Created Fri, Sep 8, 2017 § Last Modified Fri, Sep 8, 2017
What if Taeya and Peter obtained data from the Missionary Department to study variation in missionary mental health and ‘socialization processes’?
Created Tue, Jan 31, 2017 § Last Modified Tue, Jan 31, 2017
Prep for conversation with Toby and Pierre.
How often do entry terms that were previously distinct become synonyms? Preferred descriptor has multiple entry terms.
Descriptors that appear in multiple locations in the hierarchy. Are these granted more exposure?
Loss of eponyms?
Persistence of use of eponym?
References
Created Wed, Jan 18, 2017 § Last Modified Wed, Jan 18, 2017
Summary of “Situational Stratification: A Micro-Macro Theory of Inequality” by Randall Collins Retrieved through reading @bothhayn10:
“Collins’s (2000, pp. 29–33) conception of deference as inherently local and situational points to another predetermined limitation on the Matthew Effect. According to his theory, status accrual is particularly likely to occur in networks of individuals centered on a common base of specialized knowledge. Chances for growth in status are thus constrained by others’ inability to properly appreciate a (local) maven’s worth, and so high-status individuals are often confined to a finite base of focused admirers.
Created Fri, Sep 23, 2016 § Last Modified Fri, Sep 23, 2016
Introduction Fri, Sep 23, 2016 9:55 - I recently accessed Kieran Healy’s syllabus for his contemporary sociological theory course (see here) and have started an individual study course. The first session is on ‘functionalism and its discontents.’ This seems to be a bridge from courses in ‘classic’ sociological theory:
Last semester, you followed the more or less conventional sequence of “classical” socio- logical theorists through the long nineteenth century. You ended a generation later with Talcott Parsons’s effort to unify these thinkers into some sort of research program.
Created Wed, Aug 31, 2016 § Last Modified Wed, Aug 31, 2016
When an actor experiences a sudden gain in status — for example, when a scientist wins a Nobel Prize, or a film director wins an Oscar — what does this jump in status do to the fates of the winner’s many ‘neighbors’? Do non-winners bask in the reflected glory of the winner, and therefore rise with her? Or conversely, does competition for attention ensue, attenuating the recognition neighbors otherwise would have received?
Created Mon, Apr 25, 2016 § Last Modified Mon, Apr 25, 2016
Overview Reputation is typically defined as an “overall actor-level assessment” (p. 141) but often results in confounding with status, identity, celebrity. Instead, we define reputation as attribute-specific based on prior behavior and embed in social systems.
Problems with integrative definitions of reputation Vague, poor discrimination from other constructs What seems like a generalized reputation really is based on some attribute anyway (* Still to be explained: why some attribute-specific reputations dominate other attribute-specific reputations—what do audiences anchor on, and why?
Created Wed, Apr 20, 2016 § Last Modified Wed, Apr 20, 2016
Summary Interaction among sell-side securities analysts under-researched. Multipoint contact among sell-side securities analysts has not been studied.
Forecast accuracy is a direct point of competition, and information leadership is an indirect point. (Might information leadership be more highly related to star recognition?)
TO DO Retrieve key readings on mutual forbearance theory (???,(???),(???)) Learn more on information leadership (refs on p. 2) Questions Why would more information leadership in own sphere of influence be evidence of mutual forbearance?
Created Mon, Apr 4, 2016 § Last Modified Mon, Apr 4, 2016
TO DO: Incorporate in statspill See book here.
Competition is a subset of conflict.
“The foremost sociological characteristic of competition is the fact that conflict in it is indirect.”
“parallel efforts by both parties concerning the same prize”
S distinguishes between the subjective goal and objective result of competition. The prize competitors seek is in the hands of neither.
S focuses on competition where the only adversary in is the aim.
Created Mon, Apr 4, 2016 § Last Modified Mon, Apr 4, 2016
See book here.
How Is Society Possible? Kant on Nature:
Nature is the representation of nature: the way the mind organizes sense perceptions. The different sense perceptions cannot separately compose nature. They must be combined in the mind. Comparing nature and society “In the Kantian view (which we follow here), the unity of nature emerges in the observing subject exclusively; it is produced exclusively by him in the sense materials, and on the basis of sense materials, which are in themselves heterogeneous.
Created Sun, Dec 27, 2015 § Last Modified Sun, Dec 27, 2015
Summary When status depends on endorsements, non-stars will eventually attain the status of stars, but when endorsements don’t matter (no spillover effects), then stars monopolize status.
They distinguish between the Matthew Effect at the micro level (Merton 1968, 57–58) and the macro level (Merton 1968, 62). Micro level: high-status actors get more credit than low-status actors. Macro-level: the cumulative advantage enjoyed by high-status actors.
I don’t see much distinction between the two: is it that the micro level considers the individual comparison of one scholar to another, and the macro level is the aggregate effect for the high-status actor?