Theoretical Principles of Sociology, Volume 3 Mesodynamics
The meso-level realm of social reality is structured by corporate and categoric units, along with their respective cultures. Unlike the macro and micro realms of social reality, the meso-level does not reveal its own unique forces. Rather, the dynamics of
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Jonathan H. Turner
Theoretical Principles of Sociology, Volume 3 Mesodynamics
Jonathan H. Turner Department of Sociology University of California at Riverside Riverside, CA, USA
ISBN 978-1-4419-6220-1 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-6221-8 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-6221-8 Springer New York Heidelberg Dordrecht London Library of Congress Control Number: 2010929259 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
To the memory of my father, J. Hugh Turner, who at 97 years of age died in 2010 in Santa Fe, New Mexico
Preface
This is the third volume of Theoretical Principles of Sociology. As is evident in all three volumes, I have taken seriously the charge of developing theoretical principles. I view these principles as the “laws” of sociology, or at least my best effort to develop these laws. Over the almost fifty years that I have been a sociologist in graduate school and in the profession, I am amazed at how much knowledge has been accumulated that, remarkably, remains uncodified across domains of social reality and theoretical subfields within the discipline of sociology. My goal in all three volumes of Theoretical Principles of Sociology is to be integrative and to assemble and integrate into a set of models and principles demonstrating that sociology can be a natural science. The book on meso dynamics comes last in the series because it is about the domain of the social universe that stands between the macro universe of institutions, stratification, societies, and intersocietal systems, on the one side, and the micro universe of encounters among individuals. This meso realm is pushed by the forces operating at the macro and micro realms, and it provides the building blocks of the macro realm, while being the end result of micro encounters that become stabilized and structured over time. Once the dynamics of the macro and micro realms have produced the core structures of the meso realm, these meso-level sociocultural formations are constrained by the micro and macro realms. I have conceptualized these constraints as macro and micro-level fields of culture and social structures that arise from the play of forces at the micro and macro realms. These fields contain the resources that actors use to build up the socioc
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