Home
Theory and Society
Article
High-leverage sociological concepts and the progress of theory, part one
Open access
Published: 19 February 2025Volume 54, pages 705–730 (2025)
Cite this article
You have full access to thisopen accessarticle
Download PDF
Save article
Theory and SocietyAims and scopeSubmit manuscript
Steven Brint
5372 Accesses
7 Citations
3 Altmetric
Explore all metrics
Abstract
Sociological theory, as represented in the two main U.S. theory journals, has been diverted from the project of generalized explanation by a propensity for over-refinement, a preference for small-scale conceptual innovations linked to specific and sometimes quite obscure cases, a tendency to focus on heroes of theory rather than their generalizable ideas, and too much attention to the flux and instability of social life. These conclusions are based on a content analysis of 445 journal articles over a recent 11-year period. As an alternative, I propose focusing on high-leverage sociological concepts, those that have explanatory power across multiple settings, subfields, and levels of analysis, as well as the variables that are most important for conditioning their explanatory force. I connect the project with a recessive theme in the work of the mid-20th century sociologist and theorist Robert K. Merton.
Similar content being viewed by others
High-leverage sociological concepts: an extension with two cases
Article Open access12 March 2026
The History of Sociology as Disciplinary Self-Reflexivity
Chapter © 2022
The History of Sociology as Disciplinary Self-Reflexivity
Chapter © 2021
Explore related subjectsDiscover the latest articles, books and news in related subjects, suggested using machine learning.Sociological Methods
Sociological Qualitative Methods
Sociology
Sociological Theory
Social Theory
Sociology of Work
Theorizing in Social Sciences
In this article, I will argue that sociological theory, as represented in the major U.S. theory journals, has become too concerned with nuance, too prone to make minor conceptual innovations to explain highly particularized cases, too much enthrall of individual theory heroes, and too much concerned with the flux of social relations and social institutions. My conclusions about the current state of theory are based on coding the content of 445 articles from the two leading theory journals in the United States over a recent 11-year period.
These defects have created obstacles to the development of a deployable set of explanatory concepts and conditioning propositions related to these concepts. Yet sociologists have concepts and conditioning propositions that contribute to the explanation of a wide range of outcomes of interest across multiple settings, subfields, and levels of analysis. I will argue that it would be valuable for more of the theory community’s total energy to go into the identification of these sociological concepts with high explanatory power. More of the community’s energy should also go into specifying the conditioning variables that influence their impact.
For the progress of sociological theory, the stakes are high. Sciences are composed at the most basic level of building-block concepts and propositions connected to these concepts. Sociological theory has failed to achieve consensus on either its building-block concepts or its explanatory propositions. It can be argued, of course, that sociology is “not that kind of science” because of the dependence of social relations on perishable structures, historical events, incommensurable cultures, and interpretive moments.Footnote1 This is clearly true for many problems of interest to sociologists, but it is also a convenient way to avoid trying hard to push in the direction of a theoretically guided science for those problems in sociology that can be profitably examined in this way.
The approach I propose is not the only way forward for the advancement of theory. It is clearly the case, for example, that some theories with proven explanatory power have grown out of a distinctive and insightful way of looking at the workings of the social world as an inter-connected system. This approach begins in the mid-19th century with Marx’s analyses of modes of production and Spencer’s evolutionary structural-functionalism and continues through Bourdieu’s (1972 [1979]) theory of practice and Wallerstein’s (1974 [2011]) world-systems in the contemporary period. Indeed, as Einstein (1919 [1954]) emphasized long ago, science develops both from visions of the interaction of systematically related elements, what he called “constructive theories,” and from the discovery of explanatory concepts and principles, those he called “principle theories.”
In addition, specialized theories related to more bounded phenomena of social life, such as the Fligstein and McAdam (2011) theory of intra-organizational conflict or the Gellnerian (2009) theory of nationalism, also make important contributions. Moreover, the social sciences are perhaps necessarily connected to the pressing problems of the day. The social consequences of developments such as the rise of authoritarian regimes or the societal consequences of climate change will continue to provide important provocations for both theoretical and empirical interventions.
Thus, the goal is not to reject pluralism in sociological theorizing; it is instead to encourage a shift in emphasis so that a higher proportion of total effort is oriented toward the identification and utilization of concepts and conditioning propositions that aid in generalized explanation across settings, subfields, and levels of analysis.
To set the context for this argument, I will discuss a content analysis of articles that appeared in the two major American theory journals between 2008 and 2018. From this analysis I draw out the most prominent limitations of contemporary sociological theorizing as represented in these journals. I will draw on a recessive theme in the work of the mid-20th century sociologist and theorist Robert K. Merton as a guide to how sociology can make cumulative progress by focusing on the explanatory building blocks of theory and the conditioning propositions that most strongly influence their impact. I also discuss weaknesses in Merton’s program. Against the pervasive skepticism found in contemporary theory about the durability of structures and the generalizability of explanation, I will show that many sociological entities are stable enough to provide leverage for the kind of theory development I propose. Finally, I will provide a brief preview of part two of this two-part article.
What does contemporary sociological theory do?
I begin by looking at what contemporary theory does and why its current orientations are problematic.
Abend (2008) proposed a seven-category scheme for understanding what contemporary theorists mean when they use the term “theory.” His seven categories provide a useful framework for understanding the variety of meanings that have grown up around the term. They are as follows:
Theory 1: A general proposition, or logically connected system of general propositions, which establishes a relationship between two or more variables. A relationship between variables in general, independently of things like time and place.
Theory 2: Explanation of a particular social phenomenon, such as theory about the demise of Valois dynasty in the late-sixteenth-century France. Factors or conditions that led to an outcome.
Theory 3: An interpretation, a reading, or way of making sense of a certain slice of the empirical world.
Theory 4: Exegeses of the work of important social thinkers such as Weber, Durkheim, or Simmel.
Theory 5: An overall weltanschauung from which one sees and interprets the world. Ways of looking at social objects. An a priori framework, a school of thought with certain built in assumptions about the social world.
Theory 6: Normative theory: Those theories that reject the fact/value dichotomy and include feminist theory, neo-Marxist theory, critical theory, postcolonial theory.
Theory 7: Discussions about the way reality is really structured – e.g., the micro-macro problem, the problem of structure and agency, the problem of social order. The study of special problems that sociology has encountered and philosophical problems that cannot be solved by empirical methods.
One category from this list, Abend’s Theory 1, clearly refers to the form of theorizing characteristic of principle-based scientific explanation. As I will suggest, works that would be classified under Abend’s Theory 5 can also produce explanatory concepts and principles. Bourdieu’s (1972 [1977]) theory of practice, for example, can be characterized as an Abend Theory 5, a weltanschauung. In addition to its value for examining the inter-working of social relations, it has produced the oft-used concepts of field, habitus, and forms of capital.
My data comes from a study of every article in every issue of the two leading theory journals in the discipline, Sociological Theory (ST) and Theory and Society (T&S) over the decade 2008–2018. Altogether I coded 187 articles in ST, which publishes four times a year, and 258 articles in T&S, which publishes six times a year. I assigned a primary code to each article and then as many as two secondary codes. I also coded with up to four codes for the objective of the article and the article’s topical foci. I coded up to three primary protagonists and antagonists, as well as the number of citations the article had received as of June 2024. (I discuss the coding procedures in detail in an appendix on the journal’s website. I also provide the coding spreadsheet in the appendix). Footnote2 After coding 445 articles, I had reached the point of rapidly declining marginal utility. I subsequently read the abstracts and selected articles from the two journals for the years 2019 through 2023 to determine whether the journals had taken a decidedly new turn in the more recent years. This more cursory review suggests that the primary characteristics of articles did not change greatly.
While I am confident of the rank order of the categories for the variables I coded, more precise point estimates are very unlikely to be correct. They are included below solely for the purpose of showing the relative weight of each of the Abend categories. According to my coding, just 23 of the articles were at their core representative of the generalizing approach of Abend’s Theory 1. I assigned subsidiary codes for Abend Theory 1 to an additional 15 articles indicating what seemed to me a secondary interest in generalized explanation, or at least a treatment of the generalizing possibilities of the article. Thus, at most, according to my coding, fewer than 10% (39) articles were associated closely enough with generalized explanation to receive an Abend Theory 1 code. Allowing for the inexactness inherent in coding complex articles (and without the benefit of a second- or third-blind coding), it is clear that only a relatively small minority of articles are oriented toward generalized explanation. I assigned even fewer articles to Abend Theory 5, the weltanschauung category, the other type of theorizing that can be productive of generalizable concepts and explanatory principles. According to my coding, these constituted just 2.5% (11) of the articles (see Table 1).
Table 1 Distribution of articles across “Abend-Plus”a categories
Full size table
What then were the primary concerns of the articles in the two theory journals? Articles in Abend Category 3 (interpretations of slices of the empirical world) predominated in both journals. Articles in this category accounted for nearly half of the articles. When we add the secondary orientations of the articles, more than half of the articles in both journals focused either in a primary or secondary way on observing a slice of social life and theorizing the structures, relationships, and meaning systems involved in understanding these specific environments. The objects of interest in these articles ranged from descriptions and analyses of the powerful (e.g., Wall Street brokers, Southeast Asian warlords) to the marginal (e.g., sex workers in Malawi, bicycle delivery workers, dumpster divers).
I also constructed a more elaborate coding scheme in an effort to determine what the articles were attempting to accomplish. In both journals, a dominant focus was on developing a set of ideas to explain a specific phenomenon in the world, such as the identification of obesity as a social problem (Vrecko, 2010) or the sources of approaches to the evaluation of organizational performance (Brandtner 2017). The great majority of articles took up topics related to specific institutional domains or group processes, with political institutions by some measure the most frequent primary topic followed by economic institutions, organizations, cultural meaning systems, and interaction processes. Articles in ST showed more interest in concept development, though the concepts often do not have generalizability apart from the specific phenomena they are developed to explain. Articles in T&S, by contrast, showed somewhat more interest in using case studies to shed light on theory, as in the analysis of Indian politics to comment on Bourdieusian field theory (Singh, 2016) and in teasing out the interactions of social structure, culture, and events, as in the creation of the 19th century mass marketplace in Europe (Kim, 2012).
I do not mean to minimize the contributions of the articles in the two theory journals. The best of the articles are an intellectual feast.Footnote3 Yet readers will not come away from them with greater clarity about the core explanatory ideas or principles of the discipline of sociology. Indeed, it is likely that readers will conclude that no such explanatory concepts or principles exist – or perhaps can exist. The theory of the theory journals is sophisticated but not scientifically ambitious in the way that would provide an explanatory core for the discipline. Apart from the smattering of articles like Fligstein and McAdam’s (2011) theory of strategic action fields that attempt to develop generalized explanations, what we have for the most part are subfield specialists promoting small-scale conceptual innovations with little relevance outside of the cases they analyze.
Would a study of books rather than articles lead to different conclusions? Undoubtedly, we would find some works that are oriented to generalized explanation, as in the case of McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly’s Dynamics of Contention (2001), Collins’s Interaction Ritual Chains (2004), or Boltanski and Thévenot’s On Justification (2006). We would also find some valuable constructive theories, as in the case of Bourdieu’s theory of practice. But we would undoubtedly also find many more works that fit under one of the other Abend categories. The giants of contemporary theory are of course more ambitious (and more difficult to pigeon-hole) if one reviews their entire oeuvre, including their books, but they too only rarely explicitly develop concepts or principles that can contribute to the explanation of outcomes across a range of settings, subfields, and levels of analysis.
The limitations of contemporary theorizing
Systematic content analysis leads to a clear delineation of the characteristic biases of contemporary theorizing that have limited its scientific contribution. These limitations consist of an over-refinement that may reflect the perfectionism or anxiety of the theorists of this age; small-scale conceptual innovations linked to specific and sometimes quite obscure cases; a tendency to focus on heroes of theory rather than their generalizable ideas; and, most importantly from my point of view, a preference for relational sociology and social construction over durable entities and processes.
Over-refinement
The effort to get things exactly right is of course a scholarly virtue but the most recent generation of theorists has frequently taken this scholarly virtue to a point where the ideas developed are so freighted with over-refinement that they are no longer of practical value in the work of explanation. Take for example the definition of human agency in a well-cited 1998 article: “the temporally constructed engagement by actors of different structural elements – the temporal-relational contexts of action – which, through the interplay of habit, imagination, and judgment, both reproduces and transforms those structures in interactive response to the problems posed by changing historical situations” (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998, p. 970). Or the following theorization of human communication across social contexts: “Switching netdoms across sociocultural formations brings multiple voicings (heterglossias) and contextualizing cues (meta-pragmatics) that radically change the rules of the communicative game for any specific subsystem, which thus are not impermeable to indexicalities from elsewhere” (Fontdevilla, Opazo, and White 2011, p. 195).
With unwieldy constructions like these, it is not surprising that by the end of the last decade some theorists were becoming disillusioned. Healey (2017), for example, expressed frustration with the over-refinement of theory: “The desire to make theory more complex or richer by adding nuance detracts from theory…Thinking of compelling or interesting ideas is difficult so adding complexity is easier.” Instead of nuance, he wrote, “we need simplicity and strength” (p. 119).
Minor conceptual innovations
A related issue is the marked tendency of theorists to identify a minor conceptual “innovation” relevant to a particular case and for reviewers and editors to treat these small-scale innovations as contributions to theory. These conceptual innovations included such small-bore constructions as “desire paths” through nature, “shopping activism,” “non-legitimate authority,” “obfuscatory relational work,” and “para-social interaction.”
Minor conceptual innovations are often connected to niche topics. Theorists in the 21st century examined such topics as bike messengers in New York, sex workers in Malawi, the Museum of Jurassic Technology, mythical monsters, and the differential treatment of birds by milliners and ornithologists. Of course, esoteric subjects can be the grounds out of which important theoretical contributions emerge, as in the case of Leon Festinger’s (1956) discovery of cognitive dissonance and the tactics for resolving it through the study of a UFO cult. I found few, if any, similarly substantial breakthroughs deriving from the study of esoteric slices of social life during the current era.
A focus on theorists, not theory
In contrast to other scientific disciplines, sociologists continue to treat as totemic the heroes and heroines of theory rather than the explanatory concepts and principles these people have contributed to the field. In the articles I studied this was strikingly true of Pierre Bourdieu’s work. Bourdieu was a major protagonist or antagonist in nearly 20% of the articles I coded.Footnote4 This is an orientation consistent with the way theory has been conventionally taught in sociology departments, either through a focus on individual theorists (Brint and Lavalle 2000) or through a focus on competing schools of thought (Collins, 1994).Footnote5
It is true that great figures are recognized in other scientific disciplines, but such recognitions attach as adjectives around the core concepts and principles discovered by the path-breaking figure, as in Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in physics or Williamson’s transaction cost analysis in economics, not on the body of work of the figure him or herself. In my view, it would be desirable to move beyond a focus on theorists to a focus on the most important tools that the intellectual leaders in the field have added to the sociological toolbox. Rather than studying the works of Richard Emerson, Randall Collins, or Pierre Bourdieu, we could in the future be utilizing Emersonian (1966) power-dependence relations, Collinsian (2004) interaction ritual chains, and Bourdieusian (1986) forms of capital as elements in sociological explanation.
Relational sociology and social construction
The most serious liability, however, has been the tendency of contemporary theorists to deny the usefulness of thinking in terms of relatively durable structures and processes. Consider just a few of the dozens of similar statements found in the journals in the United States during the early 21stcentury:
There are no pre-existing things outside of social relations. Social actors and actions are embedded in transactions. Structures should be seen as chains of transactions… Transactions are undetermined and unpredictable and therefore the quest for social laws is rejected in relational sociology (Depelateau, 2008).
