Mustafa Emirbayer
Biographic Data
| ID | 102616 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mustafa Emirbayer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mustafa |
| FAMILY NAME | Emirbayer |
| SIGNATURE | EMIRBAYER M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6959-9195 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2572 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Depth Sociology
Collective Defense Mechanisms
Despite being an uncommon topic in sociological inquiry, collective defense mechanisms are a widely known phenomenon in social life. Whenever people experience anxieties in common, shared defensive processes can arise at an unconscious level, shunting off these anxieties from reflective awareness. This can happen in social and organizational settings that are intimate and impersonal, small and large, short-lived and enduring. How can we better th…
Self-negation
Beneath rationalization: Elias, Foucault, and the body1
Elias and Foucault ended up making the same core discovery about the same fundamental social process, which we term the 'social constraints towards self-discipline' process. We show how three distinct biographical and intellectual factors were important in guiding them toward this discovery: (1) their shared exposure to philosophical traditions associated with Heidegger's break from Husserl; (2) their common, sustained contact with 'clinical' pra…
Field and Ecology
This article offers a theoretical comparison between field and ecology, as developed by Pierre Bourdieu and the Chicago School of sociology. While field theory and ecological theory share similar conceptualizations of actors, positions, and relations, and while they converge in their views on structural isomorphism, temporality, and social psychology, they are quite different on several other scores: power and inequality, endogeneity, heterogenei…
The Racial Order
Relational Sociology as Fighting Words
A Sociological Breakthrough, not a Sociological Guilt Trip
This essay critically examines Raewyn Connell’s Southern Theory. Limitations of the work include a tendency to overgeneralize about “Northern Theory” and to leave some claims about the power of “Southern Theory” unsubstantiated. Southern Theory’s most important contributions include its insights into the problematic tendencies and patterns of knowledge production in the Global North and its insistent plea to make social theory more dialogic
The peculiar convergence of Jeffrey Alexander and Erik Olin Wright
Elias and Bourdieu
The primary goal of this article is to uncover the deep-seated conceptual affinities between Pierre Bourdieu and Norbert Elias. The second goal is to demonstrate that, in part because of their diverging sensitivities, when taken together the two authors' highly compatible approaches yield a vision more fertile than either of their sociological perspectives considered separately. Tracing the intellectual roots of the two author's three core concep…
To imagine and pursue racial justice
At the conclusion of many courses on race and racism, students, having learned, some for the first time, about the existence, origins, and complex dimensions of racial domination in America, are left pondering their next steps. ‘What is to be done?’ many ask. ‘And what, exactly, is it that we want?’ Important as they are, these questions too often are given insufficient attention, usually addressed at the end of the semester, sometimes only on th…
Race and reflexivity
It is widely recognized that our understanding of the racial order will remain forever unsatisfactory so long as we fail to turn our analytic gaze back upon ourselves, the analysts of racial domination, and inquire critically into the hidden presuppositions that shape our thought. However, for reflexivity to be employed widely in the interest of scientific truth, analysts must acknowledge that reflexive thinking entails much more than observing h…
Pragmatism and Ethnomethodology
Tilly and Bourdieu
Manifiesto en pro de una sociología relacional
En la actualidad, los sociolólogos enfrentan un dilema fundamental: se debe concebir el mundo social como conformado ante todo por sustancias o por procesos, por "cosas" estáticas o por relaciones dinámicas y en constante desarrollo. Los modelos basados en la teoría de elección racional y los fundados en la norma, diversos holismos y estructuralismos, y el análisis de "variables" estadísticas continúan implícita o explícitamente prefiriendo el pr…
What Is Racial Domination
When students of race and racism seek direction, they can find no single comprehensive source that provides them with basic analytical guidance or that offers insights into the elementary forms of racial classification and domination. We believe the field would benefit greatly from such a source, and we attempt to offer one here. Synchronizing and building upon recent theoretical innovations in the area of race, we lend some conceptual clarificat…
