araújo (University of Minho, Portugal)
E-Mail address: era@ics.uminho.pt
Between chance and Choice - the time uses of university teachers
|
|
Using data from a survey conducted to university teachers, some theoretical traits were elected for
discussion. The most important one we want to discuss has to do with the understanding of the uses and
representations of time as a result of structural conditionings and also as a result of the individual choice. In
fact, the adequacy of the lifestyle concept, regarding the study of time, seems to lie precisely, in the
theoretical treatment of this dialectic. That implies to take into consideration the interpretation of the actor-
rational action and the "effects" of the institutional constraints. So, in syntheses, what is important to stress
is in what way the uses of time are a result of the adjustment of individual to other temporal constraints.
This theoretical relation implies a problematization of the relationship between individual and society
trying to figure out until what extent does the "apparent" individual choice signals an affective degree of
autonomy towards time uses or the degree of individual survival on the margins of institutional time
schemata. This last observation implies also a brief attention on several strategies used by individuals
mainly regarding the defense of a dominant calendaric time which can be read as a way of preventing
themselves against the myth of "ever availability" that permeated the academic working time.
|
Filippo Barbera (University of Turin, Italy)
E-Mail address: filippo.barbera@libero.it
Analytical Sociology: a link between sociology and economics?
|
James Coleman argued in several occasions that his macro-micro-macro schema is a generalization of the
neoclassical economics schema.
In my paper, I will follow his suggestion and try to explore this point. I will do that, by the analysis of three
analytical mechanisms. I will follow recent Peter Abell suggestions, and trying to add something to his
picture.
1) logic of situation: Actors exogenously endowed with preferences, endogenously generates their
structure of interaction/exchange. This picture can be complicated along different dimensions. You can
make the exogenous dimensions as exogenous and vice versa. For instance preferences can be made
endogenous (e.g. how the macro shapes preferences) and the structure of interaction can be made
exogenous (namely, actors cannot freely choose with whom to interact or exchange goods).
What really matter is not dyadic interaction or dyadic exchange, but the broader network where interaction
take place: the network effect is not the sum of the dyadic interactions. Furthermore, it's possible to argue
that this network is made up of positions with rights and duties, different form the concrete persons who
happen to occupy these positions.
2) logic of transformation: here the task is to find models more complex than aggregation, where the
macro is not just the mean value of the micro. I am not sure about this at the moment. There are various
criteria to model the complexity of the transformation problem. Suggestions are welcome.
3) Logic of selection: the simplest model is SEU theory. I will compare three different models: SEU,
Cognitive and framing model and evolutionary model.
In the conclusion I will show how analytical sociology gives a privileged role to the idea of rationality of
action.
Rationality has three privileges:
a) conceptual privilege (we understand irrationality form rationality, and not the other way round);
b) explanatory privilege (rational action is its own explanation, no more question needs to be asked)
c) hermeneutic privilege (the comprehension of others action is much easier if we use the concept of
rationality, instead the one of meaning of action).
Rational does not mean utilitarian, but intentional.
I than identify three main version of Rational Action used by analytical sociology scholars.
|
Sarah Babb (University of Massachusetts, USA)
E-Mail address: babb@soc.umass.edu
The International Monetary Fund in Sociological Perspective
|
|
This paper examines the origins and evolution of IMF lending practices through the lens of sociological
theories about organizations. Organizations founded on multilateral agreements are prone to having
unusually ambiguous mandates. With such loose formal bureaucratic moorings, organizations like the IMF
are prone to being structured by the dominant ideas and interests in their environments.
|
Reinoud Bosch (European University Institute, The Netherlands)
E-Mail address: Reinoud.Bosch@iue.it; rc.bosch@hccnet.nl
Exposing the Concept of Power
|
|
The centrality of the concept of power in the social sciences has been noted by many scholars. At the same
time, the elaboration of the concept has been left somewhat wanting. In my paper, I expose the concept of
power, defined in general terms as 'the ability to achieve.' I first analyze the concept in terms of sources,
capacities, constellations, structures, and forms of power. A similar type of institutional analysis is applied
to the study of power structures in organizations and networks. I then turn to the analysis of personal and
collective agency, with the first primarily based on cognitive and social psychology, and the second
primarily on group psychology and organizational sociology. The next section discusses different ways of
exercising power, bringing together insights from the social influence literature in psychology and the
literature in sociology dealing with social control, legitimation, and social influence. Finally, after a brief
discussion of power effects, I turn to the analysis of situations, strategies, and interactions, bringing
together insights from game theory with ideas from other disciplines.
|
Gianluca Busilacchi (University of Ancona, Italy)
E-Mail address: busilacchi@posta.econ.unian.it
Freedom of choice and resource allocation mechanisms in condition of scarcity: poorness of Mr. Well
Being and the need of an external intervention
|
To oppose the rational actor model who maximizes his utility based on well being, Sen built up a
mechanism where utility depends on freedom of agency.
