Critical Realism, History, and Philosophy in the Social Sciences by Timothy Rutzou George Steinmetz

Author:Timothy Rutzou, George Steinmetz [Timothy Rutzou, George Steinmetz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Emerald Publishing
Published: 2018-08-09T00:00:00+00:00

SOCIAL THEORY: AGENCY, CULTURE, AND SOCIAL CHANGE

The determinate choices one makes in the metatheoretical domain have implications for the social theory one erects on it. It is obvious that the ontological choices we made, the normative anthropology we elected, and the existential-convivialist questions we raised will affect our conception of social action, social institutions, and social transitions. Following Hans Joas and Wolfgang Knöbl (2004, pp. 37–38), I conceive of social theory as a systematic attempt to give a coherent answer to three central questions that each social science has to ponder: “What are the nature and types of social action?” “How is the social order possible?” and “What determines social change?” It is understood that the answers one gives to the respective questions have to be integrated into a general theory of society. That is easier said than done. The general theories of Habermas, Bourdieu, Luhmann, or Latour show that it takes a lifetime to work out the ins and outs of a systematic theory. In the absence of such a unified theory, I will now sketch out some directives for a reconstructive social theory. The main directive consists in an appeal to move away from the agency-structure template. Far too much ink has been spilled on that issue (e.g. O’Donnell, 2010). To move away from the scholastic exercise, I propose three integrated displacements: (1) from action to interaction, (2) from structure to culture, and (3) from order to social change.

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