Bourdieu and organizational analysis
Beyond Weberian Action Theory
Bourdieu and Social Work
Despite occasional ritualistic invocations of his key concepts and references to certain famous texts, the discipline of social work remains largely unaware of the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. This essay seeks to show that Bourdieu contributed more than just a set of such terms as “cultural capital” and “habitus”; he also provided a new relational approach to the study of fields of domination and struggle, a new way of thinking about how power op…
Emile Durkheim: Sociologist of Modernity
Pragmatism, Bourdieu, and collective emotions in contentious politics
Emile Durkheim: Sociologist of Modernity
Introduction.Emile Durkheim: Sociologist of Modernity.Mustafa Emirbayer.Part I: Sociological Methodology:1. An Agenda for Sociology.Introduction.Durkheim Selections:Suicide.Modern Selections:Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste.Pierre Bourdieu.Part II: A Topography of Modernity.2. Social Structure and Collective Consciousness.Introduction.Durkheim Selections:The Division of Labor in Society.On Institutional Analysis.Modern Sele…
The Alexander School of Cultural Sociology
I pursue three aims in this article: (1) a contextualization of Jeffrey Alexander's cultural sociology within the broader trajectory of his intellectual development; (2) a sketch of the key ideas of his approach to cultural analysis against the backdrop of contemporary debates regarding culture and social structure; and (3) an appreciation and critical assessment of Alexander's program
Emile Durkheim: Sociologist of Modernity (Modernity and Society)
What Is Agency
This article aims (1) to analytically disaggregate agency into its several component elements (though these are interrelated empirically), (2) to demonstrate the ways in which these agentic dimensions interpenetrate with forms of structure, and (3) to point out the implications of such a conception of agency for empirical research. The authors conceptualize agency as a temporally embedded process of social engagement, informed by the past (in its…
What Is Agency
This article aims (1) to analytically disaggregate agency into its several component elements (though these are interrelated empirically), (2) to demonstrate the ways in which these agentic dimensions interpenetrate with forms of structure, and (3) to point out the implications of such a conception of agency for empirical research. The authors conceptualize agency as a temporally embedded process of social engagement, informed by the past (in its…
Manifesto for a Relational Sociology
Metadata only record
Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problem of Agency
Metadata only record
Bourdieu and organizational analysis
What Is Racial Domination
When students of race and racism seek direction, they can find no single comprehensive source that provides them with basic analytical guidance or that offers insights into the elementary forms of racial classification and domination. We believe the field would benefit greatly from such a source, and we attempt to offer one here. Synchronizing and building upon recent theoretical innovations in the area of race, we lend some conceptual clarificat…
Pragmatism, Bourdieu, and collective emotions in contentious politics
Race and reflexivity
It is widely recognized that our understanding of the racial order will remain forever unsatisfactory so long as we fail to turn our analytic gaze back upon ourselves, the analysts of racial domination, and inquire critically into the hidden presuppositions that shape our thought. However, for reflexivity to be employed widely in the interest of scientific truth, analysts must acknowledge that reflexive thinking entails much more than observing h…
Field and Ecology
This article offers a theoretical comparison between field and ecology, as developed by Pierre Bourdieu and the Chicago School of sociology. While field theory and ecological theory share similar conceptualizations of actors, positions, and relations, and while they converge in their views on structural isomorphism, temporality, and social psychology, they are quite different on several other scores: power and inequality, endogeneity, heterogenei…
Pragmatism and Ethnomethodology
Publics in history
Elias and Bourdieu
The primary goal of this article is to uncover the deep-seated conceptual affinities between Pierre Bourdieu and Norbert Elias. The second goal is to demonstrate that, in part because of their diverging sensitivities, when taken together the two authors' highly compatible approaches yield a vision more fertile than either of their sociological perspectives considered separately. Tracing the intellectual roots of the two author's three core concep…
