Sociology as a Discursive Space - The Coming Age of a New Orthodoxy?

Abstract

The field of sociology can be described as a triangle, the apexes of which are represented by the structure of social organisation (Spencer's theory of the division of labour), the structure of cultural codes (Saussure's theory of lan guage and semiology) and social action (Weber's methodological individu alism) This becomes a three-dimensional discursive space when underneath it we place, as the fourth apex, nature Consequently we have a triangular pyramid standing on its head (nature) its four plans are represented by the field of sociology (the structure of social organisation. the structure of cultural codes, action), structuralist social anthropology (the structure of social organ isation, the structure of cultural codes, nature), cultural anthropology (the structure of cultural codes, action, nature) and historical materialism (the structure of social organisation, action, nature). This turned-over tetrahedron is described in the paper as the discursive space of sociology, a space that has taken shape with the attempts at a theoretical synthesis of sociology during the 1980s (Alexander, Bourdieu. Collms, Giddens, Habermas). As in the case of the discursive condition; for all forms of knowledge, the discursive space of sociology is a rhetorical closure which determines who are classical wnters and how these classical writers are to be read and understood. At the same time it serves as the basis for the positivity of sociological knowledge. It is suggested that this space will emerge to reorganise the uncertainty produced by the collapse of the Parsonian orthodoxy which was primarily concerned to examine society from the perspective of the structure of social organisation.