SOCIOL 204 (Sociological Theorizing)

Expanded Reading List

Readings

On Theory

What is Theory?

Abend, G. (2008). The meaning of ‘Theory.’ Sociological Theory, 26(2), 173-199.
Alexander, J. C. (1987). What is Theory? Pp. 1-21 in Twenty Lectures: Sociological Theory Since World War II. Columbia University Press.
Craib, I. (1992). Cutting a Path Through the Jungle. Pp. 15-31 in Modern Social Theory. St. Martin’s Press.
Heiskala, R. (2014). Evidence and interest in social theory: An ontological-practical approach. Acta Sociologica, 57(4), 279-292.
Joas, H., & Knöbl, W. (2009). What is Theory? Pp. 1-19 in Social Theory: Twenty Introductory Lectures. Cambridge University Press.
Martin, J. L. (2015). On Theory in Sociology. Pp. 1-44 in Thinking Through Theory. W. W. Norton.

Why is Theory?

Besbris, M., & Khan, S. (2017). Less Theory. More Description. Sociological Theory, 35(2), 147-153.
Craib, I. (1992). What’s Wrong with Theory and Why We Still Need it. Pp. 1-13 in Modern Social Theory. St. Martin’s Press.
Davis, M. S. (1971). That’s interesting! Towards a phenomenology of sociology and a sociology of phenomenology. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 1(2), 309-344.
Healy, K. (2017). Fuck nuance. Sociological Theory, 35(2), 118-127.
Mears, A. (2017). Puzzling in sociology: On doing and undoing theoretical puzzles. Sociological Theory, 35(2), 138-146.
Raza, S., & Watts, G. (2025). Between Description and Evaluation: How Sociologists Do Normativity. The American Sociologist, 56(3), 535-561.

Habit and Practice

Conceptual and Definitional Considerations

Atkinson, W. (2010). Phenomenological additions to the Bourdieusian toolbox: Two problems for Bourdieu, two solutions from Schutz. Sociological Theory, 28(1), 1-19.
Crossley, N. (2001). The phenomenological habitus and its construction. Theory and Society, 30(1), 81-120.
Crossley, N. (2013). Habit and habitus. Body & Society, 19(2-3), 136-161.
Lau, R. W. (2004). Habitus and the Practical Logic of Practice: An Interpretation. Sociology, 38(2), 369-387.
Lizardo, O. (2004). The cognitive origins of Bourdieu’s habitus. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 34(4), 375-401.
Silva, E. B. (2016). Unity and fragmentation of the habitus. The Sociological Review, 64(1), 166-183.
Wacquant, L. (2016). A concise genealogy and anatomy of habitus. The Sociological Review, 64(1), 64-72.

Systems of Oppression and Difference

Dubrule, A. (2022). Gender and Habit: John Dewey and Iris Marion Young on Embodiment and Transformation. The Pluralist, 17(1), 45-51.
Engman, A., & Cranford, C. (2016). Habit and the Body: Lessons for Social Theories of Habit from the Experiences of People with Physical Disabilities. Sociological Theory, 34(1), 27-44.
Itzigsohn, J., & Brown, K. (2015). Sociology and the theory of double consciousness: WEB Du Bois’s phenomenology of racialized subjectivity. Du Bois Review, 12(2), 231-248.
Liao, S. Y., & Huebner, B. (2021). Oppressive things. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 103(1), 92-113.
Luft, A. (2023). The moral career of the genocide perpetrator: Cognition, emotions, and dehumanization as a consequence, not a cause, of violence. Sociological Theory, 41(4), 324-351.
MacMullan, T. (2011). Habits of Hate. Journal of Hate Studies, 9(1), 93-112.
Ngo, H. (2016). Racist habits: A phenomenological analysis of racism and the habitual body. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 42(9), 847-872.
Sullivan, S. (2000). Reconfiguring gender with John Dewey: Habit, bodies, and cultural change. Hypatia, 15(1), 23-42.
Sullivan, S. (2014). The hearts and guts of white people: Ethics, ignorance, and the physiology of white racism. Journal of Religious Ethics, 42(4), 591-611.
Sullivan, S. (2018). Becoming a citizen: habits of national belonging in the United States. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 100(2), 163-177.
Sullivan, S. (2024). WEB Du Bois as a Critical Anthropologist of Race. European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, 16(XVI-2).
Yancy, G. (2008). Elevators, social spaces and racism: A philosophical analysis. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 34(8), 843-876.
Young, I. M. (1980). Throwing like a girl: A phenomenology of feminine body comportment motility and spatiality. Human Studies, 3(1), 137-156.

