Webs of meaning: Theories and evidence from contemporary Ireland

Abstract

Meaning is basic to social life. Without it we are, as Bourdieu put it, like fish out water. And yet, within mainstream sociology, meaning is taken for granted. There are two questions. Is it important to try and get at meaning? And, if yes, how do we do so? In this article, I argue that we have progressed much theoretically from the debate that took place between Schutz and Parsons back in the 1960s. It is as if meaning and structures are opposite sides of the same coin but we either look at one side or the other: we cannot address them simultaneously. However, I argue that to do good sociology, it is necessary to try to marry what is going on in the actor with the way in which the actor is constituted within social structures. Given that we can only develop an approximate understanding of any actor and that we can only develop an approximate understanding of social structures, any attempt to link the two is necessarily tentative but, nevertheless, worthwhile.