From Mead and Collins to artificial social intelligence. On the social chain of thought . With a brief tour through some of my mind’s internalized conversations thesilverlining3.substack.com/p/the-social...
The Social Chain of Thought
Steps toward artificial social intelligence
thesilverlining3.substack.com
In which I offer a qualified defence agains the claim that "sociologists" think that norms as such are violent and that because they can change they should be changed. In return, I make some unqualified claims about why philosophers think that they know everything.
Delighted to have a guest post from @mclaughlinsoc.bsky.social on The Silver Linings Substack! In his terrific essay, Neil returns to the debate between Parsons and Mills but brings Gouldner into the mix, applying Gouldner's concept of "theoretical nightmares" to "the sociological imagination."
Neil McLaughlin on C. Wright Mills and Sociology’s Nightmare
Alvin Gouldner and the Crisis of Contemporary Sociology
thesilverlining3.substack.com
No one talks enthusiastically and profoundly about Parsons anymore? Well, then you should listen to Daniel Silver on Give Theory a Chance: thesocietypages.org/theory/2025/... #sociology #theory #socialtheory #parsons
Daniel Silver on Talcott Parsons - Give Theory A Chance
The Society Pages (TSP) is an open-access social science project headquartered in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota
thesocietypages.org
New essay on the sociology and literary representation of fast food. check it out! If, like me, you have both a soft spot in your heart and belly for fast food, this one is for you. And if you don't, maybe it can help to appreciate how somebody could. thesilverlining3.substack.com/p/two-litera...
thesilverlining3.substack.com
If you hear the phrase “grand theory” in sociology, more often than not it is to designate something that you are not going to do, or that used to be done in the past. thesilverlining3.substack.com/p/on-grand-t...
On Grand Theory
How an epithet became a category which became a memory
thesilverlining3.substack.com
The imagination has long been considered both essential and dangerous. It is essential because it represents a capacity to make new connections among existing ideas and to propose new ones. It is dangerous for the same reason. open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...
Sociological Over-Imagination
C. Wright Mills, the promise of "the sociological imagination," and the question of judgment
open.substack.com
An essay on the ethics of morally lax environments, from mixed martial arts to social media platforms open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...
What Counts as Cheating in a Clout Tournament?
Ongoing Reflection on the Ethics of Social Capitalism
open.substack.com
The world is full of things that could be considered problematic, but only some are actually treated that way. Why? We examine this question in a new paper, studying when some non-native species are discussed as more or less "invasive."
Is influence zero-sum? To a surprising degree, disputes about how to understand the contemporary media ecology come down to this question. One view sees status as inherently zero-sum, and therefore capable of infecting positive-sum domains, such as money.
I was very inspired by Jimmy Alfonso Licon’s Synthetic Socrates, where students debate an AI trained to fiercely defend various philosophical positions. So I thought I’d adapt it to my class on classical sociological theory. The result is Mad Max. thesilverlining3.substack.com/p/mad-max-an...
Mad Max: Beyond the Iron Cage. AI in the Classroom
Enter the Thunderdome
thesilverlining3.substack.com
This essay applies some political economy concepts to platforms, which I conceptualize under the heading of “political sociality” and “social capitalism”: the institutionalized instrumentalization of social relations. Aka: staged clout tournaments. open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...
The Scroll to Surfdoom
Social Capitalist Ethics and the Paradoxes of Participatory Platform Planning
open.substack.com
This is a terrific article, laying out an approach to sociological theory that builds from Hegel's idea of determinate negation and aims to rejuvenate deep engagement with existing theories as a central driver of theoretical creativity. www.researchgate.net/publication/...
A really great substack by the ever-brilliant @dsilver432.bsky.social charting the rise and fall and sometimes rise again of sociological research areas, discourse, and interests. Sadly, I find myself somewhere in that mid-20th century world... thesilverlining3.substack.com/p/sociologys...
Sociology's evolving discourse
Me and Codex have entered the chat
thesilverlining3.substack.com
Sociology's Evolving Discourse A computational analysis of over a century of sociology journal articles open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...
Sociology's evolving discourse
Me and Codex have entered the chat
open.substack.com
Social Media Platforms are Staged Clout Competitions open.substack.com/pub/thesilve... Why do we compete for influence online? A theory of social capitalism.