Useful Durkheim
Bourdieu and Social Work
Despite occasional ritualistic invocations of his key concepts and references to certain famous texts, the discipline of social work remains largely unaware of the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. This essay seeks to show that Bourdieu contributed more than just a set of such terms as “cultural capital” and “habitus”; he also provided a new relational approach to the study of fields of domination and struggle, a new way of thinking about how power op…
Symbols, Positions, Objects: Toward a New Theory of Revolutions and Collective Action
Approche synthetique et theorique des revolutions et de l'action collective, fondee sur les notions de culture et structure sociale, d'une part, et sur l'idee d'une action et d'une psychologie sociales, d'autre part. Au-dela de tout contexte relationnel d'action, l'A. montre que l'engagement des acteurs apporte une reponse interactive aux problemes lies au changement de situations historiques
The Alexander School of Cultural Sociology
I pursue three aims in this article: (1) a contextualization of Jeffrey Alexander's cultural sociology within the broader trajectory of his intellectual development; (2) a sketch of the key ideas of his approach to cultural analysis against the backdrop of contemporary debates regarding culture and social structure; and (3) an appreciation and critical assessment of Alexander's program
Tilly and Bourdieu
Durkheim's contribution to the sociological analysis of history
Emile Durkheim: Sociologist of Modernity
Self-negation
The peculiar convergence of Jeffrey Alexander and Erik Olin Wright
Manifiesto en pro de una sociología relacional
En la actualidad, los sociolólogos enfrentan un dilema fundamental: se debe concebir el mundo social como conformado ante todo por sustancias o por procesos, por "cosas" estáticas o por relaciones dinámicas y en constante desarrollo. Los modelos basados en la teoría de elección racional y los fundados en la norma, diversos holismos y estructuralismos, y el análisis de "variables" estadísticas continúan implícita o explícitamente prefiriendo el pr…
Beyond structuralism and voluntarism: The politics and discourse of Progressive school reform, 1890?1930
Beneath rationalization: Elias, Foucault, and the body1
Elias and Foucault ended up making the same core discovery about the same fundamental social process, which we term the 'social constraints towards self-discipline' process. We show how three distinct biographical and intellectual factors were important in guiding them toward this discovery: (1) their shared exposure to philosophical traditions associated with Heidegger's break from Husserl; (2) their common, sustained contact with 'clinical' pra…
To imagine and pursue racial justice
At the conclusion of many courses on race and racism, students, having learned, some for the first time, about the existence, origins, and complex dimensions of racial domination in America, are left pondering their next steps. ‘What is to be done?’ many ask. ‘And what, exactly, is it that we want?’ Important as they are, these questions too often are given insufficient attention, usually addressed at the end of the semester, sometimes only on th…
The Shaping of a Virtuous Citizenry: Educational Reform in Massachusetts, 1830–1860
In his “Ninth Annual Report to the Massachusetts Board of Education” (1846), the Secretary of the Board, Horace Mann, discussed the teaching of moral and civic virtues inside the classrooms of American public schools. “The question now arises,” he declared, “and it is a question on which the worth or worthlessness of our free institutions is suspended—whether [our schools] be put in requisition to impart a higher moral tone to the public mind; to…
The Shaping of a Virtuous Citizenry: Educational Reform in Massachusetts, 1830–1860
In his “Ninth Annual Report to the Massachusetts Board of Education” (1846), the Secretary of the Board, Horace Mann, discussed the teaching of moral and civic virtues inside the classrooms of American public schools. “The question now arises,” he declared, “and it is a question on which the worth or worthlessness of our free institutions is suspended—whether [our schools] be put in requisition to impart a higher moral tone to the public mind; to…
Beyond structuralism and voluntarism: The politics and discourse of Progressive school reform, 1890?1930
Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problem of Agency
Metadata only record
The Semiotic Self
Social Action and Power
Durkheim's contribution to the sociological analysis of history
Symbols, Positions, Objects: Toward a New Theory of Revolutions and Collective Action
