inspirational papers?
Last week, we had a great discussion about papers that were clear and insightful empirical pieces. “Sweet.” Now, let me ask a related question – what papers have you found to be inspirational? My own is probably the Padgett and Ansell (1993) paper about networks and Florentine politics. I had only begun to study networks and I hadn’t yet seen a paper that really revealed a social structure that was otherwise opaque to me. It made me want to do nitty gritty historical/quant work.
What paper have you found to be especially inspirational?
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Sewell’s Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation in AJS 1992. Gets better every time I reconsider it.
cwalken
July 31, 2011 at 6:14 pm
Should be a classic but it isn’t: EULAU, H. Multilevel methods in comparative politics, American Behavioral Scientist, v. 21, n. 1, 1977.
Luis Enrique
July 31, 2011 at 6:54 pm
Hatch, M. J. and Schultz, M. (2002). The Dynamics of Organizational Identity. Human Relations, 55 (8): 989-1018.
Simone
August 1, 2011 at 12:36 pm
I am with you on Padgett and Ansell, Fabio! Coming from a Bschool, I hadn’t really been exposed to this sort of work until I was assigned Padgett and Ansell and Gould (1991) at a short course I did on networks at the University of Melbourne. I was amazed. On top of all fascinating insight, I remember being impressed and entertained by Padgett and Ansell’s style of conclusion: “We shall not summarise the arguments in this paper, except for this:…”.
Sam
August 3, 2011 at 4:37 am