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Drawing on Bayesian probability theory, we propose a generalization of affect control theory (BayesACT) that better accounts for the dynamic fluctuation of identity meanings for self and other during interactions, elucidates how people infer and adjust meanings through social experience, and shows how stable patterns of interaction can emerge from individuals’ uncertain perceptions of identities. Using simulations, we illustrate how this generalization offers a resolution to several issues of theoretical significance within sociology and social psychology by balancing cultural consensus with individual deviations from shared meanings, balancing meaning verification with the learning processes reflective of change, and accounting for noise in communicating identity. We also show how the model speaks to debates about core features of the self, which can be understood as stable and yet malleable, coherent and yet composed of multiple identities that may carry competing meanings. We discuss applications of the model in different areas of sociology, implications for understanding identity and social interaction, as well as the theoretical grounding of computational models of social behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prestige of academic departments is commonly understood as rooted in the scholarly productivity of their faculty and graduates. I use the theories of Weber and Bourdieu to advance an alternative view of departmental prestige, which I show is an effect a department's position within networks of association and social exchange-that is, it is a form of social capital The social network created by the exchange of PhDs among departments is the most important network of this kind. Using data on the exchange of PhDs among sociology departments, I apply network analysis to investigate this alternative conception of departmental prestige and to demons trate its superiority over the conventional view. Within sociology, centrality within interdepartmental hiring networks explains 84 percent of the variance in departmental prestige. Similar findings are reported for history and political science. This alternative understanding of academic prestige helps clarify anomalies-e.g., the variance in prestige unconnected to scholarly productivity, the strong association between department size and prestige, and the long-term stability of prestige rankings-encountered in research that is based on the more conventional view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on a 1993 study by Peter Kollock, which examined the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma (IPD) under monitoring uncertainty. Much of what is true in Kollock's paper is not new, and much of what is new is either not true or not significant. First, Kollock does not address a new problem. What he identifies as the key issue, namely the compromise that must be made between vulnerability to exploitation and vulnerability to needless cycles of recrimination, was clearly identified as a problem a decade ago. Kollock's main result is not new either. His main finding is that when playing the noisy IPD, strategies that use a more relaxed accounting system often have important advantages. In contrast, strategies that were generous--for instance, cooperated more than their partners did--were quite effective. To see why Kollock's observations regarding the effects of noise cannot be taken at face value, they ought to be reconsidered in the context of what is known. Kollock portrays uncertainty as have only negative consequences. However, uncertainty's benign effects may be significant. The benign effects of noise concern the two most fundamental aspects of the evolution of cooperation: its emergence and its stability.

This article comments on a 1993 study by Peter Kollock, which employed computer simulations allowing a diversity of cooperative strategies in repeated games. In this study, he made a significant claim, that is, in noisy environments, a generous strategy is more successful than one that follows the injunction of an eye for an eye. The implications of Kollock's analysis are striking. When substantial noise is present, there is the evolution of stable strategies of generous cooperation that cannot be displaced by less generous strategies. Kollock offered several examples of social environments that favor a generous and forgiving strategy. For instance, he offered the case of food exchange in hunting and gathering societies. A reading of the anthropological literature in this area found that in small-scale societies, people are sometimes generous with their food resources, especially when kinship ties are close. It is hypothesized that Kollock's results showed TAT+1 to be the most successful strategy because of the large range of noise magnitude in his simulations. His analysis seems to be predicated on the idea that social exchange is so noisy that actors frequently cannot distinguish between the strategies before them.

This paper examines the interfaces between pragmatism and interactionist sociology. Four tenets central to social interactionism have been selected for this study: the philosophical perspective on reality as being in the state of flux, the sociological view of social structure as emergent process, the methodological preference for participatory modes of research, and the ideological commitment to ongoing social reconstruction as a goal of sociological practice. It is argued that from the start interactionist sociologists were concerned with the problem of social order and sought new ways of conceptualizing social structure. Special emphasis is placed on the interactionists' predilection for a logic of inquiry sensitive to the objective indeterminacy of the situation. An argument is made that the failure of interactionist sociologists to address head-on the issues of power and inequality reflects not so much their uncritical reliance on pragmatism as their failure to follow consistently pragmatist tenets and to fulfill the political commitments of pragmatist philosophers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]