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Cited by 710

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 136 of the 136 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

A Pragmatist Theory of Social Mechanisms

Gross, Neil·2009·American Sociological Review

Abstract

Some sociologists have recently argued that a major aim of sociological inquiry is to identify the mechanisms by which cause and effect relationships in the social world come about. This article argues that existing accounts of social mechanisms are problematic because they rest on either inadequately developed or questionable understandings of social action. Building on an insight increasingly common among sociological theorists—that action should be conceptualized in terms of social practices—I mobilize ideas from the tradition of classical American pragmatism to develop a more adequate theory of mechanisms. I identify three kinds of analytical problems the theory is especially well poised to address and then lay out an agenda for future research.

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Metadata

Authors
Gross, N.
Venue
American Sociological Review
Published
2009-06
Volume
74
Issue
3
Pages
358-379
ISSN
  • 0003-1224 (ISSN-L)
  • 1939-8271
OpenAlex
W2074830437
Cited by
710
References
136
FWCI
186.28
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: A Pragmatist Theory of Social Mechanisms. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1177/000312240907400302
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Gross, N. (2009). A Pragmatist Theory of Social Mechanisms. American Sociological Review. https://doi.org/10.1177/000312240907400302

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.