Other Applications

Gold, T. (2022). Contentious Tactics as Jazz Performances: A Pragmatist Approach to the Study of Repertoire Change. Sociological Theory, 40(3), 249-271.
Ostrow, J. (1987). Habit and inhabitance: an analysis of experience in the classroom. Human Studies, 10(2), 213-224.
Pagis, M. (2010). From abstract concepts to experiential knowledge: Embodying enlightenment in a meditation center. Qualitative Sociology, 33(4), 469-489.
Winchester, D. (2008). Embodying the faith: Religious practice and the making of a Muslim moral habitus. Social Forces, 86(4), 1753-1780.

Field Theory

General Considerations

DiCicco-Bloom, B., & Gibson, D. R. (2010). More than a game: Sociological theory from the theories of games. Sociological Theory, 28(3), 247-271.
Fligstein, N. (2001). Social skill and the theory of fields. Sociological Theory, 19(2), 105-125.
Fligstein, N., & McAdam, D. (2011). Toward a general theory of strategic action fields. Sociological Theory, 29(1), 1-26.
Kluttz, D. N., & Fligstein, N. (2016). Varieties of sociological field theory. Pp. 185-204 in Handbook of Contemporary Sociological Theory. Springer.
Krause, M. (2018). How fields vary. The British Journal of Sociology, 69(1), 3-22.
Martin, J. L. (2003). What is field theory? American Journal of Sociology, 109(1), 1-49.
Wang, Y. (2016). Homology and isomorphism: Bourdieu in conversation with New Institutionalism. The British Journal of Sociology, 67(2), 348-370.

Global Fields

Buchholz, L. (2016). What is a global field? Theorizing fields beyond the nation-state. The Sociological Review, 64(2_suppl), 31-60.
Go, J. (2008). Global fields and imperial forms: Field theory and the British and American empires. Sociological Theory, 26(3), 201-229.
Mudge, S. L., & Vauchez, A. (2012). Building Europe on a weak field: law, economics, and scholarly avatars in transnational politics. American Journal of Sociology, 118(2), 449-492.
Mudge, S. L., & Vauchez, A. (2016). Fielding supranationalism: The European Central Bank as a field effect. The Sociological Review, 64(2_suppl), 146-169.
Rotem, N. (2022). World society and field theory: The infiltration of development into humanitarianism. The British Journal of Sociology, 73(2), 402-420.
Steinmetz, G. (2016). Social fields, subfields and social spaces at the scale of empires: Explaining the colonial state and colonial sociology. The Sociological Review, 64(2), 98-123.

Other Applications

Green, A. I. (2008). The Social organization of desire: The sexual fields approach. Sociological Theory, 26(1), 25-50.

Institutional Theory

General Considerations

Voronov, M., & Weber, K. (2020). People, actors, and the humanizing of institutional theory. Journal of Management Studies, 57(4), 873-884.

Decoupling and Isomorphism

Beckert, J. (2010). Institutional isomorphism revisited: Convergence and divergence in institutional change. Sociological Theory, 28(2), 150-166.
DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review, 48(2), 147-160.
Hallett, T., & Hawbaker, A. (2021). The case for an inhabited institutionalism in organizational research: interaction, coupling, and change reconsidered. Theory and Society, 50(1), 1-32.
Meyer, J. W., & Rowan, B. (1977). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology, 83(2), 340-363.

Institutional Logics

Friedland, R., & Alford, R. (1991). Bringing society back in: Symbols, practices, and institutional contradictions. Pp. 232-263 in DiMaggio, P., & Powell, W., editors, The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. University of Chicago Press.
Thornton, P. H., & Ocasio, W. (1999). Institutional logics and the historical contingency of power in organizations: Executive succession in the higher education publishing industry, 1958–1990. American Journal of Sociology, 105(3), 801-843.

Institutional Change

Armstrong, E. A., & Bernstein, M. (2008). Culture, power, and institutions: A multi‐institutional politics approach to social movements. Sociological Theory, 26(1), 74-99.
Barley, S. R., & Tolbert, P. S. (1997). Institutionalization and structuration: Studying the links between action and institution. Organization Studies, 18(1), 93-117.
Voronov, M., Glynn, M. A., & Weber, K. (2022). Under the radar: institutional drift and non‐strategic institutional change. Journal of Management Studies, 59(3), 819-842.
Waeger, D., & Weber, K. (2019). Institutional complexity and organizational change: An open polity perspective. Academy of Management Review, 44(2), 336-359.

