Bio: (1942-) American sociologist. Jonathan Turner received his doctorate from Cornell University, and spent most of his academic career at the University of California, Riverside, while today he teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Turner is best known for his work in theoretical sociology. He has been developing his macro-sociological approach for over four decades, and in this endeavor, he works closely with his wife, sociologist Alexandra Maryanski, with whom he co-authored a large number of books. Turner's theoretical work aims to build a macro-sociological approach that would include all levels of a social system (macro, meso, and micro) and which would include the most significant contributions of earlier theoretical approaches, regardless of which level of the social system these approaches gave priority. The ultimate goal is to create sociological laws and analytical models that would apply to all levels of society, but also to all societies, historical and present. Turner's approach is also evolutionary because he pays attention, both to the study of the biological evolution of the human species and its importance for the shaping of human nature, and, on the other hand, to the research of the socio-cultural evolution of human societies.

                                 Macro-Evolutionary Theory

In his early works, Turner studied social stratification, ethnic relations, and conflict. As a result of this research, the book Societal Stratification: A Theoretical Analysis (1984) was written, in which the author singles out several dimensions of stratification that exist in societies. In addition to the standard dimensions of power, wealth, and reputation (status), Turner singled out the dimension of subpopulation - the formation of homogeneous subpopulations that occupy different hierarchical positions in society. For each of these dimensions, he formulated mathematical laws. Turner later focused on micro-level research and published the book A Theory of Social Interaction (1988) in which he synthesized existing theories and formulated analytical models that explored three main processes that take place in interpersonal interaction: motivational, interactive, and structuring. He continues to develop the theory of social interaction in the book Face-to-Face: Toward a Sociological Theory of Interpersonal Behavior (2002).

In his book Macrodynamics (1995), Turner presents, for the first time, the foundations of his sociological paradigm, which seeks to theoretically unite all three levels of social reality: macro, micro, and meso. He continues to further develop this paradigm in the books Human Institutions (2003) and presents it, in more detail, in the three-volume book Theoretical Principles of Sociology (2010-2012). The author deals with the macro level in the first volume, the micro level in the second volume, and the meso level in the third volume. These three levels are not just levels of analysis, but they constitute three levels of social reality. Each level has separate forces that shape and structure it.

At the macro level, there are institutional systems that are affected by several different determining factors, that is, forces: 1) population, 2) production, 3) distribution, 4) reproduction, and 5) regulation. The size, demographic trends, and distribution of the population have a very large influence on the analysis of macro levels. For the economic functioning of society, that is, for production, the most important factors that determine its character are: technological level, physical capital, human capital, ownership relations, as well as the character of entrepreneurship. In order to achieve the distribution of goods in society, it is necessary to build infrastructure systems for the transfer of goods, but also the rules governing the exchange of these goods. Societies must ensure their own biological, cultural, and social reproduction. In societies with large populations, it is necessary to consolidate and centralize power relations in society. The macro, that is, the institutional level, is crucially determined through the "institutional core", which, in any society, consists of institutional arrangements in the areas of: economy, kinship, religion, law, and education.

                                      Meso level of Society

At the meso level of social reality, there are two types of structures: corporate and categoric units, both of which form the basis of social differentiation. Corporate units are groups formed to achieve specific goals. All these units are characterized by internal division of labor, and differ in several dimensions: size, power of external borders in relation to other groups, the formality of structure, development, and scope of horizontal division of labor, and development and scope of vertical division of labor. In practice, it is possible to find different combinations of these dimensions, but the size of the unit has a decisive factor in the expression of other dimensions. Categoric units are those that group individuals according to some of their social or cultural specifics. Examples of categoric units are age groups, gender, class, race or nationality, etc. Categoric units are also characterized by five dimensions: level of heterogeneity, clarity of external borders, hierarchical position in society, the correlation between membership in two or more categoric units, the correlation between membership in a categoric unit and membership in a corporate unit (e.g. all members of an army, as a corporate unit, belong to a categoric unit of men). At the meso level, in addition to differentiation, integration also takes place, and the type of integration depends on the structural relations between all units of both types.