Due to the seminal work of Barth, the question of boundaries has shifted from the study of stable categorizations and immutable identities to a delineation of the situations and contexts in which differences and categories of selfhood are evoked and wielded…. (Tavory, 2010)
Post-colonial sociology would analytically reconnect rather than bifurcate into false dichotomies the very social relations that sociological theory purports to apprehend (Go, 2013).
It has become unfashionable…to address the ‘problem of social order’… Such a formulation seems archaic and obsolete in the twenty-first century with its fluid and globalizing networks (King, 2016).
A variety of critiques have fed into theorists’ opposition to focusing on sociological substances and robust explanatory concepts. These include concerns about the reification of substances and concepts (Honneth, 2007), assertions about the continuous flux and disruptive qualities of “post-modern” life (Lyotard, 1984), and observations about the strategic maneuvering of individuals as they attempt to make sense of their worlds (Swidler, 1986). Only the rare theorist, a Charles Tilly or a Randall Collins, has attempted to treat social life as composed of relatively durable structures or has shown an interest in the mechanisms through which social structures become relatively durable. Instead, the world of theory in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has been dominated by those who have focused on the social construction of social relations and the instability of these constructionsFootnote6.
One reason for this preference is that it underlines the extent to which such stability as exists depends on a set of relationships that are prone to flux and disruption. This preserves the potential for transformative progress in social relations, one of the “sacred values” of many sociologists (Smith, 2014). If one is interested in prioritizing the opportunities for change in social life, an emphasis on social construction provides a more advantageous perspective than an emphasis on durable structures.
Sociological theorists have created two false dichotomies: the first between social substances and social processes and the second between social substances and social relations. Every social substance is always simultaneously a social process. Social substances do not persist unless they are continuously reproduced, and reproduction is a process. Social substances can also become more or less durable, more or less taken for granted, and more or less potent. These movements toward strengthening and weakening are still more clearly processes. Some social substances are defined relationally. Reference groups cannot exist without others who reflect appraisals back on the self. Power cannot exist without a relation that is also marked by dependence or interdependence. Other social forces are not truly grounded in relations, as in the cases of organizational growth and population pressure. We can measure these substances in a non-relational context.
Revisiting the Mertonian project
The approach that I will take in this and in the second part of this two-part article is strongly influenced by the work of the mid-20th century sociologist and theorist, Robert K. Merton. In essays published as the first two chapters of Social Structure and Social Theory, Merton (1949a, b [1968a, b]) tried to set sociological theory along the path of cumulative scientific development. Merton’s second essay, on sociological theories of the middle range, is the locus classicus for the approach I am recommending.Footnote7
Early in the essay, Merton advocated separate special theories of race and ethnic relations, social mobility, and deviance. He believed the explanatory frameworks developed in these special theories would eventually give rise to a more general sociology. But at the end of the essay, he reversed field and advocated starting at a more general level by developing concepts and principles that can encompass phenomena found in each of the specialty fields. This approach is only briefly mentioned. Yet it is the path that Merton himself most often pursued, and it is the only path, I believe, that can bear fruit for sociology at the most general level.
The limitations of subfield theorization
Sociologists have been very good at developing and testing special theories in subfields. Dozens of viable theories can be found that contribute to the explanation of criminalized behavior (Akers, Sellers and Jennings, 2020), organizational structure and behavior (Scott and Davis, 2016), and social psychology (Chadee, 2022), to name just three subfields that have benefited from lively domain-specific theory communities. Even the seemingly very specialized field of social revolutions contains first-, second-, third- and fourth- generation theories (Goldstone, 2001). But these theories rarely take meaningful steps toward the consolidation Merton advocated of “a more general conceptual scheme.”
The reasons why specialized theories do not lead to a more general conceptual scheme have to do in part with the incommensurable contexts that specialty fields occupy. If variations in intimacy, passion, and commitment are relevant to a working theory of love, as argued by Sternberg (1986), it is equally true that these variations are irrelevant to explanations of firm behavior in the global economy. To take another example: One might imagine that social psychological theories could speak, at least occasionally, to criminological theories (see, e.g., Katz 1988), and vice versa, but social psychology consists at once of a broader set of relationships than criminology, and one that is much less influenced by the institutional framework of legally-legitimated social control that cannot help but be relevant to criminology.
It is also uncommon for sociologists to have the social connections and perhaps also the mental dispositions required for extracting potentially generalizable concepts and principles from a deep immersion in a subfield. Most scholars who are deeply immersed in the progress of their subfields do not make the leap to thinking about how concepts and principles in their subfields might inform other subfields. This is a function of the networks social scientists establish during their careers, the positions they feel they must argue in their subfields against those with different perspectives, and the rewards that are available for those who succeed in pushing subfields forward.
Because so much of their attention is devoted to their own work and the work of colleagues in their subfields, specialists are not generally knowledgeable enough about other subfields to know how the thinking of their subfield could apply. The difficulties have only intensified with the proliferation of journals in subfields. This proliferation encourages centrifugal engagements (Turner and Turner 1990). Giants in subfields who make contributions to general sociology are consequently exceedingly rare.
The situation is very different for the second, recessive approach to theory development that Merton advocated. Many sociological concepts have proven explanatory power across a range of sites and subfields and across levels of analysis. Merton’s own work on reference groups exemplifies the potential for theory development based on high-leverage concepts. As he notes, the theory of reference groups and relative deprivation starts with the simple idea that people take the standards of significant others in their environment as a basis for self-appraisal and evaluation (Merton, 1949b [1968b]: 40). Merton then looked for evidence of reference group influence in a wide range of subfields, including military life, race and ethnic relations, social mobility, delinquency, politics, education, and revolutionary activity (Ibid. 64).Footnote8 He also elaborated on the conditions under which reference group effects existed and persisted (Merton, 1949c [1968c]).
Following this recessive theme in Merton’s essay, I will argue that a promising avenue for theory development in sociology is through the recruitment and nurturing of people who are capable of extracting context-spanning concepts and principles from their bird’s eye view of a wide range of traditions and subfields. Others can contribute by identifying generalizable concepts and principles that derive from their own empirical investigations.
Was the Mertonian project a dead end?
It is true that the theory development and verification program that Merton championed failed to survive the 1960s. This may seem to support the conclusion that the program proved to be a dead end. Instead, I would point to some weaknesses in the way Merton and his long-time collaborator Paul Lazarsfeld conceived of the program and, perhaps more importantly, the influence of the socio-cultural changes of the late 1950s and 1960s that turned the attention of younger theorists toward social criticism.
Merton tended to think of middle-range theory in both a deterministic and universalizing way. For Merton, sociological phenomena should determine outcomes, not be probabilistically related to outcomes, and they should apply very widely across time and space. In addition, he tended to think of sociological phenomena as things rather than as accomplishments whose reproduction cannot be taken for granted. These outlooks were consistent with dominant strains in the philosophy of science of the time (see, e.g., Carnap 1928 [1967]; Hempel, 1942), but they turned out to be weaknesses. The effort to be fully deterministic and universalizing led to the proliferation of qualifications and conditioning variables – to the extent that the general ideas lost explanatory power. Merton’s (1949c [1968c]) own later work on reference groups attests to this problem. In his article on continuities in reference group theory, from 1957, he identified 26 separate structural variables that can condition reference group effects. One might say that the power of the reference group concept recedes as an inverse function of the number of conditioning variables. We see something very similar in the proliferation of conditioning variables in Coser’s (1956) work on social conflict.
These paradigmatic weaknesses might have been corrected in succeeding years, if not for the changing intellectual milieu of the late 1950s and early 1960s. As the Civil Rights Movement and later the anti-war movement gained adherents, leading intellectuals turned their attention to social injustices and social inequalities, as well as the moral failings of American elites (see, e.g., Hodgson, 1976; Isserman and Kazin 2004). In sociology, the new orientations were evident in Merton’s home department, as exemplified by C. Wright Mills’s trilogy on the American class and power structures (Mills, 1948, 1951, 1956),Footnote9 The attacks by intellectual critics of mainstream theory culminated in The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (1970), written by Merton’s former student Alvin W. Gouldner.
The enduring contributions of sociologists of the period, including Becker (1963) on labeling and stigma, Emerson (1966) on power-dependence, Goffman (1959) on social skill in self-presentation, and Merton (1949b) himself on reference groups attests to the impact of writers whose work is consistent with the aims of the Mertonian project. Importantly, we have some 75 more years of work on which to draw to fill out more of the canvas.
However, as I argue below, the Mertonian project requires extensive revision to account for the legitimate objections that have been raised against it. First, the explanatory power of sociological phenomena must be discussed in probabilistic rather than deterministic frames. Second, only the most important variables conditioning their impact should be emphasized, not the entire range of variables that could potentially condition outcomes. Finally, the search for high-leverage concepts and conditioning variables should be grounded in the assumptions of critical realism (Bhaskar, 1997, 1998) -- notably, that sociological phenomena are accomplishments not things, and their explanatory power can therefore wane, wane dramatically -- or disappear altogether.
HIgh-leverage sociological concepts
Most of the building-block concepts sociologists require are hiding in plain sight, but they have not been collected from the diverse texts in which they were first developed and utilized, sorted in relation to the breadth of their application to social phenomena, and consolidated in a compendium from which they can be deployed by working sociologists. Although each of these concepts, I will argue, provides explanatory power at multiple levels of analysis, I list them here as sociologists tend to talk about them, from those whose primary relevance is often discussed at more micro-level of analysis to those whose primary relevance is more often treated at the meso- or macro-levels. I also divide them by the extent to which they tend to be seen as more generative of social life than constraining or more constraining than generative. I emphasize that they cannot do their work in explanation without an equally strong understanding of the principal conditioning propositions that influence their impact.
The more generative concepts are: (1) social activation skill, (2) social network ties, (3) interaction ritual chains, (4) organizational growth, and (5) collaborative and autocatalytic sources of emergence. The more constraining concepts are: (6) reference groups, (7) power-dependence relations, (8) social closure mechanisms, (9) labeling/othering, and (10) institutionalized categories. In two cases, it is difficult to determine whether HLCs are more generative or more constraining because they are two faces of the same coin. These two are: (11) forms of capital and (12) population pressures.
Now for a definition: High-leverage sociological concepts (HLCs) are specifically social (rather than individual-level) reproduced forms that explain behavioral and/or organizational outcomes across a wide variety of settings, subfields, and levels of analysis. They are features of social life whose effects when operating unimpeded produce probabilistically predictable results. They rise to prominence in sociological theory based on their explanatory force and the intensive illumination they provide on social relations.
The term “high leverage” suggests both the exertion of force and a tool that can be employed to maximum advantage. HLCs must, by definition, provide intensive illumination of social relations and/or social organization and they must be centrally involved in the production and reproduction of social relations. The human actions and interactions encapsulated by HLCs have force in so far as they make social relations happen or prevent changes in social relations from happening. The stipulation about the range of applications helps to differentiate HLCs from concepts that are of more limited explanatory value. Reference groups, for example, are as relevant to the behavior of criminal offenders as they are to the distribution of status in an organizational field. Similarly, great powers operate in the context of reference groups as much as do firms in an industry or individuals in their local friendship milieus. Given the intensive illumination they provide and the range of their applications, high-leverage concepts can be considered building blocks of generalized sociological theory.
I will note several other defining features of HLCs, as I conceive of them:(1)
They are in most cases scientific objects not recognizable by most lay actors. This stipulation is desirable to allow for the epistemological break from common sense knowledge. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that some highly successful scientific concepts do enter public discourse. This process of public adoption is occurring now in the cases of social capital and labeling, for example. Footnote10
(2)
They are neither so general, as in the case of culture that their specific explanatory force cannot be identified nor so specific, as in the case, for example, of financial brokerage, that the range of their applications is too restricted to apply to a wide range of settings, subfields, and levels of analysis.
(3)
They are core concepts that are generative of families of related concepts. For example, the effective labeling of less powerful people by more powerful people is generative of other sociological concepts, including stigma, alienation, and non-conforming behavior among those labeled -- and status consciousness, social aversions, and conforming behavior among the labelers.
(4)
They are core concepts that operate at the highest level of generalization among the concepts that are closely related to them. Thus, population pressure can plausibly be considered a high-leverage concept, but urbanization would not qualify because urbanization describes a particular form of population growth and would not, for example, apply to forms of population growth in communities, social networks, or organizations.
(5)
They are simultaneously substances and processes. This stipulation is necessary to avoid the valid critique that substance-based theories often rely on reification. Institutionalized categories as durable ways of organizing personnel and practices have a compelling force only while the institution is continuously resourced, enforced, and widely legitimated. Resources, enforcements, and beliefs can obviously erode. Thus, every institution must be, by definition, continuously reproduced and will be subject to transformation when processes of reproduction falter.
It will be immediately apparent that some concepts central to sociological explanation are not included in the list of twelve above. Over the last several decades, sociologists have devoted a high proportion of their research energies into analyzing patterns of inequality in multiple settings, subfields, and at multiple levels of analysis. Indeed, in recent years more than three-quarters of articles in the American Sociological Review have investigated inequality in one form or another. The proportions are similar in the other leading U.S. journals, the American Journal of Sociology, the Annual Review of Sociology, and Social Forces. In all four journals, the proportion of studies discussing inequality has increased substantially over time (Kestinturk 2023). A compendium of high-leverage sociological concepts would undoubtedly include several concepts sociologists employ to measure and explain inequality. By bracketing them for the time being I do not intend to suggest that they are less important than those I identify above. The HLCs on which I will focus open the aperture of both sociology and generalizable theory in a valuable way. At the same time, I note that several of them are directly connected to the explanation of social inequalities. These include social closure mechanisms, labeling/othering, forms of capital, and institutionalized categories.
Are concepts constitutive of theory?
Most sociological theories contain multiple concepts treated as variables and multi-variable chains of causation. To take a relatively simple example, in Tilly’s (1999) theory of durable inequality, paired categories are treated as the structures out of which durable inequalities can arise. Tilly describes what he takes to be four constants in the development of durable inequalities. First, one group exploits the other by appropriating more value from the relationship than is their due. Second, and in some cases alternatively, members of the dominant group hoard opportunities for gain at the expense of excluded groups. Third, forms of exploitation and opportunity hoarding are emulated in sectors beyond those in which they originated. For example, schools may begin to segregate in ways that began in conquest or in economic relations. Finally, inequalities developed in these ways become routinized in daily life among members of a society. The concepts are (1) exploitation, (2) opportunity hoarding, (3) emulation, and (4) adaptation and they are connected in a chain of causation that unfolds over time.
Given that this is the normal approach to theory building, why focus on single concepts and a handful of conditioning propositions for each one? My contention is that we are at an early stage in the development of general sociological theory – that is, theory that can be applied at multiple levels of analysis, in multiple subfields, and in a wide variety of settings. HLCs can be considered the elementary building blocks of theory at this level of generality. Conditioning propositions help us to understand when and why they have greater or lesser explanatory power.
We have some fruitful examples of this approach dating from the classical period. Durkheim’s theory of ritual, for example, has proven to be one of the most powerful and generalizable approaches to understanding the creation and re-creation of social bonds. It begins by identifying the features that make rituals work: the treatment of an object or idea as “sacred,” a community of co-present believers, a common attitude and mood in relation to the sacred object or idea, and synchronized actions in relation to the sacred object or idea. For Durkheim, when these elements occur together an emotional force is created in the group, one that creates a sense of empowerment (or collective effervescence), reinforces group bonds, and defines boundaries between the group and the outside world. Thus, like other HLCs ritual is ultimately a singular concept with manifold applications. Durkheim did not explicitly identify conditioning propositions to specify the conditions under which ritual was likely to have stronger or weaker effects but if he had done so ritual theory would have been strengthened. For example, we know that some ritual occasions such as political rallies generate strong currents of emotional energy while others such as graduation ceremonies have much weaker effects because it is harder to maintain a common mood in the latter. Is it because focus on the ritual object (the parade of graduates) is not as completely sustained or because of the heterogeneity of the audience, or both?
