Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T15:44:22.816Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - Tasks for the Political Sociology of the Next Ten Years

from I - Theories of Political Sociology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2020

By
John Levi Martin  and
Nick Judd
Edited by
Thomas Janoski ,
Cedric de Leon ,
Joya Misra  and
Isaac William Martin
Thomas Janoski
Affiliation:
University of Kentucky
Cedric de Leon
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Joya Misra
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Isaac William Martin
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
Get access

Summary

We here make some suggestions as to how a specifically sociological approach to politics can build upon the course corrections recently made in political and historical sociology, as well as in the theory of action and of social structures. We argue that late-twentieth-century political sociology was led in several directions that were unprofitable. First, this political sociology was characterized by a disproportionate (and largely disappointing) focus on large-scale transitions, like revolutions, or other significant outcomes, at the expense of the examination of regularities in conventional political process. Second, the sociology that did treat everyday, lay, political behavior tended to embrace a notion of action that confused the reasons people gave for their choices with the predictors of their actions. Third, there was relatively little attention to the sociology of political elites as members of face-to-face groups with their own imperatives and organizational principles.

Keywords

theory of social actionfieldspolitical powermasselitemappingshapingideologymodernization political parties
Type
Chapter
Information
The New Handbook of Political Sociology , pp. 243 - 266
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, Julia. 2005. The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. 1969. On Violence. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.Google Scholar
Aristotle, . 1998. Politics. Translated by C. D. C. Reeve. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.Google Scholar
Baldassarri, Delia. 2012. The Simple Art of Voting: The Cognitive Shortcuts of Italian Voters. 1st ed. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bergson, Henri. 1911. Creative Evolution. Translated by Arthur Mitchell. New York: Henry Holt and Company.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1996 [1992]. The Rules of Art. Translated by Susan Emanuel. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1998 [1989]. The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power. Translated by Clough, Lauretta C.. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Breiger, Ronald L. 2000. “A Tool Kit for Practice Theory.” Poetics 27(2)–3: 91–115.Google Scholar
Burstein, Paul. 1981. “The Sociology of Democratic Politics and Government.” Annual Review of Sociology 7: 291–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burstein, Paul. 1998. “Bringing the Public Back In: Should Sociologists Consider the Impact of Public Opinion on Public Policy?” Social Forces 77: 27.Google Scholar
Chhibber, Pradeep and Kollman, Ken. 2004. The Formation of National Party Systems. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Clemens, Elisabeth S. 2016. What Is Political Sociology? Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper.Google Scholar
Duverger, Maurice. 1963 [1954]. Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State. New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Edgeworth, Francis Ysidro. 1881. Mathematical Psychics: An Essay on the Application of Mathematics to the Moral Sciences. London: C. Kegan Paul and Company.Google Scholar
Ermakoff, Ivan. 2008. Ruling Oneself Out. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Evans, Peter and Rauch, James E.. 1999. “Bureaucracy and Growth: A Cross-National Analysis of the Effects of ‘Weberian’ State Structures on Economic Growth.” American Sociological Review 64(5): 748–765.Google Scholar
Evans, Peter, Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, and Skocpol, Theda (eds.). 1985. Bringing the State Back In. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fleck, Ludwig. 1979 [1935]. Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Translated by Fred Bradley and Thaddeus J. Trenn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Fligstein, Neil. 2001. “Social Skill and the Theory of Fields.” Sociological Theory 19: 105–125.Google Scholar
Fligstein, Neil and Douglas, McAdam. 2012. A Theory of Fields. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Go, Julian. 2013. “Introduction: Entangling Postcoloniality and Sociological Thought.” Political Power and Social Theory 24: 3–31.Google Scholar
Hechter, Michael. 2000. Containing Nationalism. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hedström, Peter. 2005. Dissecting the Social: On the Principles of Analytical Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas. 1909 [1651]. Leviathan. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Lau, Richard R. and Redlawsk, David P.. 1997. “Voting Correctly.” American Political Science Review 91: 585–598.Google Scholar