                                     Micro Level of Society

The micro level focuses on what Erving Goffman calls encounters. Encounters are focused or unfocused personal interactions. Encounters are determined through six key forces: emotions, transactional needs, symbols, roles, status, and demographic/ecological properties. Turner states that four primary emotions are key to encounters: assertion-anger, aversion-fear, disappointment-sadness, and satisfaction-happiness. If the encounter goes as expected, people feel happiness, otherwise, they feel a combination of the other three emotions. The basic needs that shape encounters are: self-affirmation, profit, security and trust, knowledge of facts, as well as acceptance by the group. The key to any communication is that the person assumes a certain role and the status associated with it. Normalizing a role involves expectations in five dimensions: 1) categorizing the situation with content and level of intimacy, 2) establishing frames for things that should be included and excluded from the encounter, 3) forms of verbal and nonverbal communication, 4) rituals related to opening, duration, and closing of an interaction, and 5) emotional tone.

All three levels of social reality are studied through different analytical methods, but what connects them is the concept of "cultural embeddedness". Each meeting is embedded, that is, it takes place within the cultural rules of a higher (meso) level of reality that determines the key factors of that meeting, while categoric and corporate units function within the cultural rules of the macro level. For example, a business meeting (encounter) in a company is determined by the structure and rules of that company (corporate unit) and the position that each person at the meeting has within the internal structure of the company. On the other hand, that firm operates within the broader economic institutional arrangement of society which imposes rules that that firm must abide by. A specific theoretical goal is to determine how the rules governing the higher level affect the patterns observed at the lower level of social reality. However, Turner's paradigm is not completely one-sidedly deterministic, that is, higher levels of social reality do not, always, determine patterns at lower levels. In specific circumstances, events at lower levels can lead to social change at higher levels of social reality.

                                         Human Evolution

Turner also studied the biological evolution of humans, in the period from the emergence of the first hominids to the emergence of modern humans, and how that evolution shaped different areas of human existence. The results of this research are presented in the books The Social Cage: Human Nature and the Evolution of Society (1992), On the Origin of Human Emotions (2000), On the Origin of Human Society through Natural Selection (2008), The Emergence and the Evolution of Religions: By Means of Natural Selection (2018), and The First Institutional Spheres in Human Societies: Evolution and Adaptations from Foraging to the Threshold of Modernity (2022). Turner believes that the increase in the emotional capacity of early human ancestors enabled the creation of more stable and orderly social structures. Increased emotional capacities enabled such a change because it lead to an increase in the range and nature of interpersonal relationships and created the basis for the emergence of a moral system. When studying sociocultural evolution, the main factor that determines the level of evolutionary development is the nature of technology. Thus, he singles out the following levels of socio-cultural evolution: hunter-gatherer societies, pastoral societies, horticultural societies, agrarian societies, industrial and post-industrial societies.

Main works

American Society: Problems of Structure (1972);                       

The Structure of Sociological Theory (1974);

Inequality: Privilege and Poverty in America (1976);

Functionalism (1979);

The Emergence of Sociological Theory (1981);

Societal Stratification: A Theoretical Analysis (1984);

A Theory of Social Interaction (1988);

The Social Cage: Human Nature and the Evolution of Society (1992);

American Ethnicity: A Sociological Analysis of the Dynamics of Discrimination (1994);

Macrodynamics: Toward a Theory on the Organization of Human Populations (1995);

On the Origins of Human Emotions (2000);

Face-to-Face: Toward a Sociological Theory of Interpersonal Behavior (2002);

Human Institutions: A Theory of Societal Evolution (2003);

Sociology of Emotions (2005);

Sociology (2005);

On The Origins of Human Society by Natural Selection (2008);

Theoretical Principles of Sociology, 3 vols (2010-2012);

Handbook of Evolution and Society: Toward an Evolutionary Social Science (2015);

The Emergence and the Evolution of Religions: By Means of Natural Selection (2018);

On Human Nature (2021); 

The First Institutional Spheres in Human Societies: Evolution and Adaptations from Foraging to the Threshold of Modernity (2022).