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The Sociology Graduate Students’ Committee is happy to announce the 2nd installment of the Sociology Movie Screening. This time we will be screening Hard Candy, . The rest of the movies to be screened for the remainder of the semester will be announced shortly. In the meantime, we leave you with the film’s synopsis, trailer video link, and other information below:
Screening Information:
Date 10 March 2009, Tuesday
Time 6:00 PM
Place TBA


On the Evolution of Bureaucracy (Comments on Kaiser & Yong 2003)
March 20, 2009 in Commentary, Community, Research | by socect | Leave a comment
With Edgar Kaiser visiting this week, presumably some if not many in the department have recently read his work. If not, Kaiser and Yong (2003) “War and Bureaucratization in Qin China,” American Sociological Review 68(4):511-539, comes highly recommended.
Here are my thoughts and comments on this article:
The basic question being addressed is one of the evolution of organizational complexity – how do social systems (specifically, what are thought of as ‘state’ or ‘political’ systems) undergo a qualitative transition from patrimonial (or patron-client) type systems organized around personalized ties to bureaucratic type systems organized around impersonal ties. [Note 1]
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