Explorations in Classical Sociological Theory: Seeing the Social World

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Allan ◽  
Sarah Daynes
Keyword(s):  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Social

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.

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.

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.

The Contribution of Enrique Pichon-Rivière: Comparisons with His European Contemporaries and with Modern Theory

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
David E. Scharff
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
Modern Theory ◽  
George Herbert ◽  
George Herbert Mead ◽  
Analytic Thinking ◽  
Family Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Original Family ◽  
Kurt Lewin ◽  
Social Applications

Enrique Pichon-Rivière, a pioneer of psychoanalysis, worked and wrote in Argentina in the mid-twentieth century, but his work has not so far been translated into English. From the beginning, Pichon-Rivière understood the social applications of analytic thinking, centring his ideas on "el vinculo", which is generally translated as "the link", but could equally be translated as "the bond". The concept that each individual is born into human social links, is shaped by them, and simultaneously contributes to them inextricably ties people's inner worlds to the social world of family and society in which they live. Pichon-Rivière believed, therefore, that family analysis and group and institutional applications of analysis were as important as individual psychoanalysis. Many of the original family and couple therapists from whom our field learned trained with him. Because his work was centred in the analytic writings of Fairbairn and Klein, as well as those of the anthropologist George Herbert Mead and the field theory of Kurt Lewin, his original ideas have important things to teach us today. This article summarises some of his central ideas such as the link, spiral process, the single determinate illness, and the process of therapy.

Our Most Troubling Madness

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Defeat ◽  
Social World ◽  
Epidemiological Evidence ◽  
The West ◽  
Social Settings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Brain Alteration ◽  
Benign Course ◽  
Cultural Features ◽  
The Way

This book examines the way schizophrenia is shaped by its social context: how life is lived with this madness in different settings, and what it is about those settings that alters the course of the illness, its outcome, and even the structure of its symptoms. Until recently, schizophrenia was perhaps our best example—our poster child—for the “bio-bio-bio” model of psychiatric illness: genetic cause, brain alteration, pharmacologic treatment. We now have direct epidemiological evidence that people are more likely to fall ill with schizophrenia in some social settings than in others, and more likely to recover in some social settings than in others. Something about the social world gets under the skin. This book presents twelve case studies written by psychiatric anthropologists that help to illustrate some of the variability in the social experience of schizophrenia and that illustrate the main hypotheses about the different experience of schizophrenia in the west and outside the west--and in particular, why schizophrenia seems to have a more benign course and outcome in India. We argue that above all it is the experience of “social defeat” that increases the risk and burden of schizophrenia, and that opportunities for social defeat are more abundant in the modern west. There is a new role for anthropology in the science of schizophrenia. Psychiatric science has learned—epidemiologically, empirically, quantitatively—that our social world makes a difference. But the highly structured, specific-variable analytic methods of standard psychiatric science cannot tell us what it is about culture that has that impact. The careful observation enabled by rich ethnography allows us to see in more detail what kinds of social and cultural features may make a difference to a life lived with schizophrenia. And if we understand culture’s impact more deeply, we believe that we may improve the way we reach out to help those who struggle with our most troubling madness.

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