I was trained as a philosopher and have been a professor of philosophy for more than three decades. Beginning with Plato, I have been persuaded that reason is powerful. I am also a social theorist and have published scholarly books on Max Weber, Ferdinand Tönnies, and Raymond Aron. Yet Pareto’s writings have convinced me that people are most often motivated by interests and passions and then use reasons to justify their behavior. Plato showed people as they ought to be; Pareto showed them as they are. Philosophy is important, but so is Pareto’s social psychology.
In Pareto on Policy, Warren Samuels attempted to provide a detailed commentary on Pareto’s Treatise on General Sociology or in the English language translation Mind and Society.
Samuel’s chapters all contain the term “policy” but the chapters themselves are focused on knowledge, power, freedom, control, and change. Samuel’sPareto on Policy is the best commentary on Pareto’s magnum opus that I know.
Warren Samuels interprets Vilfredo Pareto's Treatise on General Sociology in terms of a general equilibrium model of policy. Three themes and one conviction run throughout the study. The first is a model of policy making involving three sets of variables: power, knowledge, and psychology. The second is a general equilibrium approach to the study of these variables emphasizing their fundamental interdependence. The third is the importance of Pareto's work.
Pareto is one of the few individuals whose work has had enormous influence in at least three social sciences in the twentieth century: economics, sociology, and political science. Despite Pareto's attempt…
I’m fascinated by systems of thought and very interested in understanding how we can improve our ability to create a better society for all. I think the past makes a good laboratory for investigating these kinds of questions. I got interested in early modern economic theory while researching the English East India Company for my dissertation in the sociology department of Columbia University, which was a great place for historical and computational sociology. I now teach economic sociology and theory as a professor at Yale University, another institution with amazing strengths in history, data science, and computational methods.
This is a serious scholarly investigation of the origin and eventual triumph of the efficient market hypothesis. Polillo is very smart and the theoretical sophistication high. It combines a thorough history with some extremely interesting ideas about thought, culture, and social processes fleshed out with several different methods of analysis and interpretation.
The Ascent of Market Efficiency weaves together historical narrative and quantitative bibliometric data to detail the path financial economists took in order to form one of the central theories of financial economics-the influential efficient-market hypothesis-which states that the behavior of financial markets is unpredictable.
As the notorious quip goes, a blindfolded monkey would do better than a group of experts in selecting a portfolio of securities, simply by throwing darts at the financial pages of a newspaper. How did such a hypothesis come to be so influential in the field of financial economics? How did financial economists turn a lack…
I am a Regents Professor of Psychology at the University of Arizona. Ever since I was a child growing up in the South Bronx, I have been interested in why people are so driven to believe they are right and good, and why there is so much prejudice in the world. This has led to me to a lifelong exploration of the basic motivations that guide people’s actions, and how these motivations influence how people view themselves and others, and the goals they pursue.
This is to me is the best book ever written for understanding what human beings are, how we are similar to and different from other animal species, how we develop from helpless newborns to fully functioning adults, and what we are striving for in our lives. Most nonfiction books make a point and then repeat it over and over with examples and anecdotes. In contrast, The Birth and Death of Meaning begins with evolution and progresses logically from its first page to its last. When you finish this book, you will have a much better understanding of yourself, the people in your life, historical and current events, and problems ranging from anxiety and depression to interpersonal conflict to prejudice.
I know all too well that finding a diagnosis and treating a chronic health condition can be like unraveling a mystery—maybe that’s why characters dealing with these issues make natural detectives. As a mystery writer with chronic illness, I love reading about sleuths who embody the difficulties of living with health challenges yet show the tremendous capacity we still have to contribute. Many of the sleuths on this list are confined to their homes and unable to work, so solving a mystery not only adds suspense. It gives us the satisfaction of seeing these characters find their way back into the world and rediscover their sense of purpose.
No mystery I’ve read has better captured how a chronic condition can redefine your sense of self better than The Black Hour.
This book hooked me on the first page, where we are introduced to Amelia, a sociology professor who is returning to work after being shot by a student the previous year. We witness her struggling to walk up a hill she used to climb without a second thought, and now it’s Mount Everest. She’s simultaneously vulnerable, determined, defiant, and just plain in pain.
Having a chronic illness myself, what makes this book resonate with me is the way Amelia constantly compares her post-injury self to her pre-injury self and must come to terms with the distance between those two versions.
