Debates In Social Theory Research Articles

FEMINISMO, NATURALEZA Y ECOLOGISMO DOS TEORÍAS ECOFEMINISTAS EXAMINADAS DESDE UNA PERSPECTIVA SOCIOLÓGICA

Ecofeminism is the theoretical and political articulation of environmentalism and feminism. One of its fundamental propositions is that male domination over women and nature are linked culturally and economically. This idea raises three interrelated questions: 1) What specific and empirically verifiable link exist between these forms of domination; 2) What are the causes of this connection; and 3) How and why does it vary over time. In this article I examine how two ecofeminist theories –deconstructivism and socialist ecofeminism, address these topics. I suggest that several differences between their approaches are due to their positioning in the classic structure/agency debate in social theory.

O ponto de choque da moral: ação comunicativa, reconhecimento e redistribuição – Habermas, Honneth e Fraser

A moral se tornou, há muito, fruto de intensos debates na teoria social. Contemporaneamente, esses debates apresentam temas e abordagem que, cada vez mais, ganham importância. Uma parte crucial dessas questões contemporâneas vem do debate desenvolvido por Nancy Fraser e Axel Honneth sobre os conceitos de redistribuição e de reconhecimento. Partindo de posicionamentos diversos sobre o peso da moral dentro dos seus modelos teóricos, assim como o peso de reconhecimento e de redistribuição, ela e ele debatem acerca dos alicerces da teoria social pensando, em ambos os casos, em teorias abrangentes, que servem de importantes matrizes para uma sociologia crítica, na esteira da tradição de uma teoria crítica. O ponto em comum de ambos? A crítica a Habermas. Mapearei o pensamento habermasiano sobre a moral e, depois, as críticas de Honneth e Fraser ao autor para, no fim, tentar esboçar uma sociologia com base no dualismo de Frazer.

Between openness and closure: Helmuth Plessner and the boundaries of social life

This article introduces the basic notions of the widely neglected Philosophical Anthropology of Helmuth Plessner. Instead of defining man as a privileged holder of consciousness, Plessner claims that all living organisms can be defined by their specific relation to their physical boundaries. In contrast to other living organisms such as plants and animals, however, the ‘eccentric’ nature of man allows for a comparatively high degree of freedom from the physical environment, which enables him to transcend, objectify, and deconstruct the boundaries of the same. The article concludes by outlining Plessner’s original contribution to contemporary debates in social theory, in particular constructivism and post-humanist studies.

Reconstructing social theory and the Anthropocene

This study reassesses the concept of the Anthropocene as a new geological age as it is influencing contemporary debates in social theory. As a unit of geological time whose changes are allegedly caused, directly and indirectly, by human beings, this scientific concept challenges the existing constructions of theoretical binaries, such as nature/culture, environment/society, objectivity/subjectivity or happenstance/design, in social theory. The analysis suggests many understandings of the Anthropocene in social theory are politicized over-interpretations of natural events, and these moves appear to be developing moral rhetorics of, and operational plans for, managing the Anthropocene to create specific outcomes for those who are the managers as well as the managed. The fact that human beings do not, in fact, have this measure of technical control is ignored by advocates of Anthropocenarian politics to advance their policy agendas.

Book Review: Decoding Organization: Bletchley Park, Codebreaking and Organization Studies

There is no doubt that this is an ambitious book. In the introduction, Professor Grey makes it clear that he has two concerns. The first is to analyse and explain the organization of Bletchley Park: the British Intelligence and cryptography centre popularly credited with bringing World War II to an early conclusion by decoding German communications. The second is to cure a rot that has set into the discipline of organization studies. Like a modern-day Marcello, Grey pronounces that �something has gone badly wrong with the field of organization studies� (p. 5), supporting this verdict with the obligatory string of reference to such luminaries as Starbuck, Weick, Greenwood, Czarniawska, Gabriel, Suddaby, Hinings, McKinlay and Hardy. This �something� is a loss of relevance. Setting himself against both the North American dominated, neo-positivist orthodoxy of the Academy of Management, and the more Eurocentric tradition of Critical Management Studies, Grey calls for an organization studies that de-familiarizes, but still speaks to, organizational experience, combining fine-grained empirical analysis with a theoretical eclecticism that resists dogmatism to embrace whatever is useful in explaining �organization�. Anyone who has ever attended a meeting of the Academy of Management can surely attest to his observation that �much academic work in the field has become highly specialised, quantified and abstract, seeking to identity statistical relationships between different, artificially isolated variables� (p. 6). Participation in the Critical Management Studies conference, or even selected streams at EGOS, should substantiate his assertion that �some parts of the field � are concerned with extremely arcane debates in social theory, and scarcely refer to concrete human experience at all� (p. 6). The result of this two-pronged desertion of the real, Grey argues, means that organization studies succeeds in de-familiarizing lived organizational experience but at the expense of relevance and fidelity to the complex messiness �

