Form Of Social Theory Research Articles

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

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.

Economic Theory and the Social Question: Some Dialectics Regarding the Work-Dependency Relationship

This article uses the 19th century concern with “the social question” to explore how theories shape our insights into our subjects of interest. Contemporary theory mostly construes economics as a science of rational action, which reduces the social question to a matter of material inequality. In contrast, this article treats economics as a form of social theory, with the social question revolving around the material and the moral qualities of societies. While redistribution may be a component of efforts to address the social question, primary focus rests on the institutional arrangements through which human capacities are formed and moral orientations generated.

International Relations Theory and the “Social Whole”: Encounters and Gaps Between IR and Sociology

This article explores some basic issues which arise from International Relations (IR) theory also being a form of social theory in a broader sense. Many of these issues are related to the question of a “social whole,” that is, whether international relations/International Relations is one of many parts of a social whole, on what grounds it is differentiated from other parts, and whether it operates on a distinct level of social reality. We argue that these questions have been addressed in many forms of IR theory, but mostly only implicitly, and that the failure to make explicit assumptions about a social whole is probably due to the relative neglect of the subject in modern Sociology. The article argues that implicit assumptions about a social whole can be unearthed by looking at the concepts of systems, levels, and sectors, discussing debates about each of these in turn. Openly addressing IR theory as social theory, and spelling out images of a social whole, allows one to gain a sharper understanding of some of the basic analytical categories used, and to judge whether they form plausible delimitations of social reality within a wider social context.

Antisemitism, capitalism and the formation of sociological theory

ABSTRACT Starting out from the proposition that modern antisemitism is a grotesque form of social theory that provides in its notion of ‘Jewification’ a critique of processes of capitalist modernization, Stoetzler points to the shared ground between classical sociological theory and modern antisemitism, and examines how their conceptual overlap influenced the ways in which sociologists responded to antisemitism or to the phenomena to which antisemitism also spoke. His argument is built around analyses of ‘L'individualisme et les intellectuels’, Émile Durkheim's intervention in the Dreyfus affair, and passages from Max Weber's Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, which are placed in the context of ‘classical’ and ‘early’ sociology, including positivism, early French socialism and German Katheder-socialism (academic socialism). He argues that sociologists developed a discourse that aimed to defend liberal society and modernization and, at the same time, attack a caricature of ‘egotistical utilitarianism’, which they blamed for the dismal aspects of the emerging new form of society. In doing so they offered an alternative to the antisemites but also mimicked their discourse even when—as in the case of Durkheim—they explicitly opposed antisemitism. Stoetzler argues that this was an intrinsic characteristic of classical sociology that weakened its ability to oppose antisemitism and fascism.

Action Research and Collaboration: a new perspective in social research and language education

The disconnection between what counts as social research (SR) and what serves society�s needs and interests results in a way of theorizing which, while useful, does not integrate theory and practice; a form of social theory that is not embodied in real lives and does not help non-academic people understand their contexts and practices. This disconnection in SR demands a new epistemology, a new way of knowing and doing research that can meet the everyday needs of people living real-life situations. A dialectical paradigm, researching and knowing from experience through intellectual study, can enable people to 91 rethink social theory as a practical discipline oriented towards social renewal. Within this perspective, action research (AR) can align social research and teaching to social needs because it creates a space for collaborative reflection about the mutual contrast and integration of many kinds of knowledge systems and the shared design of both the goals and the actions aimed at achieving them. Social researchers and language educators could use AR and collaboration to develop legitimate knowledge, promote social change and solve problems, while creating a space for joint reflection and dynamic interaction in language classrooms.

The Heart of the Problem

The familiar sociology of intellectuals has been constructed in the global metropole, and it is debatable how relevant its concepts are to the periphery. A life-history study was conducted with diverse intellectual workers in South Africa. A range of intellectual identities is apparent. The specific history of the Apartheid era, the struggle against Apartheid, and the advent of neo-liberalism have all shaped intellectual workers' cultural formation and created major differences in trajectories. Periphery/metropole relations profoundly structure cultural practices and consciousness, but these relations are not static. Distinctive patterns of intellectual work appear. The legacy of democratic struggle gives prominence to ‘crossover’ forms of intellectual work, fuels resistance to neo-liberal globalization, and gives a distinctive form to the problem of reproducing the intellectual workforce and project. The research thus emphasizes the cultural productiveness of the global ‘periphery’ and the need for forms of social theory based here.

Post-Marxism in a Post-Socialist Perspective

Post-Marxism has been defined as the attempt to insist on the continuing value of Marxist thought while incorporating post-structuralist criticisms of holism. In this essay, I use a perspective developed through studying the contours of power in actually existing socialist and post-socialist regimes to critically examine three influential works in post-Marxism. While finding much of value in these books’ development of non-totalizing forms of social theory, I argue that they also reproduce some of the theoretical logics that plagued the worst moments of socialist governance. In particular, I take issue with their implicit assumptions about the performance of political identities in academic writing and the relationship of empirical research to social theory.

Knowledge, Power, and the Individual in Subarctic Hunting Societies

Northern Athapaskan and Algonquian hunting people balance individual autonomy and the interdependence of community living. For many, knowledge and personal autonomy represent personal power. This article argues that culturally constructed knowledge both empowers and informs subarctic people. Their knowledge may be viewed as a form of social theory. A survey of the literature on subarctic ethnography suggests that social scientists have informed and empowered their own theoretical understanding through an understanding of the native thoughtworld.

Historical and political interpretations of jurisprudence and the social action perspective in sociology

It is argued that a full comprehension of classical and contemporary manifestations of the “social action perspective” in sociology will be significantly facilitated by placing it within the context of jurisprudential theory, especially the theory of legal actors. The Weberian and Parsonian views of social action theory are outlined in some detail, and these positions are related as a whole to the concept of legal action in late-nineteenth-century German jurisprudence. Having established structural similarities between the two perspectives, an historical argument is developed within which it is asserted that: (a) Among the academic disciplines of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Germany, jurisprudence held a relative autonomy derived from ideological circumstances which may ultimately be traced to the political economy of the nascent German state. (b) Given such an autonomy, jurisprudence provided a paradigm for the sociocultural sciences. Each of these contentions is phrased within the intellectual milieu of the day which included both Kantian and Hegelian currents. (c) Finally, certain implications are drawn from the foregoing analysis concerning ideology and contemporary social action theory, the sociology of law, and the need for future research on the relationships between jurisprudential and other forms of social theory.