People decide about political parties by taking into accountthe preferences, values, expectations, and perceptions of theirfamily, friends, colleagues, and neighbours. As most people livewith others, members of their households influence each other'spolitical decisions. How and what they think about politics andwhat they do are the outcomes of social processes. Applying variedstatistical models to data from extensive German and Britishhousehold surveys, this book shows that wives and husbandsinfluence each other; young adults influence their parents,especially their mothers. Wives and mothers sit at the centre ofhouseholds: their partisanship influences the partisanship ofeveryone else, and the others affect them. Politics in householdsinteracts with competition among the political parties to sustainbounded partisanship. People ignore one of the major parties andvary their preference of its major rival over time. Electioncampaigns reinforce these choices.
Can we understand important social issues by studyingindividual personalities and decisions? Or are societies somehowmore than the people in them? Sociologists have long believed thatpsychology can't explain what happens when people work together incomplex modern societies. In contrast, most psychologists andeconomists believe that if we have an accurate theory of howindividuals make choices and act on them, we can explain prettymuch everything about social life. Social Emergence takes a newapproach to these longstanding questions. Sawyer argues thatsocieties are complex dynamical systems, and that the best way toresolve these debates is by developing the concept of emergence,focusing on multiple levels of analysis - individuals,interactions, and groups - and with a dynamic focus on how socialgroup phenomena emerge from communication processes amongindividual members. This book makes a unique contribution not onlyto complex systems research but also to social theory.
