Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour最新文献

In contrast to the classic theory of contact among groups to combat prejudice against the outgroup (Allport, 1954), we propose the theory of the taboo of contact according to which prejudice against minorities does not arise due to lack of contact, but precisely in order to avoid contact. We summarise a series of themata whereby in the West the majority's fears of losing the purity of their religious, ethnic, or racial identity have been ontologised in four minorities (Jews, gypsies, natives, and black people). The hypothesis is that the greater the proximity to – or danger of mixing with – those vilified minorities, the greater the taboo of contact will be. We conclude that the prejudice against minorities who are victims of current ethnic and racial discrimination is an hysteresis effect of folk-anthropology themata.

What can sociology learn about the logic of social behaviour from the field of cultural evolution? How can sociology enrich cultural evolutionary theory? In this article, I present and examine cultural evolutionary theory by specifying its various proposed mechanisms, such as cultural drift, biased transmission and cultural selection (including cultural group selection), and by investigating concrete examples of social phenomena to which the theory has been applied. My findings are three-fold. First, cultural evolutionary mechanisms should not be dismissed by sociologists but instead, given their strong explanatory power in certain cases, incorporated into their basic theoretical toolkit. Second, one mechanism, i.e. cultural selection, can even underpin a more nuanced and micro-founded sociological functionalism that avoids some of the errors of structural functionalism. This, however, should not be celebrated too soon as the applicability of cultural selection is more limited than cultural evolutionists acknowledge. Third, drawing on historical sociology and comparative politics I also uncover further important sociological limitations of the cultural evolutionary approach that should be heeded by the latter. I focus on two: (1) its inapplicability to cases of intentional decision-making and strategizing, and (2) its inability to subsume the phenomenon of social power.

This paper provides a conceptual account of Pierre Bourdieu's operational concept of habitus through the lens of social recognition. More precisely, a ‘habitus of recognition’, or ‘recognitive habitus’, is defined as a set of perceptive patterns and expectations whose main function is to actualize social behaviour that allows reciprocal recognition among social agents. In this respect, this paper explains why, thanks to the recognition paradigm, we can better grasp how habitus works as a pre-reflective common sense capable of producing coordinated collective actions and social reproduction.

The Affect Theory of Social Exchange (ATSE) research program has produced cumulative insights on how instrumental exchanges lead to the development of affectual attachments. With its focus on task responsibilities, ATSE leaves space to interrogate how factors not related to task execution are at play in the production of interpersonal bonds. In this paper, we integrate insights from social psychology, cultural sociology and organizational research to develop a theoretical framework suggesting (a) why and how cultural tastes contribute to social cohesion and (b) the conditions under which cultural tastes remain a source of strategic advantage or, worse, symbolic exclusion. Our theory rests on the basic proposition that shared cultural tastes increase the likelihood of experiencing positive emotions, which in turn are key in the development and maintenance of affectual attachments. Variations to this proposition are subsequently introduced, considering culture in declarative and nondeclarative forms.

This paper aims to organize and classify cultural dimensions within and across six widely-employed cultural frameworks by relying on modernization theory and the human development perspective. The study adopts a 4-stage approach. In stage 1, the cultural dimensions in each framework are dichotomized. In stage 2, using Aristotelian categories, cultural dimensions are divided into meaningful hierarchical categories based on their essential features. In stage 3, cultural dimensions are organized according to modernization theory and human development perspective. In stage 4, the inter-correlations are calculated, and an integrative model of cultural dimensions is proposed. The paper offers insights into the dynamics of cultural values and discusses the relationship between culture, social change, human development, and modernization.

