Introduction We are at a curious impasse in explaining action in sociology. On the one hand, the limitations of various standard approaches based on teleological or rule-like notions such as norms, goals, and values are now very well-documented, to the point that further commentary on their inadequacies feels like beating …
In a recent article published online first in the Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, I attempt to sort out the (various) distinction(s) cultural analysts aim to track when they use the term implicit culture (and, by implication, explicit culture). The article is partly based on reflections developed previously in …
In a previous post I argued that the reasons why the concept of agency in sociological theory is “curiously abstract” has its roots in the ways theorists conceptualize the notion in particular usage episodes during theoretical argumentation. Particularly, conceptualizing agency as a substance (a “mass noun” like water or heat) …
Steve Vaisey’s 2009 American Journal of Sociology paper is, deservedly, one of the most (if not the most) influential pieces in contemporary work on culture and cognition in sociology. It is single-handedly responsible for the efflorescence of interest in the study of cognitive processes by sociologists in general, and more specifically …
In a previous post, Gordon Brett made a compelling argument for moving sociological work on dual-process cognition forward. In a nutshell, Gordon encouraged sociologists to begin to study structural and situational variation in the extent to which people rely on one cognitive mode (e.g., intuition, System I) versus the other …
The concept of agency has been central in sociological theory at least since Parsons’s (selective) systematization of the late-nineteenth European tradition of social theory around the problematic of “action” (Parsons, 1937). Yet, since the dissolution of the sociological functionalist synthesis in the mid-1970s, anglophone social theory has been characterized by …
Although having a history as old as the social and behavioral sciences (and for some, as old as philosophical reflections on the mind itself), dual-process models of cognition have been with us only for a bit over two decades, becoming established in cognitive and social psychology in the late 1990s …
In a recent paper published in American Sociological Review, Andrei Boutyline and Laura Soter bring much-needed conceptual clarification to the sociological appropriation of the notion of schemas while also providing valuable and welcome guidance on future uses of the concept for practical research purposes. The paper is a tour de force, and all of you should read it …
Clumppity-Clump Traditional approaches to the study of culture begin with “cultural clumps” and theorize from there. Like the devil, these clumps have been given many names throughout history. For instance, the unqualified use of the term “culture,” from Tylor’s famous definition onward, is usually meant to refer to such a …
In a previous post, we outlined the three critical mistakes sociologists make in theorizing about motivation. We referred to them as the mono-motivational, social-psychological, and list-making fallacies. In this post, we briefly summarize each fallacy. We follow with a more extended discussion on how recent interdisciplinary work in social, cognitive, …
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