Diffusion and World Society

Frank, D. J., & Meyer, J. W. (2002). The profusion of individual roles and identities in the postwar period. Sociological Theory, 20(1), 86-105.
Jepperson, R. L. (1991). Institutions, institutional effects, and institutionalism. Pp. 143-163 in DiMaggio, P., & Powell, W., editors, The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. The University of Chicago Press.
Meyer, J. W., Boli, J., Thomas, G. M., & Ramirez, F. O. (1997). World society and the nation-state. American Journal of Sociology, 103(1), 144-181.
Meyer, J. W., & Bromley, P. (2013). The worldwide expansion of “organization”. Sociological Theory, 31(4), 366-389.
Meyer, J. W., & Jepperson, R. L. (2000). The ‘actors’ of modern society: The cultural construction of social agency. Sociological Theory, 18(1), 100-120.
Strang, D., & Meyer, J. W. (1993). Institutional conditions for diffusion. Theory and Society, 22(4), 487-511.

Other Applications

Ince, J., Cleckner, C., & Hallett, T. (2025). Extending the Bridge: Racialized Organizations, Inhabited Institutionalism, and Racialization. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity (online first).
Schneiberg, M., & Clemens, E. S. (2006). The typical tools for the job: Research strategies in institutional analysis. Sociological Theory, 24(3), 195-227.

Ecologies

Abbott, A. (2005). Linked ecologies: States and universities as environments for professions. Sociological Theory, 23(3), 245-274.
Liu, S. (2021). Between social spaces. European Journal of Social Theory, 24(1), 123-139.
Liu, S., & Emirbayer, M. (2016). Field and Ecology. Sociological Theory, 34(1), 62-79.

Networks, Relations, and Structures

Bourdieu, P. (1985). The social space and the genesis of groups. Social Science Information, 24(2), 195-220.
Crossley, N. (2022). A Dependent Structure of Interdependence: Structure and Agency in Relational Perspective. Sociology, 56(1), 166-182.
Dépelteau, F. (2008). Relational Thinking: A Critique of Co‐Deterministic Theories of Structure and Agency. Sociological Theory, 26(1), 51-73.
Elder-Vass, D. (2008). Integrating institutional, relational and embodied structure: an emergentist perspective. The British Journal of Sociology, 59(2), 281-299.
Emirbayer, M. (1997). Manifesto for a relational sociology. American Journal of Sociology, 103(2), 281-317.
Erikson, E. (2013). Formalist and relationalist theory in social network analysis. Sociological Theory, 31(3), 219-242.
Fine, G. A., & Kleinman, S. (1983). Network and meaning: An interactionist approach to structure. Symbolic Interaction, 6(1), 97-110.
Fuhse, J. A. (2009). The meaning structure of social networks. Sociological Theory, 27(1), 51-73.
Haslanger, S. (2015). Social structure, narrative and explanation. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 45(1), 1-15.
Haslanger, S. (2016). What is a (social) structural explanation? Philosophical Studies, 173, 113–130.
Heiskala, R. (2001). Theorizing power: Weber, Parsons, Foucault and neostructuralism. Social Science Information, 40(2), 241-264.
Joas, H., & Knöbl, W. (2009). Structuralism and Poststructuralism. Pp. 339-370 in Social Theory: Twenty Introductory Lectures. Cambridge University Press.
Leschziner, V., & Brett, G. (2021). Symbol Systems and Social Structures. Pp. 559-582 in Handbook of Classical Sociological Theory. Springer.
Maryanski, A., & Turner, J. (1991). The offspring of functionalism: French and British structuralism. Sociological Theory, 9(1), 106-111.
Mische, A. (2011). Relational sociology, culture, and agency. Pp. 80-97 in The SAGE Handbook of Social Network Analysis. SAGE Publications.
Porpora, D. V. (1989). Four concepts of social structure. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 19(2), 195-211.
Ray, V. (2019). A theory of racialized organizations. American Sociological Review, 84(1), 26-53.
Reed, I. A. (2013). Power: Relational, discursive, and performative dimensions. Sociological Theory, 31(3), 193-218.
Reed, I. A. (2017). Chains of power and their representation. Sociological Theory, 35(2), 87-117.
Risman, B. J. (2004). Gender As a Social Structure: Theory Wrestling with Activism. Gender & Society, 18(4), 429-450.
Ritchie, K. (2020). Social structures and the ontology of social groups. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 100(2), 402-424.
Saito, H. (2011). An actor-network theory of cosmopolitanism. Sociological Theory, 29(2), 124-149.
Sewell Jr, W. H. (1992). A theory of structure: Duality, agency, and transformation. American Journal of Sociology, 98(1), 1-29.
Singh, S. (2016). What Is Relational Structure? Introducing History to the Debates on the Relation between Fields and Social Networks. Sociological Theory, 34(2), 128-150.

