make other choices. Theoretical consistency is not easier on the agentic side, as the implications of choice-sets for action quickly compound beyond what actors could possibly know, gutting any meaningful notion of agency or reverting to a “revealed-preference” accounting that is true by default and unfalsifiable (see Leifer, 1988).
This problem is well recognized by contemporary social theorists and has been the subject of extensive theoretical effort aimed at solving the problem at the intersection while retaining the power of structural and agentic accounts, respectively. The roots of these contemporary debates lie in social exchange and social dilemma problems, such as the free-rider problem (see Vol. 1, Part IX) with the works of Blau and Homans being key touchstones and much of Parsons’ work aimed to solve a similar set of problems from a structural point of view. Contemporary work has layered in an interpretive problem that we need to understand what actors are doing from their own points of view, which breaks the traditional simplifying rationality assumption while maintaining agency. Each of our single-author sections later in this volume (Bourdieu, Foucault and Habermas) deals directly with these questions.
In this section, we provide four theorists who each point to characteristic strategies for solving the structure/agency problem, arranged here thematically starting with clear-action models and moving on to more structure-centric models. We start with Michael Hechter’s work from Principles of Group Solidarity (1987); Hechter has been at the forefront of building rational-choice models in the study of social/collective solidarity. This work highlights the core challenges to individualistic accounts for collective outcomes. Similarly, James S. Coleman in Foundations of Social Theory (1990) uses a disaggregation strategy, relying on a traditional rational-action approach at the actor level while recasting the structure problem as one largely of context on the input side and complex aggregation on the output side. Perhaps not surprisingly, a tempting solution is to understand structure as an emergent property of social interaction through social networks. Harrison White developed a model of normative structures embodied in roles and norms as the tractable implication of consistent social relations. Here, we reproduce an underground-circulated set of Harrison White’s class notes (“Catnets”) as an exemplar of a general contemporary approach rooted in observed social networks. Finally, in New Rules of Sociological Method (1976), Anthony Giddens highlights the difficulty of integrating structural constraint with an actively interpretive agent’s understanding, laying the groundwork for his own recursive structuration approach.
Michael Hechter: Social Solidarity from Individual Interest
Michael Hechter (b. 1943) is an American sociologist and political scientist who has written extensively on rational-choice theory, social movements, solidarity, and comparative historical accounts of rebellion and nationalism. His empirical work on political action, nationalism, and rebellion works from within a collective-action frame asking how actors’ coordinated behaviors and intersecting interests create significant social change. His most cited work is Internal Colonialism (1975), which examined differentials in social solidarity across the Celtic, Scottish, and English areas of Britain. The work argues that the alignment of tasks with ethnicity via a “cultural division of labor” between a core and peripheral parts (“internal colonies”) fosters a dependent development that stunts economic growth and cultural autonomy. Importantly, the book makes two distinct arguments, one resting on the macro-structural division of labor between regions and a second on the level of individuals that turns on interaction and ethnic self-identity. The cultural division of labor conflates class with ethnicity as a medium for identity formation, which undercuts a generalized class identity in favor of an ethnic one.
Theoretically, Hechter has been at the forefront of generalizing rational-choice models for individual agency to explain social structural outcomes, starting with the edited volume The Microfoundations of Macrosociology (1983), and followed with his own extensive treatment in Principles of Group Solidarity (1987). Generally, rational-choice approaches seek to identify how structure emerges as an unintended consequence of individual action; with price minimums intersecting at supply and demand being perhaps the best-known example. Contemporary work recognizes the problems associated with free-rider and other social dilemmas that require active social interaction to overcome. In Principles of Group Solidarity, Hechter builds on this tradition by attempting to provide a methodological individualist account for the classical problem of social order and group cohesion. Hechter argues that none of the classical approaches (norms, function, structure) can adequately account for variations in group solidarity (1987: p. 29), noting in particular the failure of such approaches to curtail free riding. For Hechter, “The challenge is to show how group obligations evolve and then how members are induced to honor them” without reference to black-box concepts, such as “norms.” Hechter reduces the problem of solidarity to the joint problem of the “extensiveness of group obligations” and the “probability of compliance with obligations.” Compliance is a complex problem with many variants, but ultimately rests on the control capacity of groups. This control capacity is also subject to free-riding issues (since it is a “second-order public good”), but they are often not as severe as general compliance.
In his more recent writing, Hechter continues to both expand on the value of rational-choice models for sociological work and engage deeply with historical and collective action empirical contexts. In Rational Choice Sociology (2019), Hechter collects a set of previously published papers in one place that directly challenge notions that rational-action models cannot be applied in non-market settings. His most recent empirical book (2020), with Steven Pfaff, examines the role of solidarity and action identification in royal navy mutinies.
Coleman: Structures Emerge from Interdependent Action
James Coleman (1926–1995) studied chemical engineering at Purdue University (1949) before pursuing a PhD in sociology in 1955 from Columbia University where he worked with Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton. Coleman made broad contributions in both theoretical and empirical research. Empirically, Coleman’s research was split between studies of concrete social structure and institutions using a quantitative analog to classical community studies approaches and policy-driven research within the sociology of education. His pioneering work in The Adolescent Society (1961) asked how the informal relations of students shaped a largely self-contained social system complete with status hierarchies and norms. He further developed social network analysis tools to understand the diffusion of medical innovations (Coleman, Katz & Menzel, 1966). His most famous (or infamous) empirical work was in the sociology of education, first leading the 1966 civil–rights-act-mandated study Equality of Educational Opportunity (which came to be known as the Coleman Report). This work was critical in demonstrating that lower-class African-American students benefit by attending integrated schools. He continued to spark controversy later leading the High School and Beyond study, which showed, among other things, that students who attended Catholic schools did comparatively better than their public-school counterparts, all else equal (1982).
His theoretical and methodological work focused on building rigorous tools for understanding how social systems operate, bridging the structure–action divide by effectively asking how individual actions result from structure and, in turn, reproduce them. His Introduction to Mathematical Sociology (1964) text sought to provide a set of tools that could be applied to model dynamic social systems and processes. He is well known theoretically as a proponent of rational-choice theory – an individual-level model for purposive social action that posits people seek out the actions that provide them with the highest net benefit. He worked closely with economists at the University of Chicago, including Gary Becker, to push these ideas in service to understanding social systems. He argues in the excerpt of Foundations of Social Theory (1990) included in the following text that the primary goal of social theory is to identify and explain the behavior of social systems, but that social systems are rarely observed as wholes. Instead, we observe the actions and interactions of actors (people, organizations) within the system.
