Social structures Martin, John Levi; Martin, John Levi
2009., 20090727, 2009, 2009-07-27, 20090101
eBook
Social Structures is a book that examines how structural forms spontaneously arise from social relationships. Offering major insights into the building blocks of social life, it identifies which ...locally emergent structures have the capacity to grow into larger ones and shows how structural tendencies associated with smaller structures shape and constrain patterns of larger structures. The book then investigates the role such structures have played in the emergence of the modern nation-state.
It is common for social scientists to use formal quantitative methods to compare ecological units such as towns, schools, or nations. In many cases, the size of these units in terms of the number of ...individuals subsumed in each differs substantially. When the variables in question are counts, there is generally some attempt to neutralize differences in size by turning variables into ratios or by controlling for size. But methods that are appropriate in many demographic and epidemiological contexts have been used in settings where they may not be justified and may well introduce spurious relations between variables. We suggest local regressions as a simple diagnostic and generalized additive models as a superior modeling strategy, with double-residualized regressions as a backup for certain cases.
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3.
What is field theory? LEVI MARTIN, John
The American journal of sociology,
07/2003, Volume:
109, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Field theory is a more or less coherent approach in the social sciences whose essence is the explanation of regularities in individual action by recourse to position vis-a-vis others. Position in the ...field indicates the potential for a force exerted on the person, but a force that impinges "from the inside" as opposed to external compulsion. Motivation is accordingly considered to be the paramount example of social structure in action, as opposed to a residue of chance or freedom. While field theory is often castigated for its necessarily tautological definition, this may be far more of an advantage than a defect. Field theory offers social scientists a combination of analytical insight and attention to the concrete; further, the implicit definition of "explanation" that it brings is one that, unlike conventional sociological definitions, is internally consistent and in accord with everyday usage. 49 References. (Original abstract - amended)
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4.
Theory at the edge of empire Martin, John Levi
International Sociology,
03/2022, Volume:
37, Issue:
2
Book Review, Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Reed’s intervention in theories of political power is considered, critiqued and continued: we may understand chains of authorization as stretching from sovereign to agent and back again, chains whose ...links may be called into question and repaired only via Goffmanian performance.
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Using a set of user-generated data, we examine patterns in the careers of professional chefs. We argue that this is one of many cases in which careers must be understood as shaped by dual ...structures—the typical occupational structure within a firm, and the organization of firms in a larger field. We then demonstrate how career trajectories may be formalized as movement through a two-dimensional space defined by status in these structures. Building on previous ethnographic work finding that chefs understand the logic of their careers as involving repeated trade-offs between their occupational status (their rank within the kitchen) and organizational status (the status of the restaurant at which they work), we attempt to determine how different trajectories are associated with different outcomes. We find that, despite the somewhat random nature of entrance into the culinary profession, future top-tier chefs disproportionately begin their careers at high-status restaurants. Beyond their auspicious beginnings, these top-chefs-to-be also commonly devote their early careers to maximizing organizational status, forgoing promotions to higher kitchen ranks in favor of low-level jobs at more prestigious restaurants. By comparison, chefs destined to run lower-status restaurants tend to spend their early careers prioritizing rapid advancement within the kitchen, only pursuing jobs at more prestigious restaurants much later in their careers, with limited success.
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There have been widespread concerns about two aspects of the current explosion of predictive text models and other algorithm-based computational tools. On one hand, it is often insisted that ...Artificial Intelligence (AI) should be made “ethical”, and software providers take this seriously, attempting to make sure that their tools are not used to facilitate grossly criminal or widely condemned activities. On the other hand, it is also widely understood that those who create these tools have a responsibility to ensure that they are “unbiased”, as opposed to simply helping one side in political contestation define their perspectives as reality for all. Unfortunately, these two goals cannot be jointly satisfied, as there are perhaps no ethical prescriptions worthy of notice that are not contested by some. Here I investigate the current ethico-political sensibility of ChatGPT, demonstrating that the very attempt to give it an ethical keel has also given it a measurably left position in the political space and a concomitant position in social space among the privileged.
Most attempts to examine the relation between networks and events begin with what we should question—that it invariably helps us to imagine that our units fall neatly into “events” that occupy ...distinct points in Cartesian time. I show that the core insights that inspired contemporary network analysis come from a structuralist conception which is both far more theoretically generative than the Cartesian vision and does less violence to the nature of the sorts of empirical material that we usually have before us.
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9.
See It with Figures Martin, John Levi
Contemporary Sociology,
11/2019, Volume:
48, Issue:
6
Journal Article, Book Review
Peer reviewed
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