It is also true that in some, and perhaps many, instances HLCs can be combined explicitly as features of more complex, multi-factor explanations. Consider, for example, Andreas Wimmer’s (2009) theory of ethnic group formation. Wimmer argues that ethnic groups form not out of primordial attachments, as in Herder’s romantic view, but rather from acts of social distancing and social closure vis a vis members of other groups. Group making is thus a function of everyday boundary work rather than anything intrinsic about a group’s history or culture. Wimmer goes on to draw attention to three factors behind the formation of ethnic boundaries: (1) institutionalized rules that create the grounds for differential treatment of groups, (2) the distribution of resources between various participants in struggles, which influences their capacity to shape outcomes, to have their modes of categorization respected, to make their strategies of social closure consequential for others, and to gain recognition for their identities, and (3) networks of political alliances that allow for ethnic boundaries to be reproduced and enforced. These factors reference three HLCs: (1) institutionalized categories, (2) forms of capital underlying the distribution of resources, and (3) the social bonds produced by network ties.Footnote11
Are high-leverage sociological concepts “mechanisms”?
Clearly, the approach I have in mind overlaps with the focus on social mechanisms in the work of analytical sociologists (see, e.g., Hedstrom, 2005; Hedstrom and Bearman 2009; Hedstrom and Swedberg 1999), as well as in the later work of Tilly (1999, 2004, 2005) and his associates (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001). My approach is similar in so far as it involves a search for a finite set of structured actions and interactions that explain important outcomes in social life. Moreover, like Tilly and the analytical sociologists my approach is inspired in part by Merton’s essay on theories of the middle range. I also use the term “mechanism” at times to describe how HLCs influence outcomes. Because of these similarities, it is important to distinguish the approach I am advocating from that of Tilly and the analytical sociologists.
My usage of the term “mechanism” is metaphorical, not literal. High-leverage concepts are not accurately described as mechanisms as one would use the term, for example, in cell biology or engineering because they do not always produce the same results. Variable outcomes are possible depending on the mediating influence of other social forms and processes, as well as historical events. This stipulation is consistent with Tilly’s usage of the term “mechanism” in much of his later work. As he put it in an interview a few months before he died, revolutions are produced by “contingent concatenations” of mechanisms that in the case of revolutions produce dual control of armed force, but they follow no law-like properties where the same set of variables or circumstances are associated with every revolution.
This stipulation is not consistent, however, with the way the term “mechanism” is used by most analytical sociologists. For them, mechanisms are “a constellation of entities and activities that are organized such that they regularly bring about a particular type of outcome, and we explain an observed outcome by referring to the mechanism by which such outcomes are regularly brought about” (Hedstrom and Bearman 2009: 3). In other words, for analytical sociologists mechanisms can be accurately described as cell biologists and engineers use the term.Footnote12 I find this position overly restrictive and empirically problematic.
My difference with Tilly turns on the nature of Tilly’s project as compared to my own. Tilly was interested in explaining outcomes using sets of mechanisms appropriate to each outcome. For example, Tilly used one set of mechanisms – boundary activation, brokerage, polarization, and regime-initiated management strategies -- to explain incidents of violent intra-societal conflicts. He used a different set of the mechanisms -- exploitation, opportunity hoarding, emulation (or cross-sectoral diffusion of practices), and adaptation (or routinization in daily life) -- to explain durable social inequalities. My project is not the same, though I consider it complementary and similar in spirit. My intention is to identify structures and processes that contribute to the explanation of important outcomes across a wide range of settings, subfields, and levels of analysis. This project is consequently intended to work at a broader level of generality than Tilly’s.
The conditioning of HLC effects
An underlying assumption is that HLCs are consequential in social life, but the extent to which they are consequential will vary based on conditioning factors. Propositions related to this variability are consequently required to take into account the most important forms of conditioning. I will propose only a few conditioning propositions for each HLC, most based on the existing literature, rather than attempting to identify every proposition that might make a difference in some setting or at one or another level of analysis. In general, I will focus on simple linear propositions. At an elementary level, this conditioning takes the following form: the more of Conditioning Element y, the stronger the effects of HLC x and the less of Conditioning Element y, the weaker the effects of HLC x.Footnote13 At this relatively early stage in the project, I see this work as more an illustration of work that needs to be done to complete the project than as an authoritative account of the most consequential conditioning principles.
I find that hierarchical distance between groups and homophily within groups to be frequent conditioning influences. A high-status group will be in a stronger position, for example, to effectively label a low-status group relative to groups that are of roughly equal standing. Similarly, groups whose members are alike in ascriptive or achieved characteristics are more likely to come to similar conclusions about the putative stigmatizing characteristics of lower-status groups who are also alike. But no single set of conditioning influences can be identified to explain the variable impact of the entire set of 12 HLCs. The impact of population pressure, for example, has little to do with either hierarchy or homophily. Instead, the conditioning variables have mainly to do with the carrying capacity of the host environment. Thus, population pressure has effects on deprivation only when resources in the host environment cannot sustain higher numbers of people. Often, of course, host environments can sustain higher numbers, as when new productive or distributive technology is introduced.
Stability and flux
The deployment of high-leverage concepts works best when social entities have sufficient stability to be analyzed for purposes of identifying probabilistic patterns. Because the approach I am pursuing depends on a degree of stability in sociological substances, a position that many theorists criticize, I turn now to a discussion of how sociological substances become stabilized although they must be continuously reproduced and can be prone to weakening or dissolution.
The work of the philosopher of science Richard Boyd (1991, 1999) provides a starting point for understanding how socially created phenomena can become stable enough to serve as objects of inquiry. Boyd’s approach was to identify the feedback mechanisms that stabilize property clusters. Property clusters can be defined as the integrated sets of characteristics and actions that allow for the identification of an entity. For Boyd, a “scientific kind” is composed of (a) a cluster of properties shared by a group of entities and (b) a homeostatic causal mechanism responsible for the co-occurrence of these properties. These homeostatic property clusters lead to sufficient distinctiveness to allow for differentiation of “natural kinds,” to use Boyd’s terms. For biologists, reproduction and inheritance are the primary mechanisms behind homeostatic property clusters.
The epistemologist Ian Hacking (1995) was an early proponent of adapting Boyd’s approach to the human world. Hacking argued that an understanding of causal processes in human affairs relies crucially on concepts of “human kinds” which are the product of modern organizational processes with their concern for classification, quantification, and intervention. For Hacking, what distinguishes human kinds from “natural kinds” is that they have specific “looping effects.” By coming into existence through bureaucrats’ (or social scientists’) classifications, human kinds change the people so classified. Thus, Hacking offers a historicized form of nominalism that traces the mutual interactions over time between the phenomena of the human world and our conceptions and classifications of them. He cited child abuse, homosexuality, teenage pregnancy, and multiple personality as examples of human kinds established in the modern era.
Stabilizing mechanisms in the social world
In addition to the looping effect described by Hacking, sociologists have identified at least six additional feedback mechanisms that contribute to the stabilization and reproduction of human kinds or, as I prefer to say, sociological substances. These are: (1) networks or coalitions of elites who have an interest in reproducing a category; (2) enforcement mechanisms embedded in law; (3) incentives that steer rational agents to act in accordance with some classification or concept; (4) selection or filtering out of individuals who are unlikely to conform to a category or classification or will not conform to it; (5) shared cognitions in support of the reality of a category or concept; and (6) conformity with the directives or preferences of more authoritative others.Footnote14
I will use the example of medical doctors to show how a property cluster achieves a robust sociological reality by relying on each of these stabilizing mechanisms. Clearly, the medical associations and the insurance companies have a vested interest in preserving the title doctor for those who fit the frameworks they have established over time for the providers of medical care. They have an incentive to protect this jurisdiction against potential interlopers. Insurance companies will reimburse only authorized medical expenses, meaning those provided by licensed practitioners. The state will adjudicate claims of medical malpractice in the same way and provides some rights and privileges to licensed practitioners. Those who want to be reimbursed for medical expenses have a clear incentive to seek services from these individuals. Hospitals also have a clear incentive to employ only licensed practitioners if they want to be reimbursed for expenses. Medical admissions, medical examination and licensing boards, and medical ethics committees are all organized, in large part, to filter out those who can’t or won’t conform to established practices. (They also create market shelters through credential and qualification-based closure.) The idea of a licensed medical practitioner is an identity category that is widely diffused in industrialized societies and people also gain knowledge early on about what to expect of these individuals and how to behave in relation to them. These are adequately described as shared cognitions. Those who are too young to share these cognitions or perhaps not mentally able to share them may nevertheless be instructed by others to conform with a set of relevant behaviors in relation to the social category of doctors.
Not all stable entities require each of these mechanisms for their reproduction. Some socially defined categories, such as certified public accountant, are more strictly reproduced by elite consensus and law; others, such as the kinship categories of uncle and aunt, are reproduced primarily by shared cognitions and directed conformity.
The disciplining value of critical realism
While feedback mechanisms create the conditions for the stabilization and reproduction of property clusters, sociological property clusters should, in my view, be consistently subjected to the skeptical perspective of critical realism (Bhaskar, 1997, 1998). Like Boyd and Hacking, critical realists are interested in the mechanisms that produce social substances but, more than Boyd and even more than Hacking, they emphasize that these substances are in a greater state of flux than substances of the physical world. (Indeed, some critical realists underline this orientation by referring to sociological entities as “social events.”) Critical realists emphasize that social structures require reproduction and further that the individuals who inhabit the social structures are capable of consciously reflecting upon and changing the actions that produce them. I agree that this is the only scientifically acceptable approach for the human sciences.Footnote15 Although one can identify many stabilized entities and structures, it is important to acknowledge that these sociological substances are always, to one degree or another, also in process. They must be continuously reproduced through human action, and they are subject to weakening and transformation when reproductive processes falter or break down.
The stabilization and reproduction of high-leverage concepts
Concepts like interaction ritual chains or social closure mechanisms are not reproduced in the same way that sociological categories like manager, doctor, or the poor are reproduced. They are scientific concepts that are (typically) unseen by lay people and therefore do not enter their consciousness. Rather than being reproduced, they are measured. Interaction ritual chains are measured by how much emotional energy is produced along how long a chain of entrainment. Social closure mechanisms are measured by the ways and the extent to which they exclude potential aspirants to desirable statuses.
At the same time, explanatory concepts like sociological entities can be stable or unstable. If social bonds are regularly reactivated through the mechanisms of interaction ritual chains, we can say that the mechanism is operating in a stabilizing way. Similarly, if admissions rules in an elite higher education institution work in the same way every year to exclude the same types of prospective students, we can say that the mechanism is working in a stable way as a social closure mechanism.
Conversely, an interaction ritual chain that once worked to produce emotional energy and social bonding may encounter difficulties that reduce its effectiveness or ultimately lead it to dissolve. If American football loses its luster sometime in the distant future because of the number of head injuries that result from the violent collisions in games, the interaction ritual chains formed around cheering for the local professional team would be disrupted or disappear entirely. Similarly, if social movements break down the barriers to exclusion in elite higher education institutions, the admissions procedures that produced exclusion will no longer work in the same way or may not work at all. The flux that critical realists emphasize remains ever-present in the social world, and of course it extends to high-leverage concepts. The relevant questions are always “to what extent” and “under what conditions.”
What then gives high leverage concepts enough stability to be considered an important influence in social structure and social relations? It is precisely their capacity to form and energize social life for the period that they are working in an uninterrupted way. Interaction rituals and interaction ritual chains create and recreate social bonds and the sense of effervescence that sustains a charge of energy in those bonds. Social closure mechanisms are vital to the formation of privileged statuses and for the creation of divisions within population groups.
The concepts that have the most far-reaching effects are the concepts that most deserve the attention of sociologists. It is the work of theorists to identify them, to elaborate on their workings, to identify the conditions that influence their impact, and to subject them to rethinking when their explanatory power seems uncertain or wanes.
A preview of part two
In part two, I will begin the work of identifying, discussing, and deploying high-leverage sociological concepts and of the most important variables that condition their impact. I will focus on just three of the 12 HLCs identified above: (1) social activation skill, (2) interaction ritual chains, and (3) social closure mechanisms. Three is, I believe, the maximum number that can be discussed satisfactorily given the page limits of a journal article.Footnote16
So as not to spoil the discussion in part two, I will briefly illustrate the approach by focusing on a different HLC, reference groups. Reference groups can be defined in the manner of Merton as based on the idea that people take the standards of significant others in their environments as a basis for self-appraisal and self-evaluation (Merton, 1949b [1968b: 40]). Using illustrations for sociological and literary texts, it is possible to demonstrate the power of reference groups both for conformity to group norms and for their influence on individuals’ feelings of well-being or discontent, as in Stouffer et al.’s (1949) famous study of social comparison effects on contentment and dissatisfaction among American soldiers. Sociological studies also demonstrate the role of reference groups in a wide variety of subfields and at all major levels of sociological analysis. Among subfields, the reference group concept appears, for example, in differential association theory in criminology (Matsueda, 1988), identity theory in social psychology (Burke and Stets 2009), and in code switching (Carter, 2003) and gatekeeping (Erickson and Schultz 1982) studies in educational sociology. Reference group effects have been demonstrated at all levels of sociological analysis -- in small groups (Ridgeway, 1983), in organizational life (Polodny, 1993), and in international relations (Omelicheva, 2009).
Several complications to the simple model of reference group effects require consideration. These include: (1) whether and to what extent inner-directed persons who are relatively impervious to reference groups exist; (2) the influence of multiple reference groups and what we know about the conditions under which one or another of these groups is likely to be paramount; and (3) the variations in group structure that facilitate or impede reference group effects. The latter issue is important for understanding the relationship of reference groups to the community concept and particularly to the variety of community forms that now exist, including not only geographically defined communities, but also activity and belief-based communities of interest, social media communities, and imagined communities (Brint, 2001).
As I have indicated above, treatment of reference groups as an HLC will necessarily involve a consideration of the extent to which it is a scientific as opposed to a folk concept, its standing as the most general of the set of related concepts, and identification of the family of related concepts. In the case of reference groups, the family of related concepts includes anticipatory socialization, social comparison effects, status incongruity, role conflict, and role sets, among others.
Finally, a set of conditioning propositions are required to treat variation in reference group effects. Here group structure is important and includes variation related to size, frequency of interaction, monitoring capacity, and levels of clarity about and enforcement of normative expectations (see Merton, 1949a, b, c [1968c]). Reference group effects are stronger when groups are smaller, interaction is more frequent, members can monitor each other’s behavior (as opposed to being dispersed in space) and have clarity about and a capacity to enforce normative expectations (see, e.g., Becker et al., 1961; Uzzi, 1997). Other conditioning variables have also been identified in the literature, including group homophily, group value consensus, individual participants’ status aspirations, and individual participants’ mobility opportunities (see, e.g., Ridgeway, 1983).
*****
Critical assessment of the project I propose is of course essential. In so far as the project is sound, I hope it will persuade others to engage in the identification of sociological HLCs and the most important variables that condition their impact. Beyond the construction of this compendium, the value of the project can only be demonstrated through its effective deployment in the explanation of consequential outcomes in social life.
Data availability
Data is available on request to the author.
Notes
Moreover, as a literary genre, principle theories like the one I propose can make for unsatisfying reading. As Baehr (2019) writes, “Without the play of metaphor, simile, personification, synecdoche, and other figures of speech, could social and political thought exist? Perhaps it could but such thought would be as vibrant as a comatose patient. Extract features of language that arouse mood, anticipate menace, direct us to paradox, or help us to confront the enduring strangeness of human life, and not much would be left: dangling numbers, graphic shapes, skeletal propositions.” The question for the theory community is whether the current approaches, including those with literary value, lead to progress.
Article write-ups are available on request from the author.
