Processual Sociology PDF
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Processual Sociology Processual Sociology Andrew Abbott The University of Chicago Press chicago & london Andrew Abbott is the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He edits the American Journal of Sociology. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2016 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2016. Printed in the United States of America 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 1 2 3 4 5 isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 33659- 6 (cloth) isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 33662- 6 (paper) isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 33676- 3 (e- book) doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226336763.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Abbott, Andrew Delano, author. Processual sociology / Andrew Abbott. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-226-33659-6 (cloth : alkaline paper) — isbn 978-0-226-33662-6 (pbk. : alkaline paper) — isbn 978-0-226-33676-3 (e-book) 1. Social sciences— Philosophy. 2. Sociology—Philosophy. 3. Change—Social aspects. 4. Becoming (Philosophy)—Social aspects. 5. Ontology—Social aspects. 6. Sociology—Moral and ethical aspects. I. Title. HM585.A237 2016 301.01—dc23 2015031807 This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso Z39.48– 1992 (Permanence of Paper). In memory of my brother Frank C o n t e n t s Preface ix Part 1 1 The Historicality of Individuals 3 2 Human Nature in Processual Thinking 16 3 Linked Ecologies 33 Part 2 4 Lyrical Sociology 77 5 The Problem of Excess 122 Part 3 6 The Idea of Outcome 165 7 Social Order and Process 198 Part 4 8 Inequality as Process 233 9 Professionalism Empirical and Moral 253 Epilogue 277 References 293 Index 307 P r e f a c e This volume assembles nine theoretical papers written at various times in the last dozen years. Some have been previously published, some published in other languages or in obscure venues, some not published at all. Although on the surface they concern diverse topics, these papers share a common theme underneath: the elaboration of a processual approach to the social world. By a processual approach, I mean an approach that presumes that every- thing in the social world is continuously in the process of making, remaking, and unmaking itself (and other things), instant by instant. The social world does not consist of atomic units whose interactions obey various rules, as in the thought of the economists. Nor does it consist of grand social entities that shape and determine the little lives of individuals, as in the sociology of D urkheim and his followers. Nor does it consist of confl ict between given units, as in the work of Marx and his many imitators. Nor yet of symbolic structures that determine and shape our perception of the social world, as in the tradition following from Geertz and Schneider. These are all distin- guished traditions, and each has its successes in the analysis of human aff airs. But the approach here is diff erent. A processual approach begins by theorizing the making and unmaking of all these things— individuals, social entities, cultural structures, patterns of confl ict— instant by instant as the social process unfolds in time. The world of the processual approach is a world of events. Individuals and social entities are not the elements of social life, but are patterns and regularities defi ned on lineages of successive events. They are moments in a lineage, moments
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