New individualist configurations and the social imaginary

The broad purpose of this article is to explore the theoretical conditions for understanding the new individualist configurations of imagination and identity in contemporary culture and critical discourse. The article begins with a sketch of recent debates in social theory on identity, individualization and new individualism, focusing on the work of Giddens, Beck, and Bauman, as well as Lemert and Elliott. The second part of the article turns to consider, in some detail, the path breaking contributions of Cornelius Castoriadis on the demise of the social imaginary in conditions of advanced capitalism or what he termed the spread of ‘generalized conformism’. Whilst making the argument that the notion of ‘generalized conformism’ is of key importance in grasping the subjective and cultural dynamics promoted by the global electronic economy, the article also underscores the limitations of Castoriadis’s psychoanalytic and political position. The third section of the article offers a pathway beyond such constraint by examining the recent social-theoretical contributions of Julia Kristeva on ‘new maladies of the soul’. Like Castoriadis, Kristeva focuses on the atrophy of imagination in contemporary times, but does so from a more complex psychoanalytic prism. The article concludes that the work of both Castoriadis and Kristeva are essential to grasping contemporary shifts in the new individualism.

From interpretation to civilization — and back: Analyzing the trajectories of non-European modernities

This article identifies civilizational analysis as one response to a recent crisis in the sociology of large-scale social configurations and explores how far the concept of civilization can go in analyzing the contemporary global social constellation. The reasoning proceeds in four steps. First, a brief review of the recent conceptual debate in social theory and historical sociology leads to the conclusion that concepts such as ‘civilization’ and ‘modernity’ still work with too strong presuppositions about continuity and commonality of patterns of world interpretation. Second, a proposal is made to distinguish several basic problématiques that all human collectivities need to address and to suggest that such a distinction lends itself to research-oriented disentangling of various aspects of social phenomena. In an explorative manner, third, this approach will be applied to South Africa and Brazil, two social configurations that can fruitfully be studied as collectivities but lend themselves much less to civilizational analysis. By way of conclusion, finally, the trajectories of these non-European modernities will briefly be compared to the European one to illustrate the potential of this approach for a global sociology of plural trajectories of modernity.

Anthropology, multiple modernities and the axial age debate

This article suggests a need to link the anthropological debate of multiple modernities more closely to Weberian social theory, elaborated among others by Shmul Eisenstadt and Eric Voegelin. This implies readdressing the question concerning the anthropological contribution to the understanding of modernity, forcing a link to historical-social theory. In this context, the article discusses the growing axial age debate in social theory, which was indeed an important background to the very idea of ‘multiple modernities’.

Body to Body: On the Political Anatomy of Crowds

This article challenges the negative image that, since the late 19th century, has been associated with crowds, and it does so by focusing on a number of bodily-anatomic aspects of crowd behavior. I first demonstrate that the work of one of the leading crowd psychologists, Gustave Le Bon, instigated a racist body politics. As a contrast to Le Bon's political program, I examine Walt Whitman's poetry and argue that the crowd may embody a democratic vision that emphasizes the social and political import of sexuality and body-to-body contact. Further, I dispute classical crowd theory's idea of an antagonistic relationship between crowds and individuality. Following Elias Canetti, I claim instead that the bodily compression of crowds in fact liberates individuals and creates a democratic transformation. The analysis results in a rehabilitation of crowds and briefly suggests how a reinterpretation of crowd behavior may inform current debates in social theory.

The Social Theory of Mass Politics

This paper argues the study of mass politics is currently weakened by its separation from debates in social theory. A preliminary attempt at reconnection is made. The implications of an interpretative turn in social theorizing are explored, and the interpretative perspectives of mentalism, intersubjectivism, textualism, and practice theory examined in detail, in particular regarding how they and their equivalents in political study differ on units of analysis and how to understand one of the key social practices, language. It is suggested that text- and practice-oriented perspectives are well placed to sidestep common difficulties of voluntarism or social determinism, the mysteries of individual consciousness, and the metaphor of language as medium, and that they offer rich and relatively unexplored possibilities for empirical study based on examining patterns of routinized behavior, their evolution, and reflexive individual responses to them. Arguments are made for their wider application to the study of...

