Beware of Fads and Fashions

Abstract

Though Jonathan Turner’s work touches nearly every level of analysis and social phenomenon of interest, the core of his theorizing fits most with the long-standing tradition dating to Comte, Marx, Spencer, and Weber of considering the general processes and forces that have shaped the myriad forms and contents of human societies. That is, a recurring and ever-present set of themes revolving around the core macrosociological structural formations and how they evolved, initially because of, and then apart from, our biology rests aside a firm commitment to identifying the principal macro-level forces or dynamics. These interwoven themes are tied neatly together by a Comtean positivism that serves as a mission statement for his work. In the following chapter, I lay out a coherent version of Turner’s theory beginning with his rehabilitation of functionalism and providing a clear statement of Comtean positivism. From there, I unpack the macro-dynamics and their embedding in evolutionary theory. This includes what I would describe as his two crowning contributions to macrosociology: seven basic forces that work independently, in tandem, and in sequence to shape all collectives and the three types of social selection he has advanced in recent years. The chapter ends by highlighting three blind spots in Turnerian sociology, doing what its eponymous founder has always advocated for: building on top of it: making institutional spheres more real; reclaiming the ecology of Shils and, implicitly, Durkheim; and bringing collective agency into the evolutionary schema.