How does material culture matter for institutions? Material objects are increasingly prominent in sociological research, but current studies offer limited insight how to institutional processes. We build on insights theorize aesthetic style, a shared pattern of object presence and usage among cluster organizations an field. use formal relational methods survey from religious congregations uncov...

Despite the lip service which many sociologists pay to Popper’s hypothetico-deductive model (HDM) of theory testing, few if any major social theories have been definitively falsified. The reason is that sociological explanations do not fit the deductivist model of explanation: They do not contain universal or statistical ‘‘covering laws’’ from which falsifiable hypotheses could be deduced. Soci...

Sociological theories seldom inform public health interventions at the community level. The reasons for this are unclear but may include difficulties in finding, understanding or operationalising theories. We conducted a study to explore the feasibility of locating sociological theories within a specific field of public health, adolescent risk-taking, and to consider their potential for practic...