For the past twenty years, noted sociologist Andrew Abbott has been developing what he calls a processual ontology for social life. In this view, the social world is constantly changing—making, remaking, and unmaking itself, instant by instant. He argues that even the units of the social world—both individuals and entities—must be explained by these series of events rather than as enduring objects, fixed in time. This radical concept, which lies at the heart of the Chicago School ...

In The System of Professions Andrew Abbott explores central questions about the role of professions in modern life: Why should there be occupational groups controlling expert knowledge? Where and why did groups such as law and medicine achieve their power? Will professionalism spread throughout the occupational world? While most inquiries in this field study one profession at a time, Abbott here considers the system of professions as a whole. Through comparative and historical stu...

"Shows the reader how to harness new technology while upholding the highest standards of research. The result is a joy to read . . . a boon for students." —Robert J. Sampson, professor of the social sciences at Harvard UniversityToday's researchers have access to more information than ever before. Yet the new material is both overwhelming in quantity and variable in quality. How can scholars survive these twin problems and produce groundbreaking research using the p...

Edited by distinguished experts in this expanding field and with specialist contributions, this overview is the first of its kind to focus on electrodeposition from ionic liquids.This second edition has been completely revised and updated with approximately 20% new content and has been expanded by five chapters to cover the following topics:-Bulk and Interface Theory-Nanoscale Imaging including AFM, In situ STM and UHV-STM-Impedance Spectroscopy-Process S...

In July 2009, the American Journal of Sociology (AJS) began publishing book reviews by an individual writing as Barbara Celarent, professor of particularity at the University of Atlantis. Mysterious in origin, Celarent’s essays taken together provide a broad introduction to social thinking. Through the close reading of important texts, Celarent’s short, informative, and analytic essays engaged with long traditions of social thought across the globe—from India, Brazil, and China to...

"Dear Colleagues: I send you greetings from Hyde Park, where the one hundred and twentysecond Autumn Quarter of University of Chicago is right now at its midpoint. The students are hurrying through the quadrangles; the University Libraries are packed with faces worried about midterm examinations; the faculty are frowning at computer screens filled with a thousand things scholarly and unscholarly."

The discipline of sociology was born-and has been recurrently reconstituted-in response to the fragmentation of ideas about the social world. For two centuries, sociologists have sought refuge in "synthesis:" programs designed to integrate multiple perspectives within a unifying framework. Yet even as this cause has inspired many of the discipline's major thinkers, past and present, its objective has proven elusive, leaving nearly as many syntheses as synthesizers. This volume considers an...