Coleman: Structures Emerge from Interdependent Action
James Coleman (1926–1995) studied chemical engineering at Purdue University (1949) before pursuing a PhD in sociology in 1955 from Columbia University where he worked with Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton. Coleman made broad contributions in both theoretical and empirical research. Empirically, Coleman’s research was split between studies of concrete social structure and institutions using a quantitative analog to classical community studies approaches and policy-driven research within the sociology of education. His pioneering work in The Adolescent Society (1961) asked how the informal relations of students shaped a largely self-contained social system complete with status hierarchies and norms. He further developed social network analysis tools to understand the diffusion of medical innovations (Coleman, Katz & Menzel, 1966). His most famous (or infamous) empirical work was in the sociology of education, first leading the 1966 civil–rights-act-mandated study Equality of Educational Opportunity (which came to be known as the Coleman Report). This work was critical in demonstrating that lower-class African-American students benefit by attending integrated schools. He continued to spark controversy later leading the High School and Beyond study, which showed, among other things, that students who attended Catholic schools did comparatively better than their public-school counterparts, all else equal (1982).
His theoretical and methodological work focused on building rigorous tools for understanding how social systems operate, bridging the structure–action divide by effectively asking how individual actions result from structure and, in turn, reproduce them. His Introduction to Mathematical Sociology (1964) text sought to provide a set of tools that could be applied to model dynamic social systems and processes. He is well known theoretically as a proponent of rational-choice theory – an individual-level model for purposive social action that posits people seek out the actions that provide them with the highest net benefit. He worked closely with economists at the University of Chicago, including Gary Becker, to push these ideas in service to understanding social systems. He argues in the excerpt of Foundations of Social Theory (1990) included in the following text that the primary goal of social theory is to identify and explain the behavior of social systems, but that social systems are rarely observed as wholes. Instead, we observe the actions and interactions of actors (people, organizations) within the system. This distinction between what we want to explain and what we observe presents two theoretical challenges. First, theorists must account for how actors behave and second they must identify how the interdependent behavior of actors in the system combines to produce system behavior. This leads to a three-step “boat” argument consisting of situating actors in context, explaining individual action, and aggregating those actions back to the system level. Rational-actor models were, for Coleman, the most mathematically tractable solution to the first challenge of accounting for actor behavior, allowing one to profitably focus on the more complicated interdependence and systems parts.
Coming full circle to early exchange theorists and work on social networks, Coleman’s later work on social capital (1988) identifies networks of trust as an essential element in modern society. In this now classic treatment, Coleman describes how the relations actors have with others provide them with a generalized capacity for action – in much the same way as economic capital allows investors to build factories and start companies. While defining exactly what counts as “social capital” has sparked something of a minor industry in sociology, all agree that factors that contribute to informal interactions and social resources provide advantages. For example, knowing many people (and, importantly, the right people) increases your odds of knowing someone who can help you find a job, which provides a clear example of how social capital can generate economic capital. Social capital also provides a collective route to solving social dilemmas, as people can mobilize their social networks to overcome problems. Theorists have argued that social capital is key to understanding political participation and the ability of communities to cooperate for common good (Putnam, 2000). That relationships can provide an unspecified future resource changes the incentive structure implicit in much of the early work on social exchange, making decisions about who to exchange with and how power is distributed complex.
Harrison White: Structure from (Relational) Action
A common avenue out of the structure–action duality rests on social networks. The root of this idea is that in most social situations, action is not independent, but rather “embedded” with the actions of others (Granovetter 1985; see Part III of this volume). That is, people’s actions are in response to the prior actions of others and are mutually interdependent. Through social relations ranging from trivial fleeting interactions to deeply meaningful patterns of kin, social networks provide a way to simultaneously situate meaningful interaction within an extant, realized structure of prior action. Arguably, one of the theoretically richest accounts of this perspective has been made by Harrison White (b. 1930).
Harrison White entered Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at the age of 15 years and went on to receive a PhD in theoretical physics 5 years later. He leveraged a Ford Foundation fellowship at Princeton University to earn his PhD in sociology with a dissertation based on management conflict (White 1961). His early work on the structural implications of kinship patterns (White 1963) formalized earlier ideas from structural anthropology and laid the foundation for his later work on abstracting structural patterns from observed networks. Kinship systems provide a clear example of how primary relations (marriage and descent) can extend to other known roles (for example, your mother’s mother is your “grandmother” and your mother’s mother’s daughter’s daughter is your cousin). The various concatenations of the two primary relations can be used to describe the full kinship system. Moreover, rules about who is allowed to marry provide a constraint that shapes social action in ways that reinforce the system. White recognized that one can extend this argument to other kinds of relations and discover roles in systems by empirically tracing the most common patterns of extended network ties. Known as “blockmodeling,” this approach founded a long tradition of research building on earlier role theories. The ultimate, abstract extension of these ideas takes White beyond actors to “identities” and from the specific analyses of particular networks to the general strategies actors use to gain control (White, 1992; 2004).
White’s second major contribution to social theory is a direct attack on classical economic market models. In a series of papers culminating in his book Markets from Networks (2004), White demonstrates that the basic competition model for commodities that is the foundation for most work on markets is really just a special case of the many possible ways markets can be organized. Instead of focusing on the supply and demand for commodities, White focuses on observable relations among product producers and how they negotiate a trade-off between the quality of goods produced and the prices for those goods in comparison to similar other firms. In White’s model, firms choose a position along a quality–price array to offer goods. For example, Walmart seeks to offer low-quality goods at the lowest prices, while Target offers slightly higher-quality goods at slightly higher prices. As you move up the quality–price curve, you would find retailers, such as Macy’s, deliberately eschewing low prices in an effort to signal high quality. This insight has deep implications for market failures, prices, and control.
The piece reprinted in the following text existed as a mimeographed copy in circulation among White’s students (and students of students of students) that we first published in our third edition. While we are typically used to thinking of categories, such as “race” and “sex,” as essential fixed characteristics of people, White argues for a conception of categories that rests on the correspondence of network ties (Nets) with categories (Cats). A “catnet” is thus the correspondence between these two features of a population. Substantively, the idea reflects notions that we regularly observe – category membership (such as being “male” or “female”) is only relevant to the degree that it shapes our relations with others. Or, to flip it around, features come to have structural meaning when they shape social relations. The reality of a category is only meaningful when enacted in relations.