Suchergebnisse

Zur Einführung -- Einleitung: Parallelen und Kontraste struktureller Analysen -- Strukturelle Analyse in der Soziologie -- Was heißt soziale "Struktur"? -- Die strukturelle Analyse Mettons und Homan' -- Soziale Struktur und Handlungstheorie -- Soziale Struktur und die symbolischen Austauschmedien -- Struktur und Handlung in den Theorien von Coleman und Parsons -- Die evolutionäre Analyse sozialer Struktur -- Diskussionsbemerkungen zu Lenskis evolutionärer Betrachtungsweise -- Struktur und Geschichte -- Soziale Struktur und sozialer Wandel -- Struktur und Konflikt -- Parameter sozialer Strukturen -- Bibliographie -- Die Autoren -- Namensverzeichnis.

I introduce this memoir about my academic career by describing the fortuitous incidents involved in my coming to this country and becoming a sociologist. In graduate school my sociological orientation changed under the influence of Merton and Lazarsfeld from grand theories to systematic theory grounded in research. My dissertation was a field study of bureaucracy in terms of Weber's theory, which led to a book on exchange theory. Next I collaborated with Duncan on a nationwide study of occupational achievement and mobility, for which I learned regression analysis, reluctantly at first, but later becoming converted to it. During the next decade I conducted a research program on bureaucracy, specifically of quantitative studies of various types of formal organizations, from which I developed a limited organizational theory. The limitations of this theory prompted me to construct a formal macrostructural theory of population structure's influences on intergroup relations, which was subsequently tested in empirical research on the 125 largest metropolitan areas in the United States.

Abstract
Coleman states that social phenomena cannot be directly accounted for by their social antecedents without analyzing three intervening steps: what motives the antecedents create, how these affect individual behavior, and the transition from the acts of interdependent individuals to social phenomena. The last is most important. I agree, but Foundations has its causal link upside down. Reanalyzing some of his cases, I try to show that macrostructures are not the product of microfoundations but the existential conditions that circumscribe individuals' choices.

A theoretical analysis of growth in services & its implications for social structure focuses on the effects of growth in services on heterogeneity, inequality, intersecting social differentiation, & social integration. Census data indicate that continuing growth in services has: (1) increased occupational heterogeneity, particularly in densely populated areas; (2) decreased educational & occupational inequality; (3) promoted greater intersection of social differences; (4) reduced sex differences in labor force participation; & (5) reduced race differences in education, occupation, & income. These structural influences are predicted by the theory to increase integrative intergroup relations. These predictions can be tested by ascertaining the link between growth in services & structural conditions, & the influence of structural conditions on intergroup relations. 2 Tables. Modified AA.

Max Weber has often been criticized for advocating a wertfrei, ethically neutral approach in the social sciences and for thereby denying to man, in the words of Leo Strauss, "any science, empirical or rational, any knowledge, scientific or philosophic, of the true value system." On the other hand, Carl Friedrich points out that Weber's "ideal-type analysis led him to introduce value judgments into his discussion of such issues as bureaucracy." There is some justification for both these criticisms. Indeed, a characteristic of Weber's work is that it can be and has been subjected to opposite criticisms, not only in this respect but also in others. Historians object to his disregard for the specific historical conditions under which the social phenomena he analyzes have taken place, which sometimes leads him to combine historical events that occurred centuries apart into a conception of a social system. Sociologists, in contrast, accuse him of being preoccupied with interpreting unique historical constellations, such as Western capitalism, instead of studying recurrent social phenomena which make it possible to develop testable generalizations about social structures. His methodology is attacked as being neo-Kantian, but his concept of Verstehen is decried as implying an intuitionist method. While his theories are most frequently cited in contradistinction to those of Marx, they have also been described as basically similar to Marx's.