Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Theory after Essentialism -- Accounting for the Observer -- Observing Observers -- Levels of Observing -- Ideological Conflicts in Observation -- Inside and Outside Observers -- Value-Freedom and Disinterestedness -- The Myth of "Going Native" -- A Few Pretty Old Rules of Method -- The Classics Revisited, Briefly -- Networks and Systems -- Some Elements of a Working Epistemology -- 2. How to Sociologize with a Hammer -- The Crisis of Representation -- Underdetermination and Theory-Ladenness -- The Indeterminacy of Translation -- Empiricizing Contexts and Demarcations -- Incommensurability -- The Double Hermeneutic -- Things and Persons -- 3. Cultural Rationality -- After Reason -- Causes and Reasons -- The Unity of Persons -- What Do Persons Want and Believe? -- Decisions, Decisions -- How to Locate Rationality -- Some Covariates of Rationality -- 4. Foundations of Culture -- Never Minds -- Who Knows? No Idea! -- The Meanings of Meaning -- Observing Culture and Cultural Observers -- What Is in a Culture? -- Cultural Stratification -- Art -- Reputation -- 5. Modes of Social Association I: Encounters, Groups, and Organizations -- The Bodies and Brains of Persons -- Emotional Selves -- Levels of Society -- Encounters -- Groups -- Organizations -- Variations in Organizational Cultures -- 6. Modes of Social Association II: Networks -- Drift -- Fields of Forces -- Power to the Networks -- Metabolism -- Renormalization -- Autopoiesis -- Self-Similarity -- Unity -- Boundaries -- Network Expansions -- Networks of Culture -- 7. Realism Explained -- A Continuum of Realism -- Core Expansions and Time -- Machines -- Instruction -- Density -- Monopoly and Hegemony -- Competition and Decentralization -- Literacy and Printing -- Orality, Perception, and Copresence -- Consensus -- Distance and Frontstages -- Conclusion -- References.

Index.