Stratification and Organization: Selected Papers(Studies in Rationality and Social Change)

The essays in this collection, on stratification, organization and the discipline of sociology, all bear upon a general theoretical question: what models of rationality are necessary or suitable to explain individual and collective action in institutional contexts? Professor Stinchcombe was one of the first sociologists to write on this question; and this collection includes a new essay which takes account of recent work done in the tradition Stinchcombe did much to institute. The first group of essays - on class, stratification and mobility - addresses core problems of the discipline and offers imaginative conceptualizations with interesting empirical consequences. The second section - essays on the sociology of organizations - displays, like the first, Stinchcombe's wide knowledge of sociological traditions from structuralism to Marxism. The final section, 'comments on the discipline', deepens the readers understanding of sociological theorizing by presenting different modes of analysis of universities and research institutions and providing challenging, and often funny, insights into the subject.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; 1. Rationality and social structure: an introduction; Part I. Stratification: 2. Agricultural enterprise and rural class relations; 3. Some empirical consequences of the Davis–Moore theory of stratification; 4. Interdependence and inequality: a specification of the Davis–Moore theory; 5. Marxist theories of power and empirical research; 6. Social mobility in industrial labor markets; 7. The sociology of ethnic loyalties; 8. The deep structure of moral categories, eighteenth-century French stratification and the Revolution; Part II. Organizations: 9. Bureaucratic and craft administration of production: a comparative study; 10. Social structure and the founding of organizations; 11. On social factors in administrative organization; 12. Norms of exchange; Part III. Sociology as a Profession: 13. On getting 'hung up' and other assorted illnesses; 14. Review of Max Weber's Economy and Society; 15. Merton's theory of social structure; 16. A structural analysis of sociology; 17. The mathematical biology of survey research centres; 18. On journal editing as a probabilistic process; 19. Should sociologists forget their mothers and fathers?; Bibliography; Name and place-name index; Subject index.

Review :
' … when sound, no one sounder! And how interesting always!' Theory and Society