Suchergebnisse

An introduction to a Social Science Quarterly symposium commemorating the centennial of Karl Marx's death, with a brief account of his life. Marx is discussed in relation to his roles as student, journalist-scholar, revolutionary, & family member. Reviewing Marx's life & character reveals a political & intellectual figure of enormous stature & complexity, but a person typically human in passions, commitments, strengths, & shortcomings. 5 References. HA.

L. Schneider argued the value of applying irony as a device for social analysis & considered T. Veblen an exemplary craftsman of irony. Discussed are three ironic themes in Veblen's work: (1) 'the paradox or irony of highly adapted forms,' (2) 'contradiction, opposition ... negation, dilemma,' & (3) the 'self-disconfirming analysis.' AA.

A brief history of evolutionary analysis in sociology -- The continuing sociological tradition -- Can functionalism be saved? : toward a more viable form of evolutionary thinking -- Stage-model theories of societal evolution -- Inter-societal models of societal evolution -- New forms of ecological theorizing in evolutionary sociology -- Darwinian analysis and alternatives -- The evolution of social behavior by natural selection -- The rise of sociobiology -- Sociobiology and human behavior -- Evolutionary psychology and the search for the adapted mind -- The limitations of darwinian analysis -- New models of natural selection in socio-cultural evolution -- New darwinian approaches within sociology -- New forms of comparative sociology : what primates can tell sociology about humans? -- In search of human nature : using the tools of cross-species comparative analysis -- The evolution of the human brain: applications of neurosociology -- Cross-species comparative sociology -- Cross-species analysis of megasociality -- Behavioral and interpersonal basis of megasociality : evidence from primates -- Epilogue: prospect for a new evolutionary sociology -- Bibliography -- Index

Recently, a growing contingent of "evolutionary sociologists" has begun to integrate theoretical ideas and empirical findings derived from evolutionary biology, especially sociobiology, into a variety of sociological inquiries. Without capitulating to a naive version of either biological reductionism or genetic determinism, these researchers and theorists have begun to synthesize sociological thought with research produced in various branches of the evolutionary life sciences. These recent developments provide sociology instructors with new opportunities to reconsider how they address the topic of biology's relevance to sociology. In this article, the authors review key issues pertaining to evolutionary explanations of social behavior, offer clarifications and explanations of several issues that are sometimes misrepresented and misunderstood, and provide specific suggestions for instructors who are interested in updating and improving the quality of instruction on this important topic.

Sociologists tend to eschew biological explanations of human social behavior. Accordingly, when evolutionary biologists began to apply neo-Darwinian theory to the study of human social behavior, the reactions of sociologists typically ranged from indifference to overt hostility. Since the mid-1960s, however, neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory has stimulated a "second Darwinian revolution" in traditional social scientific conceptions of human nature and social behavior, even while most sociologists remain largely uninformed about neo-Darwinian theory and research. This article traces sociology's long-standing isolation from the life sciences, especially evolutionary biology, to divergence in the metatheoretical assumptions that typify conventional sociological thought versus contemporary evolutionary biology. We conclude with a discussion of the recent emergence of a nascent "evolutionary sociology" that integrates sociobiological reasoning with contemporary sociological thought.

A troublesome but generally ignored paradox characterizes contemporary sociological explanations of crime causation. Although many sociologists interpret crime as if it were pathological or aberrant and thus "abnormal" behavior, most simultaneously embrace Durkheim's famous dictum of crime as "normal" behavior. A review of Durkheim's theory of crime causation reveals that it is burdened by several serious logical flaws. And ironically, despite his reputation for propagating a purely sociological explanation of crime, Durkheim resorts ultimately to individual characteristics, rather than social facts, in order to identify the root causes of crime. Contemporary evolutionary game theory affords an alternative explanation of the normalcy of much crime without suffering the deficiencies of the classical Durkheimian approach. The authors' evolutionary ecological-based theory explains the incidence of "expropriative" crime as a by-product of normal patterns of social organization and processes of social interaction. Furthermore, this alternative perspective successfully explains, within one theoretical frame-work, the link between key macro-and microlevel forces responsible for patterns of expropriative crime.