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This article uses a history of concept formation focused on Pierre Bourdieu's probabilism to provide the groundwork for a probabilistic sociology. We argue that not only was Bourdieu a probabilist, but that reframing probability along heterodox lines holds empirical promise when it is also linked to new concept formation, as evident in the case of Bourdieu. For the anglophone sociological field, probability is of primary significance for method and epistemic commitment. Sociological theory continues to react to the integral role of probability used for the purposes of sociological knowledge but finds very little in the way of concept formation that does not adopt the same commitments as the methodologists. The history we outline retrieves a different approach, one which finds Bourdieu aligned with objective probability borrowed from the sociology of Max Weber. This version of probabilism locates probability directly in the world and makes it a source of concept formation without the intervention of the methodologists. This article follows Bourdieu as he recognizes objective probability in the work of Weber (around 1973) and then engages in novel concept formation on these grounds. Ranging between spaces of objective probability (fields), spaces of randomness (games of chance), and spaces of determinism (apparatus), Bourdieu's mature probabilism reveals the conceptual and meta-methodological differences that come with making probability objective. Probabilistic expectations derive from the world itself, rather than existing as part of explanation or method. Specifically, this history of concept formation reveals a looping relation between objective probability (chances) and learned probability (expectations) that, as Bourdieu himself appreciated, holds wide-ranging implications for best knowledge practices and empirical sociological research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research and theory at the intersection of cultural sociology and network analysis have converged around the notion of cultural holes: patterns of cultural choice that position the person as a bridge not between other persons but between cultural worlds. This is an approach that promises to open up new vistas in our conceptualization of the relationship between social position and cultural taste, but that so far lacks operational grounding. In this article, I draw on Breiger's () formalization of the idea of the duality of persons and groups along with classical formalizations of brokerage for sociometric networks (Burt ) to suggest that the 'cultural ego network' of a typical survey respondent can be reconstructed from patterns of audience overlap among the cultural items that are chosen by each respondent. This leads to a formalization of the notion of omnivorousness as relatively low levels of clustering in the cultural network: namely, omnivorousness as cultural network efficiency. I show how this metric overcomes the difficulties that have plagued previous attempts to produce ordinal indicators of omnivorousness from simple counts of the number of cultural choices, while providing novel substantive (and sometime counter-intuitive) insights into the relationship between socio-demographic status markers and patterns of cultural choice in the contemporary United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I attempt to address some enduring problems in formulation and practical use of the notion of structure in contemporary social science. I begin by revisiting the question of the fidelity of Anthony Giddens' appropriation of the idea of structure with respect to Levi-Strauss. This requires a reconsideration of Levi-Strauss' original conceptualization of 'social structure' which I argue is a sort of 'methodological structuralism' that stands sharply opposed to Giddens' ontological reconceptualization of the notion. I go on to show that Bourdieu's contemporaneous critique of Levi-Strauss is best understood as an attempt to recover rather than reject the central implication of Levi-Strauss' methodological structuralism, which puts Bourdieu and Giddens on clearly distinct camps in terms of their approach toward the idea of structure. To demonstrate the-insurmountable-conceptual difficulties inherent in the ontological approach, I proceed by critically examining what I consider to be the most influential attempt to resolve the ambiguities in Giddens structuration theory: Sewell's argument for the 'duality of structure.' I show that by retaining Giddens' ontological focus, Sewell ends up with a notion of structure that is at its very core 'anti-structuralist' or only structuralist in a weak sense. I close by considering the implications of the analysis for the possibility of developing the rather neglected 'methodological structuralist' legacy in contemporary social analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]