The aim of this paper comes from a complication of this theory: is it possible to let Mr. Agency and Mr.
Well Being live together in a same model? When one gets the upper hand over the other, and which one is
(if there is) their causal relationship?
This question is, as a matter of fact, the classical issue concerning the relationship between resources and
preferences: here the focus is on the possibility that the freedom of agency influences the well-being when
those resources are poor.
The micro level allows us to focus on the making of individual choice processes for the "poor" people.
From here it is also possible to extend the argument at the resource allocation level in a certain community:
poverty could be shown in this perspective as the failure of "natural" (or market) mechanisms of social
integration, therefore it is necessary a State intervention to re-balance the level of freedom of agency for the
disadvantaged people.
|
Sun-Ki Chai (University of Hawaii, USA)
E-Mail address: sunki@hawaii.edu
The Many Flavors of Rational Choice and the Fate of Sociology
|
|
This paper argues that it is premature to judge the weaknesses and strengths of the rational choice approach
without more clearly defining what we mean by "rational choice". In particular, it is important to go beyond
the well-worn sociology vs. economics controversy and examine other academic disciplines. One then finds
that there a contrasting "flavors" of rational choice present in political science, anthropology, psychology,
philosophy, and even linguistics. In particular, these different versions can be contrasted along the
following dimensions: (1) whether rational choice theory is seen as an optimizing or heuristic procedure;
(2) whether its purpose is viewed as primarily normative, predictive, or interpretive; (3) whether it is
associated with formal, quantitative models or with informal, "common sense" models; and (4) whether it is
"thick" in asserting certain preferences and beliefs or "thin" in leaving these exogenous. The discipline has
embrace very different and contradictory views along these dimensions. This in turn helps us to identify
what, if anything, is the essence of the rational choice approach, as well as which aspects of it are worth
retaining. This paper builds upon the earlier book Choosing an Identity (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2001) by
the author.
|
Lothar Funk (Cologne Institute for Business Research, Germany)
E-Mail address: Funk@iwkoeln.de
German economic research methodology: a paradoxical gap between international economic policy
successes and academic merits?
|
|
Although some country-specific or regional varieties of economics and economics methodologies do exist,
there is now a US-dominated core of economics that is almost universally accepted by economists. After
examining the content of mainstream economics in the first section, I shall explain, and focus strongly on,
the peculiarities of (West) German economics methodology after the Second World War; that is to say, I
shall only mention in passing scholars of economic thought from other (partly) German-speaking countries
like Switzerland and Austria. The subsequent section will demonstrate some tendencies towards
convergence in analytical concepts in economics and political science and will give some examples taken
from recent publications. The final section will try to answer, in a tentative fashion, a paradox of German
economics: on the one hand, German economics has had only a rather small international influence
(according to one author, the ordo-liberal economic research programme as a generally accepted area of
research and teaching in Germany not only failed to become internationally successful, it even failed to
become internationally known), while, on the other, practical solutions based on ideas emanating from
German economics are quite influential.
|
Jerald Hage (University of Maryland, USA)
E-Mail address: HAGE@socy.umd.edu/jerryhage@aol.com
Knowledge and a New Theory of Societal Change: The feedback consequences of patterns of
differentiation in the evolution of organizational populations
|
The bulk of industrial economics and organizational theory as well as management studies are built around
the theory of the large firm that obeys the laws of microeconomics. From a dynamic perspective, this
means an evolutionary model of consolidation. This model has been highly successful and with it one can
predict a large number of organizational and population properties across time. But increasingly, this
model no longer describes the patterns of changes that are occurring within industrialized countries, namely
the evolution in organizational populations towards greater differentiation. This leads to an opposite of set
of predictions ands requires a new socio-economic theory of organizational evolution built on the concept
of the creation of new knowledge.