Ethics and Social Ontology

Abstract Normative theory, in various idioms, has grown wary of questions of ontology-social and otherwise. Thus modern debates in ethics have tended to take place at some distance from (for example) debates in social theory. One arguable casualty of this has been due consideration of relational factors (between agents and the social structures they inhabit) in the interrogation of ethical values. Part 1 of this paper addresses some examples of this tendency, and some of the philosophical assumptions which might underlie it. Parts 2 and 3 discuss two issues of growing prominence-disability, and environmental concern-due attention to which, I argue, highlights strong reasons why severing ethics from social ontology is neither possible nor desirable. I conclude by recommending a qualified ethical naturalism as a promising candidate through which, non-reductively, to reunite these two areas of theoretical focus.

Structure versus Agency in Studies of the Biblical Social World: Engaging with Louise Lawrence

Taking Louise Lawrence’s ethnographic study of the Gospel of Matthew as a starting point, this article questions whether the structure vs. agency debate in social theory can be settled by proclaiming (or presupposing) one over the other. Indeed, sociological theory has been moving towards recognizing that society, and alongside it culture, must include both. This theoretical question matters for our understanding of the New Testament world. Can we, for instance, assume a single ratio of structure to agency for the ancient and the modern worlds? I suggest that other aspects of a culture should be brought to bear on this question, namely collectivism and individualism. Surely, a collectivistic culture (the biblical world) will operate with a different degree of structure than will an individualistic culture (North America and parts of Europe).

Reclaiming the Human Stratum, Acknowledging the Complexity of Social Behaviour: From the Linguistic Turn to the Social Cube in Theory of Decision‐making

Roy Bhaskar's Social Cube model based on critical realist philosophy has not been dealt with in theory of decision‐making at any length, nor has it raised any notable debate in social theory in general. The model demonstrates that decision‐making is regulated and transformed by a constantly evolving complexity of mechanisms emerging from physical, mental, material, human and social levels of reality. With the help of this device, Graham Allison's argument against the Rational Actor Model (RAM) that decisions are not so much acts of unitary decision‐makers but more outputs of large organisations can be elaborated and converted into a statement that decisions are products of a complexity of knowledge‐producing mechanisms. The openness of social systems revealed by the Social Cube therefore requires methodological pluralism, for example the application of psychological theories in order to explain political phenomena. By applying the Social Cube model and by drawing new empirical evidence from the Linda Melvern Rwanda Genocide Archive, this article demonstrates that the Somalia effect on the UN's failure in Rwanda was more complicated than the existing literature claims; it was “multi‐layered”, generated not only by intentional political calculations, as previous studies argue, but also by a multiplicity of other mechanisms operative at various levels, particularly cognitive dissonance in organisational learning at the unintentional or subconscious level.

Group Analysis Special Issue New Currents in Contemporary Social Theory and Implications for Group-Analytic Theory and Practice

Introduction This Special Issue explores implications for group analysis of current debates in social theory. It aims to bring creative and dynamic currents, which have recently invigorated approaches to method and interpretation within the social and human sciences, into dialogue with those of group analysis. While the range of such approaches are so diverse as to scarcely allow for a common title, what might be called the ‘post-foundationalist paradigm’ (broadly including poststructuralist, postmodernist, performative and postcolonial ideas) in contemporary social theory has prompted both new preoccupations and alternative perspectives on old problems – problems of individual and collective meaning, and subjectivities. Group Analysis has certainly featured some of these frameworks and highlighted possible applications (e.g. Craib, 2001), and this issue builds on these to identify and introduce specific areas or fields of newly emerging inquiry that are currently transforming the conceptual landscape of social theory. These have key implications as to how we formulate contexts of distress and usher in alternative interpretive approaches to therapeutic, and other group-analytic, work. The Special Issue takes the form of six specially commissioned articles by experts in their field, drawn from a range of disciplines, each of whom addresses a key perspective that has emerged from the recent ‘textual’ turn in social theory. Each paper outlines the

