Social Mechanisms

Zusammenfassung:
Im Längsschnitt einer Kohorte ehemaliger Gymnasiasten zwischen dem 15. und 43. Lebensjahr wird gezeigt, dass Lehrerurteile mit prognostischem Anspruch vermittelt über die Erfolgserwartungen der Schüler deren Entscheidungen bezüglich ihres weiteren Bildungsverlaufs zu beeinflussen vermögen und dadurch zu einer Self-Fulfilling Prophecy im Sinne Mertons (1948) werden können. Ursprünglich unzu-treffende Lehrerurteile können durch die Pfadabhängigkeit und Kumulativität des Ausbildungs- und Berufsverlaufes indirekt noch das Berufsprestige im 43. Lebensjahr beeinflussen. Die hier vor¬legten Analysen belegen zugleich, wie sich die Längsschnittperspektive der Lebens¬ver¬laufs¬for¬schung frucht¬bar mit der handlungstheoretischen Perspektive einer Wert-Erwartungstheorie ver¬knüpfen lässt.

Teachers’ Evaluations over the Life Course: Valid Prognosis or Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?
Abstract:
In a longitudinal study of former German high school students between age 15 and 43 it is shown that teachers' evaluations with prognostic claims may influence the students' educational decisions by shap-ing their success expectations. Thus initially false teacher evaluations may work like a self-fulfilling prophecy in the sense of Merton (1948). Because of the path dependency and cumulativity of educa-tional and occupational career processes they still affect the occupational prestige at the age of 43 indi-rectly. Finally, the following analyses offer prospects in terms of fruitfully connecting the longitudinal perspective of life course research to the action-theoretical perspective of a theory of subjective expected utility.

In a longitudinal study of former German high school students between age 15 and 43 it is shown that teachers' evaluations with prognostic claims may influence the students' educational decisions by shaping their success expectations. Thus initially false teacher evaluations may work like a self-fulfilling prophecy in
the sense of Merton (1948). Because of the path dependency and cumulativity of educational and occupational career processes they still affect the occupational prestige at the age of 43 indirectly. Finally, the following analysis offer prospects in terms of fruitfully connecting the longitudinal perspective of life course research to the action-theoretical perspective of a theory of subjective expected utility.

Bilder über die eigene Zukunft können zerstörerisch sein. Entlang der Konzepte der selbsterfüllenden und der selbstzerstörenden Prophezeiung zeigt der Beitrag auf, wie
Organisationen aufgrund von Vorhersagen aus der Ordnung geraten und scheitern können. Zentrales Element in seiner Argumentation ist das aus der Religionssoziologie entlehnte Konzept der Realitätsverdopplung. Prophezeiungen stellen
dabei eine konkurrierende Realität zu der zunächst vorherrschenden Sicht auf eine Organisation dar. Welche zerstörerische Kraft in diesen Alternativordnungen von Wirklichkeiten liegen können, wird entlang zwei konkreter Fallstudien dargestellt: Die Fusion von DaimlerChrysler und der "bank run" auf Northern Rock.

The point of departure of this paper is Fligstein and McAdam's A Theory of Fields. It is argued that their theoretical framework would be strengthened by a more systematic focus in social mechanism based explanations since this would increase understanding of how new strategic action fields (SAFs) emerge. We illustrate this argument by exploring the emergence of the European Research Area (ERA) as a SAF. In identifying social mechanisms we draw both on Fligstein and McAdam's studies as well as on academic capitalism literature. Our main conclusion is that the emergence of the ERA was brought about by multiple social mechanisms such as collective attribution of threat/opportunity, social appropriation and innovative collective action, coalition formation and boundary deactivation. Moreover, the emergence of the ERA was a contested and complex process that faced considerable resistance from different actors. Full implementation of the ERA is still an ongoing and open ended process.

