Processual Sociology

328 Pages·2016·1.952 MB·English

by  Andrew Abbott

Processual Sociology

Processual Sociology
Andrew Abbott
The University of Chicago Press chicago & london
Andrew Abbott is the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor
at the University of Chicago. He edits the American Journal of Sociology.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2016 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2016.
Printed in the United States of America
25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 1 2 3 4 5
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 33659- 6 (cloth)
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 33662- 6 (paper)
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 33676- 3 (e- book)
doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226336763.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Abbott, Andrew Delano, author.
Processual sociology / Andrew Abbott.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-226-33659-6 (cloth : alkaline paper) — isbn 978-0-226-33662-6
(pbk. : alkaline paper) — isbn 978-0-226-33676-3 (e-book) 1. Social sciences—
Philosophy. 2. Sociology—Philosophy. 3. Change—Social aspects. 4. Becoming
(Philosophy)—Social aspects. 5. Ontology—Social aspects. 6. Sociology—Moral and
ethical aspects. I. Title.
HM585.A237 2016
301.01—dc23
2015031807
This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso Z39.48– 1992
(Permanence of Paper).
In memory of my brother Frank

C o n t e n t s
Preface ix
Part 1
1 The Historicality of Individuals 3
2 Human Nature in Processual Thinking 16
3 Linked Ecologies 33
Part 2
4 Lyrical Sociology 77
5 The Problem of Excess 122
Part 3
6 The Idea of Outcome 165
7 Social Order and Process 198
Part 4
8 Inequality as Process 233
9 Professionalism Empirical and Moral 253
Epilogue 277
References 293
Index 307

P r e f a c e
This volume assembles nine theoretical papers written at various times in the
last dozen years. Some have been previously published, some published in
other languages or in obscure venues, some not published at all. Although on
the surface they concern diverse topics, these papers share a common theme
underneath: the elaboration of a processual approach to the social world.
By a processual approach, I mean an approach that presumes that every-
thing in the social world is continuously in the process of making, remaking,
and unmaking itself (and other things), instant by instant. The social world
does not consist of atomic units whose interactions obey various rules, as in
the thought of the economists. Nor does it consist of grand social entities
that shape and determine the little lives of individuals, as in the sociology of
D urkheim and his followers. Nor does it consist of confl ict between given
units, as in the work of Marx and his many imitators. Nor yet of symbolic
structures that determine and shape our perception of the social world, as
in the tradition following from Geertz and Schneider. These are all distin-
guished traditions, and each has its successes in the analysis of human aff airs.
But the approach here is diff erent.
A processual approach begins by theorizing the making and unmaking of
all these things— individuals, social entities, cultural structures, patterns of
confl ict— instant by instant as the social process unfolds in time. The world
of the processual approach is a world of events. Individuals and social entities
are not the elements of social life, but are patterns and regularities defi ned
on lineages of successive events. They are moments in a lineage, moments