Lau, Richard R. and Redlawsk, David P.. 2001. “Advantages and Disadvantages of Cognitive Heuristics in Political Decision Making.” American Journal of Political Science 45(4): 951. DOI:10.2307/2669334CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laumann, Edward O. and Knoke, David. 1987. The Organizational State: Social Choice in National Policy Domains. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Leschziner, Vanina. 2016. At the Chef’s Table. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Lieberson, Stanley. 1991. “Small N’s and Big Conclusions: An Examination of the Reasoning in Comparative Studies Based on a Small Number of Cases.” Social Forces 71 :307–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipset, Seymour Martin and Rokkan, Stein. 1967. Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Luhmann, Niklas. 2000. Die Politik der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolò. 1998. The Prince. Translated by Harvey C. Mansfield. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Martin, John Levi. 2009. Social Structures. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, John Levi. 2011. The Explanation of Social Action. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, John Levi. 2014. Thinking Through Theory. New York: W. W. Norton.Google ScholarPubMed
Martin, John Levi and Desmond, Matthew. 2010. “Political Position and Social Knowledge.” Sociological Forum 25: 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, John Levi and Merriman, Ben. 2015. “A Social Aesthetics as a General Cultural Sociology?” pp. 132–148 in Hanquinet, Laurie and Savage, Mike (eds.) International Handbook of the Sociology of Art and Culture. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Martin, John Levi and Merriman, Ben. 2017. “Field Theory and the Assumption of Autonomy.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Chicago. August 12–15.Google Scholar
Marwell, Gerald. 1967. “Party, Region and the Dimensions of Conflict in the House of Representatives, 1949–1954.” American Political Science Review 61: 380–399.Google Scholar
McAdam, Doug and Tarrow, Sidney. 2010. “Ballots and Barricades: On the Reciprocal Relationship between Elections and Social Movements.” Perspectives on Politics 8(2): 529–542.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAdam, Doug and Tarrow, Sidney. 2011. “Introduction: Dynamics of Contention Ten Years On.” Mobilization: An International Quarterly 16(1): 1–10.Google Scholar
Meinong, Alexius. 1894. Psychologische-Ethische Untersuchungen zur Wert-Theorie. Graz: Leuschner and Lubensky.Google Scholar
Mettler, Suzanne. 2011. The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mills, C. Wright. 1940. “Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive.” American Sociological Review 5: 904–931.Google Scholar
Odling-Smee, John, Laland, Kevin, and Feldman, Marcus. 2003. Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ojeda, Christopher and Hatemi, Peter K.. 2015. “Accounting for the Child in the Transmission of Party Identification.” American Sociological Review 80(6): 1150–1174.Google Scholar
Padgett, John. 1990. “Mobility as Control: Congressmen through Committees” pp. 27–58 in Breiger, Ronald L. (ed.) Social Mobility and Social Structure. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Redlawsk, David P., Civettini, Andrew J. W., and Emmerson, Karen M.. 2010. “The Affective Tipping Point: Do Motivated Reasoners Ever ‘Get It’?” Political Psychology 31: 563–593.Google Scholar
Rule, Nicholas O. and Ambady, Nalini. 2010. “Democrats and Republicans Can Be Differentiated from Their Faces.” PLOS ONE 5(1): e8733. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0008733Google Scholar
Sartori, Giovanni. 1976. Parties and Party Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1956. Being and Nothingness. Translated by Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library.Google Scholar
Schmitt, Carl. 2008 [1932]. The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Simmel, Georg. 1950 [1923]. Soziologie, 3rd ed., pp. 87–408 in The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Translated and edited by Kurt H. Wolff. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
Steinmetz, George. 2008. “The Colonial State as a Social Field.” American Sociological Review 73: 589–612.Google Scholar
Strand, Michael and Lizardo, Omar. 2017. “The Hysteresis Effect: Theorizing Mismatch in Action.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 47(2): 164–194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, Stephen P. 2018. Cognitive Science and the Social. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
von Clausewitz, Karl. 1968 [1832]. On War. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Walder, Andrew G. 2009. “Political Sociology and Social Movements.” Annual Review of Sociology 35(1): 393–412.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1946 [1918]. “Politics as a Vocation” pp. 77–128 in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Translated and edited by Gerth, Hans H. and Wright Mills, C.. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1949 [1917]. “The Meaning of ‘Ethical Neutrality’ in Sociology and Economics” pp. 1–47 in The Methodology of the Social Sciences. Translated and edited by Shils, Edward A. and Finch, Henry A.. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society, 2 volumes. Edited by Roth, Guenther and Wittich, Claus. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Weeden, Kim A. and Grusky, David B.. 2005. “The Case for a New Class Map.” American Journal of Sociology 111(1): 141–212.Google Scholar
Wright, Rachel A. and Boudet, Hilary Schaffer. 2012. “To Act or Not to Act: Context, Capability, and Community Response to Environmental Risk.” American Journal of Sociology 118: 728–777.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×