Abstract
Boudon has distinguished between the primary and secondary effects of socialization as a cause of social disparities in education. His explanation of secondary effects, which rests on an analysis of decision-making within opportunity cost constraints, has attracted support from realist sociologists. The empirical evidence, however, suggests that primary effects, largely the result of cognitive socialization in early childhood, may be a more important source of variance than Boudon recognizes. Some implications of this for a general theory of inequality/difference are examined with reference to the character of social explanation and in the context of the realist discussion on the structure-agency problem.
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Nash, R. Boudon, Realism, and the Cognitive Habitus: Why an Explanation of Inequality / Difference Cannot be Limited to a Model of Secondary Effects. Interchange 36, 275–293 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-005-6866-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-005-6866-2