The social fact in Durkheim’s late work: Structural hermeneutics, positive sociology, and causality

Émile Durkheim’s late work focuses on représentations collectives, social facts that embody sui generis social forces and that direct behaviour in meaningful ways. The focus on représentations collectives raises questions, but also opens doors for Durkheimian sociology. Many would contend that Durkheim’s focus on représentations collectives introduces a hermeneutical and ideational element that is at odds with his positivist approach. His study of représentations collectives also point to a potentially broad application of his method to the study of culture as a causally autonomous factor in social life. This article will discuss the social fact in Durkheim’s late work in light of these issues. It will argue that représentations collectives are social facts, ‘things’ in Durkheim’s terminology, that are rooted in ritual. They have an objective existence and are causally efficacious, which makes them the object of positive sociology; there is thus no tension between ‘early’ and ‘late’ Durkheim on this point. It will also argue that due to the causally autonomous and inherently meaningful nature of représentations collectives, Durkheim’s approach adds to the Strong Program’s research agenda, albeit with more of a focus on ritual and emotional energy. In so doing the article seeks to build a bridge between the Strong Program and the interaction ritual approach developed by Randall Collins.

Rekonstruktive Sozialforschung als strukturale Hermeneutik

With special reference to the works of Ulrich Oevermann and Fritz Schütze, this book outlines the dense foundations of the logic of reconstructive social research from the perspective of structural hermeneutics. In this context, the author’s explanations focus on the social ontological prerequisites of the aforementioned methodology. Against the background of aspects of knowledge theory and science theory, the study emphasises the appropriate theory of the embedded subject in relation to the world around it and, in doing so, synthesises structuralism and hermeneutics. In this context, sociological theory cannot be appropriately understood without psychoanalysis of the deep mechanisms of the intra-individual work apparatus.

Phenomenological Hermeneutics Looking Forwards to Its Cognitive Synthesis

Some basic mainstreams of phenomenological hermeneutics’ further develop­ment in XX century’s philosophy, such as hermeneutics of the life-world (“late” E. Husserl’s and phenomenological sociology’s project), existential-phenomeno­logical hermeneutics as subjective ontology (M. Heidegger’s project) and “syn­thetic” post-structural hermeneutics of P. Ricœur have been presented in this pa­per. Phenomenological ideas of “early” E. Husserl presented in his “Logical Investigations” as well as transcendental-phenomenological project’s evolution into “Phenomenology of the Life-World” in the “late” Husserl’s works have also been examined in this paper. Ideal foundations of cognitive hermeneutics’ trans­formation into M. Heidegger’s subjective ontology Dasein project have been explicitly shown in the paper proposed. Philosophical preconditions of general­ization (and partly re-interpretation) some previous phenomenological herme­neutics’ achievements and constituting “synthetic” post-structural hermeneutics as interdisciplinary synthesis of phenomenology, post-structural linguistics and psychoanalysis have clearly been demonstrated. It has also been displayed to what extent some achievements of “synthetic” hermeneutics have been pro­ceeded in contemporary Russian humanitarians’ works.

JEFFREY C. ALEXANDER ON THE THEATRICALITY OF SOCIAL LIFE: DEEPENING THE HERMENEUTICS OF CULTURAL SOCIOLOGY

This article provides a critical examination of the cultural sociology developed by Jeffrey C. Alexander, focusing on his view of the theatricality of social life. The argument is that, while Alexander’s perspective do engage in a highly significant valuation of the performative dimension of social and political life that matches his strong program in cultural sociology to add a reflexive turn to cultural production in general, his views on theatre and politics remain somehow limited in their efforts at reaching the symbolic structures that are constitutive of these domains. In using a structural hermeneutics to define the analytical core of his methodology, Alexander loses sight of a more dialectical hermeneutics able to tackle the significant transformations affecting those symbolic structures, and exhibited by both avant-garde theatre and media infused mass democratic politics.