Culture, Cognition, and Action

Abramson, C. M. (2012). From ‘either‐or’ to ‘when and how’: A context‐dependent model of culture in action. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 42(2), 155-180.
Alexander, J. C. (1988). Action and its Environments. Pp. 301-333 in Action and Its Environments: Toward a New Synthesis. Columbia University Press.
Ayala Hurtado, E. (2022). Narrative continuity/rupture: Projected professional futures amid pervasive employment precarity. Work and Occupations, 49(1), 45-78.
Brett, G. (2022). Dueling with Dual-Process Models: Cognition, Creativity, and Context. Sociological Theory, 40(2), 179-201.
Eckstein, H. (1996). Culture as a foundation concept for the social sciences. Journal of Theoretical Politics, 8(4), 471-497.
Eliasoph, N., & Lichterman, P. (2003). Culture in interaction. American Journal of Sociology, 108(4), 735-794.
Emirbayer, M., & Goodwin, J. (1994). Network analysis, culture, and the problem of agency. American Journal of Sociology, 99(6), 1411-1454.
Emirbayer, M., & Mische, A. (1998). What is agency? American Journal of Sociology, 103(4), 962-1023.
Freeman, K. J., Condron, D. J., & Steidl, C. R. (2020). Structures of stratification: Advancing a sociological debate over culture and resources. Critical Sociology, 46(2), 191-206.
Haslanger, S. (2019). Cognition as a social skill. Australasian Philosophical Review, 3(1), 5-25.
Hays, S. (1994). Structure and agency and the sticky problem of culture. Sociological Theory, 12(1), 57-72.
Joas, H., & Knöbl, W. (2009). The Classical Attempt at Synthesis. Pp. 20-42 in Social Theory: Twenty Introductory Lectures. Cambridge University Press.
Leschziner, V., & Green, A. I. (2013). Thinking about food and sex: Deliberate cognition in the routine practices of a field. Sociological Theory, 31(2), 116-144.
Lizardo, O., & Strand, M. (2010). Skills, toolkits, contexts and institutions: Clarifying the relationship between different approaches to cognition in cultural sociology. Poetics, 38(2), 205-228.
Luft, A. (2020). Theorizing moral cognition: Culture in action, situations, and relationships. Socius, 6, 1-14.
Luft, A. (2023). The moral career of the genocide perpetrator: Cognition, emotions, and dehumanization as a consequence, not a cause, of violence. Sociological Theory, 41(4), 324-351.
Miles, A. (2014). Addressing the problem of cultural anchoring: An identity-based model of culture in action. Social Psychology Quarterly, 77(2), 210-227.
Patterson, O. (2015). The nature and dynamics of cultural processes. Pp. 25-44 in The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth. Harvard University Press.
Reed, I. A., & Weinman, M. (2019). Agency, power, modernity: A manifesto for social theory. European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, 6(1), 6-50.
Sendroiu, I. (2022). ‘All the old illusions’: on guessing at being in crisis. Sociological Theory, 40(4), 297-321.
Sewell, W. H. (2005). The concept(s) of culture. Pp. 152-174 in Logics of History. University of Chicago Press.
Silver, D. (2011). The moodiness of action. Sociological Theory, 29(3), 199-222.
Spillman, L. (1995). Culture, social structures, and discursive fields. Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 15, 129-154.
Strand, M., & Lizardo, O. (2017). The hysteresis effect: Theorizing mismatch in action. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 47(2), 164-194.
Swidler, A. (1986). Culture in action: Symbols and strategies. American Sociological Review, 51(2), 273-286.
Vaisey, S. (2009). Motivation and justification: Toward a dual-process theory of culture in action. American Journal of Sociology, 114(6), 1675-1715.
Winchester, D. (2016). A hunger for God: embodied metaphor as cultural cognition in action. Social Forces, 95(2), 585-606.
Winchester, D., & Green, K. D. (2019). Talking your self into it: How and when accounts shape motivation for action. Sociological Theory, 37(3), 257-281.
Zilberstein, S., Lamont, M., & Sanchez, M. (2023). Recreating a Plausible Future: Combining Cultural Repertoires in Unsettled Times. Sociological Science, 10, 348-373.