To provide a sense of the flavor of some of the valuable contributions during the period I will indicate a few personal highlights. They included an overview of Zelizer’s treatment of the culture- and society-preserving uses of money as a rejoinder to Polanyi’s Great Transformation (Steiner, 2009); Reed’s (2013) discussion of the relational, discursive, and performative dimensions of power; Liu and Emibayer’s (2016) contrast of Bourdieusian fields and Chicago School ecologies as approaches to the analysis of social space; Fourcade’s (2016) analysis of the way democratic societies amplify both nominal categories and ordinal ranks; Brubaker’s (2017) discussion of the structural context and narrative elements in the rise of western populism; and Parker and Corte’s (2017) analysis of the roles and social dynamics at work in highly creative scientific and artistic circles. Most impressive of all in my opinion is Fligstein and McAdam’s theory of fields (2011), which represents a very general and now well investigated theory of the actors, sources, strategies, and possible outcomes of intra-organizational conflicts. Other, more recent articles with rich intellectual content include Mann’s (2018) empirically based dissection and critique of Steven Pinker’s thesis about the decline in violence in the 20th century and Burchardt and Swidler’s (2020) analysis of why some institutional transplants flourish outside of their original host settings while others quickly die.
Others who received considerable attention during the period included Randall Collins, Erving Goffman, and Charles Tilly.
A change in emphasis in the teaching of theory consistent with the direction suggested here can be found in Rojas (2017).
For an illuminating discussion, see Hacking 1999.
Others at Columbia or in close association elaborated on the methodological implications of Merton’s approach. See Lazarsfeld and Rosenberg (1955) and Zetterberg (1954). Others published work directly influenced by and intended to contribute to Merton-Lazarsfeld program, including Blau (1956) Coser (1956) and Katz (1957).
Stouffer and his associates (1949), for example, showed that not only do soldiers look to those in their units for standards of behavior but also that the relative success of those in their milieu creates feelings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with their own circumstances. In units with low levels of promotion most men were satisfied because as they evaluated their peers most were in the same circumstances as themselves, but in units with high levels of promotion the soldier who failed to be promoted was more likely to become dissatisfied with his lot because his own situation differed from that of most of his peers.
Mills’s The Sociological Imagination (1959) can be read as a critique, not only of Parsonsian structural functionalism, but of his scientifically minded colleagues in the sociology department at Columbia.
This suggests that the development of scientific concepts is an ongoing process of construction rather than a once-in-for-all accomplishment and that the boundary between social science and public understandings is permeable. Bourdieu’s contention that an epistemological break is a fundamental feature of science is not entirely sustainable (see Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992).
In other cases, both HLCs and other causal influences may be involved, as in the Fligstein and McAdam (2011) theory of inter-organizational conflict and the Meyer and Bromley (2013) theory of the spread of western style organizations. One of the hallmarks of an HLC is that it should frequently figure in explanations encompassing complex causal chains.
This is not my only difference from the analytical sociologists. Like James Coleman, whose work serves as an inspiration, the analytical sociologists show a pronounced tendency to work from the ground up and to constitute the meso- and macro-levels of analysis from micro-foundations. I find this stricture unnecessary and frequently counter-productive. See Jepperson and Meyer (2011) on the limits of methodological individualism.
I modeled this approach on the work of Collins (1975) and Black (1976), though I do not accept their preference to focus on a consistent set of conditioning variables.
In general, those who focus on power as a decisive feature of social life orient their analyses to the first two mechanisms and sometimes also the sixth. Those who focus on culture and cognition as a decisive feature of social life orient their analyses to the last two mechanisms. Economists tend to focus on the third mechanism and those interested in social inequality have often cited the fourth. In fact, these six mechanisms frequently work simultaneously as stabilizing forces. Michel Foucault’s (1980) conception of “power-knowledge systems,” for example, incorporates elements of each of the mechanisms described above.
These practices of reflection and reorientation are in part facilitated by social science itself (Bhaskar 1998). For example, when social science examines substances such as race or gender in a critical spirit, this critique may ultimately facilitate the dissolution of features of the property cluster or indeed of the entire property cluster. This insight about the role of critique should be extended to the activities of social movement organizations, interest groups, and state bureaucrats because these actors can also in some instances facilitate reflection and change among those affected by disadvantageous or uncongenial classifications.
I intend to elaborate on all 12, together with a chapter on inequalities, in a forthcoming book.
References
Abend, G. (2008). The meaning of ‘theory’. Sociological Theory, 26(2), 173–199.
Article Google Scholar
Akers, R. L., Sellers, & Jennings, W. G. (2020). Criminological theories: Introduction, evaluation, and application. Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Baehr, P. (2019). The image of the veil in social theory. Theory and Society, 48(4), 535–558.
Article Google Scholar
Becker, H. S. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the sociology of deviance. The Free Press.
Becker, H.S., Greer. B., Hughes, E.C., and Strauss, A.M. (1961). Boys in white: Student culture in a medical school. Routledge.
Bhaskar, R. (1974 [1997]). A realist theory of science. Verso.
Bhaskar, R. (1979 [1998]). The possibility of naturalism (3rd ed). Routledge.
Black, D. (1976). The behavior of law. Academic.
Google Scholar
Blau, P.M. (1956). Bureaucracy in modern society. Crown Publishers.
Brandtner, C. (2017). Putting the world in order: Plurality in organizational evaluation. Sociological Theory, 35(3), 200–227.
Boltanski, L. & Thévenot, L. (1991 [2006]). On justification: Economies of worth. Princeton University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1972 [1977]). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. Pp. 241 – 58. In J. G. Richardson (Ed.), Theory and research for the sociology of education. Greenwood.
Google Scholar
Boyd, R. (1991). Realism, anti-foundationalism and the enthusiasm for natural kinds. Philosophical Studies, 61(1–2), 127–148.
Article Google Scholar
Boyd, R. (1999). Homeostasis, species, and higher taxa. In R. A. Wilson (Ed.), Species: New interdisciplinary essays (pp. 141–85). MIT Press.
Chapter Google Scholar
Brint, S., & Lavalle, J. (2000). Du Bois ascendant and other findings from the Brint-Lavalle survey of theorists. Theoretical Perspectives, (January), 1–2.
Brint, S. (2001). Gemeinschaft revisited: Rethinking the community concept. Sociological Theory, 19(1), 1–23.
Article Google Scholar
Brubaker, R. (2017). Why populism? Theory and Society, 46(5), 357–385.
Article Google Scholar
Burchardt, M. & Swidler, A. (2020). Transplanting institutional innovation: Comparing the Success of NGOs and missionary protestantism in Sub-Saharan Africa. Theory and Society, 49(3), 335–364.
Burke, P. J., & Stets, J. E. (2009). Identity theory. Oxford Academic.
Book Google Scholar
Carnap, R. (1928 [1967]). The logical structure of the world: Pseudo-problems in philosophy. University of California Press.
Carter, P. L. (2003). “Black’’ cultural capital, status positioning, and schooling conflicts for low-income African American youth. Social Problems, 50(1), 136–155.
Article Google Scholar
Chadee, D. (2022). Theories in social psychology (2nd ed.). Wiley Blackwell.
Google Scholar
Collins, R. (1994). Four sociological traditions. Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Collins, R. (2004). Interaction ritual chains. Princeton University Press.
Google Scholar
Coser, L. M. (1956). The functions of social conflict. The Free Press.
Google Scholar
Depelteau, F. (2008). Relational thinking: A critique of co-deterministic theories of structure and agency. Sociological Theory, 26(1), 51–73.
Article Google Scholar
Einstein, A. (1919) [1954]). What is the theory of relativity? In Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (pp. 227–232). Bonanza.
Emerson, R. M. (1966). Power-dependence relations. American Sociological Review, 27(1), 31–41.
Article Google Scholar
Emirbayer, M. (1998). What is agency? American Journal of Sociology, 103(4), 962–1023.
Article Google Scholar
Erickson, F. (1982). The counselor as gatekeeper: Social interactions in interviews. Academic.
Google Scholar
Festinger, L., & Reiken, H. W. (1956). When prophecy fails: A social and psychological study of a modern group that predicted the destruction of the world. University of Minnesota Press.
Book Google Scholar
Fligstein, N. & McAdam, D. (2011). Toward a general theory of strategic action fields. Sociological Theory, 29(1), 1–26.
Fontdevilla, J., Opazo, M.P. & White, H. C. (2011). Order on the edge of chaos. Sociological Theory, 29(3), 178–198.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power-knowledge.: Selected interviews and other writings (pp. 1972–1977). Pantheon.
Google Scholar
Fourcade, M. (2016). Ordinalization: Lewis A. Coser memorial award for theoretical agenda setting. Sociological Theory, 34(3), 175–195.
Article Google Scholar
Gellner, E. (1983 [2009]). Nations and nationalism. Cornell University Press.
Go, J. (2013). For postcolonial sociology. Theory and Society 42(1), 25–55.
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Anchor.
Google Scholar
Goldstone, J. A. (2001). Toward a fourth generation of revolutionary theory. Annual Review of Political Science, 4, 139–187.
Article Google Scholar
Gouldner, A. W. (1970). The coming crisis of western sociology. Basic Books.
Hacking, I. (1995). The looping effects of human kinds. In D. Sperber, D. Premack, & A. J. Premack (Eds.), Causal cognition: A multidisciplinary debate (pp. 351–394). Clarendon Press.
Google Scholar
Hacking, I. (1999). The social construction of what? Harvard University Press.
Google Scholar
Healey, K. (2017). Fuck nuance. Sociological Theory, 35(2), 118–127.
Hedstrom, P. (1999). Social mechanisms: An analytical approach to sociology. Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar
Hedstrom, P. (2005). Dissecting the social: On the principles of analytical sociology. Cambridge University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Hedstrom, P. & Bearman, P. (2009). What is analytical sociology all about? In Hedstrom & Bearman (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of analytical sociology (pp. 3–24). Oxford University Press.
Hempel, C. (1942). The function of general laws in history. Journal of Philosophy, 39(2), 35–48.
Article Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. (1976). America in our time. Garden City. Doubleday.
Google Scholar
Honneth, A. (2007). Reification: A new look at an old idea. Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Isserman, M. & Kazin, M. (2004). America divided: The civil war of the 1960s (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Jepperson, R. & Meyer, J.W. (2011). Multiple levels of analysis and the limits of methodological individualisms. Sociological Theory, 26(1), 54–73.
Article Google Scholar
Katz, E. (1957). The two-step flow of communications. Public Opinion Quarterly, 21(1), 61–78.
Article Google Scholar
Katz, J. (1988). The seductions of crime: The moral and sensual attractions of doing evil. Basic Books.
Google Scholar
Kestinturk, T. (2023). Sociology’s inequality problem. Blog post retrieved on July 15, 2024 from https://tkeskinturk.github.io/blog/inequality/#:~:text=The%20data%20show%20that%20nearly,of%20sociologists%20talks%20about%20inequality
Kim, R. (2012). Virtue and material culture of the nineteenth century: The debate over the mass marketplace in France in the aftermath of the 1848 revolution. Theory and Society, 41(6), 557–579.
King, A. (2016). Gabriel Tarde and contemporary social theory. Sociological Theory, 34(1), 45–61.
Article Google Scholar
Lazarsfeld, P. F., & Rosenberg, M. (1955). The language of social research: A reader in the methodology of social research. The Free Press.
Google Scholar
Liu, S. & Emirbayer, M. (2016). Field and ecology. Sociological Theory, 34(1), 62–79.
Lyotard, J. F. (1979 [1984]). The post-modern condition: A report on knowledge. University of Minnesota Press.
Mann, M. (2018). Have wars and violence declined? Theory and Society, 47(1), 37–60.
Article Google Scholar
Matsueda, R. L. (1988). The current state of differential association theory. Crime & Delinquency, 34(3), 277–306.
Article Google Scholar
McAdam, D., Tarrow, S., & Tilly, C. (2001). Dynamics of contention. Cambridge University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Merton, R. K. (1949a [ 1968a]). On the history and systematics of social theory. In Merton, Social theory and social structure (pp. 1–37). The Free Press.
Merton, R. K. (1949b [ 1968b]). On sociological theories of the middle range. In Merton, Social theory and social structure (pp. 39–72). The Free Press.
Merton, R. K. (1949c [ 1968c]). Continuities in the theory of reference groups and social structure. In Merton, Social theory and social structure (pp. 335–440). The Free Press.
Meyer, J. W., & Bromley, P. (2013). The worldwide expansion of ‘organization.’ Sociological Theory, 31(4), 366–389.
Article Google Scholar
Mills, C.W. (1948). The new men of power: America’s labor leaders. Harcourt, Brace.
Google Scholar
Mills, C.W. (1951). White collar. Oxford University Press.
Mills, C.W. (1956). The power elite. Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Mills, C.W. (1959). The sociological imagination. Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Omelicheva, M. Y. (2009). Reference group perspective on state behavior: A case study of Estonia’s counterterrorism policies. Europe Asia Studies, 61(3), 483–504.
Article Google Scholar
Polodny, J. M. (1993). A status-based model of market competition. American Journal of Sociology, 98(4), 829–872.
Article Google Scholar
Reed, I. A. (2013). Power: Relational, discursive, and performative dimensions. Sociological Theory, 31(3), 193–218.
Ridgeway, C. (1983). Dynamics of small groups. St., Martin’s.
Google Scholar
Rojas, F. (2017). Theory for the working sociologist. Columbia University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Scott, W. R. & Davis, G. F. (2016). Organizations and organizing: Rational, natural, and open systems. Routledge.
Google Scholar
Singh, S. (2016). Appreciating field theory’s insights into politics: An empirical illustration using the case of emergency in India (1975–77). Theory and Society, 45(2), 107–142.
Smith, C. (2014). The sacred project of American sociology. Oxford University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Steiner, P. (2009). Who is right about the modern economy: Polanyi, Zelizer, or both? Theory and Society, 38(1), 97–110.
Article Google Scholar
Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological Review, 93(2), 119–135.
Article Google Scholar
Stouffer, S. A., Suchman, E.A., Devinney, L.C., Star, S.A. & Williams, R. M., Jr (1949). The American soldier: Adjustment during army life. Princeton University Press.
Swidler, A. (1986). Culture in action: Symbols and strategies. American Sociological Review, 51(2), 273–286.
Article Google Scholar
Tavory, I. (2010). Of yarmulkes and categories: Delegating boundaries and the phenomenology of interactional expectation. Theory & Society, 39(1), 49–68.
Article Google Scholar
Tilly, C. (1999). Durable inequality. University of California Press.
Google Scholar
Tilly, C. (2004). Social boundary mechanisms. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 34(2), 211–236.
Article Google Scholar
Tilly, C. (2005). Identities, boundaries, and social ties. Routledge.
Uzzi, B. (1997). Social structure and competition in interfirm networks. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42(1), 35–67.
Article Google Scholar
Vrecko, S. (2010). Global and everyday matters of consumption: On the productive assemblage of pharmaceuticals and obesity. Theory and Society, 39(5), 555–573.
Article Google Scholar
Wallerstein, I. (1974 [2011]). The modern world-system I: Capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century. University of California Press.
Book Google Scholar
Wimmer, A. (2009). Herder’s heritage and the boundary-making approach: Studying ethnicity in immigrant societies. Sociological Theory, 27(3), 244 – 70.
Zetterberg, H. L. (1954). On theory and verification in sociology. Almqvist and Wiksell.
Google Scholar
Download references
Acknowledgements
I am grateful for critical commentary and/or reference suggestions by Seth Abrutyn, Paul DiMaggio, Kevin J. Dougherty, Jerry A. Jacobs, Woody Powell, Fabio Rojas, David L. Swartz, and two anonymous Theory and Society reviewers on earlier drafts of this paper.
Funding
Not Applicable.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Department of Sociology, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA
Steven Brint
Contributions
This is a sole-authored paper.
Corresponding author
Correspondence to Steven Brint.
Ethics declarations
Ethical approval
Not Applicable.
