Sociologica - International Journal for Sociological Debate

09/08/2025

In this essay honoring Harrison White’s legacy, I have reflected on complexity in dialogue with his theoretical model to shed light on social dimensions of complex systems. My goal has been to stimulate sophisticated systems thinking back into sociology by means of complexity theory. We live in complex social systems far from equilibrium that experience path-dependent histories and unpredictable phase transitions, and that now more than ever, exist in strained relations with our planet. In this connection, I argue that White’s model is extremely significant for future research on complexity in the social sciences. More specifically, I consider White’s integration of indexical semiotics and metapragmatics into networks a turning point in complex social systems theorizing.

Jorge Fontdevila — Department of Sociology, California State University, Fullerton rton

07/08/2025

How is talk about what will, could, and should happen in the future shaped by networks of actors engaged in these conversations? And how do conversations about imagined futures reshape social relations? This essay considers the roots of my current research on “the duality of networks and futures” in seminars and conversations with Harrison White at Columbia in the 1990s.

Ann Mische — Department of Sociology, University of Notre Dame
https://sociologica.unibo.it/article/view/21585/19865

05/08/2025

Harrison White’s reconceptualization of identity as dynamic, relational, and contingent outcome of social interaction and struggles for control offers a powerful alternative to the static, essentialist concept of identity that dominates contemporary social science. Building on White’s network-based framework, this article advances a structuralist critique of identity-based explanations — particularly the framing of partisanship as a “mega-identity”.

Delia Baldassarri — Silver Professor, Department of Sociology and Politics, New York University

https://sociologica.unibo.it/article/view/21583/19863

03/08/2025

This paper explores the emergence of constraints in managerial networks and the strategies by which individuals regain autonomy. Drawing on Harrison C. White’s theories, we construct and analyze a series of examples that are composite narratives informed by the second author’s work at a global investment bank. Our examples show how professional relationships, initially pursued for career advantage, can crystallize into rigid, constraining roles. We also illustrate three strategies that restore autonomy: annealing, a strategy of controlled disruption; network reaching, which establishes counter-normative ties across social boundaries; and prolepsis, a form of anticipatory rhetoric that affects action through vivid, seemingly inevitable pictures of the future.

Matthew S. Bothner, ESMT Berlin
Richard Haynes, CFTC - U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Ingo Marquart, statworx
Nghi Truong, Sasin School of Management, University
Hai Anh Vu University of Economics Ho Chi Minh city - UEH , College of Economics, Law and Government

https://sociologica.unibo.it/article/view/21638

01/08/2025

I think we need more of this attention to strong relationships, entailments, and allegories in social theorizing, and less conceptual development of single, standalone ideas. Considering my own research, I realize that I could have applied this type of approach to the two central concepts in my book (i.e., trade and nation) by exploring the interlocking and reciprocal effects between nationalism and globalization. Does the idea of the nation entail something like international trade? And if so, are globalization and nationhood — often conceived as enemies — in fact inextricably related?

Emily Erikson — Department of Sociology, Yale University

30/07/2025

White was, I believe, 100% serious in trying to argue that we had to understand identities as an outgrowth of (sometimes strategic) interactions, not their conditions. Making identity endogenous to strategy forces us to reconsider both concepts. And here’s how I now interpret what he was saying. Other people were, and, sadly, still are, trying to use networks to predict individual outcomes: who stays in the group, who believes this or that, who moves ahead or doesn’t, and so on and so forth.

John Levi Martin, Department of Sociology, The University of Chicago

28/07/2025

Harrison Colyar White passed away on May 19, 2024, at the age of 94.
For this special section of Sociologica we have invited six authors to reveal in a little more depth some aspects of Harrison’s craft while recounting how their own work has in some respects been entangled with the research problems and vision that Harrison has articulated. Each essay is at once scholarly, innovative, and deeply personal.

Peter Bearman, Incite Institute, Columbia University (United States)
Ronald L. Breiger, School of Sociology, The University of Arizona

26/07/2025

The issue 19(2)/2025 of Sociologica. International Journal for Sociological Debate has just been published and is now freely available online:

👉 https://sociologica.unibo.it/issue/view/1392

The Special Feature that opens this issue, edited by leading scholars Peter Bearman and Ronald L. Breiger, is entirely devoted to the work of Harrison White, who passed away in May 2024. Each of the authors contributing to the section was invited to highlight aspects of White's intellectual craft while reflecting on how their own work has been shaped by the research questions and vision he developed. This tribute was masterfully carried out by John Levi Martin, Emily Erikson, Matthew S. Bothner with Richard Haynes, Ingo Marquart, Nghi Truong and Hai Anh Vu, Delia Baldassarri, Ann Mische and Jorge Fontdevila. Their six papers combine a celebration of the legacy of a truly exceptional scholar with thoughtful critical engagement, underscoring the continued relevance of his contributions to current scientific debate.

