Socio final revision

Agency

• A person’s ability to make their choices and act on them

• Agency is motivated by values but increasingly rationalized (Weber). It can also be said to be shaped by norms, roles and symbols in social interactions (Goffman) as well as habits (Bourdieu) and enabled/constrained by social networks (Granovetter)

Bureaucracy

• Highly structured organizations designed for efficiency

• Weber’s ultimate expression of rational-legal authority

• “Street-level” bureaucratic institutions interact with public agents who interact with ordinary people (Lipsky)

  • Scripted or improvised

  • Individuals or mass-processing

  • Micro-subvert (little changes erode big structures)

Civil society

Gramsci private political associations which achieve control through cultural hegemony as influenced by public intellectuals

Civilizing process

Introduced by Elias where individuals increasingly internalize rules about behavior in public and private spaces

Collective action

Individuals getting together and forming a formal or informal organization

Collective effervescence

Individuals motivating one another to transcend their individual selves and become part of a something larger (Durkheim)

Conformity

Changing actions/values to fit into a society

Conflict vs. Order

Is society as a result of control via conflict or is it a result of humans’ inherent desire for order?

Marx vs. Durkheim

Consent and hegemony

Conscious act of allowing ourselves to be controlled by the ruling class

Double movement

• Economy and state emerge at the same time

  • Economic liberalism, aiming at the establishment of self regulating market

  • Social protection, aiming at the conversation of a man and nature as productive organization

Embeddedness

Granovetter’s idea that economic actions occur within social relationships

Falsification

We cannot prove what is true but can only prove what is not

Formal organizations

Organizations with formal rationality, hierarchy, specialization, impersonality and meritocratic recruitment

Extended by Taylor for optimization, science of productivity and this helped develop modern business schools (e.g. Harvard)

Framing theory

Based on Goffman and symbolic violence and the idea that we need to create a new sense for people to take action

Free-rider problem

The issue of inefficient distribution of goods/services when some individuals are allowed to consume more than others and pay less costs

Governmentality

Foucault’s idea that the state influences conduct using knowledge, not violence. This creates compliance and punishment is rehabilitation not repression.

Habitus

Bourdieu’s idea of internalized habits; habits used. Internalised dispositions that shape our behaviour but also change through our interactions with structured social spaces (field)

Human capital

Collection of skills, knowledge, attributes and experiences

Induction and deduction

Drawing general theory from small observations and opposite

Institutional theory

• Meyer and Rowan theorized that organizations adopt structures because they appear legitimate (not for efficiency)

• Global model of the modern university spread through world bank and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), professional networks and international rankings

Isomorphism

DiMaggio and Powell

Institutional strategy evolves based upon norms driven by the environment

• Coercive - cultural expectations and pressures

• Mimetic - procedures from other companies (copy or compete)

• Normative - expertise of internal individuals

Late modernity

Giddens’ idea that modernity disembeds people from tradition, religion, where abstract systems replace local systems (such as science or markets)

Matthew effect

Self-fulfilling prophecy of status within society

Methodological individualism

Weber’s idea that emphasizes the importance of individual actors and their actions and attached meaning to understand social phenomena

Mobilizing structure

Part of political opportunity theory where movement go from crowd to organized

Activists borrowing churches

Freedom Summer Project sending white kids to black movements

Norms and social roles

Expectactions of behavior within society

Political opportunity theory

• Using a time of state-vulnerability to launch a social movement by 

1. Vulnerability of the system (Sckopol’s unified elite and peasant led revolution)

2. Networks and media

3. Mobilizing structures

4. Contentious repertoire - spread more tactics

5. Framing processes - Goffman frames shape interpretation of reality.

Power

Foucault’s idea that you need both

Repressive = coercion

Normalizing = knowledge-based

Protest cycle rationalization

• Sydney Tarrow’s idea

1. Mobilization

2. Contagion

3. Countermobilization

4. Demobilization

5. Institutionalization

6. Remobilization

• Can fail at any time

Relative deprivation

People rebel because of relative frustration not pure misery due to the gap between expectation and reality leading to agitation

Risk society

A society increasingly preoccupied with managing risks that it itself has produced through modernization processes

Sacred and profane

Sacred (higher force) and profane (reality) by Zelizer

Social capital

• Value derived from social networks and relationships

  • Coleman argues social capital enables human capital

Social movements

• Tilly: contentious performances/displays/campaigns where ordinary people make collective claims

• McAdam: organized efforts to promote/resist change using non-institutionalized political action

• Tarrow: collective claim-making by actors lacking regular institutional access

State autonomy

Capacity of a state to govern itself and make independent decisions free from external interference

Structure Vs. Agency

Do the structure shape individuals (Levi-strauss/Durkheim/Marx) or do individuals shape structure (Weber)

Surveillance and discipline

Way people are controlled by higher institutions

Status

Perceived quality ranking relative to others in social structure based on voluntary deference

Symbolic interactionism

People create and interpret meaning through social interaction

The Iron Cage

Weber’s meaning attached to actions (being close to god, etc…) faded away but the actions became institutionalized within capitalist institutions. What had meaning has been replaced by a structure that restricts us.

Tragedy of the commons

An economic and environmental science problem where individuals have access to a shared resource and act in their own interest, at the expense of other individuals. This can result in overconsumption, underinvestment, and depletion of resources.

Welfare state

Large administrative state where social insurance counteracts capitalism’s unpredictability

A macro form of economic and population regulation

Transaction Costs

Expenses during trading but separate from the product itself

Varieties of capitalism

The idea of Varieties of Capitalism complicates this narrative. Even among so-called liberal Western democracies, there are significant differences in how capitalism is organized. For instance, the United States emphasizes free-market competition, while countries like Germany rely on coordinated market economies with strong stakeholder involvement. These differences are not minor—they reflect deeply rooted institutional, historical, and cultural divergences.