This paper defines knowledge and explains the nature of the changes in the patterns of evolution as well as
their causes. With these new variables, one obtains a quite different theory of societal change than the one
first proposed by Marx and largely accepted even by the non-Marxists. With this new theory a number of
novel predictions can be main about the macro performance of the economy that are quite different from
traditional economic thought.
|
Michael Hechter (University of Washington, USA)
E-Mail address: hechter@u.washington.edu
From Class to Culture
|
|
This paper argues that class politics has receded in advanced capitalist societies during the last century at
about the same time that cultural politics has increased, and offers an explanation for these offsetting
trends. The leading explanations of this shift in the social bases of politics from class to culture highlight
the role of social structural changes that have occurred over the last century – not least, the growth of
service occupations at the expense of working class jobs. Whereas such structural changes indeed are
implicated in any successful explanation, this paper, in contrast, focuses attention away from causes due to
patterns of stratification and towards those due to social and political institutions. The analysis flows from
the premise that participation in solidary voluntary associations has important consequences for the social
bases of politics. The shift from class to culture has been affected by the substitution of direct for indirect
rule. Indirect rule tends to promote class-based organization, but direct rule favors culturally-based
organization. Whereas the expansion of direct rule since the 1950s – in the form of the welfare state --
resulted in the muting of class politics, at the same time it has inadvertently increased the salience of
cultural politics.
|
Roberto Herranz (Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
E-mail address: cpherran@usc.es
From Pragmatism to Economic Sociology through the Thought of Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929)
|
Our essay seeks to explore some of Charles Horton Cooley's theoretical insights to socioeconomic theory
through the study of the market as a social process.
His main contribution to sociological theory is related to his idea about the "Self looking glass." Even so,
this seminal idea was displaced by George Mead's more sophisticated psycho-sociological theory of
internalization. However, unlike the psycho-sociological approach of Mead, Cooley offers a more
sociological flavor. Indeed, he was concerned with the social organization and evolutionary process of the
economy and society, relating the idea of the actor and social interaction to the complex institutional
environment of modern society.
In his works, in line with evolutionary and pragmatic thought, we discover criticism of the static, formalist
and Cartesian approach to economy, as well as the essay of a new and tentative conception about the
relationship between social action and its context.
At first, we deal with how he presents to us the necessary conditions for the constitution of the market as a
social institution, as a place for learning and as a game of cooperation and power. Secondly, we analyze
the role that, in his opinion, the market and other institutions carry out to explain innovation as part of an
evolutionary and tentative process. In his different contributions to competition and the market, we are able
to find new sociological and psychological vocabulary to analyze the meaning of social action in economic
situations.
|
Abbott Katz (Touro College, USA)
E-Mail address: akatz@hotmail.com
What is Social Structure?
|
The proposal's interrogative title: merging, perhaps, equal parts impudence and ingenuousness - points to a
question that nevertheless needs to be asked. Few ideas are drawn so tightly across the fabric of social
thought as social structure, even as so paltry a consensus devolves around its meaning.
Exactly what does "social structure" presume to identify and explain? The proposed paper seeks to assay its
definitional diversity:
1) For some, social structure is conceived as a vast, unitary lattice of positions, enclosing entire societies
within its ambit, e.g., "Egyptian Social Structure".
2) For others, however, structure comprises a raft of impediments and/or enhancements to social action,
e.g., "structural constraints". Structure here tends to nominate variables that may or may not inhere in
positions; they may rather be seen to possess an extra-positional independence.
3) For still others, structure is paired to the processes that appear to issue from it: rationally organized
social structure involves clearly defined patterns of activity in which, ideally, every series of actions is
functionally related to the purposes of the organization.(Robert Merton) Here one often suffers a confusion
between patterned social activity and that which engenders pattern.
The paper seeks to explore these and other conceptions.
|
Edgar Kiser/Ted Welser (University of Washington, USA)
E-Mail address: kiser@u.washington.edu
"Analytical Weberianism: Scope Conditions for Micro-Level Causal Mechanisms"
|
|
Weber's four types of social action (instrumental rationality, value rationality, emotions, habits) provide a
rich and complete set of microfoundations for the social sciences. However, his model illustrates the
central problem with using multiple microfoundations: unless the conditions under which each of the four
types will be important are specified, the model is untestable (since anything can be explained by one of the
four types after the fact). This problem has caused many scholars to abandon the use of multiple
microfoundations in favor of more narrow but more testable models (e.g., rational choice theorists). We
choose a different strategy -- we begin with Weber's four types, but then specify (in a preliminary way) the
scope conditions of each. The result is a model of microfoundations that combines the descriptive
completeness of Weber with the precision and testability of rational choice theory. We call this hybrid
model "Analytical Weberianism."
|
Gregoire Mallard (Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan, France)
E-Mail address: g.mallard@free.fr
Bridging Culture and Rationality: Four Traditions in Economic Sociology.