The Jerry Springer Show as an emotional public sphere

The public sphere debate in social theory has been a topic of considerable interest amongst scholars analysing the talk show genre. Habermas attached great importance to the potential of rational critical discussion to create consensus and thereby legitimation in democratic society. He was concerned that the media gave a false impression of engagement in a public sphere while managing rights of access and speech in a manner that was inimical to open public discussion. In contrast, cultural commentators on the talk show genre have been impressed by the richness and spontaneity of interactions on the shows, suggesting that they might have a positive role in public participation despite not meeting Habermas’s criteria for a public sphere. In consequence, the literature is moving away from the public sphere debate and focusing on issues of voice and expression in analyses of talk shows. This article, however, makes the argument that many of Habermas’s concerns are still highly relevant to the genre. This is demonstrated through an analysis of The Jerry Springer Show. On the surface, this show seems to have little to do with rational critical discussion. The analysis reveals a number of parallels between the conception of the rational critical public sphere and The Jerry Springer Show, leading to a revision of the received view of Habermas’s work in the analysis of mediated discussion. A range of implications for the mediation of deliberation, participation and expression are explored.

Witnessing and Testimony

Contemporary debates in social theory around issues of multiculturalism have focused on the demand or struggle for recognition by marginalized or oppressed people, groups, and cultures. The work of Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth, in particular, have crystallized issues of multiculturalism and justice around the notion of recognition. In Witnessing: Beyond Recognition, I challenge what has become a fundamental tenet of this trend in debates over multiculturalism, namely, that the social struggles manifest in critical race theory, queer theory, feminist theory, and various social movements are struggles for recognition. Testimonies from the aftermath of the Holocaust and slavery do not merely articulate a demand to be recognized or to be seen. Rather, they witness to pathos beyond recognition. The victims of oppression, slavery, and torture are not merely seeking visibility and recognition, but they are also seeking witnesses to horrors beyond recognition. The demand for recognition manifest in testimonies from those othered by dominant culture is transformed by the accompanying demands for retribution and compassion.

Emotional capital and information technologies in the changing rhetorics around children and childhoods

Connecting the debates in social theory with examples from recent advertising that draw on meanings and images of children, this chapter shows how some recent representations of childhood that engage explicitly with new information technologies are forms of economically invested socialization, precisely through their subscription to changing discourses of emotions.

‘Risking the University? Learning to be a Manager-Academic in UK Universities’

The paper explores the extent to which Heads of Department and Pro-Vice Chancellors, or manager-academics, in UK universities are aware of and prepared for the so-called ‘risk society’. It draws on a research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council concerned with the management of UK universities and the extent of permeation within universities of recent ideologies about new practices for managing public services. Recent debates in social theory about the concept of a risk society and risk cultures, and how these might be applied to higher education, are considered. Key features of a rapidly changing environment for the conduct and management of academic work are also outlined. The focus and methodology of the ESRC research project are explained. Interview data from Head of Department and Pro-Vice Chancellors are then used to illustrate a range of responses to notions of risk made by manager-academics. Finally, the paper examines how the learning of manager-academics could be better supported, in order that post-holders can acquire the flexibility and reflexivity which living in a risk society and culture seems to demand.

Debates in Social Theory—Tensions in Sociocultural Theorizing

Sawyer (2002) criticizes as untenable the two foundational assumptions that allegedly characterize ‘socioculturalism’ (process ontology and inseparability of individual and social levels of analysis). While sympathizing with his aim, this comment challenges his construal of both assumptions, as well as his claim of analytic dualism as an alternative to the ‘unresolved tensions’ in sociocultural theory. A call is made to further this debate.

Agent-Based Models and Individualism: Is the World Agent-Based?

Agent-based models (ABMs) are an increasingly popular tool in the social sciences. This trend seems likely to continue, so that they will become widely used in geography and in urban and regional planning. We present an overview of examples of these models in the life sciences, economics, planning, sociology, and archaeology. We conclude that ABMs strongly tend towards an individualist view of the social world. This point is reinforced by closer consideration of particular examples. This discussion pays attention to the inadequacy of an individualist model of society with reference to debates in social theory. We argue that because models are closed representations of an open world it is important that institutions and other social structures be explicitly included, or that their omission be explained. A tentative explanation for the bias of ABMs is offered, based on an examination of early research in artificial intelligence and distributed artificial intelligence from which disciplines the approach is derived. Some implications of these findings are discussed. We indicate some useful research directions which are beginning to tackle the individualism issue directly. We further note that the underlying assumptions of ABMs are often hidden in the implementation details. We conclude that such models must be subject to critical examination of their assumptions, and that model builders should engage with social theory if the approach is to realise its full potential.