Approche synthetique et theorique des revolutions et de l'action collective, fondee sur les notions de culture et structure sociale, d'une part, et sur l'idee d'une action et d'une psychologie sociales, d'autre part. Au-dela de tout contexte relationnel d'action, l'A. montre que l'engagement des acteurs apporte une reponse interactive aux problemes lies au changement de situations historiques
Useful Durkheim
Manifesto for a Relational Sociology
Metadata only record
What Is Agency
This article aims (1) to analytically disaggregate agency into its several component elements (though these are interrelated empirically), (2) to demonstrate the ways in which these agentic dimensions interpenetrate with forms of structure, and (3) to point out the implications of such a conception of agency for empirical research. The authors conceptualize agency as a temporally embedded process of social engagement, informed by the past (in its…
Publics in history
Emile Durkheim: Sociologist of Modernity (Modernity and Society)
Emile Durkheim: Sociologist of Modernity
Introduction.Emile Durkheim: Sociologist of Modernity.Mustafa Emirbayer.Part I: Sociological Methodology:1. An Agenda for Sociology.Introduction.Durkheim Selections:Suicide.Modern Selections:Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste.Pierre Bourdieu.Part II: A Topography of Modernity.2. Social Structure and Collective Consciousness.Introduction.Durkheim Selections:The Division of Labor in Society.On Institutional Analysis.Modern Sele…
The Alexander School of Cultural Sociology
I pursue three aims in this article: (1) a contextualization of Jeffrey Alexander's cultural sociology within the broader trajectory of his intellectual development; (2) a sketch of the key ideas of his approach to cultural analysis against the backdrop of contemporary debates regarding culture and social structure; and (3) an appreciation and critical assessment of Alexander's program
Beyond Weberian Action Theory
Bourdieu and Social Work
Despite occasional ritualistic invocations of his key concepts and references to certain famous texts, the discipline of social work remains largely unaware of the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. This essay seeks to show that Bourdieu contributed more than just a set of such terms as “cultural capital” and “habitus”; he also provided a new relational approach to the study of fields of domination and struggle, a new way of thinking about how power op…
Emile Durkheim: Sociologist of Modernity
Pragmatism, Bourdieu, and collective emotions in contentious politics
Bourdieu and organizational analysis
Manifiesto en pro de una sociología relacional
En la actualidad, los sociolólogos enfrentan un dilema fundamental: se debe concebir el mundo social como conformado ante todo por sustancias o por procesos, por "cosas" estáticas o por relaciones dinámicas y en constante desarrollo. Los modelos basados en la teoría de elección racional y los fundados en la norma, diversos holismos y estructuralismos, y el análisis de "variables" estadísticas continúan implícita o explícitamente prefiriendo el pr…
What Is Racial Domination
When students of race and racism seek direction, they can find no single comprehensive source that provides them with basic analytical guidance or that offers insights into the elementary forms of racial classification and domination. We believe the field would benefit greatly from such a source, and we attempt to offer one here. Synchronizing and building upon recent theoretical innovations in the area of race, we lend some conceptual clarificat…
Tilly and Bourdieu
To imagine and pursue racial justice
At the conclusion of many courses on race and racism, students, having learned, some for the first time, about the existence, origins, and complex dimensions of racial domination in America, are left pondering their next steps. ‘What is to be done?’ many ask. ‘And what, exactly, is it that we want?’ Important as they are, these questions too often are given insufficient attention, usually addressed at the end of the semester, sometimes only on th…
Race and reflexivity
It is widely recognized that our understanding of the racial order will remain forever unsatisfactory so long as we fail to turn our analytic gaze back upon ourselves, the analysts of racial domination, and inquire critically into the hidden presuppositions that shape our thought. However, for reflexivity to be employed widely in the interest of scientific truth, analysts must acknowledge that reflexive thinking entails much more than observing h…
Pragmatism and Ethnomethodology
Sociology (29 works) · Philosophy (22 works) · Epistemology (21 works) · Social and Cultural Dynamics (15 works) · Political science (13 works) · Law (11 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Social science (9 works) · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice (8 works) · Critical Realism in Sociology (5 works)