Mechanisms in a theory are defined here as bits of theory about entities at a different level (e.g., individuals) than the main entities being theorized about (e.g., groups), which serve to make the higher-level theory more supple, more accurate, or more general. The criterion for whether it is worthwhile to theorize at lower levels is whether it makes the theory at the higher levels better, not whether lower-level theorizing is philosophically necessary. The higher-level theory can be made better by mechanisms (...) known to be inadequate in the discipline dealing with the lower level. Conditions for the usefulness of lower-level theorizing are proposed, with many examples from various social and physical sciences. (shrink)

If social relations often require the choice of a cooperative solution to a prisoners' dilemma, we must ask how people generally solve the games. Three possible devices are that those who choose non-cooperative strategies get a bad reputation and so learn to be cooperative, that people are taught by parents that non-cooperators have unhappy lives, or that an official can be paid a salary to make the cooperative choice. By analyzing erotic love and marriage, and why people try to do (...) their jobs, it is suggested that these devices result in people often solving prisoners' dilemma games without being conscious of them. How then do these structures that 'have the function' of solving prisoners' dilemmas get created and maintain themselves? It is suggested that Deweyan consciousness, existing only when structural strains or unsolved games create personal problems, is adequate to explain many such functional structures. (shrink)

The essays in this collection, on stratification, organization and the discipline of sociology, all bear upon a general theoretical question: what models of rationality are necessary or suitable to explain individual and collective action in institutional contexts? Professor Stinchcombe was one of the first sociologists to write on this question; and this collection includes a new essay which takes account of recent work done in the tradition Stinchcombe did much to institute. The first group of essays - on (...) class, stratification and mobility - addresses core problems of the discipline and offers imaginative conceptualizations with interesting empirical consequences. The second section - essays on the sociology of organizations - displays, like the first, Stinchcombe's wide knowledge of sociological traditions from structuralism to Marxism. The final section, 'comments on the discipline', deepens the readers understanding of sociological theorizing by presenting different modes of analysis of universities and research institutions and providing challenging, and often funny, insights into the subject. (shrink)

The true end of Man... is the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole. Freedom is the first and indispensable condition which the possibility of such a development presupposes; but there is besides another essential—intimately connected with freedom, it is true—a variety of situations. Even the most free and self‐reliant of men is hindered in his development, when set in a monotonous situation.—Wilhelm von Humboldt.