Culture, Historicity and Power Reflections on Some Themes in the Work of Alain Touraine

Abstract

Touraine's critique of the sociological tradition has gradually come to focus on the very notion of society and the basic assumptions associated with it: the interpretation of social life as organized around central principles that are embodied in institutions and internalized by individuals, the tendency to subsume social structure and social change under the same determinants, and the rejection or minimization of the distinction between state and society. In the light of this critique, his earlier attempts to construct a systematic theory seem premature. In particular, the key notion of historicity was overshadowed by the more restrictive concept of the “self-production of society” and the model of a “historical system of action”. But on the other hand, the open questions and unresolved problems of the earlier work underline the need for a further radicalization of the critique of the dominant image of society. This would lead to a conceptualization of social life in terms of interrelations and tensions between structures of culture and structures of power, both of which transcend the social field. A more Weberian perspective would thus replace the residual Durkheimianism of Touraine's earlier writings.