Social Science Files

Social Science Files

The big transition: custom-to-convention-to-law

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Michael G. Heller
Jun 13, 2023
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Metamorphosis II excerpt 5, by M.C. Escher (Date: 1939)

Social rules

The sociologist Max Weber asked ‘how anything new can ever arise in this world’. He struggled to answer a complex question—how do informal rules emerge and then evolve into enforceable formal law? A continuum of multiple determinations, a patterning of action, and the knock-on effect of …

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