For Chicago sociology professor Amelia Emmet, violence was a research topic--until a student she'd never met shot her. He also shot himself. Now he's dead and she's back on campus, trying to keep up with her class schedule, a growing problem with painkillers, and a question she can't let go: Why? All she wants is for life to get back to normal, but normal is looking hard to come by. She's thirty-eight and hobbles with a cane. Her first student interaction ends in tears (hers). Her fellow faculty members seem uncomfortable with her, and her ex--whom she may or may…
I am a historian and economist who is fascinated by the intersection of the economy and culture. This started for me with the idea that economic ideas were shaped by the cultural context in which they emerged, which resulted in my book on the Viennese Students. Over time it has expanded to an interest for the markets for the arts from music to the visual arts, as well as the way in which culture and morality influence economic dynamism. Economics and the humanities are frequently believed to be at odds with each other, but I hope to inspire a meaningful conversation between them.
Mainstream economic accounts of culture are prone to treat culture as a set of norms or informal institutions which constrain economic behavior: ‘don’t charge interest,’ ‘don’t sell kidneys,’ or ‘always tip at a bar’. Storr presents an alternative account of culture as the animating spirit of an economy, which he illustrates through various entrepreneurial spirits which shape the direction of an economy. This book is the perfect combination of serious anthropological theory (Geertz) and an appreciation of the market process. Culture is not that which obstructs market, but that what brings economies to life.
How does culture impact economic life? Is culture like a ball and chain that actors must lug around as they pursue their material interests? Or, is culture like a tool-kit from which entrepreneurs can draw resources to aid them in their efforts? Or, is being immersed in a culture like wearing a pair of blinders? Or, is culture like wearing a pair of glasses with tinted lenses? Understanding the Culture of Markets explores how culture shapes economic activity and describes how social scientists (especially economists) should incorporate considerations of culture into their analysis.
Although most social scientists recognize that culture…
I’ve been writing about birth for decades – how it became a medical process, managed by a surgical specialty in a factory-like setting. I’ve worked with contemporary midwives who are trying to reclaim birth, to move it back home, back to physiological and loving care. And over and over again, I see the similarities to the other gate of life – how death and dying also left home and went into the hospital, where people die, as they birth, pretty much alone – with perhaps a ‘visitor’ allowed. Covid made it worse – but in birth and death, it allowed the hospitals to return to what medicine considered essential: medical procedures, not human connections.
Sudnow is maybe the most-assigned book I use in teaching. I start every medical sociology course with Sudnow – if you can get students to understand that death itself is not just “real” and self-evident but socially constructed, then you can calm them down enough to listen to how birth or cancer or Attention Deficit Disorder is socially constructed. This short book – just 176 pages – was based on Sudnow’s dissertation (thus also good to share with anyone struggling through writing a dissertation!) The short message is that ‘social value’ affected attempts to revive people, to rescue them from death. The longer message is taking what I call the ‘watchwords of my faith’ as a sociologist, that ‘situations defined as real are real in their consequences,’ and putting them to work.
We can’t credit Sudnow with starting the Sociology of Death as an area but for me, he solidified…
I write about pop culture and women’s history, often as it relates to the body and beauty. I’m intrigued by the ways women claim unconventional means of expression for their own beautification (such as tattooing) and how they harness beauty in the service of social and economic mobility (as in pageant culture). These books offer insight into the varied ways pageantry, from campus pageants to the Miss America stage, inform American identity and ratify the historian Rosalyn Baxandall’s belief that “every day in a woman’s life is a walking Miss America contest.”
A history of campus pageants going back to the 1920s,Queens of Academeconsiders not only their “calibrations of class and femininity,” but also their racial and (overwhelmingly Christian) religious underpinnings. Tice chronicles how campus competitions (many of which are feeder pageants for Miss America) allayed fears that educated women would renounce home and hearth, and traces the ways they’ve evolved to reflect social progress. Two chapters—“We are Here: Pageants as Racial ‘Homeplaces’ and Ethnic Combat Zones” and “Flesh and Spirit: Bibles, Beauty and Bikinis”—examine neglected aspects of pageant scholarship, showing how Black swimsuit contestants faced a unique challenge in deflecting the pernicious Jezebel trope by proving their worth through demonstrations of etiquette, grooming, and racial progress. Even male contestants swagger through these pages—including a Mr. Harvard hopeful who competed in see-through tape and rose-petal pasties.