Social Media Platforms are Staged Clout Competitions
Why we fight
open.substack.com
Artificial Social Intelligence in the Classroom open.substack.com/pub/thesilve... This is the latest post in a series on our experiments in teaching Classical Sociological Theory by way of Artificial Social Intelligence.
Artificial Social Intelligence in the Classroom
Experiments in Classical Sociology IV
open.substack.com
I've been enjoying Dan Silver's substack, but this post on avoiding a "sucker sociology" really speaks to me: open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...
The social construction of crime
Or, how to avoid becoming a sucker
open.substack.com
Check out our new paper in American Sociological Review: "Living with Ghosts: How Physical Traces of the Past Shape Cultural Trauma in Chinatowns" The paper is based on research we've done on efforts to preserve and protect historic Chinatowns in Canada and the United States doi.org/10.1177/0003...
Living with Ghosts: How Physical Traces of the Past Shape Cultural Trauma in Chinatowns - Matt Patterson, Henry Tsang, Bryan Kuk, Weiqi Li, Mojtaba Rostami, 2026
Cultural trauma refers to how past experiences of harm can fundamentally transform a community’s shared identity, potentially generating feelings of solidarity ...
doi.org
Another excellent read here for those who teach #sociological theory or are interested in simplifying how certain perspectives work
Dan Silver@dsilver432.bsky.social · 6mo agoConstructionism instead takes the world as problematic and tries to understand how and why it is built the way it is, here and now. You can view this as a critical strand of constructionism. thesilverlining3.substack.com/p/the-social...
thesilverlining3.substack.com/p/marriage-a... In my previous post on Social Constructionism, I examined how failing to adopt a constructionist perspective feeds into “sucker sociology”: taking the rationales offered by interested actors at face value.
Marriage and the Construction of Reality
"I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific."
thesilverlining3.substack.com
The Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World is maybe one of the most famous diagrams in the history of social science. Did you ever wonder where the regions come from? Or why they have that blobby shape? open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...
Adventures in Sociological Spacetime
Mapping Social Change: A Unified Framework for Temporal Clustering
open.substack.com
Knowledge work now often begins with a blank screen and helpful AI assistants. Whatever else that does, it will make the post industrial workplace into the stuff of nostalgia, sort of like those farms where you can go pick apples to experience agricultural labor . open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...
Knowledge Work Apple Picking
On post-post-industrial nostalgia
open.substack.com
The Chicago School of Sociology was a School of Sociology substack.com/home/post/p-... In which I argue that it’s crucial to understand the Chicago School's urban research as a subset of its broader sociological project, which is an attempt at applied pragmatist philosophy.
The Chicago School of Sociology was a School of Sociology
And that's why they cared about cities
open.substack.com
Apply to this year’s Public Thinking Workshops by Friday March 6! The Good Life will be taught by philosophers and Point editors Anastasia Berg and Joseph Keegin, and Questions Concerning Technology will be taught by Point founding editor Jon Baskin and me. www.publicthinking.thepointmag.com/apply
Apply — Public Thinking
publicthinking.thepointmag.com
Social Capitalist Ethics III: The Disembedding of Sociality from Society open.substack.com/pub/thesilve... How are social media platforms like used car dealers? This post answers that question, and more. I first briefly review my first two posts in this series.
Social Capitalist Ethics III: The Disembedding of Sociality from Society
Collective representations, discovery mechanisms, and scaling social life
open.substack.com
This post summarizes results from using Codex to analyze a dataset of NEA project reports from its Our Town program. Our Town is a place-based initiative that supports arts groups to work with various civic organizations to enhance local community vitality. open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...
Exploring NEA's Our Town with Codex
I’ve been using LLMs as coding aids for some time, and they have definitely enhanced my abilities, both through speeding up things I could have otherwise done, and also allowing me to try out analyses...
open.substack.com
This post examines romanticism from a sociological perspective. In this point of view, romanticism is a perennial possibility because all societies experience strain and tension. substack.com/home/post/p-...
Romanticism: a sociological perspective
How modern societies channel the romantic impulse, from Baudelaire to Bon Jovi.
substack.com
