Deleuze and Relational Sociology

Abstract

Deleuze’s philosophy is most often associated with literary criticism and cultural studies (in the humanities) and politics and international relations (in the social sciences). This chapter shows how a careful reading of Deleuze following early, key works, specifically Difference and Repetition, exposes a rigorous immanent philosophy which is capable of accounting for and contributing to relational sociology. Not only does Deleuze’s thought allow us to resist ad hoc appeals to determinism and voluntarism—in effect solving the structure–agency conundrum—but it presents the basis for a sociology that is in fact purely relational. It does this through its commitment to a univocal ontology that is divided into an intensive, virtual half and an extensive, actualized half. In a seldom-read book, The Fold, Deleuze presents the (social) world as an infinite series of folds—folds within folds—in which any entity/thing is both enveloped and enveloping. This suggests a sociology even more relational than Emirbayer’s transactional approach, but nevertheless allows for emergence and change as well as structure and stratification. Not only does Deleuze’s relational sociology imply a research paradigm in its own right, but it can help us to map the variations of what has come to be loosely called relational sociology.