Competing interest
The author declares no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Published: 19 February 2025Volume 54, pages 705–730 (2025)
Cite this article
You have full access to thisopen accessarticle
Download PDF
Save article
Theory and SocietyAims and scopeSubmit manuscriptSteven Brint
5372 Accesses
7 Citations
3 Altmetric
Explore all metrics
Abstract
Sociological theory, as represented in the two main U.S. theory journals, has been diverted from the project of generalized explanation by a propensity for over-refinement, a preference for small-scale conceptual innovations linked to specific and sometimes quite obscure cases, a tendency to focus on heroes of theory rather than their generalizable ideas, and too much attention to the flux and instability of social life. These conclusions are based on a content analysis of 445 journal articles over a recent 11-year period. As an alternative, I propose focusing on high-leverage sociological concepts, those that have explanatory power across multiple settings, subfields, and levels of analysis, as well as the variables that are most important for conditioning their explanatory force. I connect the project with a recessive theme in the work of the mid-20th century sociologist and theorist Robert K. Merton.
Similar content being viewed by others
High-leverage sociological concepts: an extension with two cases
Article Open access12 March 2026
The History of Sociology as Disciplinary Self-Reflexivity
Chapter © 2022
The History of Sociology as Disciplinary Self-Reflexivity
Chapter © 2021
Explore related subjectsDiscover the latest articles, books and news in related subjects, suggested using machine learning.Sociological Methods
Sociological Qualitative Methods
Sociology
Sociological Theory
Social Theory
Sociology of Work
Theorizing in Social Sciences
In this article, I will argue that sociological theory, as represented in the major U.S. theory journals, has become too concerned with nuance, too prone to make minor conceptual innovations to explain highly particularized cases, too much enthrall of individual theory heroes, and too much concerned with the flux of social relations and social institutions. My conclusions about the current state of theory are based on coding the content of 445 articles from the two leading theory journals in the United States over a recent 11-year period.
These defects have created obstacles to the development of a deployable set of explanatory concepts and conditioning propositions related to these concepts. Yet sociologists have concepts and conditioning propositions that contribute to the explanation of a wide range of outcomes of interest across multiple settings, subfields, and levels of analysis. I will argue that it would be valuable for more of the theory community’s total energy to go into the identification of these sociological concepts with high explanatory power. More of the community’s energy should also go into specifying the conditioning variables that influence their impact.
For the progress of sociological theory, the stakes are high. Sciences are composed at the most basic level of building-block concepts and propositions connected to these concepts. Sociological theory has failed to achieve consensus on either its building-block concepts or its explanatory propositions. It can be argued, of course, that sociology is “not that kind of science” because of the dependence of social relations on perishable structures, historical events, incommensurable cultures, and interpretive moments.Footnote1 This is clearly true for many problems of interest to sociologists, but it is also a convenient way to avoid trying hard to push in the direction of a theoretically guided science for those problems in sociology that can be profitably examined in this way.
The approach I propose is not the only way forward for the advancement of theory. It is clearly the case, for example, that some theories with proven explanatory power have grown out of a distinctive and insightful way of looking at the workings of the social world as an inter-connected system. This approach begins in the mid-19th century with Marx’s analyses of modes of production and Spencer’s evolutionary structural-functionalism and continues through Bourdieu’s (1972 [1979]) theory of practice and Wallerstein’s (1974 [2011]) world-systems in the contemporary period. Indeed, as Einstein (1919 [1954]) emphasized long ago, science develops both from visions of the interaction of systematically related elements, what he called “constructive theories,” and from the discovery of explanatory concepts and principles, those he called “principle theories.”
In addition, specialized theories related to more bounded phenomena of social life, such as the Fligstein and McAdam (2011) theory of intra-organizational conflict or the Gellnerian (2009) theory of nationalism, also make important contributions. Moreover, the social sciences are perhaps necessarily connected to the pressing problems of the day. The social consequences of developments such as the rise of authoritarian regimes or the societal consequences of climate change will continue to provide important provocations for both theoretical and empirical interventions.
Thus, the goal is not to reject pluralism in sociological theorizing; it is instead to encourage a shift in emphasis so that a higher proportion of total effort is oriented toward the identification and utilization of concepts and conditioning propositions that aid in generalized explanation across settings, subfields, and levels of analysis.
To set the context for this argument, I will discuss a content analysis of articles that appeared in the two major American theory journals between 2008 and 2018. From this analysis I draw out the most prominent limitations of contemporary sociological theorizing as represented in these journals. I will draw on a recessive theme in the work of the mid-20th century sociologist and theorist Robert K. Merton as a guide to how sociology can make cumulative progress by focusing on the explanatory building blocks of theory and the conditioning propositions that most strongly influence their impact. I also discuss weaknesses in Merton’s program. Against the pervasive skepticism found in contemporary theory about the durability of structures and the generalizability of explanation, I will show that many sociological entities are stable enough to provide leverage for the kind of theory development I propose. Finally, I will provide a brief preview of part two of this two-part article.
What does contemporary sociological theory do?
I begin by looking at what contemporary theory does and why its current orientations are problematic.
Abend (2008) proposed a seven-category scheme for understanding what contemporary theorists mean when they use the term “theory.” His seven categories provide a useful framework for understanding the variety of meanings that have grown up around the term. They are as follows:
Theory 1: A general proposition, or logically connected system of general propositions, which establishes a relationship between two or more variables. A relationship between variables in general, independently of things like time and place.
Theory 2: Explanation of a particular social phenomenon, such as theory about the demise of Valois dynasty in the late-sixteenth-century France. Factors or conditions that led to an outcome.
Theory 3: An interpretation, a reading, or way of making sense of a certain slice of the empirical world.
Theory 4: Exegeses of the work of important social thinkers such as Weber, Durkheim, or Simmel.
Theory 5: An overall weltanschauung from which one sees and interprets the world. Ways of looking at social objects. An a priori framework, a school of thought with certain built in assumptions about the social world.
Theory 6: Normative theory: Those theories that reject the fact/value dichotomy and include feminist theory, neo-Marxist theory, critical theory, postcolonial theory.
Theory 7: Discussions about the way reality is really structured – e.g., the micro-macro problem, the problem of structure and agency, the problem of social order. The study of special problems that sociology has encountered and philosophical problems that cannot be solved by empirical methods.
One category from this list, Abend’s Theory 1, clearly refers to the form of theorizing characteristic of principle-based scientific explanation. As I will suggest, works that would be classified under Abend’s Theory 5 can also produce explanatory concepts and principles. Bourdieu’s (1972 [1977]) theory of practice, for example, can be characterized as an Abend Theory 5, a weltanschauung. In addition to its value for examining the inter-working of social relations, it has produced the oft-used concepts of field, habitus, and forms of capital.
My data comes from a study of every article in every issue of the two leading theory journals in the discipline, Sociological Theory (ST) and Theory and Society (T&S) over the decade 2008–2018. Altogether I coded 187 articles in ST, which publishes four times a year, and 258 articles in T&S, which publishes six times a year. I assigned a primary code to each article and then as many as two secondary codes. I also coded with up to four codes for the objective of the article and the article’s topical foci. I coded up to three primary protagonists and antagonists, as well as the number of citations the article had received as of June 2024. (I discuss the coding procedures in detail in an appendix on the journal’s website. I also provide the coding spreadsheet in the appendix). Footnote2 After coding 445 articles, I had reached the point of rapidly declining marginal utility. I subsequently read the abstracts and selected articles from the two journals for the years 2019 through 2023 to determine whether the journals had taken a decidedly new turn in the more recent years. This more cursory review suggests that the primary characteristics of articles did not change greatly.
While I am confident of the rank order of the categories for the variables I coded, more precise point estimates are very unlikely to be correct. They are included below solely for the purpose of showing the relative weight of each of the Abend categories. According to my coding, just 23 of the articles were at their core representative of the generalizing approach of Abend’s Theory 1. I assigned subsidiary codes for Abend Theory 1 to an additional 15 articles indicating what seemed to me a secondary interest in generalized explanation, or at least a treatment of the generalizing possibilities of the article. Thus, at most, according to my coding, fewer than 10% (39) articles were associated closely enough with generalized explanation to receive an Abend Theory 1 code. Allowing for the inexactness inherent in coding complex articles (and without the benefit of a second- or third-blind coding), it is clear that only a relatively small minority of articles are oriented toward generalized explanation. I assigned even fewer articles to Abend Theory 5, the weltanschauung category, the other type of theorizing that can be productive of generalizable concepts and explanatory principles. According to my coding, these constituted just 2.5% (11) of the articles (see Table 1).
Table 1 Distribution of articles across “Abend-Plus”a categories
Full size table
What then were the primary concerns of the articles in the two theory journals? Articles in Abend Category 3 (interpretations of slices of the empirical world) predominated in both journals. Articles in this category accounted for nearly half of the articles. When we add the secondary orientations of the articles, more than half of the articles in both journals focused either in a primary or secondary way on observing a slice of social life and theorizing the structures, relationships, and meaning systems involved in understanding these specific environments. The objects of interest in these articles ranged from descriptions and analyses of the powerful (e.g., Wall Street brokers, Southeast Asian warlords) to the marginal (e.g., sex workers in Malawi, bicycle delivery workers, dumpster divers).
I also constructed a more elaborate coding scheme in an effort to determine what the articles were attempting to accomplish. In both journals, a dominant focus was on developing a set of ideas to explain a specific phenomenon in the world, such as the identification of obesity as a social problem (Vrecko, 2010) or the sources of approaches to the evaluation of organizational performance (Brandtner 2017). The great majority of articles took up topics related to specific institutional domains or group processes, with political institutions by some measure the most frequent primary topic followed by economic institutions, organizations, cultural meaning systems, and interaction processes. Articles in ST showed more interest in concept development, though the concepts often do not have generalizability apart from the specific phenomena they are developed to explain. Articles in T&S, by contrast, showed somewhat more interest in using case studies to shed light on theory, as in the analysis of Indian politics to comment on Bourdieusian field theory (Singh, 2016) and in teasing out the interactions of social structure, culture, and events, as in the creation of the 19th century mass marketplace in Europe (Kim, 2012).
I do not mean to minimize the contributions of the articles in the two theory journals. The best of the articles are an intellectual feast.Footnote3 Yet readers will not come away from them with greater clarity about the core explanatory ideas or principles of the discipline of sociology. Indeed, it is likely that readers will conclude that no such explanatory concepts or principles exist – or perhaps can exist. The theory of the theory journals is sophisticated but not scientifically ambitious in the way that would provide an explanatory core for the discipline. Apart from the smattering of articles like Fligstein and McAdam’s (2011) theory of strategic action fields that attempt to develop generalized explanations, what we have for the most part are subfield specialists promoting small-scale conceptual innovations with little relevance outside of the cases they analyze.
Would a study of books rather than articles lead to different conclusions? Undoubtedly, we would find some works that are oriented to generalized explanation, as in the case of McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly’s Dynamics of Contention (2001), Collins’s Interaction Ritual Chains (2004), or Boltanski and Thévenot’s On Justification (2006). We would also find some valuable constructive theories, as in the case of Bourdieu’s theory of practice. But we would undoubtedly also find many more works that fit under one of the other Abend categories. The giants of contemporary theory are of course more ambitious (and more difficult to pigeon-hole) if one reviews their entire oeuvre, including their books, but they too only rarely explicitly develop concepts or principles that can contribute to the explanation of outcomes across a range of settings, subfields, and levels of analysis.
The limitations of contemporary theorizing
Systematic content analysis leads to a clear delineation of the characteristic biases of contemporary theorizing that have limited its scientific contribution. These limitations consist of an over-refinement that may reflect the perfectionism or anxiety of the theorists of this age; small-scale conceptual innovations linked to specific and sometimes quite obscure cases; a tendency to focus on heroes of theory rather than their generalizable ideas; and, most importantly from my point of view, a preference for relational sociology and social construction over durable entities and processes.
Over-refinement
The effort to get things exactly right is of course a scholarly virtue but the most recent generation of theorists has frequently taken this scholarly virtue to a point where the ideas developed are so freighted with over-refinement that they are no longer of practical value in the work of explanation. Take for example the definition of human agency in a well-cited 1998 article: “the temporally constructed engagement by actors of different structural elements – the temporal-relational contexts of action – which, through the interplay of habit, imagination, and judgment, both reproduces and transforms those structures in interactive response to the problems posed by changing historical situations” (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998, p. 970). Or the following theorization of human communication across social contexts: “Switching netdoms across sociocultural formations brings multiple voicings (heterglossias) and contextualizing cues (meta-pragmatics) that radically change the rules of the communicative game for any specific subsystem, which thus are not impermeable to indexicalities from elsewhere” (Fontdevilla, Opazo, and White 2011, p. 195).
With unwieldy constructions like these, it is not surprising that by the end of the last decade some theorists were becoming disillusioned. Healey (2017), for example, expressed frustration with the over-refinement of theory: “The desire to make theory more complex or richer by adding nuance detracts from theory…Thinking of compelling or interesting ideas is difficult so adding complexity is easier.” Instead of nuance, he wrote, “we need simplicity and strength” (p. 119).
Minor conceptual innovations
A related issue is the marked tendency of theorists to identify a minor conceptual “innovation” relevant to a particular case and for reviewers and editors to treat these small-scale innovations as contributions to theory. These conceptual innovations included such small-bore constructions as “desire paths” through nature, “shopping activism,” “non-legitimate authority,” “obfuscatory relational work,” and “para-social interaction.”
Minor conceptual innovations are often connected to niche topics. Theorists in the 21st century examined such topics as bike messengers in New York, sex workers in Malawi, the Museum of Jurassic Technology, mythical monsters, and the differential treatment of birds by milliners and ornithologists. Of course, esoteric subjects can be the grounds out of which important theoretical contributions emerge, as in the case of Leon Festinger’s (1956) discovery of cognitive dissonance and the tactics for resolving it through the study of a UFO cult. I found few, if any, similarly substantial breakthroughs deriving from the study of esoteric slices of social life during the current era.
A focus on theorists, not theory
In contrast to other scientific disciplines, sociologists continue to treat as totemic the heroes and heroines of theory rather than the explanatory concepts and principles these people have contributed to the field. In the articles I studied this was strikingly true of Pierre Bourdieu’s work. Bourdieu was a major protagonist or antagonist in nearly 20% of the articles I coded.Footnote4 This is an orientation consistent with the way theory has been conventionally taught in sociology departments, either through a focus on individual theorists (Brint and Lavalle 2000) or through a focus on competing schools of thought (Collins, 1994).Footnote5
It is true that great figures are recognized in other scientific disciplines, but such recognitions attach as adjectives around the core concepts and principles discovered by the path-breaking figure, as in Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in physics or Williamson’s transaction cost analysis in economics, not on the body of work of the figure him or herself. In my view, it would be desirable to move beyond a focus on theorists to a focus on the most important tools that the intellectual leaders in the field have added to the sociological toolbox. Rather than studying the works of Richard Emerson, Randall Collins, or Pierre Bourdieu, we could in the future be utilizing Emersonian (1966) power-dependence relations, Collinsian (2004) interaction ritual chains, and Bourdieusian (1986) forms of capital as elements in sociological explanation.
Relational sociology and social construction
The most serious liability, however, has been the tendency of contemporary theorists to deny the usefulness of thinking in terms of relatively durable structures and processes. Consider just a few of the dozens of similar statements found in the journals in the United States during the early 21stcentury:
There are no pre-existing things outside of social relations. Social actors and actions are embedded in transactions. Structures should be seen as chains of transactions… Transactions are undetermined and unpredictable and therefore the quest for social laws is rejected in relational sociology (Depelateau, 2008).
