Sociological Theory 31(2)

Sociological Theory, June 2013: Volume 31, Issue 2

The Honored Outsider: Raymond Aron as Sociologist
Peter Baehr

Raymond Aron (1905–1983) assumed many guises over a long and fruitful career: journalist, polemicist, philosopher of history, counselor to political leaders and officials, theorist of nuclear deterrence and international relations. He was also France’s most notable sociologist. While Aron had especially close ties with Britain, a result of his days in active exile there during the Second World War, he was widely appreciated in the United States too. His book Main Currents in Sociological Thought was hailed a masterpiece; more generally, Aron’s books were extensively reviewed in the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review (in earlier days, it hosted a review section), Contemporary Sociology, and Social Forces. And he was admired and cited by sociologists of the stature of Daniel Bell, Edward Shils, and David Riesman. Yet despite appearing well poised to become a major force in international sociology, analogous to his younger collaborator, Pierre Bourdieu, Aron has almost vanished from the sociological landscape. This article explains why, offering in the process some observations on the conditions—conceptual and motivational—of reputational longevity in sociological theory and showing how Aron failed to meet them. Special attention is devoted to a confusing equivocation in Aron’s description of sociology and to the cultural basis of his ambivalence toward the discipline.

Thinking about Food and Sex: Deliberate Cognition in the Routine Practices of a Field
Vanina Leschziner and Adam Isaiah Green

Overemphasizing automatic, dispositional cognitive processes, research on social fields has tended to undertheorize the active, reflective dimensions of cognition that shape practice. This has occurred, at least in part, as a reaction to the overly instrumentalist premises of rational action theory. But redressing the errors of an excessively instrumentalist notion of action by overemphasizing the automatic nature of cognition leaves us with a similarly inadequate understanding of how cognition works to influence practice in a field and, as a consequence, the ways in which change may occur from pressures originating within the field itself. In this article, we draw from data on cognition and practice in two kinds of fields—a sexual and a culinary field—to demonstrate how inherent structural pressures encourage instances of deliberate nondispositional cognition and practice. These data suggest an expanded model of practice in field theory that moves beyond a dual-process model of cognition and toward a more nuanced understanding of the relationship of automaticity and deliberation, and habituality and nonhabituality, in the routine practices of a field.

The Practical Organization of Moral Transactions: Gift Giving, Market Exchange, Credit, and the Making of Diaspora Bonds
Dan Lainer-Vos

The fusion of gift giving and market exchange elements in economic transactions creates practical difficulties. How can the parties involved agree about the meaning of their engagement and the value of the exchanged objects? This article tackles the topic—an important one in economic sociology—by looking at moral transactions (i.e., transactions that combine pecuniary and ethical considerations). Through an empirical study of the issuance of Irish and Israeli diaspora bonds during the 1920s and 1950s, respectively, I identify practices that help actors overcome the difficulties inherent in moral transactions. Clarification practices allow actors to treat the exchange as either gift giving or market exchange. Blurring practices allow actors to complete a transaction without agreeing on its meaning. Blurring practices require creating a zone of indeterminacy, that is, a context in which the parties can cooperate without agreeing on their relationships. The broader implications of these practices are then discussed.

Copresence: Revisiting a Building Block for Social Interaction Theories
Celeste Campos-Castillo and Steven Hitlin

Copresence, the idea that the presence of other actors shapes individual behavior, links macro- and micro-theorizing about social interaction. Traditionally, scholars have focused on the physical proximity of other people, assuming copresence to be a given, objective condition. However, recent empirical evidence on technologically mediated (e.g., e-mail), imaginary (e.g., prayer), and parasocial (e.g., watching a television show) interactions challenges classic copresence assumptions. In this article we reconceptualize copresence to provide theoretical building blocks (definitions, assumptions, and propositions) for a revitalized research program that allows for the explicit assessment of copresence as an endogenous, subjective variable dynamically related to social context. We treat copresence as the degree to which an actor perceives mutual entrainment (i.e., synchronization of attention, emotion, and behavior) with another actor. We demonstrate the ramifications of this reconceptualization for classic theorizing on micro-macro linkages and contemporary research questions, including methodological artifacts in laboratory research and disparities in patient-provider rapport.