Tying Micro and Macro
What Fills up the Sociological Vacuum?
Series:
Mikolaj Pawlak
This study critically discusses the thesis on the sociological vacuum formulated by Stefan Nowak. The author’s aim is to refute the claim that the sociological vacuum is relevant for major social processes occurring in Poland. He presents the sociological vacuum in the context of the debate on micro and macro levels and discusses how the theory of fields and social network analysis is useful to reconcile the micro-macro divide. The book considers the uses of the sociological vacuum in explaining such phenomena as the Solidarność social movement, civil society, social capital, and democracy. In the empirical part, the author confronts the data on identifications with the data on relations and claims that the vacuum is not in the society but it in sociology.
- Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien, 2018, 272 p., 3 b/w ill., 6 b/w tab.
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author(s)/editor(s)
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I: The micro-macro problem in sociology: theoretical background
- 1 Classical approaches to the micro-macro problem in sociology
- 1.1 Introduction
- 1.2 Micro-macro and other pairings in sociological theory
- 1.3 The classics on micro-macro and macro-micro
- 1.4 The 1980s and the debate about the micro-macro link
- 1.5 Linking micro and macro via meso
- 1.6 Concluding remarks
- 2 Social fields: the meso-level of analysis
- 2.1 Introduction
- 2.2 Social fields and the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu
- 2.3 Sociology of organizations in the search for the level of analysis
- 2.4 Towards an integration of the field theories: strategic action fields approach
- 2.5 Concluding remarks
- 3 Social networks: tying micro and macro
- 3.1 Introduction
- 3.2 From fishermen to World Wide Web: a brief review of network approaches in social sciences
- 3.3 How nodes are tied into society: from micro to macro
- 3.4 Concluding remarks
- Part II: The sociological vacuum: the story of the spell cast on Polish sociologists
- 4 Polish sociology in the 1970s, Stefan Nowak, and the sociological vacuum thesis
- 4.1 Introduction
- 4.2 Stefan Nowak
- 4.3 Survey sociology: measurement of attitudes, values, and society as an aggregate of individuals
- 4.4 Thesis on Poland’s sociological vacuum
- 4.5 The sociological vacuum: brilliant intuition or a methodological artifact?
- 4.6 Concluding remarks
- 5 Solidarność: how atomized individuals mobilized as a social movement?
- 5.1 Introduction
- 5.2 The outburst of Solidarność: the most interesting event in Polish social history
- 5.3 A movement fulfilling the vacuum? Solidarność as a problem for sociology of Polish society
- 5.4 Towards sociological explanations of Solidarność: how are atoms linked into a society?
- 5.5 Concluding remarks
- 6 Civil society: in search of the new actor of the social transformation
- 6.1 Introduction
- 6.2 Civil society: its rivals and kin
- 6.3 Civil society in the vacuum
- 6.4 For the common good? Associationalism: its advantages and disadvantages
- 6.5 In search of civic life in Poland
- 6.6 Concluding remarks
- 7 Social capital: what mediates between individuals and society?
- 7.1 Introduction
- 7.2 Social capital: short story of a fuzzy concept
- 7.3 Social capital and the sociological vacuum
- 7.4 What do we know about the social capital in Poland?
- 7.5 Concluding remarks
- 8 Quality of democracy: social base for political institutions
- 8.1 Introduction
- 8.2 Democracy: aggregating individual wills into collective action
- 8.3 Democracy in the vacuum?
- 8.4 Concluding remarks
- Part III: What fills up the sociological vacuum? Empirical illustration
- 9 Getting a job in Poland: how weak ties fill up the sociological vacuum?
- 9.1 Introduction
- 9.2 Brief story of getting a job studies
- 9.3 Getting a job in Poland
- 9.4 Concluding remarks
- Conclusions
- References
- Index
- Series index
Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.
This publication was financially supported by the National Science Centre (Narodowe Centrum Nauki) on the basis of the decision number DEC-2012/07/D/HS6/00977
ISSN 2196-0151
ISBN 978-3-631-66593-0 (Print)
E-ISBN 978-3-653-06044-7 (E-PDF)
E-ISBN 978-3-653-71084-5 (EPUB)
E-ISBN 978-3-653-71085-2 (MOBI)
DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-06044-7
© Peter Lang GmbH
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Berlin 2018
All rights reserved.
Peter Lang – Berlin ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙ Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.
This publication has been peer reviewed.
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author(s)/editor(s)
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I: The micro-macro problem in sociology: theoretical background
- 1 Classical approaches to the micro-macro problem in sociology
- 1.1 Introduction
- 1.2 Micro-macro and other pairings in sociological theory
- 1.3 The classics on micro-macro and macro-micro
- 1.4 The 1980s and the debate about the micro-macro link
- 1.5 Linking micro and macro via meso
- 1.6 Concluding remarks
- 2 Social fields: the meso-level of analysis
- 2.1 Introduction
- 2.2 Social fields and the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu
- 2.3 Sociology of organizations in the search for the level of analysis
- 2.4 Towards an integration of the field theories: strategic action fields approach
- 2.5 Concluding remarks
- 3 Social networks: tying micro and macro
- 3.1 Introduction
- 3.2 From fishermen to World Wide Web: a brief review of network approaches in social sciences
- 3.3 How nodes are tied into society: from micro to macro
- 3.4 Concluding remarks
- Part II: The sociological vacuum: the story of the spell cast on Polish sociologists
- 4 Polish sociology in the 1970s, Stefan Nowak, and the sociological vacuum thesis
- 4.1 Introduction
- 4.2 Stefan Nowak
- 4.3 Survey sociology: measurement of attitudes, values, and society as an aggregate of individuals
- 4.4 Thesis on Poland’s sociological vacuum
- 4.5 The sociological vacuum: brilliant intuition or a methodological artifact?
- 4.6 Concluding remarks
- 5 Solidarność: how atomized individuals mobilized as a social movement?
- 5.1 Introduction
- 5.2 The outburst of Solidarność: the most interesting event in Polish social history
- 5.3 A movement fulfilling the vacuum? Solidarność as a problem for sociology of Polish society
- 5.4 Towards sociological explanations of Solidarność: how are atoms linked into a society?
- 5.5 Concluding remarks
- 6 Civil society: in search of the new actor of the social transformation
- 6.1 Introduction
- 6.2 Civil society: its rivals and kin
- 6.3 Civil society in the vacuum
- 6.4 For the common good? Associationalism: its advantages and disadvantages
- 6.5 In search of civic life in Poland
- 6.6 Concluding remarks
- 7 Social capital: what mediates between individuals and society?
- 7.1 Introduction
- 7.2 Social capital: short story of a fuzzy concept
- 7.3 Social capital and the sociological vacuum
- 7.4 What do we know about the social capital in Poland?
- 7.5 Concluding remarks
- 8 Quality of democracy: social base for political institutions
- 8.1 Introduction
- 8.2 Democracy: aggregating individual wills into collective action
- 8.3 Democracy in the vacuum?
- 8.4 Concluding remarks
- Part III: What fills up the sociological vacuum? Empirical illustration
- 9 Getting a job in Poland: how weak ties fill up the sociological vacuum?
- 9.1 Introduction
- 9.2 Brief story of getting a job studies
- 9.3 Getting a job in Poland
- 9.4 Concluding remarks
- Conclusions
- References
- Index
- Series index