Path Dependence in Historical Sociology
Path dependence to some Sociologists is the theory that events that happened in past, have some or a lot of influence on events that happen in the future. However the Sociologist Mahoney has a different definition of path dependence. This theory suggests that "process, sequence, and temporality" have a valid reason for affecting path dependence and the meaning of past historical events. There are three path-dependent analyses with an explanation to how each theory works. "1) the study of causal processes that are especially sensitive, in a sequence, to early historical events, which are more important than later events; 2) these events are contingent occurrences that cannot be explained by prior events or initial conditions; and 3) that once contingent events take place, the path dependent sequence becomes a deterministic pattern."
Read more about this topic: Historical Sociology
Famous quotes containing the words path, dependence, historical and/or sociology:
“Examples are cited by soldiers, of men who have seen the cannon pointed, and the fire given to it, and who have stepped aside from he path of the ball. The terrors of the storm are chiefly confined to the parlour and the cabin.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“As, therefore, we can have no dependence upon morality without religion;Mso, on the other hand, there is nothing better to be expected from religion without morality;Mnevertheless, ‘tis no prodigy to see a man whose real moral character stands very low, who yet entertains the highest notion of himself, in the light of a religious man.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“Some of us still get all weepy when we think about the Gaia Hypothesis, the idea that earth is a big furry goddess-creature who resembles everybody’s mom in that she knows what’s best for us. But if you look at the historical record—Krakatoa, Mt. Vesuvius, Hurricane Charley, poison ivy, and so forth down the ages—you have to ask yourself: Whose side is she on, anyway?”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“Living in cities is an art, and we need the vocabulary of art, of style, to describe the peculiar relationship between man and material that exists in the continual creative play of urban living. The city as we imagine it, then, soft city of illusion, myth, aspiration, and nightmare, is as real, maybe more real, than the hard city one can locate on maps in statistics, in monographs on urban sociology and demography and architecture.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)