The Stages of Small Group Action
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 Posted in Concepts, The People, Group, Cadre Functions, Small Group, Focused Group | No Comments »For a short while I did group interviews for commercial firms trying to hone their advertising messages to consumers. I worked for two very bright psychologists, decent men making an independent living for themselves and their families. At the time ...
The Cadre-Group Nexus
Monday, October 29th, 2007 Posted in Group, Cadre, Cadre Functions | No Comments »The group does not act. It only exhibits the summary pattern of the actions of its member-agents. In some part this pattern follows intention, and this intention is in the planning, decision, mobilization, coordination, and evaluation that we ...
Cadre Down, Autonomous Group Up
Saturday, October 27th, 2007 Posted in Group, Cadre, Cadre Functions | No Comments »Consider the ubiquity of the cadre function. It includes all activities and processes that contribute to a group's unity in action. Can think of it as the forms of governance: (1) legislative: what to do and how to do ...
The Group’s Cadre Functions
Friday, October 26th, 2007 Posted in Group, Cadre, Cadre Functions | No Comments »Take soldiers marching. Their movements precisely synchronized to match. There are a limited number of established actions (left turn, about face, etc.). The sequencing of these is not fixed. So signals are needed to identify and coordinate ...
Varieties of Group
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 Posted in Concepts, Group, Converge-Disperse, Sociology of Group | No Comments »A togetherness, a sharing of a space (either physically or conceptually or both). A group. The key is identification so we can distinguish those who are in from those who are not. That is the start. This has to register ...
Corralling Charisma & Introducing the Neuz
Friday, October 19th, 2007 Posted in Social Invention, Reductionism, Charisma, Neuz | No Comments »Weber's charismatic threatens the sociological project with reductionism. It suggests that a social fact may have its source within another level of analysis, that the plural experience may be explained by a biologically based psychology and sociology reduced to an ...
Everything Else Equal. Reductionism Contained.
Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 Posted in Individual, Charismatic Leader | No Comments »The dramatic narrative so far: Max Weber introduces a human called charismatic leader who radically recreates culture and social organization from within himself. Sociology is threatened with reduction to an appendage of biology. We rally to the defense of sociology out ...
Sociological View of Reductionism
Friday, October 12th, 2007 Posted in Individual, Reductionism, Harry Houdini | 2 Comments »Triad of Hierarchical Stones on New England Beach. Locals claim it has been in place for 10 million years. (above) Old Line Journeyman Sociologist on the Way to His Lab. He still remembers seeing Talcott Parsons dance the ...
The Unanticipated Individual
Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 Posted in Concepts, Individual, Reductionism, Levels of Analysis | No Comments »Max Weber, the famous German sociologist, gave us the concept of charismatic leader--an individual who has freed himself from the bond of the established social consensus and asserted a new dispensation. His charm is considerable and those people ...
We the People
Thursday, October 4th, 2007 Posted in Concepts, The People, Social System | No Comments »But first a look at the social system. With the encounter we start small, two actors in relationship. The challenge is to build up one incident at a time, like the stacking of saucers at a French cafe, until the whole ...