Understanding Society

A social network is constituted by a number of units (nodes) that are connected to each other by a defined relationship -- for example, ...

image: Conspiracy , Edward Biberman (cover illustration, Quiet Politics ) Pepper Culpepper's  Quiet Politics and Business Power: Corpor...

The playing field seems to keep tilting further against ordinary people in this country -- poor people, hourly workers, low-paid service wor...

We think of social phenomena as "relational" in some important respect. Individuals contribute to social outcomes through structu...

As we have noted in previous posts, social outcomes are highly path-dependent and contingent ( link , link , link , link ). This implies th...

There have been several efforts recently by partisan groups in Michigan and Wisconsin to gain access to faculty email messages on subjects t...

An earlier post laid out a case for a modest social holism, in the form of a set of arguments for the idea that there are social forces and...

Several recent posts have focused on new thinking about how to characterize "agency". Much of that thinking is aimed at dissolvin...

Here is a schematic effort at capturing some of the main factors involved in the socially constituted agent. There are the "influencer...

We think we know quite a bit about being an "agent". It is to be an intervener in the world: a being capable of changing things ar...