ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at two types of sociological explanatory variables that claim causal power for the psychical behavior of people in each participant's environment. Psychical contagionistic variables are the environmental counterparts of instinctivistic variables, and rely on the presumed innate abilities of individuals to send and receive messages of determinate content. Herbert Blumer's description of "circular reaction" indicates what is meant here by a psychical contagionistic explanatory variable. Cultural structuralistic variables, the environmental counterparts of enculturistic variables, rely on the learned ability of individuals to send and receive such messages. The role of cultural structuralistic variables in explanations of nonhuman social phenomena is by no means as well-developed and differentiated there as in explanations of human social phenomena. Four major kinds of cultural structuralistic variables were identified: consensus, complementarity, dissensus, and symbolic interactionism. These cultural structuralisms were paired with unison, exchange, dissensus, and functionalist social structuralism.
