This is one of the largest groups in the ledger, and it combines sociology's classical theorists, a young and fast-growing science of cultural evolution, a set of cross-cultural comparisons, and a lively contemporary argument conducted from both political directions. The unifying question is how a society holds together, and what happens to people inside it as a result.
The classical questions
The founders of sociology asked what binds a society. Durkheim's Mechanical and Organic Solidarity contrasts societies held together by sameness with those held together by interdependence, and his Anomie describes what happens when norms lose their grip. Ibn Khaldun's Asabiyyah, written in the fourteenth century, explains the rise and fall of dynasties by the strength and decay of group solidarity. Cooley's Looking-Glass Self, Du Bois's Double Consciousness and Goffman's Face-Work and Stigma describe the self as formed in the eyes of others. The Thomas Theorem and Merton's Self-Fulfilling Prophecy show beliefs about a situation producing it.
How culture evolves
The newest body of theory treats culture as something that evolves by transmission. Vertical, Horizontal, Conformist and Prestige-Biased Transmission describe whom people learn from, and Content and Context Bias describe which ideas they keep. Cumulative Culture explains how human knowledge builds across generations beyond what any individual could invent, and Gene-Culture Coevolution shows culture shaping biology in return, as dairying selected for adult lactose tolerance.
How societies sort people
A third cluster concerns stratification. Bourdieu's Cultural Capital, Social Closure and Opportunity Hoarding explain how advantaged groups keep their advantage. Schelling's Segregation Model shows that even mild individual preferences for similar neighbours can produce stark segregation that nobody wanted. Fundamental Cause Theory explains why health inequalities persist even as the diseases causing them change.
Comparing cultures
A fourth cluster compares societies. Gelfand's Tight and Loose Cultures, Fukuyama's High- and Low-Trust Societies and Nisbett and Cohen's Culture of Honour explain differences in norms by history and ecology. The Chinese Mianzi and Lian, the two kinds of face, and Singapore's Kiasu, the fear of losing out, name patterns English lacks a word for.
Where it applies
These models inform policy wherever people must live and work together. Schelling's model changed how planners think about segregation, showing that integration needs deliberate design even when prejudice is mild. The cultural-evolution models explain how practices spread in organisations and online. The cross-cultural models are used in international business and diplomacy, and the classical theories remain the working vocabulary of social research.
Where it is argued over
The contemporary end of the group is contested from both political directions, and the ledger files both sides. From the left come Cultural Hegemony, False Consciousness, Capitalist Realism and the Spirit Level Hypothesis. From the right come Luxury Belief, Victimhood Culture, Oikophobia and Hard Times Create Strong Men. Critics of each side point out that its models attribute motives to opponents that have not been measured. The cultural-evolution models face a different challenge: their formal predictions often outrun the historical data available to test them.
Why it is worth knowing
This group holds the widest range of explanations for social life in the ledger, from fourteenth-century Tunis to present-day blogs. Knowing several of them guards against the most common error in thinking about society, which is to explain every pattern by one mechanism. Segregation, inequality and political conflict usually have several causes at once, and this group supplies most of the candidates.
The entries behind this essay: Model in Sociology & Culture. Every subject has its essays on the essays page.