Identity and control : a structural theory of social action

Author(s)

• White, Harrison C.

Bibliographic Information

Identity and control : a structural theory of social action

Harrison C. White

（Princeton paperbacks）

Princeton University Press, c1992

• : pbk

Note

Includes works cited (p. [351]-413) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

In proposing a comprehensive network theory that cuts across the range of social sciences, Harrison White rejects conventional hierarchical models and focuses instead on efforts of control in a social structure described as a tangle of locked-in practices. He argues that the widely held conceptions of "person" and "goal" grounded in traditional political economy do not provide a basis for social theory that is either coherent or consistent with current developments in psychology and anthropology. White replaces "person" with "identity", which, in a distinctively human sense, emerges from frictions and social noise across different levels and disciplines in networks. Likewise, he reshapes the notion of "goals", maintaining that they merely inhabit sets of stories used to explain agency and that action itself comes through selective strategies to break through formal organization. As his main empirical basis, White uses case studies covering a wide range of topics, including tribal religions, changing rhetorics of industrial administration and the premodern Church, practices of state-building and changes of style in popular music. His analyses draw from English social anthropology, n

Table of Contents

<table><TR><TD> <TD>List of Figures <TD>Introduction to Identity and Control <TR><TD> <TD>Identities from Contingencies <TR><TD> <TD>Control and Decoupling <TR><TD> <TD>Scope and Terms of Social Organization <TR><TD>2 <TD>Disciplines <TR><TD> <TD>Pecking Orders <TR><TD> <TD>Three Species from Valuation Orderings <TR><TD> <TD>Embedding and Variations <TR><TD> <TD>Interfaces <TR><TD> <TD>Arenas <TR><TD> <TD>Councils <TR><TD> <TD>Catnets for Black Hole in Index Space <TR><TD>3 <TD>Network and Stories <TR><TD> <TD>Ties and Stories <TR><TD> <TD>Tracings of Social Space <TR><TD> <TD>Network as Population <TR><TD> <TD>Types of Tie <TR><TD> <TD>Blockmodels of Structural Equivalence <TR><TD> <TD>Ambiguity versus Ambage <TR><TD>4 <TD>Institutions <TR><TD> <TD>Village Caste and University Science <TR><TD> <TD>Boundaries <TR><TD> <TD>Values <TR><TD> <TD>Corporatism <TR><TD> <TD>Clientelism <TR><TD> <TD>Norman Feudalism <TR><TD> <TD>Positions across Role Frames <TR><TD>5 <TD>Styles and Person <TR><TD> <TD>Styles <TR><TD> <TD>Profiles <TR><TD> <TD>Entourages <TR><TD> <TD>Persons <TR><TD> <TD>Careers <TR><TD> <TD>Professionalism and Regimes <TR><TD>6 <TD>Getting Action <TR><TD> <TD>Further Control in Time <TR><TD> <TD>Hieratic Styles <TR><TD> <TD>Agenda for Agency <TR><TD> <TD>Getting Action <TR><TD> <TD>Dual Hierarchy and Servile Elite <TR><TD> <TD>General Management <TR><TD> <TD>Annealing <TR><TD>7 <TD>Rhetoric and Theory <TR><TD> <TD>Rhetorics and Systems <TR><TD> <TD>Rationality <TR><TD> <TD>History and Natural Science as Guides <TR><TD> <TD>Identity and Control <TR><TD> <TD>Appendix 1: One Hundred Topics <TR><TD> <TD>Conjectures 1-27 <TR><TD> <TD>Speculations 1-19 <TR><TD> <TD>Questions 1-54 <TR><TD> <TD>Appendix 2: Some Models <TR><TD>A <TD>Disciplines and Networks <TR><TD>B <TD>Space-Times <TR><TD>C <TD>Persons as Kalman Filters <TR><TD> <TD>Appendix 3: List of Software <TR><TD> <TD>Works Cited <TR><TD> <TD>Index

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

• NCID: BA1867003X
• ISBN:
  • 069100398X
• LCCN: 92004072
• Country Code: us
• Title Language Code: eng
• Text Language Code: eng
• Place of Publication: Princeton, N.J.
• Pages/Volumes: xix, 423 p.
• Size: 24 cm
• Classification:
  • LCC : HM131
  • DC20 : 303.3/3
  • NDC8 : 361.4
• Subject Headings:
  • LCSH : Social structure
  • LCSH : Social interaction
  • LCSH : Social institutions
  • LCSH : Social networks
  • LCSH : Social control
• Parent Bibliography ID:
  • BA0032080X