Due to the seminal work of Barth, the question of boundaries has shifted from the study of stable categorizations and immutable identities to a delineation of the situations and contexts in which differences and categories of selfhood are evoked and wielded…. (Tavory, 2010)
Post-colonial sociology would analytically reconnect rather than bifurcate into false dichotomies the very social relations that sociological theory purports to apprehend (Go, 2013).
It has become unfashionable…to address the ‘problem of social order’… Such a formulation seems archaic and obsolete in the twenty-first century with its fluid and globalizing networks (King, 2016).
A variety of critiques have fed into theorists’ opposition to focusing on sociological substances and robust explanatory concepts. These include concerns about the reification of substances and concepts (Honneth, 2007), assertions about the continuous flux and disruptive qualities of “post-modern” life (Lyotard, 1984), and observations about the strategic maneuvering of individuals as they attempt to make sense of their worlds (Swidler, 1986). Only the rare theorist, a Charles Tilly or a Randall Collins, has attempted to treat social life as composed of relatively durable structures or has shown an interest in the mechanisms through which social structures become relatively durable. Instead, the world of theory in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has been dominated by those who have focused on the social construction of social relations and the instability of these constructionsFootnote6.
One reason for this preference is that it underlines the extent to which such stability as exists depends on a set of relationships that are prone to flux and disruption. This preserves the potential for transformative progress in social relations, one of the “sacred values” of many sociologists (Smith, 2014). If one is interested in prioritizing the opportunities for change in social life, an emphasis on social construction provides a more advantageous perspective than an emphasis on durable structures.
Sociological theorists have created two false dichotomies: the first between social substances and social processes and the second between social substances and social relations. Every social substance is always simultaneously a social process. Social substances do not persist unless they are continuously reproduced, and reproduction is a process. Social substances can also become more or less durable, more or less taken for granted, and more or less potent. These movements toward strengthening and weakening are still more clearly processes. Some social substances are defined relationally. Reference groups cannot exist without others who reflect appraisals back on the self. Power cannot exist without a relation that is also marked by dependence or interdependence. Other social forces are not truly grounded in relations, as in the cases of organizational growth and population pressure. We can measure these substances in a non-relational context.
Revisiting the Mertonian project
The approach that I will take in this and in the second part of this two-part article is strongly influenced by the work of the mid-20th century sociologist and theorist, Robert K. Merton. In essays published as the first two chapters of Social Structure and Social Theory, Merton (1949a, b [1968a, b]) tried to set sociological theory along the path of cumulative scientific development. Merton’s second essay, on sociological theories of the middle range, is the locus classicus for the approach I am recommending.Footnote7
Early in the essay, Merton advocated separate special theories of race and ethnic relations, social mobility, and deviance. He believed the explanatory frameworks developed in these special theories would eventually give rise to a more general sociology. But at the end of the essay, he reversed field and advocated starting at a more general level by developing concepts and principles that can encompass phenomena found in each of the specialty fields. This approach is only briefly mentioned. Yet it is the path that Merton himself most often pursued, and it is the only path, I believe, that can bear fruit for sociology at the most general level.
The limitations of subfield theorization
Sociologists have been very good at developing and testing special theories in subfields. Dozens of viable theories can be found that contribute to the explanation of criminalized behavior (Akers, Sellers and Jennings, 2020), organizational structure and behavior (Scott and Davis, 2016), and social psychology (Chadee, 2022), to name just three subfields that have benefited from lively domain-specific theory communities. Even the seemingly very specialized field of social revolutions contains first-, second-, third- and fourth- generation theories (Goldstone, 2001). But these theories rarely take meaningful steps toward the consolidation Merton advocated of “a more general conceptual scheme.”
The reasons why specialized theories do not lead to a more general conceptual scheme have to do in part with the incommensurable contexts that specialty fields occupy. If variations in intimacy, passion, and commitment are relevant to a working theory of love, as argued by Sternberg (1986), it is equally true that these variations are irrelevant to explanations of firm behavior in the global economy. To take another example: One might imagine that social psychological theories could speak, at least occasionally, to criminological theories (see, e.g., Katz 1988), and vice versa, but social psychology consists at once of a broader set of relationships than criminology, and one that is much less influenced by the institutional framework of legally-legitimated social control that cannot help but be relevant to criminology.
It is also uncommon for sociologists to have the social connections and perhaps also the mental dispositions required for extracting potentially generalizable concepts and principles from a deep immersion in a subfield. Most scholars who are deeply immersed in the progress of their subfields do not make the leap to thinking about how concepts and principles in their subfields might inform other subfields. This is a function of the networks social scientists establish during their careers, the positions they feel they must argue in their subfields against those with different perspectives, and the rewards that are available for those who succeed in pushing subfields forward.
Because so much of their attention is devoted to their own work and the work of colleagues in their subfields, specialists are not generally knowledgeable enough about other subfields to know how the thinking of their subfield could apply. The difficulties have only intensified with the proliferation of journals in subfields. This proliferation encourages centrifugal engagements (Turner and Turner 1990). Giants in subfields who make contributions to general sociology are consequently exceedingly rare.
The situation is very different for the second, recessive approach to theory development that Merton advocated. Many sociological concepts have proven explanatory power across a range of sites and subfields and across levels of analysis. Merton’s own work on reference groups exemplifies the potential for theory development based on high-leverage concepts. As he notes, the theory of reference groups and relative deprivation starts with the simple idea that people take the standards of significant others in their environment as a basis for self-appraisal and evaluation (Merton, 1949b [1968b]: 40). Merton then looked for evidence of reference group influence in a wide range of subfields, including military life, race and ethnic relations, social mobility, delinquency, politics, education, and revolutionary activity (Ibid. 64).Footnote8 He also elaborated on the conditions under which reference group effects existed and persisted (Merton, 1949c [1968c]).
Following this recessive theme in Merton’s essay, I will argue that a promising avenue for theory development in sociology is through the recruitment and nurturing of people who are capable of extracting context-spanning concepts and principles from their bird’s eye view of a wide range of traditions and subfields. Others can contribute by identifying generalizable concepts and principles that derive from their own empirical investigations.
Was the Mertonian project a dead end?
It is true that the theory development and verification program that Merton championed failed to survive the 1960s. This may seem to support the conclusion that the program proved to be a dead end. Instead, I would point to some weaknesses in the way Merton and his long-time collaborator Paul Lazarsfeld conceived of the program and, perhaps more importantly, the influence of the socio-cultural changes of the late 1950s and 1960s that turned the attention of younger theorists toward social criticism.
Merton tended to think of middle-range theory in both a deterministic and universalizing way. For Merton, sociological phenomena should determine outcomes, not be probabilistically related to outcomes, and they should apply very widely across time and space. In addition, he tended to think of sociological phenomena as things rather than as accomplishments whose reproduction cannot be taken for granted. These outlooks were consistent with dominant strains in the philosophy of science of the time (see, e.g., Carnap 1928 [1967]; Hempel, 1942), but they turned out to be weaknesses. The effort to be fully deterministic and universalizing led to the proliferation of qualifications and conditioning variables – to the extent that the general ideas lost explanatory power. Merton’s (1949c [1968c]) own later work on reference groups attests to this problem. In his article on continuities in reference group theory, from 1957, he identified 26 separate structural variables that can condition reference group effects. One might say that the power of the reference group concept recedes as an inverse function of the number of conditioning variables. We see something very similar in the proliferation of conditioning variables in Coser’s (1956) work on social conflict.
These paradigmatic weaknesses might have been corrected in succeeding years, if not for the changing intellectual milieu of the late 1950s and early 1960s. As the Civil Rights Movement and later the anti-war movement gained adherents, leading intellectuals turned their attention to social injustices and social inequalities, as well as the moral failings of American elites (see, e.g., Hodgson, 1976; Isserman and Kazin 2004). In sociology, the new orientations were evident in Merton’s home department, as exemplified by C. Wright Mills’s trilogy on the American class and power structures (Mills, 1948, 1951, 1956),Footnote9 The attacks by intellectual critics of mainstream theory culminated in The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (1970), written by Merton’s former student Alvin W. Gouldner.
The enduring contributions of sociologists of the period, including Becker (1963) on labeling and stigma, Emerson (1966) on power-dependence, Goffman (1959) on social skill in self-presentation, and Merton (1949b) himself on reference groups attests to the impact of writers whose work is consistent with the aims of the Mertonian project. Importantly, we have some 75 more years of work on which to draw to fill out more of the canvas.
However, as I argue below, the Mertonian project requires extensive revision to account for the legitimate objections that have been raised against it. First, the explanatory power of sociological phenomena must be discussed in probabilistic rather than deterministic frames. Second, only the most important variables conditioning their impact should be emphasized, not the entire range of variables that could potentially condition outcomes. Finally, the search for high-leverage concepts and conditioning variables should be grounded in the assumptions of critical realism (Bhaskar, 1997, 1998) -- notably, that sociological phenomena are accomplishments not things, and their explanatory power can therefore wane, wane dramatically -- or disappear altogether.
HIgh-leverage sociological concepts
Most of the building-block concepts sociologists require are hiding in plain sight, but they have not been collected from the diverse texts in which they were first developed and utilized, sorted in relation to the breadth of their application to social phenomena, and consolidated in a compendium from which they can be deployed by working sociologists. Although each of these concepts, I will argue, provides explanatory power at multiple levels of analysis, I list them here as sociologists tend to talk about them, from those whose primary relevance is often discussed at more micro-level of analysis to those whose primary relevance is more often treated at the meso- or macro-levels. I also divide them by the extent to which they tend to be seen as more generative of social life than constraining or more constraining than generative. I emphasize that they cannot do their work in explanation without an equally strong understanding of the principal conditioning propositions that influence their impact.
The more generative concepts are: (1) social activation skill, (2) social network ties, (3) interaction ritual chains, (4) organizational growth, and (5) collaborative and autocatalytic sources of emergence. The more constraining concepts are: (6) reference groups, (7) power-dependence relations, (8) social closure mechanisms, (9) labeling/othering, and (10) institutionalized categories. In two cases, it is difficult to determine whether HLCs are more generative or more constraining because they are two faces of the same coin. These two are: (11) forms of capital and (12) population pressures.
Now for a definition: High-leverage sociological concepts (HLCs) are specifically social (rather than individual-level) reproduced forms that explain behavioral and/or organizational outcomes across a wide variety of settings, subfields, and levels of analysis. They are features of social life whose effects when operating unimpeded produce probabilistically predictable results. They rise to prominence in sociological theory based on their explanatory force and the intensive illumination they provide on social relations.
The term “high leverage” suggests both the exertion of force and a tool that can be employed to maximum advantage. HLCs must, by definition, provide intensive illumination of social relations and/or social organization and they must be centrally involved in the production and reproduction of social relations. The human actions and interactions encapsulated by HLCs have force in so far as they make social relations happen or prevent changes in social relations from happening. The stipulation about the range of applications helps to differentiate HLCs from concepts that are of more limited explanatory value. Reference groups, for example, are as relevant to the behavior of criminal offenders as they are to the distribution of status in an organizational field. Similarly, great powers operate in the context of reference groups as much as do firms in an industry or individuals in their local friendship milieus. Given the intensive illumination they provide and the range of their applications, high-leverage concepts can be considered building blocks of generalized sociological theory.
I will note several other defining features of HLCs, as I conceive of them:(1)
They are in most cases scientific objects not recognizable by most lay actors. This stipulation is desirable to allow for the epistemological break from common sense knowledge. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that some highly successful scientific concepts do enter public discourse. This process of public adoption is occurring now in the cases of social capital and labeling, for example. Footnote10
(2)
They are neither so general, as in the case of culture that their specific explanatory force cannot be identified nor so specific, as in the case, for example, of financial brokerage, that the range of their applications is too restricted to apply to a wide range of settings, subfields, and levels of analysis.
(3)
They are core concepts that are generative of families of related concepts. For example, the effective labeling of less powerful people by more powerful people is generative of other sociological concepts, including stigma, alienation, and non-conforming behavior among those labeled -- and status consciousness, social aversions, and conforming behavior among the labelers.
(4)
They are core concepts that operate at the highest level of generalization among the concepts that are closely related to them. Thus, population pressure can plausibly be considered a high-leverage concept, but urbanization would not qualify because urbanization describes a particular form of population growth and would not, for example, apply to forms of population growth in communities, social networks, or organizations.
(5)
They are simultaneously substances and processes. This stipulation is necessary to avoid the valid critique that substance-based theories often rely on reification. Institutionalized categories as durable ways of organizing personnel and practices have a compelling force only while the institution is continuously resourced, enforced, and widely legitimated. Resources, enforcements, and beliefs can obviously erode. Thus, every institution must be, by definition, continuously reproduced and will be subject to transformation when processes of reproduction falter.
It will be immediately apparent that some concepts central to sociological explanation are not included in the list of twelve above. Over the last several decades, sociologists have devoted a high proportion of their research energies into analyzing patterns of inequality in multiple settings, subfields, and at multiple levels of analysis. Indeed, in recent years more than three-quarters of articles in the American Sociological Review have investigated inequality in one form or another. The proportions are similar in the other leading U.S. journals, the American Journal of Sociology, the Annual Review of Sociology, and Social Forces. In all four journals, the proportion of studies discussing inequality has increased substantially over time (Kestinturk 2023). A compendium of high-leverage sociological concepts would undoubtedly include several concepts sociologists employ to measure and explain inequality. By bracketing them for the time being I do not intend to suggest that they are less important than those I identify above. The HLCs on which I will focus open the aperture of both sociology and generalizable theory in a valuable way. At the same time, I note that several of them are directly connected to the explanation of social inequalities. These include social closure mechanisms, labeling/othering, forms of capital, and institutionalized categories.
Are concepts constitutive of theory?
Most sociological theories contain multiple concepts treated as variables and multi-variable chains of causation. To take a relatively simple example, in Tilly’s (1999) theory of durable inequality, paired categories are treated as the structures out of which durable inequalities can arise. Tilly describes what he takes to be four constants in the development of durable inequalities. First, one group exploits the other by appropriating more value from the relationship than is their due. Second, and in some cases alternatively, members of the dominant group hoard opportunities for gain at the expense of excluded groups. Third, forms of exploitation and opportunity hoarding are emulated in sectors beyond those in which they originated. For example, schools may begin to segregate in ways that began in conquest or in economic relations. Finally, inequalities developed in these ways become routinized in daily life among members of a society. The concepts are (1) exploitation, (2) opportunity hoarding, (3) emulation, and (4) adaptation and they are connected in a chain of causation that unfolds over time.
Given that this is the normal approach to theory building, why focus on single concepts and a handful of conditioning propositions for each one? My contention is that we are at an early stage in the development of general sociological theory – that is, theory that can be applied at multiple levels of analysis, in multiple subfields, and in a wide variety of settings. HLCs can be considered the elementary building blocks of theory at this level of generality. Conditioning propositions help us to understand when and why they have greater or lesser explanatory power.
We have some fruitful examples of this approach dating from the classical period. Durkheim’s theory of ritual, for example, has proven to be one of the most powerful and generalizable approaches to understanding the creation and re-creation of social bonds. It begins by identifying the features that make rituals work: the treatment of an object or idea as “sacred,” a community of co-present believers, a common attitude and mood in relation to the sacred object or idea, and synchronized actions in relation to the sacred object or idea. For Durkheim, when these elements occur together an emotional force is created in the group, one that creates a sense of empowerment (or collective effervescence), reinforces group bonds, and defines boundaries between the group and the outside world. Thus, like other HLCs ritual is ultimately a singular concept with manifold applications. Durkheim did not explicitly identify conditioning propositions to specify the conditions under which ritual was likely to have stronger or weaker effects but if he had done so ritual theory would have been strengthened. For example, we know that some ritual occasions such as political rallies generate strong currents of emotional energy while others such as graduation ceremonies have much weaker effects because it is harder to maintain a common mood in the latter. Is it because focus on the ritual object (the parade of graduates) is not as completely sustained or because of the heterogeneity of the audience, or both?
