Category: Social structure

Julie Lie-Panis on Guarding the Guardians — How Institutions Make Social Life Work

by David Labaree, posted in Culture, Institutions, Politics, Social structure, Theory

This post is an essay by Julien Lie-Panis from a recent edition of Aeon.  Here's a link to the original. He's addressing a problem that is suddenly quite salient in the world of Trump2.  Institutions make social life possible, but they depend on in formal social pressures: norms not laws.  Past presidents behaved themselves because … Continue reading Julie Lie-Panis on Guarding the Guardians — How Institutions Make Social Life Work

Steven Mintz — History with a Human Soul

by David Labaree, posted in Agency, History, Social structure

This post is an essay by historian Steven Mintz from his Substack.  Here's a link to the original.  In it, he explores the need to balance structure and agency in the way we write history.  And his model for doing this is Tolstoy.  This is an overview of his argument: Yet War and Peace is no exercise in … Continue reading Steven Mintz — History with a Human Soul