Benign Mass Movement Ready to Go
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 Posted in Concepts, Cadre, Cadre Functions, Global Warming, Mass Movements | No Comments »Mass movement: The parallel acceptance of a concept by numerous persons as a basis for action. For example: (1) When we link tobacco with cancer we give up tobacco. (2) A military attack on a city and ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Variations on the Spectator-Player Relationship. Part III
Saturday, September 29th, 2007 Posted in Concepts, Encounter, Asymmetrical Relationship | No Comments »Come on in. Expect to be startled and provoked. You have started down a yellow brick road to brains, brawn and love. Oz or bust. We've been on our way for several weeks, a rag-tag band of, as far as I ...
More on the Encounter/Unit Act. Part II
Saturday, September 22nd, 2007 Posted in Concepts, Unit Act | No Comments »The match of the professional sports encounter and the model (the unit act) that describes it is wonderfully close. The rules are recorded in an official manual. The informal lore of the game is widely, if unevenly, dispersed. Large ...
Unit Act. Sociology Describes the Encounter. Part I
Thursday, September 20th, 2007 Posted in Concepts, Unit Act | No Comments »I got the unit act from Talcott Parsons. Not directly but through his book "The Structure of Social Action." Spending his youth (in the 1920s) in scholarly study in Europe (for that is where Americans went then to ...
The End of Second Hand. Part IV
Friday, September 14th, 2007 Posted in Analysis, Concepts, Second Hand | No Comments »Material goods are easy. The user queue describes the experience of a large array of them, from the ephemeral to the durable. They all fit the same abstract model. The distinctions: producers from consumers, sale from gift, public from private, useful ...
Another Round of Palaver About Second Hand. Part III
Monday, September 10th, 2007 Posted in Analysis, Concepts, Second Hand | No Comments »Watch the leaving out. In emphasizing consumption we omit the obviously critical producing side. The search for the social pattern of using up is balanced by a social pattern in the making. While conceptually separate ...