Self, Social Structure, and Beliefs

Jeffrey C. Alexander is Professor and Chair of Sociology at Yale University and the author most recently of The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology. Gary T. Marx is Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is the author of Undercover: Police Surveillance in America, among other works. Christine L. Williams is Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas, Austin, and author of Gender Differences at Work and Still a Man's World.

"The essays collected here are a fitting tribute precisely because they are intellectual, rich, diverse, thought-provoking, and unafraid of controversy." - Craig Calhoun, President, Social Science Research Council; "If the legacy of scholars is measured by the work of their students, Neil Smelser has done very well indeed." - Michele Lamont, coeditor of Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology"

• 1. Mastering Ambivalence: Neil Smelser as a Sociologist of Synthesis Jeffrey C. Alexander, Gary T. Marx, and Christine L. Williams PART I: SELF Introduction: Christine L. Williams 2. The Sociological Eye and the Psychoanalytic Ear: Nancy J. Chodorow 3. The Commodity Frontier: Arlie Russell Hochschild 4. The Glass Cage: Flexible Work, Fragmented Consumption, Fragile Selves Yiannis Gabriel PART II: SOCIAL STRUCTURE Introduction: Gary T. Marx 5. Rational Choice and Sociology: Alberto Martinelli 6. Enlisting Smelser's Theory of Ambivalence to Maintain Progress in Sociology of Religion's New Paradigm: R. Stephen Warner 7. Circuits of Commerce: Viviana A. Zelizer 8. Trust as an Aspect of Social Structure: Robert Wuthnow 9. The Organizational Foundations of University Capability: Differentiation and Competition in the Academic Sector of Society Burton R. Clark PART III: BELIEFS Introduction: Jeffrey C. Alexander 10. Primordial Beliefs and Immigration Policy: The Case of Britain's Patrials Christian Joppke 11. Causal Reasoning, Historical Logic, and Sociological Explanation: Lyn Spillman 12. Intellectual Cycles of Social Movement Research: From Psychoanalysis to Culture? James M. Jasper 13. Shaping Sociological Imagination: The Importance of Theory Piotr Sztompka List of Contributors Index