Towards an Immature Sociology

1998 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 458-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Lee
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social World ◽  
Emergent Property ◽  
Theoretical Interpretation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Sociology Of Childhood

Sociological theory displays a tendency to depict the social world in terms of completed ‘beings’. The social, thus depicted, is a world of powers to ‘finish’ (such as the power granted to convention to provide for social order), and finished products (such as agents and ethical points-of-view). As sociologists of childhood have attempted to bring children into sociological focus in their own right, the disciplinary concern with the ‘complete’ has required that children be attributed the properties assumed more normally to belong to adults. The sociology of childhood has thus preserved the privilege of the complete and the mature over the incomplete and the immature. In this paper the key sociological issues of convention, agency and ethics are given a theoretical interpretation that makes them fit for understanding childhood. The ability of convention to complete social order is questioned. Agency is portrayed as the emergent property of networks of dependency rather than the possession of individuals. An alternative to the ethics of ‘positions’ is offered in the form of an ethics of ‘motion’. Where extant sociologies of childhood have brought children into the ‘finished’ world of sociological theory, this paper uses childhood's ontological ambiguity to open the door onto an unfinished social world.

scholarly journals Recovering critique in an age of datafication

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (7) ◽  
pp. 1135-1151
Author(s):  
Nick Couldry
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Questions

This article starts out from the need for critical work on processes of datafication and their consequences for the constitution of social knowledge and the social world. Current social science work on datafication has been greatly shaped by the theoretical approach of Bruno Latour, as reflected in the work of Actor Network Theory and Science and Technology Studies (ANT/STS). The article asks whether this approach, given its philosophical underpinnings, provides sufficient resources for the critical work that is required in relation to datafication. Drawing on Latour’s own reflections about the flatness of the social, it concludes that it does not, since key questions, in particular about the nature of social order cannot be asked or answered within ANT. In the article’s final section, three approaches from earlier social theory are considered as possible supplements to ANT/STS for a social science serious about addressing the challenges that datafication poses for society.

The Social World as Will and Idea: Schopenhauer's Influence upon Durkheim's Thought

1988 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 674-705 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stjepan G. Mestrovic
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
Nature Perception ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Unity Of Knowledge

The starting-point for this analysis is a remark made by André Lalande, that Durkheim was so enamoured with Schopenhauer's philosophy that his students nicknamed him ‘Schopen’. The intellectual context shared by Schopenhauer and Durkheim is explored, especially with regard to the opposition between the id-like ‘will’ and the mind. Schopenhauer's influence upon Durkheim's contemporaries is examined briefly. Then, this new context for apprehending Durkheim's thought is applied to selected problems in Durkheimian scholarship, problems that have to do with the dualism of human nature, perception, the unconscious and the unity of knowledge relative to the object-subject debate. The implications for sociological theory are also discussed.

Socialism’s Past, New Social Democracy, and Socialism’s Futures

1994 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 439-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brad Rose ◽  
George Ross
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Work Experience ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Social World ◽  
Social Actor ◽  
Social Collaboration ◽  
The Social

The ideas of socialism grew in ordinary people’s lived experience of all-encompassing markets, totalizing doctrines of individualism, the power of capitalist property over human dignity and destiny, and equations between market success and human merit. Codified into doctrine, socialism was pro-ductivist, seeing the work experience as that which determined personal identity and the shape of social collaboration. It was also class analytical, mapping the social world in terms of classes in conflict and specifying the working class as the central social actor and agent for change. Third, it was egalitarian democratic, rejecting arbitrary distinctions determining different stations in life. Finally, socialism was Utopian, revolutionary at least in aspiration if not always in deed. The capitalist order could be, and ought to be, radically transcended. Socialism, which would follow, would reappropriate control over work and its fruits by “the workers” and would facilitate full democracy, equality, and the consecration of a creative and cooperative social order.

Hobbes's Artifice as Social Construction

2005 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raia Prokhovnik
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Social World ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Individual Identity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Constructionist Approach

AbstractThe paper argues that Leviathan can be interpreted as employing a constructionist approach in several important respects. It takes issue with commentators who think that, if for Hobbes man is not naturally social, then man must be naturally unsocial or naturally purely individual. First, Hobbes's key conceptions of the role of artifice and nature-artifice relations are identified, and uncontroversially constructionist elements outlined, most notably Hobbes's conceptualisation of the covenant. The significance of crucial distinctions in Leviathan, between the civil and the social, between science and philosophy, between mankind's nature and the human condition, is developed. A constructionist reading of the argument of Leviathan is then advanced. The interpretation focuses on the contribution of nature-artifice relations, and of Hobbes's notion of civil philosophy, in understanding the critical issues of the state of nature and individual subjectivity. This reconstruction of the meaning of the text highlights the necessarily social character of human life in Leviathan, expressed in the way that the social' gives meaning to the 'natural', as well as because for Hobbes we live in a mind-affected world of perception and ideas. Leviathan can be interpreted as, in particular, a political social construction, because both social and individual identity logically require the social order and arrangements that only a strong government can supply. The social world, in Leviathan, cannot exist prior to the generation of a political framework, in civil society, the commonwealth, and law.

Becoming a Person

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Erikson
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social World ◽  
Early Years ◽  
George Herbert ◽  
The Social ◽  
Total Institutions ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines the process of socialization, of becoming a person—the way we become aware of the social world we are a part of and learn to participate in it. It first considers the lessons of early childhood and how a child learns a particular language before discussing George Herbert Mead's views on childhood learning. It then analyzes the processes that occur when people are removed from the larger social order and confined to total institutions and “becoming a person once again,” also known as “secondary socialization” or “resocialization.” It suggests that, whether one is speaking of “becoming a person” in the early years or repeating some part of that process later, members of a society live by an informal grammar.

Logic, Paralogisms and Social Distinction

Theoria ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 65 (155) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Michel Lallement
Keyword(s):  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social Ontology ◽  
Social World ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Theoretical Interest ◽  
Social Distinction ◽  
Relevant Today ◽  
The Social ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Value Judgements

In La Barrière et le Niveau (1925), the French philosopher Edmond Goblot applied a logic of quality to the social world. The major thesis which Goblot defended at that time was: having no titles or property, the bourgeois class constructed itself superficially through value judgements, building upon commonly shared appreciations, however intrinsically contradictory they may be. If we accept this logical reading found in La Barrière et le Niveau, then two different types of paralogism, useful for sociological theory, merit consideration: paralogisms of criteria and paralogisms of judgement. When interpreted in this way, Goblot’s work presents a threefold theoretical interest: it associates logic and sociology in an original way; it illustrates the heuristic relevance of a social ontology approach, and it provides a grid of sociocultural analysis of the social classes which is still relevant today.

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