The issue also features a thought-provoking symposium on Emotions in Academic Work, edited by three well-established scholars in the field of Gender Studies: Camilla Gaiaschi, Rossella Ghigi, and Valeria Qu***ia. This reflection is animated by four insightful essays by Lucas Brunet with Ruth Müller, Rebecca Lund, Sara Bonfanti with Maddalena Cannito and Manuela Naldini, and Maddie Breeze.

The Essay Section includes two timely and engaging articles: the first, co-authored by Poonam Pandey, Stefano Sbalchiero, Cesare Silla, and Brandon Vaidyanathan, is titled "Indifferent, Dogmatic or Pragmatic: A Multi-Country Analysis of How Scientists View the Public and Public Engagement". The second, written by Giampaolo Nuvolati with Anne-Iris Romens, focuses on "Remote Working and Using the Services of the 15-Minute City. An Analytical Model Based on Data Collected in Milan."

The issue concludes with an outstanding interview by Ilaria Pitti with Patricia Hill Collins, titled "Learning to Think for Ourselves and the Work of Sociology."

09/06/2025

This cartoon anachronism came into my mind several years ago while preparing a literature review about the phenomenon of online mis- and disinformation.2 It was inspired by the image Bruno Latour offers, in Science in Action, of a child quoting “three NIH studies” to refute his mother’s gentle suggestion that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”. Latour uses the absurd breach of context to illustrate the different “regimes of circulation” of soft, everyday facts versus harder scientific ones. Here, the absurdity is meant to highlight — for a small group of communications researchers who argue about the effects of media technologies — the field’s surprisingly narrow approach to thinking about misinformation on social networks.

Lucas Graves
School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison

https://sociologica.unibo.it/article/view/21446

07/06/2025

The advent of formal “social network analysis” in the last stretch of the last century was rightly hailed as a scientific breakthrough. Then, quite naturally, a cohort of brilliant contributors started mingling with information technology companies, selling ideas, or even maybe giving them away for free (Healy, 2015). Today, though, it seems that the most promising social science that one can imagine in that vein is the one that ought to be carried out by Google, Microsoft, Meta, or OpenAI directly, so to say, that is, with direct access to the stuff society has supposedly become. Where do social scientists themselves go when wanting to observe their very own network of observations? To Google Scholar, for example. This is computational sociology gone too far.

Fabian Muniesa
Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation (CNRS UMR 9217), Mines Paris - PSL

Estrangement of Meaning in a Wealth of Information Authors Fabian Muniesa Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation (CNRS UMR 9217), Mines Paris - PSL https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8756-3241 Fabian Muniesa is a senior researcher at the École des Mines de Paris (Mines Paris - PSL) and a member of the Cen...

05/06/2025

Universities (and other institutions) are now struggling to navigate the balance between in person and remote work. Generally speaking, as we know, faculty have much greater agency than staff in choosing when/where they work and this flexibility is often distributed along the lines of race, gender, ability and class causing significant tension between employees. And, as a result, disabled people are once again having to advocate for more flexibility — sometimes successfully and sometimes less so (often depending on their manager) — and many people are needing to quit their jobs or, even, drop out of the workforce entirely or retire early.

Laura Forlano
College of Arts, Media, and Design, Northeastern University

CybORGs. Cybernetic Organisms and Cybernetic Organizations Authors Laura Forlano College of Arts, Media, and Design, Northeastern University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3997-7180 Laura Forlano, a Fulbright award-winning and National Science Foundation funded scholar, is a disabled writer, social sci...

03/06/2025

What I’m going to talk about today is related to my research on home pregnancy tests, and there are many here who have contributed a lot to my thinking around these topics. But I will organize this essay around three provocations.
My first provocation: Heterosexual women would not be here in this room if we were pregnant every one to two years since we were teenagers.
I am literally referring to the women in this room. We would not be here. What this means is that our ability to have access to birth control and abortion makes it possible for us to participate in scholarly life. Without control of our reproduction, we would quite literally not be here. If our participation matters to you, this should matter to you.

Joan H. Robinson
The City College of New York, CUNY

We Would Not Be Here: Reproduction, Scholarship, and the Rise of Techno-authoritarianism Authors Joan H. Robinson The City College of New York, CUNY Joan H. Robinson, JD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Social Science and Law at The City College of New York, CUNY (USA). Her research examines inter...