Sociology: Authorship, Tradition and Conversation

Abstract

Dr. Strasser and I are obviously poles apart and, from my viewpoint, his reply simply reaffirms his commitment to that version of theorizing my review challenged; especially in its last two paragraphs, the whole tenor of which is so exactly that of his book that, for me, they reinforce all the points I made about what I believe to be the real and representative significance of the latter. That apart, however, his reply is vitiated even in its own terms by some of the grosser simplifications on which it is founded. For example, I cannot share his confident belief in an unproblematic distinction between description and explanation nor, consequently, in an equally unproblematic distinction between the former and theory. Relatedly, to characterize any version of second-order reflection on the social world as being merely 'a descriptive reconstruction of the cognitive map in people's minds . . . hopelessly devoid of any theoretical content* is surely simplistic in the extreme, given the theoretical complexity of the reflexive relationship between the meanings of the observer and those of the observed. Most revealing of all, however, is Dr. Strasser's resort to that misleading, hackneyed and facile equation between macro-sociology and a social system perspective. No conception of the social world, at whatever ostensible level, can fail to have both macroand micro-sociological ramifications which are analytically continuous. In other words, the macro/micro distinction must be one of the biggest non-distinctions in sociology. And those who fall back on it always work, in fact, with a particular theory of the macro-social which must and does produce a concomitant theory of the micro-social ; namely, that familiar theory of the social system which conceives of it as independent of social action. The macro/micro distinction is intended, of course, to make a gesture of acknowledgement towards the whole tradition of social action analysis which takes human agency as its starting-point, whilst at the same time relegating that tradition to the micro-level. But the gesture is an empty one, the relegation really a dismissal. For this particular social system perspective, in its micro-application, conceives of social actors as mere reflexes of the social system, and thus has no place at any level for any serious conception of human agency. To generate such a conception necessitates tackling at the outset the crucial question as to how precisely the social system should be conceptualized. For there is more than one way, dependent upon whether one begins from the system itself as an entity prior to its members, or from its origins in human agency. Conceptually and analytically, the consequences of each are radically opposed; as they are in their moral character, the first being highly conservative, the second genuinely emancipatory. Yet for Dr. Strasser, as for all who so glibly equate the macrosociological with the social system prespective as if it were self-evident, the question does not arise. On the basis of this equation, there can be only one social system perspective ; precisely that which 'has traditionally paid more attention to producing structural explanations rather than to being overly concerned with the problem of systemic reification ' Which is scarcely surprising ; it cannot deal with systemic reification as a problem because it reproduces it. So, too, must any paradigms generated by the social system perspective like the order and conflict paradigms Dr. Strasser, following a well-worn path, derives from it. Beneath their surface divergences, both conceptualize central social phenomena, however characterized, as