It is also true that in some, and perhaps many, instances HLCs can be combined explicitly as features of more complex, multi-factor explanations. Consider, for example, Andreas Wimmer’s (2009) theory of ethnic group formation. Wimmer argues that ethnic groups form not out of primordial attachments, as in Herder’s romantic view, but rather from acts of social distancing and social closure vis a vis members of other groups. Group making is thus a function of everyday boundary work rather than anything intrinsic about a group’s history or culture. Wimmer goes on to draw attention to three factors behind the formation of ethnic boundaries: (1) institutionalized rules that create the grounds for differential treatment of groups, (2) the distribution of resources between various participants in struggles, which influences their capacity to shape outcomes, to have their modes of categorization respected, to make their strategies of social closure consequential for others, and to gain recognition for their identities, and (3) networks of political alliances that allow for ethnic boundaries to be reproduced and enforced. These factors reference three HLCs: (1) institutionalized categories, (2) forms of capital underlying the distribution of resources, and (3) the social bonds produced by network ties.Footnote11
Are high-leverage sociological concepts “mechanisms”?
Clearly, the approach I have in mind overlaps with the focus on social mechanisms in the work of analytical sociologists (see, e.g., Hedstrom, 2005; Hedstrom and Bearman 2009; Hedstrom and Swedberg 1999), as well as in the later work of Tilly (1999, 2004, 2005) and his associates (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001). My approach is similar in so far as it involves a search for a finite set of structured actions and interactions that explain important outcomes in social life. Moreover, like Tilly and the analytical sociologists my approach is inspired in part by Merton’s essay on theories of the middle range. I also use the term “mechanism” at times to describe how HLCs influence outcomes. Because of these similarities, it is important to distinguish the approach I am advocating from that of Tilly and the analytical sociologists.
My usage of the term “mechanism” is metaphorical, not literal. High-leverage concepts are not accurately described as mechanisms as one would use the term, for example, in cell biology or engineering because they do not always produce the same results. Variable outcomes are possible depending on the mediating influence of other social forms and processes, as well as historical events. This stipulation is consistent with Tilly’s usage of the term “mechanism” in much of his later work. As he put it in an interview a few months before he died, revolutions are produced by “contingent concatenations” of mechanisms that in the case of revolutions produce dual control of armed force, but they follow no law-like properties where the same set of variables or circumstances are associated with every revolution.
This stipulation is not consistent, however, with the way the term “mechanism” is used by most analytical sociologists. For them, mechanisms are “a constellation of entities and activities that are organized such that they regularly bring about a particular type of outcome, and we explain an observed outcome by referring to the mechanism by which such outcomes are regularly brought about” (Hedstrom and Bearman 2009: 3). In other words, for analytical sociologists mechanisms can be accurately described as cell biologists and engineers use the term.Footnote12 I find this position overly restrictive and empirically problematic.
My difference with Tilly turns on the nature of Tilly’s project as compared to my own. Tilly was interested in explaining outcomes using sets of mechanisms appropriate to each outcome. For example, Tilly used one set of mechanisms – boundary activation, brokerage, polarization, and regime-initiated management strategies -- to explain incidents of violent intra-societal conflicts. He used a different set of the mechanisms -- exploitation, opportunity hoarding, emulation (or cross-sectoral diffusion of practices), and adaptation (or routinization in daily life) -- to explain durable social inequalities. My project is not the same, though I consider it complementary and similar in spirit. My intention is to identify structures and processes that contribute to the explanation of important outcomes across a wide range of settings, subfields, and levels of analysis. This project is consequently intended to work at a broader level of generality than Tilly’s.
The conditioning of HLC effects
An underlying assumption is that HLCs are consequential in social life, but the extent to which they are consequential will vary based on conditioning factors. Propositions related to this variability are consequently required to take into account the most important forms of conditioning. I will propose only a few conditioning propositions for each HLC, most based on the existing literature, rather than attempting to identify every proposition that might make a difference in some setting or at one or another level of analysis. In general, I will focus on simple linear propositions. At an elementary level, this conditioning takes the following form: the more of Conditioning Element y, the stronger the effects of HLC x and the less of Conditioning Element y, the weaker the effects of HLC x.Footnote13 At this relatively early stage in the project, I see this work as more an illustration of work that needs to be done to complete the project than as an authoritative account of the most consequential conditioning principles.
I find that hierarchical distance between groups and homophily within groups to be frequent conditioning influences. A high-status group will be in a stronger position, for example, to effectively label a low-status group relative to groups that are of roughly equal standing. Similarly, groups whose members are alike in ascriptive or achieved characteristics are more likely to come to similar conclusions about the putative stigmatizing characteristics of lower-status groups who are also alike. But no single set of conditioning influences can be identified to explain the variable impact of the entire set of 12 HLCs. The impact of population pressure, for example, has little to do with either hierarchy or homophily. Instead, the conditioning variables have mainly to do with the carrying capacity of the host environment. Thus, population pressure has effects on deprivation only when resources in the host environment cannot sustain higher numbers of people. Often, of course, host environments can sustain higher numbers, as when new productive or distributive technology is introduced.
Stability and flux
The deployment of high-leverage concepts works best when social entities have sufficient stability to be analyzed for purposes of identifying probabilistic patterns. Because the approach I am pursuing depends on a degree of stability in sociological substances, a position that many theorists criticize, I turn now to a discussion of how sociological substances become stabilized although they must be continuously reproduced and can be prone to weakening or dissolution.
The work of the philosopher of science Richard Boyd (1991, 1999) provides a starting point for understanding how socially created phenomena can become stable enough to serve as objects of inquiry. Boyd’s approach was to identify the feedback mechanisms that stabilize property clusters. Property clusters can be defined as the integrated sets of characteristics and actions that allow for the identification of an entity. For Boyd, a “scientific kind” is composed of (a) a cluster of properties shared by a group of entities and (b) a homeostatic causal mechanism responsible for the co-occurrence of these properties. These homeostatic property clusters lead to sufficient distinctiveness to allow for differentiation of “natural kinds,” to use Boyd’s terms. For biologists, reproduction and inheritance are the primary mechanisms behind homeostatic property clusters.
The epistemologist Ian Hacking (1995) was an early proponent of adapting Boyd’s approach to the human world. Hacking argued that an understanding of causal processes in human affairs relies crucially on concepts of “human kinds” which are the product of modern organizational processes with their concern for classification, quantification, and intervention. For Hacking, what distinguishes human kinds from “natural kinds” is that they have specific “looping effects.” By coming into existence through bureaucrats’ (or social scientists’) classifications, human kinds change the people so classified. Thus, Hacking offers a historicized form of nominalism that traces the mutual interactions over time between the phenomena of the human world and our conceptions and classifications of them. He cited child abuse, homosexuality, teenage pregnancy, and multiple personality as examples of human kinds established in the modern era.
Stabilizing mechanisms in the social world
In addition to the looping effect described by Hacking, sociologists have identified at least six additional feedback mechanisms that contribute to the stabilization and reproduction of human kinds or, as I prefer to say, sociological substances. These are: (1) networks or coalitions of elites who have an interest in reproducing a category; (2) enforcement mechanisms embedded in law; (3) incentives that steer rational agents to act in accordance with some classification or concept; (4) selection or filtering out of individuals who are unlikely to conform to a category or classification or will not conform to it; (5) shared cognitions in support of the reality of a category or concept; and (6) conformity with the directives or preferences of more authoritative others.Footnote14
I will use the example of medical doctors to show how a property cluster achieves a robust sociological reality by relying on each of these stabilizing mechanisms. Clearly, the medical associations and the insurance companies have a vested interest in preserving the title doctor for those who fit the frameworks they have established over time for the providers of medical care. They have an incentive to protect this jurisdiction against potential interlopers. Insurance companies will reimburse only authorized medical expenses, meaning those provided by licensed practitioners. The state will adjudicate claims of medical malpractice in the same way and provides some rights and privileges to licensed practitioners. Those who want to be reimbursed for medical expenses have a clear incentive to seek services from these individuals. Hospitals also have a clear incentive to employ only licensed practitioners if they want to be reimbursed for expenses. Medical admissions, medical examination and licensing boards, and medical ethics committees are all organized, in large part, to filter out those who can’t or won’t conform to established practices. (They also create market shelters through credential and qualification-based closure.) The idea of a licensed medical practitioner is an identity category that is widely diffused in industrialized societies and people also gain knowledge early on about what to expect of these individuals and how to behave in relation to them. These are adequately described as shared cognitions. Those who are too young to share these cognitions or perhaps not mentally able to share them may nevertheless be instructed by others to conform with a set of relevant behaviors in relation to the social category of doctors.
Not all stable entities require each of these mechanisms for their reproduction. Some socially defined categories, such as certified public accountant, are more strictly reproduced by elite consensus and law; others, such as the kinship categories of uncle and aunt, are reproduced primarily by shared cognitions and directed conformity.
The disciplining value of critical realism
While feedback mechanisms create the conditions for the stabilization and reproduction of property clusters, sociological property clusters should, in my view, be consistently subjected to the skeptical perspective of critical realism (Bhaskar, 1997, 1998). Like Boyd and Hacking, critical realists are interested in the mechanisms that produce social substances but, more than Boyd and even more than Hacking, they emphasize that these substances are in a greater state of flux than substances of the physical world. (Indeed, some critical realists underline this orientation by referring to sociological entities as “social events.”) Critical realists emphasize that social structures require reproduction and further that the individuals who inhabit the social structures are capable of consciously reflecting upon and changing the actions that produce them. I agree that this is the only scientifically acceptable approach for the human sciences.Footnote15 Although one can identify many stabilized entities and structures, it is important to acknowledge that these sociological substances are always, to one degree or another, also in process. They must be continuously reproduced through human action, and they are subject to weakening and transformation when reproductive processes falter or break down.
The stabilization and reproduction of high-leverage concepts
Concepts like interaction ritual chains or social closure mechanisms are not reproduced in the same way that sociological categories like manager, doctor, or the poor are reproduced. They are scientific concepts that are (typically) unseen by lay people and therefore do not enter their consciousness. Rather than being reproduced, they are measured. Interaction ritual chains are measured by how much emotional energy is produced along how long a chain of entrainment. Social closure mechanisms are measured by the ways and the extent to which they exclude potential aspirants to desirable statuses.
At the same time, explanatory concepts like sociological entities can be stable or unstable. If social bonds are regularly reactivated through the mechanisms of interaction ritual chains, we can say that the mechanism is operating in a stabilizing way. Similarly, if admissions rules in an elite higher education institution work in the same way every year to exclude the same types of prospective students, we can say that the mechanism is working in a stable way as a social closure mechanism.
Conversely, an interaction ritual chain that once worked to produce emotional energy and social bonding may encounter difficulties that reduce its effectiveness or ultimately lead it to dissolve. If American football loses its luster sometime in the distant future because of the number of head injuries that result from the violent collisions in games, the interaction ritual chains formed around cheering for the local professional team would be disrupted or disappear entirely. Similarly, if social movements break down the barriers to exclusion in elite higher education institutions, the admissions procedures that produced exclusion will no longer work in the same way or may not work at all. The flux that critical realists emphasize remains ever-present in the social world, and of course it extends to high-leverage concepts. The relevant questions are always “to what extent” and “under what conditions.”
What then gives high leverage concepts enough stability to be considered an important influence in social structure and social relations? It is precisely their capacity to form and energize social life for the period that they are working in an uninterrupted way. Interaction rituals and interaction ritual chains create and recreate social bonds and the sense of effervescence that sustains a charge of energy in those bonds. Social closure mechanisms are vital to the formation of privileged statuses and for the creation of divisions within population groups.
The concepts that have the most far-reaching effects are the concepts that most deserve the attention of sociologists. It is the work of theorists to identify them, to elaborate on their workings, to identify the conditions that influence their impact, and to subject them to rethinking when their explanatory power seems uncertain or wanes.
A preview of part two
In part two, I will begin the work of identifying, discussing, and deploying high-leverage sociological concepts and of the most important variables that condition their impact. I will focus on just three of the 12 HLCs identified above: (1) social activation skill, (2) interaction ritual chains, and (3) social closure mechanisms. Three is, I believe, the maximum number that can be discussed satisfactorily given the page limits of a journal article.Footnote16
So as not to spoil the discussion in part two, I will briefly illustrate the approach by focusing on a different HLC, reference groups. Reference groups can be defined in the manner of Merton as based on the idea that people take the standards of significant others in their environments as a basis for self-appraisal and self-evaluation (Merton, 1949b [1968b: 40]). Using illustrations for sociological and literary texts, it is possible to demonstrate the power of reference groups both for conformity to group norms and for their influence on individuals’ feelings of well-being or discontent, as in Stouffer et al.’s (1949) famous study of social comparison effects on contentment and dissatisfaction among American soldiers. Sociological studies also demonstrate the role of reference groups in a wide variety of subfields and at all major levels of sociological analysis. Among subfields, the reference group concept appears, for example, in differential association theory in criminology (Matsueda, 1988), identity theory in social psychology (Burke and Stets 2009), and in code switching (Carter, 2003) and gatekeeping (Erickson and Schultz 1982) studies in educational sociology. Reference group effects have been demonstrated at all levels of sociological analysis -- in small groups (Ridgeway, 1983), in organizational life (Polodny, 1993), and in international relations (Omelicheva, 2009).
Several complications to the simple model of reference group effects require consideration. These include: (1) whether and to what extent inner-directed persons who are relatively impervious to reference groups exist; (2) the influence of multiple reference groups and what we know about the conditions under which one or another of these groups is likely to be paramount; and (3) the variations in group structure that facilitate or impede reference group effects. The latter issue is important for understanding the relationship of reference groups to the community concept and particularly to the variety of community forms that now exist, including not only geographically defined communities, but also activity and belief-based communities of interest, social media communities, and imagined communities (Brint, 2001).
As I have indicated above, treatment of reference groups as an HLC will necessarily involve a consideration of the extent to which it is a scientific as opposed to a folk concept, its standing as the most general of the set of related concepts, and identification of the family of related concepts. In the case of reference groups, the family of related concepts includes anticipatory socialization, social comparison effects, status incongruity, role conflict, and role sets, among others.
Finally, a set of conditioning propositions are required to treat variation in reference group effects. Here group structure is important and includes variation related to size, frequency of interaction, monitoring capacity, and levels of clarity about and enforcement of normative expectations (see Merton, 1949a, b, c [1968c]). Reference group effects are stronger when groups are smaller, interaction is more frequent, members can monitor each other’s behavior (as opposed to being dispersed in space) and have clarity about and a capacity to enforce normative expectations (see, e.g., Becker et al., 1961; Uzzi, 1997). Other conditioning variables have also been identified in the literature, including group homophily, group value consensus, individual participants’ status aspirations, and individual participants’ mobility opportunities (see, e.g., Ridgeway, 1983).
*****
Critical assessment of the project I propose is of course essential. In so far as the project is sound, I hope it will persuade others to engage in the identification of sociological HLCs and the most important variables that condition their impact. Beyond the construction of this compendium, the value of the project can only be demonstrated through its effective deployment in the explanation of consequential outcomes in social life.
Data availability
Data is available on request to the author.
Notes
Moreover, as a literary genre, principle theories like the one I propose can make for unsatisfying reading. As Baehr (2019) writes, “Without the play of metaphor, simile, personification, synecdoche, and other figures of speech, could social and political thought exist? Perhaps it could but such thought would be as vibrant as a comatose patient. Extract features of language that arouse mood, anticipate menace, direct us to paradox, or help us to confront the enduring strangeness of human life, and not much would be left: dangling numbers, graphic shapes, skeletal propositions.” The question for the theory community is whether the current approaches, including those with literary value, lead to progress.
Article write-ups are available on request from the author.
