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Despite being a central topic, current theories of motivation in sociology remain underdeveloped. This paper supplements existing sociological theories on motivation with insights from affective and cognitive neuroscience to address this issue. The resulting sociological affective model of motivation treats affect as an independent force that sometimes coordinates with cognition while taking charge at other times. Drawing on recent work in the neuroscience of motivation and reward, the paper shows how two affective mechanisms—wanting and liking—can shed light on various behavioral outcomes of interest while allowing for sharper theorizing of key distinctions that need clarification in the literature. By examining the distinctive contribution of each process, the paper reveals a proactive, desire‐driven agent often overlooked by prevailing sociological models emphasizing a reactive actor responding creatively and deliberately when internal meanings and external cues are incongruent. The paper concludes by outlining the broader implications of this synthetic affective model of motivation for sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The image of Max Weber as an "interpretivist" cultural theorist of webs of significance that people use to cope with a meaningless world reigns largely unquestioned today. This article presents a different image of Weber's sociology, where meaning does not transport actors over an abyss of meaninglessness but rather helps them navigate a world of Chance. Retrieving this concept from Weber's late writings, we argue that the fundamental basis of the orders sociologists seek to understand is not chaos. Action is rendered interpretable, rather, to the extent persons orient themselves to possibilities and probabilities, which remain real but unknowable. In this framework, interpretation and probability are allies, not antagonists. Weber's systematic use of the probabilistic notion of Chance as a central resource for concept formation and sociological explanation seriously challenges current understandings of probability as a purely statistical, atheoretical concern. We outline the conceptual difference it makes when basic categories of sociology are understood as rooted in Chance, and we point to the larger implications of Weber's probabilism for contemporary debates around issues of prediction, action, and interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

While Weber’s distinction between ‘ideal’ and ‘material’ interests is one of the most enduring aspects of his theoretical legacy, it has been subjected to little critical commentary. In this article, we revisit the theoretical legacy of interest-based explanation in social theory, with an eye to clarifying Weber’s place in this tradition. We then reconsider extant critical commentary on the ideal/material interest distinction, noting the primarily Parsonian rendering of Weber and the unproductive allegiance to ‘generic need’ readings of Weber’s action theory. We reconstruct the basis of the ideal/material interest distinction in the work of Rudolph von Ihering and provide a sounder basis for its analytic role in Weber’s ‘grand’ project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I this paper, I draw on recent research on the radically embodied and perceptual bases of conceptualization in linguistics and cognitive science to develop a new way of reading and evaluating abstract concepts in social theory. I call this approach Sociological Idea Analysis. I argue that, in contrast to the traditional view of abstract concepts, which conceives them as amodal 'presuppositions' removed from experience, abstract concepts are irreducibly grounded in experience and partake of non-negotiable perceptual-symbolic features from which a non-propositional 'logic' naturally follows. This implies that uncovering the imagistic bases of allegedly abstract notions should be a key part of theoretical evaluation of concepts in social theory. I provide a case study of the general category of 'structure' in the social and human sciences to demonstrate the analytic utility of the approach. [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]

In this paper, I argue that recent sociological theory has become increasingly bifurcated into two mutually incompatible styles of theorizing that I label formalist and behavioral-realist. Formalism favors mathematization and proposes an instrumentalist ontology of abstract processes while behavioral-realist theory takes at its basis the “real” physical individual endowed with concrete biological, cognitive and neurophysiological capacities and constraints and attempts to derive the proper conceptualization of social behavior from that basis. Formalism tends to lead toward a conceptually independent sociology that in principle requires only minimal reference to the empirical and ontological storehouse of other disciplines, while behavioral-realist theory leads to an interdisciplinary sociology that can be located within a hierarchy of behavioral sciences, leading to questions regarding the relationship between sociology and other disciplines as well as issues of transdisciplinary unification and possible interdisciplinary reduction. I explore the consequences of this split for the project of explanatory sociological theory within the context of how it has manifested itself in sociological network theory and social psychology. I close with a critique and assessment of formalist tendencies in sociological theorizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]