Search results for ""Author John Levi Martin""

Social Structures is a book that examines how structural forms spontaneously arise from social relationships. Offering major insights into the building blocks of social life, it identifies which locally emergent structures have the capacity to grow into larger ones and shows how structural tendencies associated with smaller structures shape and constrain patterns of larger structures. The book then investigates the role such structures have played in the emergence of the modern nation-state. Bringing together the latest findings in sociology, anthropology, political science, and history, John Levi Martin traces how sets of interpersonal relationships become ordered in different ways to form structures. He looks at a range of social structures, from smaller ones like families and street gangs to larger ones such as communes and, ultimately, nation-states. He finds that the relationships best suited to forming larger structures are those that thrive in conditions of inequality; that are incomplete and as sparse as possible, and thereby avoid the problem of completion in which interacting members are required to establish too many relationships; and that abhor transitivity rather than assuming it. Social Structures argues that these "patronage" relationships, which often serve as means of loose coordination in the absence of strong states, are nevertheless the scaffolding of the social structures most distinctive to the modern state, namely the command army and the political party.

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Simply put, Thinking Through Statistics is a primer on how to maintain rigorous data standards in social science work. But don’t let that daunt you. With clever examples and witty takeaways, John Levi Martin proves himself to be a most affable tour guide through these scholarly waters. Martin lays out the fundamental vocabulary of sociological statistics—from probability to null models—and illustrates common pitfalls to avoid in quantitative research. He encourages readers to hunker down with the data, using a combination of visual models and simulations to outline the threats to accuracy and validity in a conventional researcher’s work. Thinking Through Statistics gives social science practitioners accessible insight into troves of wisdom that would normally have to be earned through arduous trial and error, and it does so with a lighthearted approach that ensures this field guide is anything but stodgy

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Sociological research is hard enough already you don't need to make it even harder by smashing about like a bull in a china shop, not knowing what you're doing or where you're heading. Or so says John Levi Martin in this witty, insightful, and desperately needed primer on how to practice rigorous social science. Thinking Through Methods focuses on the practical decisions that you will need to make as a researcher where the data you are working with comes from and how that data relates to all the possible data you could have gathered. This is a user's guide to sociological research, designed to be used at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Rather than offer mechanical rules and applications, Martin chooses instead to team up with the reader to think through and with methods. He acknowledges that we are human beings and thus prone to the same cognitive limitations and distortions found in subjects and proposes ways to compensate for these limitations. Martin also forcefully argues for principled symmetry, contending that bad ethics makes for bad research, and vice versa. Thinking Through Methods is a landmark work one that students will turn to again and again throughout the course of their sociological research.

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Sociological research is hard enough already you don't need to make it even harder by smashing about like a bull in a china shop, not knowing what you're doing or where you're heading. Or so says John Levi Martin in this witty, insightful, and desperately needed primer on how to practice rigorous social science. Thinking Through Methods focuses on the practical decisions that you will need to make as a researcher where the data you are working with comes from and how that data relates to all the possible data you could have gathered. This is a user's guide to sociological research, designed to be used at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Rather than offer mechanical rules and applications, Martin chooses instead to team up with the reader to think through and with methods. He acknowledges that we are human beings and thus prone to the same cognitive limitations and distortions found in subjects and proposes ways to compensate for these limitations. Martin also forcefully argues for principled symmetry, contending that bad ethics makes for bad research, and vice versa. Thinking Through Methods is a landmark work one that students will turn to again and again throughout the course of their sociological research.

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