Analytical sociology is a strategy for understanding the social world. It is concerned with explaining important social facts such as network structures, patterns of residential segregation, typical beliefs, cultural tastes, and common ways of acting. It explains such facts by detailing in clear and precise ways the mechanisms through which the social facts were brought about. Making sense of the relationship between micro and macro thus is one of the central concerns of analytical sociology. The approach is a contemporary incarnation of Robert K. Mertons notion of middle-range theory and presents a vision of sociological theory as a tool-box of semi-general theories each of which is adequate for explaining certain types of phenomena. The Handbook brings together some of the most prominent sociologists in the world. Some of the chapters focus on action and interaction as the cogs and wheels of social processes, while others consider the dynamic social processes that these actions and interactions bring about.
FOUNDATIONS ; 1. What is analytical sociology all about? An introductory essay by Peter Hedstrom ; 2. Analytical sociology and theories of the middle range ; SOCIAL COGS AND WHEELS ; 3. Emotions ; 4. Beliefs ; 5. Preferences ; 6. Opportunities ; 7. Heuristics ; 8. Signaling ; 9. Norms ; 10. Trust ; SOCIAL DYNAMICS ; 11. Social dynamics from the bottom up: Agent-based models of social interaction ; 12. Segregation dynamics ; 13. Self fulfilling processes ; 14. Social influence: The puzzling nature of success in cultural markets ; 15. The Contagiousness of Divorce ; 16. Matching ; 17. Collective action ; 18. Conditional choice ; 19. Network dynamics ; 20. Threshold models of social influence ; 21. Time and scheduling ; 22. Homophily and the focused organization of ties ; 23. Status ; 24. Dominance hierarchies ; 25. Conflict ; PERSPECTIVES FROM OTHER FIELDS AND APPROACHES ; 26. Game theory ; 27. Experiments ; 28. Surveys ; 29. Analytical ethnography ; 30. Historical sociology