To provide a sense of the flavor of some of the valuable contributions during the period I will indicate a few personal highlights. They included an overview of Zelizer’s treatment of the culture- and society-preserving uses of money as a rejoinder to Polanyi’s Great Transformation (Steiner, 2009); Reed’s (2013) discussion of the relational, discursive, and performative dimensions of power; Liu and Emibayer’s (2016) contrast of Bourdieusian fields and Chicago School ecologies as approaches to the analysis of social space; Fourcade’s (2016) analysis of the way democratic societies amplify both nominal categories and ordinal ranks; Brubaker’s (2017) discussion of the structural context and narrative elements in the rise of western populism; and Parker and Corte’s (2017) analysis of the roles and social dynamics at work in highly creative scientific and artistic circles. Most impressive of all in my opinion is Fligstein and McAdam’s theory of fields (2011), which represents a very general and now well investigated theory of the actors, sources, strategies, and possible outcomes of intra-organizational conflicts. Other, more recent articles with rich intellectual content include Mann’s (2018) empirically based dissection and critique of Steven Pinker’s thesis about the decline in violence in the 20th century and Burchardt and Swidler’s (2020) analysis of why some institutional transplants flourish outside of their original host settings while others quickly die.
Others who received considerable attention during the period included Randall Collins, Erving Goffman, and Charles Tilly.
A change in emphasis in the teaching of theory consistent with the direction suggested here can be found in Rojas (2017).
For an illuminating discussion, see Hacking 1999.
Others at Columbia or in close association elaborated on the methodological implications of Merton’s approach. See Lazarsfeld and Rosenberg (1955) and Zetterberg (1954). Others published work directly influenced by and intended to contribute to Merton-Lazarsfeld program, including Blau (1956) Coser (1956) and Katz (1957).
Stouffer and his associates (1949), for example, showed that not only do soldiers look to those in their units for standards of behavior but also that the relative success of those in their milieu creates feelings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with their own circumstances. In units with low levels of promotion most men were satisfied because as they evaluated their peers most were in the same circumstances as themselves, but in units with high levels of promotion the soldier who failed to be promoted was more likely to become dissatisfied with his lot because his own situation differed from that of most of his peers.
Mills’s The Sociological Imagination (1959) can be read as a critique, not only of Parsonsian structural functionalism, but of his scientifically minded colleagues in the sociology department at Columbia.
This suggests that the development of scientific concepts is an ongoing process of construction rather than a once-in-for-all accomplishment and that the boundary between social science and public understandings is permeable. Bourdieu’s contention that an epistemological break is a fundamental feature of science is not entirely sustainable (see Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992).
In other cases, both HLCs and other causal influences may be involved, as in the Fligstein and McAdam (2011) theory of inter-organizational conflict and the Meyer and Bromley (2013) theory of the spread of western style organizations. One of the hallmarks of an HLC is that it should frequently figure in explanations encompassing complex causal chains.
This is not my only difference from the analytical sociologists. Like James Coleman, whose work serves as an inspiration, the analytical sociologists show a pronounced tendency to work from the ground up and to constitute the meso- and macro-levels of analysis from micro-foundations. I find this stricture unnecessary and frequently counter-productive. See Jepperson and Meyer (2011) on the limits of methodological individualism.
I modeled this approach on the work of Collins (1975) and Black (1976), though I do not accept their preference to focus on a consistent set of conditioning variables.
In general, those who focus on power as a decisive feature of social life orient their analyses to the first two mechanisms and sometimes also the sixth. Those who focus on culture and cognition as a decisive feature of social life orient their analyses to the last two mechanisms. Economists tend to focus on the third mechanism and those interested in social inequality have often cited the fourth. In fact, these six mechanisms frequently work simultaneously as stabilizing forces. Michel Foucault’s (1980) conception of “power-knowledge systems,” for example, incorporates elements of each of the mechanisms described above.
These practices of reflection and reorientation are in part facilitated by social science itself (Bhaskar 1998). For example, when social science examines substances such as race or gender in a critical spirit, this critique may ultimately facilitate the dissolution of features of the property cluster or indeed of the entire property cluster. This insight about the role of critique should be extended to the activities of social movement organizations, interest groups, and state bureaucrats because these actors can also in some instances facilitate reflection and change among those affected by disadvantageous or uncongenial classifications.
I intend to elaborate on all 12, together with a chapter on inequalities, in a forthcoming book.
References
Abend, G. (2008). The meaning of ‘theory’. Sociological Theory, 26(2), 173–199.
Article Google Scholar
Akers, R. L., Sellers, & Jennings, W. G. (2020). Criminological theories: Introduction, evaluation, and application. Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Baehr, P. (2019). The image of the veil in social theory. Theory and Society, 48(4), 535–558.
Article Google Scholar
Becker, H. S. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the sociology of deviance. The Free Press.
Becker, H.S., Greer. B., Hughes, E.C., and Strauss, A.M. (1961). Boys in white: Student culture in a medical school. Routledge.
Bhaskar, R. (1974 [1997]). A realist theory of science. Verso.
Bhaskar, R. (1979 [1998]). The possibility of naturalism (3rd ed). Routledge.
Black, D. (1976). The behavior of law. Academic.
Google Scholar
Blau, P.M. (1956). Bureaucracy in modern society. Crown Publishers.
Brandtner, C. (2017). Putting the world in order: Plurality in organizational evaluation. Sociological Theory, 35(3), 200–227.
Boltanski, L. & Thévenot, L. (1991 [2006]). On justification: Economies of worth. Princeton University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1972 [1977]). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. Pp. 241 – 58. In J. G. Richardson (Ed.), Theory and research for the sociology of education. Greenwood.
Google Scholar
Boyd, R. (1991). Realism, anti-foundationalism and the enthusiasm for natural kinds. Philosophical Studies, 61(1–2), 127–148.
Article Google Scholar
Boyd, R. (1999). Homeostasis, species, and higher taxa. In R. A. Wilson (Ed.), Species: New interdisciplinary essays (pp. 141–85). MIT Press.
Chapter Google Scholar
Brint, S., & Lavalle, J. (2000). Du Bois ascendant and other findings from the Brint-Lavalle survey of theorists. Theoretical Perspectives, (January), 1–2.
Brint, S. (2001). Gemeinschaft revisited: Rethinking the community concept. Sociological Theory, 19(1), 1–23.
Article Google Scholar
Brubaker, R. (2017). Why populism? Theory and Society, 46(5), 357–385.
Article Google Scholar
Burchardt, M. & Swidler, A. (2020). Transplanting institutional innovation: Comparing the Success of NGOs and missionary protestantism in Sub-Saharan Africa. Theory and Society, 49(3), 335–364.
Burke, P. J., & Stets, J. E. (2009). Identity theory. Oxford Academic.
Book Google Scholar
Carnap, R. (1928 [1967]). The logical structure of the world: Pseudo-problems in philosophy. University of California Press.
Carter, P. L. (2003). “Black’’ cultural capital, status positioning, and schooling conflicts for low-income African American youth. Social Problems, 50(1), 136–155.
Article Google Scholar
Chadee, D. (2022). Theories in social psychology (2nd ed.). Wiley Blackwell.
Google Scholar
Collins, R. (1994). Four sociological traditions. Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Collins, R. (2004). Interaction ritual chains. Princeton University Press.
Google Scholar
Coser, L. M. (1956). The functions of social conflict. The Free Press.
Google Scholar
Depelteau, F. (2008). Relational thinking: A critique of co-deterministic theories of structure and agency. Sociological Theory, 26(1), 51–73.
Article Google Scholar
Einstein, A. (1919) [1954]). What is the theory of relativity? In Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (pp. 227–232). Bonanza.
Emerson, R. M. (1966). Power-dependence relations. American Sociological Review, 27(1), 31–41.
Article Google Scholar
Emirbayer, M. (1998). What is agency? American Journal of Sociology, 103(4), 962–1023.
Article Google Scholar
Erickson, F. (1982). The counselor as gatekeeper: Social interactions in interviews. Academic.
Google Scholar
Festinger, L., & Reiken, H. W. (1956). When prophecy fails: A social and psychological study of a modern group that predicted the destruction of the world. University of Minnesota Press.
Book Google Scholar
Fligstein, N. & McAdam, D. (2011). Toward a general theory of strategic action fields. Sociological Theory, 29(1), 1–26.
Fontdevilla, J., Opazo, M.P. & White, H. C. (2011). Order on the edge of chaos. Sociological Theory, 29(3), 178–198.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power-knowledge.: Selected interviews and other writings (pp. 1972–1977). Pantheon.
Google Scholar
Fourcade, M. (2016). Ordinalization: Lewis A. Coser memorial award for theoretical agenda setting. Sociological Theory, 34(3), 175–195.
Article Google Scholar
Gellner, E. (1983 [2009]). Nations and nationalism. Cornell University Press.
Go, J. (2013). For postcolonial sociology. Theory and Society 42(1), 25–55.
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Anchor.
Google Scholar
Goldstone, J. A. (2001). Toward a fourth generation of revolutionary theory. Annual Review of Political Science, 4, 139–187.
Article Google Scholar
Gouldner, A. W. (1970). The coming crisis of western sociology. Basic Books.
Hacking, I. (1995). The looping effects of human kinds. In D. Sperber, D. Premack, & A. J. Premack (Eds.), Causal cognition: A multidisciplinary debate (pp. 351–394). Clarendon Press.
Google Scholar
Hacking, I. (1999). The social construction of what? Harvard University Press.
Google Scholar
Healey, K. (2017). Fuck nuance. Sociological Theory, 35(2), 118–127.
Hedstrom, P. (1999). Social mechanisms: An analytical approach to sociology. Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar
Hedstrom, P. (2005). Dissecting the social: On the principles of analytical sociology. Cambridge University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Hedstrom, P. & Bearman, P. (2009). What is analytical sociology all about? In Hedstrom & Bearman (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of analytical sociology (pp. 3–24). Oxford University Press.
Hempel, C. (1942). The function of general laws in history. Journal of Philosophy, 39(2), 35–48.
Article Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. (1976). America in our time. Garden City. Doubleday.
Google Scholar
Honneth, A. (2007). Reification: A new look at an old idea. Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Isserman, M. & Kazin, M. (2004). America divided: The civil war of the 1960s (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Jepperson, R. & Meyer, J.W. (2011). Multiple levels of analysis and the limits of methodological individualisms. Sociological Theory, 26(1), 54–73.
Article Google Scholar
Katz, E. (1957). The two-step flow of communications. Public Opinion Quarterly, 21(1), 61–78.
Article Google Scholar
Katz, J. (1988). The seductions of crime: The moral and sensual attractions of doing evil. Basic Books.
Google Scholar
Kestinturk, T. (2023). Sociology’s inequality problem. Blog post retrieved on July 15, 2024 from https://tkeskinturk.github.io/blog/inequality/#:~:text=The%20data%20show%20that%20nearly,of%20sociologists%20talks%20about%20inequality
Kim, R. (2012). Virtue and material culture of the nineteenth century: The debate over the mass marketplace in France in the aftermath of the 1848 revolution. Theory and Society, 41(6), 557–579.
King, A. (2016). Gabriel Tarde and contemporary social theory. Sociological Theory, 34(1), 45–61.
Article Google Scholar
Lazarsfeld, P. F., & Rosenberg, M. (1955). The language of social research: A reader in the methodology of social research. The Free Press.
Google Scholar
Liu, S. & Emirbayer, M. (2016). Field and ecology. Sociological Theory, 34(1), 62–79.
Lyotard, J. F. (1979 [1984]). The post-modern condition: A report on knowledge. University of Minnesota Press.
Mann, M. (2018). Have wars and violence declined? Theory and Society, 47(1), 37–60.
Article Google Scholar
Matsueda, R. L. (1988). The current state of differential association theory. Crime & Delinquency, 34(3), 277–306.
Article Google Scholar
McAdam, D., Tarrow, S., & Tilly, C. (2001). Dynamics of contention. Cambridge University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Merton, R. K. (1949a [ 1968a]). On the history and systematics of social theory. In Merton, Social theory and social structure (pp. 1–37). The Free Press.
Merton, R. K. (1949b [ 1968b]). On sociological theories of the middle range. In Merton, Social theory and social structure (pp. 39–72). The Free Press.
Merton, R. K. (1949c [ 1968c]). Continuities in the theory of reference groups and social structure. In Merton, Social theory and social structure (pp. 335–440). The Free Press.
Meyer, J. W., & Bromley, P. (2013). The worldwide expansion of ‘organization.’ Sociological Theory, 31(4), 366–389.
Article Google Scholar
Mills, C.W. (1948). The new men of power: America’s labor leaders. Harcourt, Brace.
Google Scholar
Mills, C.W. (1951). White collar. Oxford University Press.
Mills, C.W. (1956). The power elite. Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Mills, C.W. (1959). The sociological imagination. Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Omelicheva, M. Y. (2009). Reference group perspective on state behavior: A case study of Estonia’s counterterrorism policies. Europe Asia Studies, 61(3), 483–504.
Article Google Scholar
Polodny, J. M. (1993). A status-based model of market competition. American Journal of Sociology, 98(4), 829–872.
Article Google Scholar
Reed, I. A. (2013). Power: Relational, discursive, and performative dimensions. Sociological Theory, 31(3), 193–218.
Ridgeway, C. (1983). Dynamics of small groups. St., Martin’s.
Google Scholar
Rojas, F. (2017). Theory for the working sociologist. Columbia University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Scott, W. R. & Davis, G. F. (2016). Organizations and organizing: Rational, natural, and open systems. Routledge.
Google Scholar
Singh, S. (2016). Appreciating field theory’s insights into politics: An empirical illustration using the case of emergency in India (1975–77). Theory and Society, 45(2), 107–142.
Smith, C. (2014). The sacred project of American sociology. Oxford University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Steiner, P. (2009). Who is right about the modern economy: Polanyi, Zelizer, or both? Theory and Society, 38(1), 97–110.
Article Google Scholar
Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological Review, 93(2), 119–135.
Article Google Scholar
Stouffer, S. A., Suchman, E.A., Devinney, L.C., Star, S.A. & Williams, R. M., Jr (1949). The American soldier: Adjustment during army life. Princeton University Press.
Swidler, A. (1986). Culture in action: Symbols and strategies. American Sociological Review, 51(2), 273–286.
Article Google Scholar
Tavory, I. (2010). Of yarmulkes and categories: Delegating boundaries and the phenomenology of interactional expectation. Theory & Society, 39(1), 49–68.
Article Google Scholar
Tilly, C. (1999). Durable inequality. University of California Press.
Google Scholar
Tilly, C. (2004). Social boundary mechanisms. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 34(2), 211–236.
Article Google Scholar
Tilly, C. (2005). Identities, boundaries, and social ties. Routledge.
Uzzi, B. (1997). Social structure and competition in interfirm networks. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42(1), 35–67.
Article Google Scholar
Vrecko, S. (2010). Global and everyday matters of consumption: On the productive assemblage of pharmaceuticals and obesity. Theory and Society, 39(5), 555–573.
Article Google Scholar
Wallerstein, I. (1974 [2011]). The modern world-system I: Capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century. University of California Press.
Book Google Scholar
Wimmer, A. (2009). Herder’s heritage and the boundary-making approach: Studying ethnicity in immigrant societies. Sociological Theory, 27(3), 244 – 70.
Zetterberg, H. L. (1954). On theory and verification in sociology. Almqvist and Wiksell.
Google Scholar
Download references
Acknowledgements
I am grateful for critical commentary and/or reference suggestions by Seth Abrutyn, Paul DiMaggio, Kevin J. Dougherty, Jerry A. Jacobs, Woody Powell, Fabio Rojas, David L. Swartz, and two anonymous Theory and Society reviewers on earlier drafts of this paper.
Funding
Not Applicable.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Department of Sociology, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA
Steven Brint
Contributions
This is a sole-authored paper.
Corresponding author
Correspondence to Steven Brint.
Ethics declarations
Ethical approval
Not Applicable.
Competing interest
The author declares no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
