Bio: (1926-1995) American sociologist. James Coleman began his career as a chemical engineer, and later received his doctorate in sociology in 1955 from Columbia University. He has taught sociology at the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins University. His greatest theoretical contributions are in the field of mathematical sociology and rational choice theory. Scientific experience in the natural sciences has led Coleman to approach the study of the social system as an engineer. His research aimed to understand how societies are structured. The basic unit of society is the individual, but although individuals share a common human nature, they also differ in the way the environment has influenced them, and this primarily applies to the community and schools. To understand how school and community influence the formation of individuals, Coleman empirically studied how the influences of both factors overlap. To advance the theoretical study of schools and communities, Coleman developed the concept of "social capital", which refers to norms that function within social networks. In addition, he introduced mathematical models to study diffusion processes, rational choices, trust systems, collective behavior, and authority systems.

In his book Adolescent Society (1961), Coleman studied the value systems of students, and, most of all, their status hierarchy. Among adolescents, boys who were successful in sports had the highest reputation, and so was for the girls who had the greatest circle of friends, while social background and success in school did not have a great influence. In schools that attached great importance to sports competitions with other schools, successful athletes had an even higher social status. A few years later, Coleman conducted extensive empirical research to determine differences in educational opportunities between different schools, which resulted in the book Equality of Educational Opportunity (1966). He came to several conclusions: the scope and content of school inputs did not have a greater impact on student achievement; family background, and especially racial background, had the greatest impact on school success; bad students showed better results when they are surrounded by better students, while the opposite case has not been noticed.

In his book Public and Private High Schools (1987), Coleman specifically studied the impact of social capital on student achievement. He determined that the school success of students, to a large extent, depends on the similarity in values ​​and norms between parents and teachers of a school. If parents and teachers only share values ​​and norms, then there is what he called a "value community", and when parents and teachers have social interactions outside of school, then there is a "functional community". The best example of a functional community are Catholic schools. The results showed that students from schools that had functional communities achieved the greatest success, students in value communities achieved medium success, while students who went to schools where parents' social capital was small or non-existent had the worst success.

Coleman explores the impact of modern corporations on American society in his book The Asymmetric Society (1982). He believes that corporations, due to their great economic and legal influence, have drastically reduced the importance and social capital of families, neighborhoods, and churches. Corporations are increasingly influencing the destinies of individuals. With the help of marketing and mass media, corporations spread consumerism and selfishness, which is in conflict with the norms of solidarity and selflessness developed by the family and the neighborhood. The impact that corporations have on individuals, society, and the environment is usually negative, and individuals are not able to oppose them, so the role of the state in limiting the power of corporations should be increasing. The role of sociology in the fight against the growing negative role of corporations must also be significant, especially in the field of research, by informing the public about the results, and by preventing corporate abuse of sociology.

In the 1980s Coleman began to be interested in the question of how parts of the social system work and how they form the system. He observes the individual actor as a basic part of the social system, and to explain his behavior, Coleman took over the theoretical approach of microeconomics and the rational choice theory that it developed. In his books Individual Interests and Collective Action (1986) and Fundations of Social Theory (1990b), Coleman applies the rational choice theory to the behavior of individual actors. He believes that this theoretical approach has an obvious advantage because it starts from the assumption that the behavior of actors depends on their interests and their power. On the other hand, this theory provides an excellent basis for explaining how large organizations are formed and how they operate, as well as how social exchange and collective action take place.

Coleman starts from elementary actions and relationships in order to build a macro theory. Actors have interests and they control some of the resources they use to pursue those interests. Some resources and events, however, are completely under someone else's control. To achieve interests, actors exchange control over resources and events that are less important to them, to gain control over things that are more important to them. At the middle level, which takes place between the activities of individual actors and macro structures, there are structures that mediate individual activities, the most important of which are: the system of authority, the system of trust, networks, norms, and organizations. Coleman applied this theory to the analysis of the collective decision-making process and the study of the functioning of the labor market. To further develop his model theoretically, Coleman also devised mathematical models.

Main works

The Adolescent Society (1961);

Introduction to Mathematical Sociology (1964);

Equality of Educational Opportunity  (1966);

Power and the Structure of Society (1974);

The Asymmetric Society (1982);

Individual Interests and Collective Action (1986);

Public and Private High Schools: The Impact on Communities (1987);

Equality and Achievement in Education (1990a);

Foundations of Social Theory (1990b).