certitudo salutis!

Wow. There’s this really cool new search that you can do at Amazon.com. You can search for “statistically improbable phrases.” According to the website, these ‘SIPs’ show you “the interesting, distinctive, or unlikely phrases that occur in the text of books.” Kinda fun, kinda weird, kinda ‘I’m-never-going-to-tell-my-students-about-that.’ Kieran Healy does a few sociology classics (I’ll offer my faves):

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber, and From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology edited by Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills: dueling corps, virtuoso religiosity, magical asceticism, expert officialdom, old civilized countries, civic strata, active asceticism, emissary prophecy, office prebends, certitudo salutis, ascetic conduct, capitalistic development.

The Field of Cultural Production by Pierre Bourdieu: art competence, cultural consecration, symbolically dominant, symbolic revolution, symbolic goods, dominated fractions, aesthetic disposition, scholarly culture, dominant fractions, artistic field, positions and dispositions, bourgeois artists, autonomous field, dominated position.

Identity and Control by Harrison White: embedding ratios, commit interfaces, servile elite, compound actors, council species, select arena, molecular disciplines, discipline species, valuation orderings, differentiation ratio, social molecules, acquaintance dance, fresh control, hieratic style, arena disciplines, multiplex tie, network populations, getting action, interface species, dual hierarchy.