Universities are unlikely venues for grading, branding, and marketing beauty, bodies, poise, and style. Nonetheless, thousands of college women have sought not only college diplomas but campus beauty titles and tiaras throughout the twentieth century. The cultural power of beauty pageants continues today as campus beauty pageants, especially racial and ethnic pageants and pageants for men, have soared in popularity.
In Queens of Academe, Karen W. Tice asks how, and why, does higher education remain in the beauty and body business and with what effects on student bodies and identities. She explores why students compete in and attend pageants such…
I am currently a Professor of Sociology at George Mason University, a Research I Institution, and have now published 9 books. Until I wrote the book Christianity and Sociological Theory, I was a traditional sociologist, one who abided by the tenet of the discipline to profess neutrality in one’s scholarly work. My book, The Not So Outrageous Idea of a Christian Sociology, is not only my most controversial book, given its criticism of contemporary sociology, but also my most personal book.
This book presents an alternative history of sociological theory. Sociological theory is usually seen as either emerging from the British and French philosophers of the 18th century or from the writings in the 19th century of Auguste Comte, generally considered to be the “father of sociology.” Beginning with the 12th century Scholastics, the influence of Christianity on science and social theory is discussed, and its influence is carried through today.
This book is so important to me because it represented the first time in print that I had declared I was a practicing Christian, something that is usually not done in sociology, which is one of the most, if not the most, secular of all the social sciences.
This book offers a history of sociological theory from a Christian perspective, tracing the origins of sociology from the beginnings of Western science as introduced by the Scholastics of the twelfth century, which, when combined with their emphasis on rationality, led to the Enlightenment "science of man"-an emphasis that eventually resulted in sociology, which combined empiricism and a Christian moral philosophy. With chapters focusing on the Scholastics, the Enlightenment, the rise of sociology in France, Germany, and the United States, and the legacy of Positivism, Christianity and Sociological Theory shows how the emphasis on moral philosophy was eventually lost as…
My own experience on Facebook piqued my interest in digital photography and social media. My emotional response to what I saw there ran the gamut from super anxious or angry to happy and even optimistic. As a scholar of religion with some expertise in traditional media and photography, I wanted to know why and how so I could respond better. I turned to experts in these new technologies – particularly those who write good books aimed at curious people, not just their peers! – for help. I learned a lot from these books and I’m confident you will, too!
I rarely think about why I see what I see online. Yes, I know algorithms had something to do with it, but they’re just algebra on steroids, right? Well, not so fast!
This book opened my eyes to how and why bias – in this case, racial bias – shows up online and what we can do about it. I learned a lot about the intricate connections between our online lives and our real ones.
A revealing look at how negative biases against women of color are embedded in search engine results and algorithms
Run a Google search for "black girls"-what will you find? "Big Booty" and other sexually explicit terms are likely to come up as top search terms. But, if you type in "white girls," the results are radically different. The suggested porn sites and un-moderated discussions about "why black women are so sassy" or "why black women are so angry" presents a disturbing portrait of black womanhood in modern society.
In Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Umoja Noble challenges the idea that search…
Life well-being has many domains beyond finances, including family, friends, health, work, education, religion, and more. I know that financial well-being is necessary for life well being but it is not sufficient. Our older daughter lives with bipolar illness. Our life well-being was decimated years ago when my daughter’s illness was diagnosed. But we’ve learned to alleviate well-being injuries in one domain from well-being medicine from the same domain and from other domains. Our younger daughter loves her sister and cares for her, and our ample finances domain lets us support our older daughter without constraining our own budget.
Viviana Zelizer’s book told me the fascinating story of the cultural transition from a time when children provide to parents mostly financial well-being to a time when children provide only life well-being.
In the 18th century, in America, parents welcomed the arrival of their children mostly as workers when children were young and as security when parents were old. By the mid-19th century, however, parents of the urban elite welcomed their children mostly for their life well-being benefits in love, smiles, and successes that make parents proud.
Children, in Zelizer’s language, became ‘sacralized,’ economically worthless but emotionally priceless. By the early 20th century, working-class and poor parents joined elite parents in sacralizing their children.
