Understanding Society

Georg Lukács in 1962 used the colorful image of a fictional "Grand Hotel Abyss" to express his disappointment in the theorists...

Recent posts have grappled with the interesting topic of phase transitions in physics ( link , link , link ). One reason for being int...

In an earlier post I considered the topic of phase transitions as a possible source of emergent phenomena ( link ). I argued there that pha...

When I first posted on cephalopod intelligence a year or so ago, I assumed it would be a one-off diversion into the deep blue sea ( link )....

Is sociology as a discipline different in France than in Germany or Britain? Or do common facts about the social world entail that soc...

Andrew Abbott is one of the thinkers within sociology who is not dependent upon a school of thought -- not structuralism, not positivism...

A primary reason for thinking that assemblage theory is important is the fact that it offers new ways of thinking about social ontology....

I've been seriously interested in the question of character since being invited to contribute to a volume on the subject a few year...

The question of the relationship between micro-level and macro-level is just as important in physics as it is in sociology. Is it possib...