Sociology

April 2025

• Apr 28, 2025CultureWhat Are Social Norms? Governing Behavior in SocietyShared expectations enforced by approval rather than law. Bicchieri defines a norm as a rule people follow when they believe others follow it and believe others expect them to. Cialdini's Petrified Forest field experiment showed the cost of getting this wrong: describing theft as common raised it 8 percent, while an injunctive request reduced it. Gelfand's 33-nation study found ecological threat history predicted norm tightness better than culture or religion.26 MIN10.8k
• Apr 26, 2025CultureWhat Is Social Movement Theory? Key Concepts and CasesOn December 5, 1955, 50,000 Black residents of Montgomery stopped riding the buses, organized over one weekend. The Women's Political Council had been planning for months and distributed 52,000 flyers within 24 hours of Parks' arrest. The puzzle is the collective action problem: anyone who quietly took the bus gained while others walked, so defection is individually rational. Near-perfect participation held for 381 days.17 MIN1.5k

March 2024

• Mar 20, 2024CultureWhat Is Power? Insights from Sociology and PhilosophyRobert Dahl traced every significant decision across three policy areas in New Haven and found power was plural and diffuse, with no single bloc controlling everything. Who Governs? launched the opposite question: what about issues that never reach the table, and the power to make people want what the powerful want? Three faces follow, decision-making, agenda-setting and preference shaping, from Dahl to Bachrach and Baratz to Lukes.18 MIN13.0k

February 2024

• Feb 4, 2024ConceptsWhat Is Social Class?Raj Chetty's team linked parents and children through administrative tax data and found absolute mobility has collapsed: among Americans born in 1940, roughly 90 percent earned more than their parents at age 30, against only about 50 percent of those born in 1980. The cause is rising inequality rather than slower growth. Bourdieu's account explains the rest through habitus and three forms of capital.18 MIN6.1k

December 2023

• Dec 26, 2023CultureSociology Explained: The Study of Society and Social DynamicsCatholics differed from Protestants, married from unmarried, and soldiers showed higher rates than civilians through too much integration rather than too little. That demonstrated a level of analysis irreducible to individual psychology. The page notes critics have questioned his data sources and how suicide was classified across countries, then sets his account of solidarity against the conflict tradition.17 MIN4.8k

January 2023

• Jan 14, 2023ConceptsThe Matthew Effect: Compounding Early AdvantagesBeing oldest in the cohort means selection for rep teams, better coaching and more practice hours, which by 18 looks like natural talent. Robert Merton named the effect in 1968 after observing that eminent scientists draw disproportionate credit on co-authored work, a tendency he documented rather than an invariable rule. Stanovich traced the same compounding in reading, which is why early intervention is urgent.13 MIN7.0k