|
|
The treatment of "information" as a commodity represents a new field for socio-economic inquiry. How do
culture and rationality matter in this transformation? I argue in this paper that the way sociologists and
economists have articulated culture and rationality to analyse the rationalization of labor as a commodity,
can be fruitfully adapted to open new venues for studies of the "information" society. I identify four
different traditions, bridging culture and rationality to explain the commodification of labor. On one side,
two models define rationality as an independent variable and culture as a dependent variable. On the other
side, two models define culture as an independent variable and rationality as a dependent variable. Such
circularity leads to a question: did these theories succeed in cumulating their results? I argue that the two
opposed traditions do not give to their empirical object, "labor", the same epistemological status, which
makes it impossible to cumulate and to falsify their results. But I show that socio-economic theories, which
view culture as an independent variable, have integrated in a particularly fruitful way other theories as parts
of their objects of analysis. I show how a socio-economic study of "information" could follow this path.
|
Morio Onda (Ryutsu Keizai University, Japan)
E-Mail address: morio.onda@nifty.com
Network of mutual help in Japanese society
|
|
Network of mutual help is important in Japanese society. It originated from the villages in medieval times.
This solidarity has contributed to the maintenance of social system in Japanese villages. This informal
organization for mutual help was reinforced by the formal organization of the government. However, it
continued to fulfill the function of integration and assistance among villagers. Even though modernization
influenced network of mutual help, it remained unchanged habitually. The modern spirit of volunteer has
inherited from this social symbiosis. This network can be seen not only in Japanese society but also in
Asian developing countries. Japanese group cohesiveness has influenced the activity of business in both
positive and negative aspects. Network of mutual help will continue to sustain Japanese indigenous social
structure.
|
Paul Reed/Kevin Selbee (Statistics Canada/Carleton University, Canada)
E-Mail address: paul.reed@statcan.ca
The Significance of Social Embeddedness as an Explanatory Variable
|
|
The search for determinants of positive health has shifted away from preoccupation with biological factors
as the significant influence of such social factors as income, position in status hierarchies, and self-
determination have become understood. Analysis of data from four large national surveys in Canada has
revealed a powerful link between individuals' social embeddedness — the extent and nature of their social
connections and anchoring values — and the level of their self-rated health. In addition to summarizing
this analysis, the paper discusses other effects of social embeddedness and the link between social
embeddedness, social engagement, and social capital.
|
Dick Stanley (Department of Canadian Heritage, Canada)
E-Mail address: dick_stanley@pch.gc.ca
It Takes Two to Bowl: Untangling the concepts of social cohesion and social capital
|
|
Social Capital has been accused of being a Aquasi-concept@ (Bernard, 1999), a sop thrown by neo-
classical economists to their critics in the other social sciences (Somers, 2001), and a concept with too
many definitions. This paper argues that if the concept of social capital is unpacked using the notions of
social capital and social cohesion explored by the World Bank (Knack and Keefer, 1997), Douglass North
(1990), and the Canadian Government=s Social Cohesion Research Network (Jeannotte et al, 2002), it
becomes very clear that social capital bears the same relationship to social cohesion as physical capital does
to economic production. Examining the economic indicators used to measure the latter can lead to sorting
out the various indicators (trust, participation, adherence to norms, crime rates, etc.) hitherto associated
confusingly with the concept of social capital. If the concepts of economic production and physical capital
underpin the neo-classical economic model, the concepts of social cohesion and social capital can be used
to begin to develop a coherent model of social sustainability and development which might provide social
policy with a more fertile underpinning than the economic efficiency model it is now tied to in most
developed countries.
|
Shann Turnull (Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia)
E-Mail address: sturnbull@mba1963.hbs.edu
Grounding Sociology in System Science
|
This paper uses Transaction Byte Analysis (TBA) to ground sociology in system science. No relationship
or organisation can exist without some sort of communication that can be measured in bytes. The
transmission or storage of bytes involves physical changes in materials or in energy states subject to
scientific laws. Information overload and bounded rationality can be explained by the physiological and
neurological limits on the ability of individuals to receive, store, process or communicate bytes and so
information, knowledge and wisdom. The laws of requisite variety in communications, control and
decision-making provide additional criteria for evaluating and/or designing social systems and
organisations with unreliable components.
The power of TBA is illustrated by showing how the nested network of firms around the town of
Mondragón in Spain follows the strategies used in nature to create and manage complexity through simple
components. Unlike many other organisational theories, TBA accepts that individuals can be either, or
both, trusting/suspicious, cooperative/competitive and/or altruistic/selfish. TBA is compared with
Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) which it subsumes when costs represent a proxy for information.
Unlike TCE, TBA can be applied to any type of social institution to provide the foundations for a "science
of organisation".
|
|