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Community remains a potent symbol and aspiration in political and intellectual life. However, it has largely passed out of sociological analysis. The paper shows why this has occurred, and it develops a new typology that can make the concept useful again in sociology. The new typology is based on identifying structurally distinct subtypes of community using a small number of partitioning variables. The first partition is defined by the ultimate context of interaction; the second by the primary motivation for interaction; the third by rates of interaction and location of members; and the fourth by the amount of face-to-face as opposed to computer-mediated interaction. This small number of partitioning variables yields eight major subtypes of community. The paper shows how and why these major subtypes are related to important variations in the behavioral and organizational outcomes of community. The paper also seeks to resolve some disagreements between classical liberalism and communitarians. It shows that only a few of the major subtypes of community are likely to be as illiberal and intolerant as the selective imagery of classical liberals asserts, while at the same time only a few are prone to generate as much fraternalism and equity as the selective imagery of communitarians suggests. The paper concludes by discussing the forms of community that are best suited to the modern world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the dominance of linear models has led many sociologists to construe the social world in terms of a "general linear reality." This reality assumes (1) that the social world consists of fixed entities with variable attributes, (2) that cause cannot flow from "small" to "large" attributes/events, (3) that causal attributes have only one causal pattern at once, (4) that the sequence of events does not influence their outcome, (5) that the. "careers" of entities are largely independent, and (6) that causal attributes are generally independent of each other. The paper discusses examples of these assumptions in empirical work, considers standard and new methods addressing them, and briefly explores alternative models for reality that employ demographic, sequential, and network perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Theory’ is one of the most important words in the lexicon of contemporary sociology. Yet, their ubiquity notwithstanding, it is quite unclear what sociologists mean by the words ‘theory,’‘theoretical,’ and ‘theorize.’ I argue that confusions about the meaning of ‘theory’ have brought about undesirable consequences, including conceptual muddles and even downright miscommunication. In this paper I tackle two questions: (a) what does ‘theory’ mean in the sociological language?; and (b) what ought ‘theory’ to mean in the sociological language? I proceed in five stages. First, I explain why one should ask a semantic question about ‘theory.’ Second, I lexicographically identify seven different senses of the word, which I distinguish by means of subscripts. Third, I show some difficulties that the current lack of semantic clarity has led sociology to. Fourth, I articulate the question, ‘what ought “theory” to mean?,’ which I dub the ‘semantic predicament’ (SP), and I consider what one can learn about it from the theory literature. Fifth, I recommend a ‘semantic therapy’ for sociology, and advance two arguments about SP: (a) the principle of practical reason—SP is to a large extent a political issue, which should be addressed with the help of political mechanisms; and (b) the principle of ontological and epistemological pluralism—the solution to SP should not be too ontologically and epistemologically demanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a brief history of the authors who contributed to the success of this January 2003 issue of the journal "Sociological Theory." Jack P. Gibbs is Centennial Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Vanderbilt University. His research interests are in deviance and criminology, human ecology, control, the sociology of law, and the methodology of theory construction. Tim Hallett is an advanced graduate student at Northwestern University. This paper is an intellectual precursor to his dissertation, "Symbolic Power and the Social Organization of Turmoil." His dissertation makes an argument about how symbolic power is created in social interaction. Bradford Verter received his doctorate from Princeton University and is currently on the social sciences faculty of Bennington College. He has published articles and reviews on the cultural history of religion in the United States, and is completing a study of the social and ideological dimensions of occultism since the Enlightenment.

Gatekeepers control access to benefits that they do not own. When granted access, their clients incur obligations that take the form of fees owed to the gatekeeper. This paper examines a variety of forms that gatekeeping has historically taken, looking closely at the network positions that gatekeepers have occupied. Not previously resolved is what determines the size of the client’s obligation. The theory presented here predicts 1) the size of that obligation from the value to the client of the access sought. It also predicts that 2) to benefit, gatekeepers must monopolize their positions, or, failing monopolization, 3) must organize to form a shared monopoly. In exchange networks, gatekeeping takes the form of “ordering,” a new structural power condition. Resistance equations generate exact quantitative values for hypotheses expressing the three predictions above. Experimental tests in the well-understood context of exchange networks offer strong support for the hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By any standard, nonrationality is an undertheorized concept in sociology. This paper attempts to open a discussion on nonrationality by analyzing one of the most fruitful theorizations of the concept: Simmel's Simmel deveioped a theory that placed nonrationality on the same plane with rationality and attributed to the former a role as fundamental as the latter's in the foundations of action, and as central as the latter's in the generation of existential meanings. The gradual eclipse of the nonrational elements of life in the expanses of a modern, highly rationalized world imply, then, an impoverishment of being. I argue that Simmel's theory of the nonrational can serve as a model capable of enriching our understanding of society and of the person and can, in this sense, serve as a counterpoint to current sociological theories that emphasize the rational elements of life and conceive the person in primarily rational terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article draws attention to the importance of chance in sociological theory in the recent paper by sociologists Jerome Manis and Bernard Meltzer and their attempt to sketch alternatives to the causal determinism assumed by many sociologists, but they have not correctly specified tie challenges and possibilities in sociological explanation. Manis and Meltzer argue that there exists a class of events which possess the following overlapping features: 1) absence of cause, 2) absence of predictability and 3) absence of regularity in the sequence of the action and its antecedent conditions and that the existence of such events contravenes determinism, a fundamental postulate of science. They maintain that although some events are governed by causal laws, others are not and argue that this latter set includes chaos in the mathematical sense, quantum mechanics, evolution, trends in the arts, global politics and political movements, people actions and many key points in their lives, such as where they work and whom they mate with. The authors conclude that mainstream sociology and its search for causal laws cannot help in studying events in this broad set. This claim is especially significant because the broad set includes human action.

Postmodern claims for the lack of general coherence in social life and therefore in social research are merely a version of recurrent attempts to accept incoherence as adequate in explanations. Incoherence, however, is less sharply distinguished from the synthetic and generalizing theories that it is held to have replaced than its proponents and critics suppose. Generalizing approaches, in fact, were built around contradictions that contributed to their instability and facilitated postmodern fragmentation. In this paper we demonstrate the central contradictions in social theory, showing their common occurrence in apparently opposed positions. Both postmodernism and what it seeks to replace are features of a conservative and unproductive social science. We trace the contradictory continuties through major modern schools of social theory in order to clear the ground for a progressive social science which accepts contradictions as problems that must be solved creatively in the practice of social research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this chapter I review empirical studies directly testing the hypotheses of my 1973 paper "The Strength of Weak Ties" (hereafter "SWT") and work that elaborates those hypotheses theoretically or uses them to suggest new empirical research not discussed in my original formulation. A long the way, I will reconsider various aspects of the theoretical argument, attempt to plug some holes, and broaden its base. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]