In following Marxist and psychoanalytic theory, we can understand ideologies as social processes that obscure the contradictions (i.e., how an object is not at one with itself) inherent to individual subjectivity and social structures. Despite claiming to be non-ideological, mainstream psychology has, throughout its history, served the ideological interests of elite classes (e.g., by pathologizing political resistance). Working within the liberation psychology paradigm, I attempt in this article to elaborate on the notion of de-ideologization (i.e., the politically committed retrieval of people's experiences beyond the ideological reference points of elite classes) through a consideration of contradiction. To do this, I explore how de-ideologization can connect with contradiction through processes of re-symbolization, solidarity-making, and mobilizing progressive ideologies. Considered together, these three processes allow us to use contradiction to understand interlocking currents of oppression, divergent visions of emancipation, the development of insurgent subjectivities, and the building of an intersectional socialist politics. In conclusion, I consider some of the directions that theoretical and praxis-oriented work on de-ideologization may take, as well as some paths it may wish to avoid.

Experts often play a fundamental role in decision-making processes. They are the bearers of an epistemic authority, which is primarily grounded on what we may call scientific naturalism. The main tenets of this view can clash though with other values characterising our pluralist societies. This may lead to conflicts but also to a devaluation or to a rejection of the sort of knowledge and advise offered by experts. In this paper we propose a new accommodation between scientific naturalism and the values of our democratic societies. In Section 1, we present a case study highlighting the problematicity of experts' decisions based on mere epistemic soundness. In Section 2, we frame our analysis of expertise in the context of a post-truth world. Section 3 looks at the relations between scientific naturalism and democracy, while Section 4 focuses on the potential clash between scientific naturalism and the normative character of other forms of knowledge. In Sections 5 and 6, we present practical instances of this clash (additional case studies), involving religious, bioethical, and cultural values. We show that in some cases these values ought to be granted full citizenship in a democratic state. This, (Section 7), leads us to a stalemate that seems to threaten the functioning of modern democracies. In Section 8, to overcome this stalemate, we propose to resort to a more inclusive form of naturalism, namely liberal naturalism. This form of naturalism cannot do without experts' scientific recommendations and yet does not end up excluding (a priori) alternatives forms of knowledge. We conclude, Section 9, by advocating a more liberal ecology of mechanisms for the regulation of decision-making processes; one that also encompasses socially inclusive (not necessarily scientific) processes of deliberation and judgment.

It is often assumed that social and political thought have nothing to do with issues of concern to metaphysicians. I have referred to this assumption in the past as The Myth of Metaphysical Neutrality. I argue here that social and political theories have metaphysical positions built into them, such that to adopt a given social or political account commits one to that theory's implicit metaphysics -- and, conversely, that commitment to a given metaphysical position will preclude adopting social or political accounts that are at odds with it. I look first at the issue of emergence, showing that key concepts employed by Aristotle, Rousseau and Marx, respectively, require a belief that wholes do not reduce to their parts. I then turn to Marx's account of alienation, arguing that it presupposes a belief in agent-causal free will.

Social interaction as the middle phase of the morphogenetic sequence described by Margaret Archer presupposes that interpretative activities go on between individuals and collectivities. Novel meanings emerge in social interaction and spur the processes of structural elaboration. The hermeneutics of actors (or agents) should be part of the morphogenetic explanatory framework. Narratives as a distinctive species of interpretation will then become more susceptible to a mode of analysis based in realism. By adopting Paul Ricoeur's concept of narrative figuration (or threefold mimésis) for use in sociology, it is possible to embark on this task at the rudimentary level of intersubjective communication. The stories and anecdotes in which we describe episodes, events, and processes to others articulate and give order to our experience of time. When we are searching for concord in narratives to cope with discordant elements, we are participating in morphogenesis via the transformation of meaning. The complementary nature of Archer's and Ricoeur's conceptualisations provides an alternative to one-sided social constructionist accounts of narrative

Scholars increasingly deny that they are strictly biological. Instead, these scholars argue that they are socially constructed. One challenge is to square the notion of social kinds with the apparent perception of those categories. I argue that we do not perceive social categories such as race. Instead, racial categories are visually encoded based on visible markers that are proxies for social kinds. Thus, I argue that the assumption of seeing social categories commits us to a flawed theory of visual essentialism: the idea that some social kinds are visible properties that are biologically determined.