Social Structure
Relationships, Representations, and Rules

Jonathan Eastwood (Author)

9781509561926, Polity Press

Hardback, published 20 December 2024

216 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 2.3 cm, 0.454 kg

“This informative book takes on the thorny question of what sociologists mean by social structure and addresses it in a novel way. The result ranges widely through sociology and makes concrete, intelligible, and empirically tractable the intuitions that students, activists, and scholars articulate when they talk about structure and order, opportunity and constraint, mechanism and explanation. And it’s a fun read to boot.”
Josh Pacewicz, Brown University

“Eastwood’s definitional framework not only masterfully captures existing approaches with great parsimony, but transcends the traditional culture–structure dichotomies with something new and promising. Brilliant and accessible, this book also offers stimulating ideas for data analysis, policy analysis, and future theoretical reactions.”
Francesco Duina, Bates College

Social structure is arguably the central concept of sociology, and in recent years a much wider public has taken up with fresh vigor the sociological idea that persistent inequalities are rooted in social structures. Yet there seem to be as many definitions of the term as there are sociologists, and we often struggle to articulate accessible yet precise accounts of structures that can guide empirical research and other kinds of action.

Jonathan Eastwood offers a set of pragmatic strategies for thinking about social structures, emphasizing ways in which we can approach them as complex lacings of relationships, representations, and rules. He then teases out a variety of implications of these strategies for qualitative and quantitative research, the analysis of social problems, and the implementation of social policies. Written for advanced undergraduate and graduate students as well as fellow scholars, this insightful book contributes to our understanding of this fundamental and dynamic ingredient of social life.

Preface

Part 1: The Basic Ideas
Chapter 1: The Three Rs
Chapter 2: Other Meanings of Social Structure
Chapter 3: Interlacings and Intralacings

Part 2: Working with Social Structures
Chapter 4: Explaining with Structures
Chapter 5: Data Structures and Social Structures
Chapter 6: Social Structures and Social Policies

Conclusion
Questions for Reflection and Discussion

Subject Areas: Sociology & anthropology [JH]