The Logics of Social Structure
The Logics of Social Structure
In this book, the author proposes an interesting approach to the study of one of the most central concepts in social analysis, that of social structure. He provides a critique of the leading models and argues that each is inadequate to the task of explaining the complexity of structures that make up society and the processes by which these structures are formed and are interlinked. A conceptualization of the processes of societal formation is then presented, drawing on developments in the physical, biological and cognitive sciences. This conceptualization allows for the multiplicity of processes of structuration, which the author refers to as logics, some of which function at the individual or 'micro' level, others at the organizational or 'meso' level, and still others at the society-wide, or 'macro' level. The author terms this conceptualization a theory of heterarchy and it is a truly comprehensive theory of societal structuration.
- Original theory of the nature of societies - important topic in the social sciences
- Includes an analytical review of the vast literature of social structure
Reviews & endorsements
'Kontopoulos provides a wonderfully thorough and lucid platform from which to understand and interpret the many complex new developments in social theory.' Harrison White, Columbia University
Product details
November 2006Paperback
9780521032698
496 pages
229 × 152 × 28 mm
0.72kg
20 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I. Metatheoretical Considerations:
- 1. Epistemic strategies in contemporary science
- 2. The dynamics of emergence: the case against reductionism
- 3. The nature of hierarchical and heterarchical organization
- 4. Some formal theses on hierarchy and heterarchy
- Part II. Compositionist Logics:
- 5. Methodological individualism
- 6. Constructionism/compositionism: elementary notions
- 7. Complex systems of interaction
- Part III. Logics of Hierarchy:
- 8. Hierarchy theory and postfunctional analysis
- 9. The hierarchical theory of social structure
- Part IV. Heterarchical Logics:
- 10. Heterarchical thinking in social thought
- 11. Neural networks as a model of structure
- Part V. The Phenomenology of Social Structures:
- 12. Modalities and systems of interaction
- 13. Heterarchical levels of social structure
- 14. On structural totalities
- 15. In conclusion
- Appendix: the logics of structuration: an inventory
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index.
