Читать книгу Contemporary Sociological Theory - Группа авторов - Страница 57

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.