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Status, Power, and Legitimacy presents methodological, theoretical, and empirical essays by Joseph Berger and Morris Zelditch, Jr.two of the leading contributors to the Stanford tradition in the study of micropro-cesses. This three-part volume brings together major contributions to the development of this tradition, in addition to a number of newly written essays published here for the first time. Berger and Zelditch integrate the essays and relate them to a larger body of theory and research as they explore the importance of a generalizing orientation in sociology. Their view of theory as flux and process, the blending of social process with theory-building, produces a picture of the social world in line with the great tradition of George Herbert Mead, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel.Status, Power, and Legitimacy explores the relation between the scope of a theory and testing, applying, and developing it; the relation between abstract, general theories and empirical generalizations; and how to use an understanding of this relation to construct theories that are neither historically nor culturally bound. In the first part, Berger and Zelditch discuss strategies of theory construction, the development of abstract, general theories of social processes, and the different ways in which theories grow. Status processes are the focus of the second part, which includes: the formation of reward expectations; the role of status cues in interaction; the evolution of status expectations; and the application of status characteristics theory to male-female interaction. Lastly, the authors dissect power and legitimacy: the effect of expectations on power; the legitimation of power and its effect on the stability of authority; and legitimation under conditions of dissensus.This volume is a fine theoretical effort of great depth and breadth. Berger and Zelditch review the background of each paper, place the new concepts and principles introduced by ea
List of contents
Introduction: The Biosocial Orientation, Interview: An Accidental Life I 1. Why Bureaucracy Fails 2. Nationalism: Hymns Ancient and Modem 3. Moral Sense and Utopian Sensibility 6. Left Ideology and Right Archaeology 7. Self-Interest and Social Concern 8. Scientific Humanism and Humanistic Science, Interview: An Accidental Life II, Epilogue: What the Shaman Saw
About the author
Fox, Robin
Summary
This is the third in the series of volumes of essays that Robin Fox began with Reproduction and Succession and continued with The Challenge of Anthropology. Fox who has been described as "the conscience of anthropology" continues to have the same aim: to expose readers in the social sciences and beyond to the consequences of "the biosocial orientation," and to assess the "state of the art" in anthropology in particular and the social sciences in general.
As always he encompasses a wide range of topics: Why do bureaucracies fail? Are we really an innovative animal? Is nationalism a purely constructed phenomenon? What is the role of sexual competition in epic literature? In all these enquiries he tries to show in non-technical language how the evolutionary approach throws new light on old problems--and even raises new and more interesting problems. He pursues the issue of whether we have a naturally developed moral sense, and if so what it could possibly be (on the way attempting a definitive definition of the good); he looks at the status of the idea of self-interest in economic and biological science; he examines the current state of archaeology as a basis for a renewed scientific anthropology; and he tries to adjudicate the debate between the scientific and humanistic camps in the social sciences.
