Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Nouns and Verbs: Old and New Strategies for Sociology

  • Chapter
New Social Connections

Abstract

Ever since Durkheim’s (1895) famous adjuration to ‘treat social facts as things’, sociology has been most comfortable with the work of identifying, classifying, and analysing the ‘thing-like’ entities which it has defined as society and its components. The idea of ‘social structure’ attributed a thing-like solidity to the sociological object of study. The constant but sometimes unexpected concomitants or effects of ‘structures’ – their generation of unequal life-chances between classes, genders, or races, for example – gave sociology a significant explanatory power. Since structures could be empirically shown to have consequences for aggregates of individuals, as in the sequelae of social stratification, it was possible to hold to the idea that there were entities specific to sociology as a discipline, while also keeping at least one foot on the solid ground of methodological individualism.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Bibliography

  • Alexander, J., Giesen, B., Munch, R., and Smelser, N.J. (eds) (1992) The Macro-Micro Link. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, P. (1979) Considerations on Western Marxism. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bauman, Z. (1979) The Phenomenon of Norbert Elias. Sociology 13 (1): 117–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bauman, Z. (1987) Legislators and Interpreters: On Modernity, Post-Modernity, and Intellectuals. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bauman, Z. (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bauman, Z. (2000) Liquid Modernities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, P. (1988) Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, P. (1990) The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Byrne, D. (1998) Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Calhoun, C., Gerteis, G., Moody, J., and Pfaff, J. (2002) Contemporary Sociological Theory. Blackwell Readers in Sociology. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Castells, M. (1998) The Information Age: Economy Society and Culture, Volumes 1, 2

    Google Scholar 

  • Dawe, A. (1970)‘The two sociologies’, British Journal of Sociology 21(2): 207–18.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dawe, A. (1978) ‘Theories of social action’ in Bottomore, T. and Nisbet, R. (eds), A History of Sociological Analysis, London: Heinemann, pp. 362–417.

    Google Scholar 

  • Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1984) Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Athlone Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Desai, M. (2002) Marx’s Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Durkheim, E. (1895) The Rules of the Sociological Method. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1982.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elias, N. (1969) What is Sociology London: Hutchinson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elias, N. (2000) The Civilising Process, revised edition. Oxford: Blackwell (originally The History of Manners 1939/1978; State Formation and Civilisation 1939/2000).

    Google Scholar 

  • Elias, N. (2001) The Society of Individuals. London: Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elliott, A. (ed.) (1999) The Blackwell Reader in Contemporary Social Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Garfinkel, H. (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  • Garfinkel, H. (2002) Ethnomethodology’s Program: Working out Durkheim’s Aphorism. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gellner, E. (1985) The Psychoanalytic Movement. London: Paladin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gellner, E. (1995) Freud’s Social Contract, in Gellner, E. (ed.), Anthropology and Politics: Revolutions in the Sacred Grove. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giddens, A. (1981) A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giddens, A. (1984) The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Glass, D.V. (ed.) (1954) Social Mobility in Britain. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Halsey, A.H. (2004) A History of Sociology in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2000) Empire. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harré, R. (1986) Varieties of Realism. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harvey, D. (1990) The Condition ofPost-Modernity. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hogben, L. (1938) Political Arithmetic: A Symposium of Population Studies. New York: Macmillan Co.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, T.S. (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, T.S. (2000) The Road since Structure: Philosophical Essays 1970–1990 with an Autobiographical Interview, Conant, J. and Haugeland, J. (eds), London: University of Chicago.

    Google Scholar 

  • Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (2001) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, second rev. edition. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lash, S. and Urry, J. (1987) The End of Organised Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Latour, B. (1987) Science in Action. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lepenies, W. (1988) Between Literature and Science: The Rise ofSociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Luhmann, N. (1985) Social Systems. Stanford: Stanford California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mann, M. (1986) The Sources of Social Power, Volume 1. A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Mann, M. (1993) The Sources of Social Power, Volume 2. Rises of Classes and Nation States, 1760–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maturana, H.J.R. and Varela, F.J. (1980) Autopoeisis and Cognition: The Realisation of the Living. Dordrecht: Reidel.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Matza, D. (1970) Delinquency and Drift. New York: John Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nisbet, R.A. (1967) The Sociological Tradition. London: Heinemann.

    Google Scholar 

  • Power, M. (1994) The Audit Explosion. London: Demos.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ritzer, G. (2007) Sociological Theory, seventh edition. New York: McGraw Hill. Ritzer, G. and Smart, B. (eds) Handbook of Social Theory. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Runciman, W.G. (1983) A Treatise on Social Theory, Volume 1: The Methodology of Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Runciman, W.G. (1987) A Treatise on Social Theory, Volume 2: Substantive Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Runciman, W.G. (1997) A Treatise on Social Theory, Volume 3: Applied Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Runciman, W.G. (2000) ‘Can there be a Nietzschean Sociology?’ Archives Européennes de Sociologie 40 (1): 3–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rustin, M.J. (2003)‘LookingintheRightPlace: ComplexityTheory, Psychoanalysis and Infant Observation’, International Journal of Infant Observation 5(1), 2002 (Spring): 122–44.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rustin, M.J. (2004) ‘Rethinking Audit and Inspection’, Soundings 26, Spring: 86–107.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rutter, M., Maughan, B., Mortimore, P., and Ouston, J. (1979) Fifteen Thousand Hours: Secondary Schools and their effects on Children. London: Open Book Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sheller, M. and Urry, J. (2004). Tourist Mobilities: Places to Stay, Places in Play. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stengers, I. (2000) The Invention of Modern Science. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Strathern, M. (ed.) (2000) Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Therborn, G. (1976) Science, Class and Society. London: New Left Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Therborn, G. (2008) From Marxism to Post-Marxism. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Urry, J. (2000) Sociology beyond Societies. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Urry, J. (2002) The Tourist Gaze. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Urry, J. (2003) Global Complexities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walby, S. (2009) Globalization and Inequalities: Complexity and Contested Modernities. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, R. (1958) Culture and Society. London: Chatto and Windus.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Michael Rustin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Wolverhampton, UK

    Judith Burnett

  2. University of East London, UK

    Syd Jeffers  & Graham Thomas  & 

Copyright information

© 2010 Michael Rustin

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Rustin, M. (2010). Nouns and Verbs: Old and New Strategies for Sociology. In: Burnett, J., Jeffers, S., Thomas, G. (eds) New Social Connections. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230274877_3

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation