The General Sociology of Harrison C. White: Chaos and Order in Networks PDF
Preview The General Sociology of Harrison C. White: Chaos and Order in Networks
The General Sociology of Harrison C. White The General Sociology of Harrison C. White Chaos and Order in Networks G. Reza Azarian © G.Reza Azarian 2005 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-1-4039-4434-4 All rights reserved.No reproduction,copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced,copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988,or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,90 Tottenham Court Road,London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in 2005 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills,Basingstoke,Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue,New York,N.Y.10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St.Martin’s Press,LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States,United Kingdom and other countries.Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-52247-7 ISBN 978-0-230-59671-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230596719 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Azarian,G.Reza,1960– The general sociology of Harrison C.White :chaos and order in networks / G.Reza Azarian. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-349-52247-7 1.Social networks.2.Sociology.3.White,Harrison C.I.Title. HM741.A93 2005 302.4—dc22 2005044354 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 For Nadja Contents Foreword by Randall Collins ix Acknowledgments xvii 1 Introduction 1 2 Return to Empirical Social Reality 13 White as an empirical sociologist 13 Search for general social logics 20 Networks as analytical tool 25 White’s mobility studies 27 3 Ties and Networks 35 Social networks as theoretical paradigm 35 Social ties 37 Dynamics of ties 44 Story 51 A new image of contemporary social contexts 53 4 Control and Identity 59 Embedded in multiple networks 59 Control 64 Modes of control 69 Control and agency 76 Identity 79 5 Structures and Disciplines 83 Structural analysis 83 Structural equivalence 88 Comparability 97 Disciplines 100 vii viii Contents 6 A General Assessment 108 Quest for the real 110 Misleading ontological constructs 113 Real social forces 118 Some critical remarks 121 Appendix 135 Notes 151 References 153 Bibliography of Harrison C. White’s Work 160 Index 166 Foreword The publication of Reza Azarian’s treatise is a major event for the field of sociological theory. Harrison White is regarded by many as the greatest living sociologist. But he is notoriously difficult to under- stand, especially in his later and most important work. White has had a long series of important students, such as Paul DiMaggio, Mark Granovetter, and many others, who have established both sociology of networks and sociology of culture as prominent fields. Yet, none of White’s successful students claim to fully understand him. The lead- ing American sociologists, like Charles Tilly, Andrew Abbott, Arthur Stinchcombe, and others, all try their hand at interpreting him. Harrison White is like an IQ test for sociologists. In this respect, he is like James Joyce was 50 years ago: all intellectuals read him whether or not they understand him, and some made careers by expounding the secret meaning of Ulysses or by providing A Skeleton Key to Finnegan’s Wake. Reza Azarian is doing the field of sociology a great service in much the same way, by providing the first systematic, comprehensive explanation of Harrison White’s theory. It should be noted that Harrison White is not a bad writer in the conventional sense. He is not difficult in the way that Talcott Parsons or Pierre Bourdieu could be; he is not grammatically involuted or complicated, nor pretentious or rhetorical and defensive. White’s writings sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph are lucid and incisive, even full of bon mots. The trouble in understanding lies elsewhere. White is so deeply innovative that the rest of us have trouble seeing how he frames the world. In contrast, Bourdieu once you get through the verbiage is comparatively easy – a synthesis of Marxism with cultural sociology via a structuralist device of quasi- autonomous but mutually self-reproducing fields. White, however, wants to break entirely with the vision of society as stratification, and indeed as permanent structures of any kind. As Azarian points out, White wants a theory of pure process, sheer ongoing making, and unmaking of structural connections, a world in which there are no fixed identities, and no individual essences either on the level of personalities, groups, or organizations. His image for this world of ix
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