Although attempts to complement the concept of reflexivity with social embeddedness have been made by many sociologists, theoretical tools for coming to grips with ‘temporally embedded’ aspects of reflexive activity have yet to make an entrance in the sociological arena. This paper intends to rectify this deficiency by spelling out how laypeople’s reflexive orientations draw on past lived experiences in the social world. Margaret Archer’s celebrated approach to reflexivity struggles to accommodate this dimension of reflexive agents since its clear ‘subjective–objective distinction’ is hostile to any talk of reflexivity as being historically constituted. A complementary account that allows us to map out and systematize temporal processes concerning reflexivity is therefore apt, an account that must address the fact that: reflexive activity does not start from scratch, in a vacuum, each time it operates; and, effects of previous lived experiences are at the heart of the mediatory process of reflexivity. By drawing on phenomenologically inspired sociology, and borrowing Schütz’s notion of ‘stock of knowledge,’ I intend to flesh out how my account of reflexivity can be reconciled with the durable effects of sociotemporal embeddedness without sacrificing the subjective and agentic qualities of reflexive activity. One immediate upshot of this ‘reconciliation’ is an empirical project that links a variety of reflexive orientations to multiple ‘time points’ (relevant lived experiences) and offers the prospect of penetrating deep into how socialization processes, identity formation and life trajectories actually transpire through temporality and reflexivity.

This book explores the role one social form of exchange governance plays in the occurrence of technological knowledge sharing among R&D scientists in the same firm. Technological knowledge sharing is the informal voluntary conveyance of intermediate scientific know-how from one R&D scientist (source) to another R&D scientist (recipient). This study fills a gap in the literature by exploring the relationship between reputation and the interpersonal intrafirm sharing of technological knowledge in an environment where R&D work (innovative activity) is embedded in a social context and is broken down physically, organizationally, and by area of technology. R&D workers in the same firm, though comprising a social community, may work in different locations, may be separated by organizational boundaries (e.g., departments), and work in different scientific disciplines.

The academic issue central to this debate concerns the role of social governance devices, reputation in particular, in exchange of resources; specifically, the exchange or sharing of non-codified technological knowledge. Social considerations function as an instrument of exchange between members of a firm, providing recompense for services performed and motivating their future performance (La-Valle 1998). The link between reputation and reciprocal interests challenges the standard transaction cost view of exchange that excludes the impact of social mechanisms of governance and repeated interaction. The following question for empirical investigation arises:

What effect does an R&D worker’s reputation have on a second R&D worker’s decision to share technological knowledge with the first individual, when both are in the same firm?

Knowledge and entrepreneurial knowledge-creating activities are the foundation of firm capabilities (Iansiti and Clark 1994). Questionnaire data and supporting interview data illuminate attributes of reputation (at the individual and group level) conducive to the voluntary sharing of timely, relevant, technological knowledge among R&D scientists in the same multidivisional, multinational firm.

This article investigates the reasons, the transformative processes, and the social mechanisms involved in the establishment of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Contrary to commonly accepted theories used to explain institutional change, it argues that the establishment of the EMU has not simply been the product of historical paths, the rational choices of actors, or social construction of new economic ideas and preferences, but also it has been the product of self-fulfilling prophecies that have facilitated and accelerated the process of institutional change. This article also discusses the role of context-bounded rationality, embodied institutions, reflexivity, and double contingency.

Many existing defenses of group rights seem to rely on the notion of group freedom. To date, however, no adequate analysis of this notion has been offered. Group freedom is best understood in terms of processes of social categorization that are embedded in social mechanisms. Such processes often give rise to group-specific constraints and enablements. On the proposed social mechanism account, group rights are demands for group freedom. Even so, group rights often serve to eradicate individual unfreedom. Furthermore, generic measures sometimes provide the most appropriate solution to a problem of group unfreedom.

El presente trabajo discute las posibilidades del diseño institucional como herramienta para la generación y extensión social de la virtud cívica. Se sostendrá que nuestros conocimientos acerca de cómo promover la virtud cívica son aún demasiado precarios como para plantearse ir más allá de algunas recomendaciones generales. En este sentido, probablemente la mejor estrategia consista en diseñar instituciones que economicen motivación y que promuevan el cumplimiento y la cooperación de cualquier tipo de agente, sea cual sea su motivación, y que empleen la virtud cívica existente sin erosionarla.

