Modeling society with statistical mechanics: an application to cultural contact and immigration

We introduce a general modeling framework to predict the outcomes, at the population level, of individual psychology and behavior. The framework prescribes that researchers build a cost function that embodies knowledge of what trait values (opinions, behaviors, etc.) are favored by individual interactions under given social conditions. Predictions at the population level are then drawn using methods from statistical mechanics, a branch of theoretical physics born to link the microscopic and macroscopic behavior of physical systems. We demonstrate our approach building a model of cultural contact between two cultures (e.g., immigration), showing that it is possible to make predictions about how contact changes the two cultures.     

社会新形势下加强公安队伍建设探讨

在新的时代背景下,加强公安系统队伍建设存在一定的难度,应该与时俱进,针对具体问题作出正确判断,将矛盾问题处理解决。建设好公安队伍,从源头上保证社会和谐,并向正确方向发展。     

The fiscal sociology of Gino Borgatta: Pareto, extra-economic redistribution and economic growth

The purpose of this study is to establish the extent to whichBorgatta's early fiscal sociology is consistent with, and differentfrom, Vilfredo Pareto's critical views on fiscal theory. Particularemphasis is given to the treatment of the relationship between‘extra-economic’ redistribution, achieved throughfiscal measures, and economic growth. Since evidence of Pareto'sinfluence is much weaker in Borgatta's more mature studies,the ‘definitive’ Paretian fiscal sociology thatemerged in his early ‘Lo Studio Scientifico dei FenomeniFinanziari’ is investigated for possible indications ofwhy Borgatta did not subsequently develop fiscal studies furtheralong Paretian lines.     

Structural constraints on organizational change: A longitudinal analysis

The results of a longitudinal study assessing the impact of internal constraints upon both organizational responsiveness to the environment and efforts to change structures for symbolic signaling of policy are presented. The causal model used is developed from a theoretical elaboration of Williamson, Thompson, and Meyer. The implications of the analysis for the signaling metaphor of organizational change are emphasized. The data indicate (i) that the varying resistance to change observed within core dimensions of organizational structure may be largely due to durable capital investments, (ii) that within capitalized dimensions of organizational structure, the resulting resistance to change leads to a longitudinal persistence of centralized decision making, and (iii) that failure to incorporate such constraints in analyses of organizational change leads to misleading results.     

科学社会学理论视角下科技社团治理有效性评价与检验

以治理目标为导向的结果有效作为评价重点，依照科学社会学中的科学二分法理论，结合典型文献构建具体评价指标体系，并对其进行检验与实证分析。主要结论如下：第一，科技社团治理目标的实现程度正向显著影响组织社会影响力与满意度水平；第二，当前我国科技社团总体治理有效性水平处于起步阶段，科技传播能力较强，但科技服务能力明显偏弱，且学会之间存在分化现象。其中，医科类较好，交叉学科则表现欠佳；第三，我国科技社团治理改革内在驱动力不足，政策效用与行政干预现象较明显。事实上，行政干预力量最弱的科技社团，其治理有效性水平反而最高。当前，治理转型的突破口集中在挂靠到事业单位的科技社团。     

Self-quantification and the datapreneurial consumer identity

ABSTRACT

This study delivers a clearer understanding of the constitution of the datapreneurial consumer, the role of the market in that construction, and the implications for consumer identity projects in the age of Big Data and an increasingly data- and surveillance-driven society. The study uses a theoretical framework of the “quantified self” (QS) to examine consumers (re)building creditworthiness. In the context of a major online credit-user forum, it employs creative-nonfiction methodology to protect forum-member privacy. To the literature on creditworthiness, the study contributes a process model of the construction of the datapreneurial credit consumer identity. To the QS literature, it offers insight into how consumers may embrace quantification and self-tracking, even in areas where they are nudged or pushed into it. To the sociology of quantification literature, it adds empirics to explain how consumers may embrace market-provided self-quantification resources in attempts to liberate themselves from the structural control of that very quantification.     

Beyond the Life Cycle. II. An Illustration

In the preceding article, Chris DeBresson and Joseph Lampel propose a new, nonlinear view of technological evolution. In this article, they use their new model to take us through the changes in one firm over a period of more than 50 years. Their model emerges as less constraining in strategic options than in the traditional view, and richer in its representation of technological change.     

Conference Announcement

This paper presents a case study of a landslide that devastated a small rural community in the redwoods of northern California. This seemingly mundane event is used to explore several insights offered by recent literature on environmental risk, and illustrate the extent to which our reliance on modern, technologically complex industrial systems as the basis for risk scholarship may limit our understanding of the role of environmental risk in society. This landslide, and the political upheaval that followed it, point to the need for more rigorous sociological analysis of how hazards , rather than risks, are legitimated in political discourse through a process called 'normalization'; and of the complex of organizational structures of causation that encourage the development of risky situations, not only in modern technological systems, but in systems of society-environment interaction with a much longer history, such as the extraction and management of timber.     

The City as Experiential Space: The Production of Shared Meaning

Cities obviously differ from each other. Sociologically, this difference becomes significant when your aim is to ascertain the influence of local factors in a globalizing world or to understand processes of societal differentiation. To do so, scholars in the areas of urban and regional sociology, community research and local policy can turn to a number of theoretical and empirical studies on cities, municipalities, or, less specifically, the local setting as societally formative units that resist global influences. In this article I continue to ask how cities socialize in a way that allows shared experience to emerge in communities. Grounded in the sociology of knowledge shaped by German thinkers such as Max Weber, Alfred Schütz, Karl Mannheim, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, my aim is to illustrate that specific stocks of knowledge based on habitualized experience arise in every city. Intrinsic logic captures the hidden structures of cities as locally well‐established, operative processes of sense‐making along with their physical, material manifestations.