The The lost canon. Social theory and social regulation from overturning to mirroring

Onofrio Romano

doi:10.36253/cambio-10487

Abstract

Facing the hitches of the neoliberal global turn, which first emerged with the 2008 financial crisis, social theory doesn’t appear able to provide an overall critical interpretation of the current regulation pattern and to imagine a different institutional regime, addressing the problems on the ground. This is an unprecedented situation. As we contend, social theory has always glimpsed well in advance the social system crises, assessing at the same time an alternative paradigm, thanks to a sort of canone inverso played against the coeval institutional regime: when a horizontal form of social regulation prevails in a given period, sociology adopts a knowledge paradigm based on the primacy of the vertical social dimensions. And vice-versa. This attitude transcends any conceptual content and mainly concerns the “form” of the theoretical building. In general, social theory opposed both the self-regulating market regime of the nineteenth century, and the following state-centered regime of the twentieth century. Sociology has found its raison d’être in this kind of critical monitoring towards social regulation. What happens today is that the dialectic between social theory and social regulation appears jammed. Evoking the case of the generative social action approach, the article shows that, contrary to the past intellectual seasons, the form of social theory “mirrors” the form of social regulation, instead of overturning it.

Highlights

As Nisbet argues, the rise of sociology in the nineteenth century is not the fruit of an inner evolution of philosophy and social sciences, but the response «to crises of events and to the challenges formed by major changes in the social order» (Nisbet 1996: 9)
Religion is inescapable in its specific function to provide a set of fundamental ends and norms to be kept in a safe, in order to avoid the unsustainable sense of vertigo generated by the freedom to elect and to discuss every social rule (Durkheim 1960). Despite his pretended neutral descriptivism, Simmel has bequeathed to us a rich catalogue of the horizontal regime perverse effects: the diminution of man coinciding with the intellectualization engendered by metropolitan life or with that sensibility shutdown typical of the blasé modern individual (Simmel 1971); the reduction of the world to its quantitative dimensions due to the spreading of monetary mediation (Simmel 1990); the dissonance of modern culture related to the disproportion between objective and subjective spirit (Simmel 1971)
Dahrendorf (1969) frontally criticizes the Parsonian concept of socialization, in which the actor appears like a mere executioner of the role injunctions, whose architecture is a priori designed by the institution. This formulation prevents a real comprehension of how society and individuals work

Summary

SOCIAL UPROOTING AS THE GENERATIVE FACTOR OF SOCIOLOGY

As Nisbet argues, the rise of sociology in the nineteenth century is not the fruit of an inner evolution of philosophy and social sciences, but the response «to crises of events and to the challenges formed by major changes in the social order» (Nisbet 1996: 9). Religion is inescapable in its specific function to provide a set of fundamental ends and norms to be kept in a safe, in order to avoid the unsustainable sense of vertigo generated by the freedom to elect and to discuss every social rule (Durkheim 1960) Despite his pretended neutral descriptivism, Simmel has bequeathed to us a rich catalogue of the horizontal regime perverse effects: the diminution of man coinciding with the intellectualization engendered by metropolitan life or with that sensibility shutdown typical of the blasé modern individual (Simmel 1971); the reduction of the world to its quantitative dimensions due to the spreading of monetary mediation (Simmel 1990); the dissonance of modern culture related to the disproportion between objective and subjective spirit (Simmel 1971). In order to face the weakness of collective conscience and the risk of anomy, modern State has to take charge of the active community building, mainly investing in public education and corporatism (a proxy of the lost community)

SOCIOLOGY AND THE STATE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

CANONE INVERSO