Wolfgang Knöbl hat 2015 die Leitung des Hamburger Instituts für Sozialforschung (HIS) von Jan Philipp Reemtsma übernommen. Verbunden sind beide durch ihr langjähriges Interesse an der Erforschung von Gewalt. In dem neuen Buch Gewalt erklären! legt Knöbl zusammen mit Thomas Hoebel eine methodologische Kritik der Gewaltforschung vor, die die zukünftige Forschung anleiten soll und in diesem Beitrag rezensiert wird. Die beiden Autoren kritisieren die sozialwissenschaftliche Gewaltforschung dafür, dass »keine nennenswerte wissenschaftstheoretische Auseinandersetzung mit den Prämissen, Problemen und Perspektiven der Erklärung von Gewalt« (13) stattfindet. Dieser Umstand habe die Gewaltforschung in ein Dilemma geführt. Denn die unterschiedlichen Positionen verharren darin, sich gegenseitig zu kritisieren, finden hieraus aber keinen Ausweg. Diesen wollen die Autoren nun mit ihrem Plädoyer für eine entdeckende Prozesssoziologie anbieten. Gleichzeitig kann man dieses Plädoyer auch als programmatische Standortbestimmung lesen, mit der sich der ›neue‹ Direktor des Hamburger Instituts für Sozialforschung von der Ausrichtung seines Vorgängers Jan Philipp Reemtsma abgrenzt. Denn dieser habe sich nicht nur explizit von Erklärungsansprüchen distanziert, sondern sein Hauptwerk sei auch deshalb »nicht nennenswert forschungsleitend« geworden (22).

In this paper, I would like to try to shed light on a kind of small scale mechanisms - namely rhetorical devices – and on the extent to which they can play, along with other small scale mechanisms, a significant role in the emergence of social phenomena on a much larger scale. I hope that these conceptual analyses will help improve our understanding of certain aspects of what is or what could be explanation within the context of analytical sociology, a new trend in the social sciences. These conceptual analyses will be based on a case study, which outlines an empirical analysis of a set of argumentation procedures and rhetorical devices used by Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in the famous Lincoln-Debates held in Illinois during the 1858 senatorial election process. One could argue that apparently innocuous strategic rhetorical devices used in these initially very local political speeches (they were held in small towns) nonetheless played a significant role in the emergence of the American Civil War.

Winner of the 2020 Essay Competition of the International Social Ontology Society.

Ian Hacking uses the looping effect to describe how classificatory practices in the human sciences interact with the classified people. While arguably this interaction renders the affected human kinds unstable and hence different from natural kinds, realists argue that also some prototypical natural kinds are interactive and human kinds in general are stable enough to support explanations and predictions. I defend a more fine-grained realist interpretation of interactive human kinds by arguing for an explanatory domain account of the looping effect. First, I argue that knowledge of the feedback mechanisms that mediate the looping effect can supplement, and help to identify, the applicability domain over which a kind and its property variations are stably explainable. Second, by applying this account to cross-cultural case studies of psychiatric disorders, I distinguish between congruent feedback mechanisms that explain matches between classifications and kinds, and incongruent feedback mechanisms that explain mismatches. For example, congruent mechanisms maintain Western auditory experiences in schizophrenia, whereas exporting diagnostic labels inflicts incongruence by influencing local experiences. Knowledge of the mechanisms can strengthen explanatory domains, and thereby facilitate classificatory adjustments and possible interventions on psychiatric disorders.

This article develops a novel account of middle‐range theories for combining theoretical and empirical analysis in explanatory sociology. I first revisit Robert K. Merton's original ideas on middle‐range theories and identify a tension between his developmental approach to middle‐range theorizing that recognizes multiple functions of theories in sociological research and his static definition of the concept of middle‐range theory that focuses only on empirical testing of theories. Drawing on Merton's ideas on theorizing and recent discussions on mechanism‐based explanations, I argue that this tension can be resolved by decomposing a middle‐range theory into three interrelated and evolving components that perform different functions in sociological research: (i) a conceptual framework about social phenomena that is a set of interrelated concepts that evolve in close connection with empirical analysis; (ii) a mechanism schema that is an abstract and incomplete description of a social mechanism; and (iii) a cluster of all mechanism‐based explanations of social phenomena that are based on the particular mechanism schema. I show how these components develop over time and how they serve different functions in sociological theorizing and research. Finally, I illustrate these ideas by discussing Merton's theory of the Matthew effect in science and its more recent applications in sociology.

El presente trabajo discute las posibilidades del diseño institucional
como herramienta para la generación y extensión social de la virtud cívica. Se sostendrá que nuestros conocimientos acerca de cómo promover la virtud cívica son aún demasiado precarios como para plantearse ir más allá de algunas recomendaciones generales. En este sentido, probablemente la mejor estrategia consista en diseñar instituciones que economicen motivación y que promuevan el  cumplimiento y la cooperación de cualquier tipo de agente, sea cual sea su motivación, y que empleen la virtud cívica existente sin erosionarla.
Key words: social mechanisms; social norms; motivation; dispositions.