Analytical Sociology: Norms, Actions and Networks illustrates how analytical sociology is progressively refining its theoretical framework and how powerful this framework is in explaining a large array of social phenomena. ?Manzo and his team have collaborated to demonstrate how analytical sociology integrates formal models, computer simulations, laboratory experiments, and complex statistical analysis of large-scale datasets; an integration that makes analytical sociology comparable to the methodology adopted by modern biological and physical sciences. ? ?Reputed academic experts drawn from global centres of excellence present and discuss ?the macro-level consequences of complex social actions such as crime, voting, tax, protesting, discriminatory or cooperative behaviours with puzzling historical events such as the rise of Italian fascism or witchcraft panics in early modern Scotland, with pervasive relational phenomena such as network instability network homophily, or with the emergence of status hierarchies and with recurrent organizational patterns. The editor introduces each chapter, providing a seamless thread through the book that draws on common conclusions and relates the chapter to previous research and current debates in analytical sociology. ? The first part of the book demonstrates that analytical sociology combines norms, beliefs, and social networks to devise and concretely apply a theory of action which is more complex and realistic than rational choice theory. The second and third part of the book pursue this demonstration by focusing on several aspects of social network characteristics and effects, the main distinction between the two parts being the major role played by simulation. The latter part of the book shows how seriously analytical sociology takes into account networks among actors & thus challenging the criticism of individualistic reductionism which, according to critics, flaw the approach. The authors discuss computational models as well as laboratory experiments, focusing on how experiments can be used to study the complex relation between norms, networks, and social actions
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