Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour最新文献

Imran, M. H., & Zhai, Z. (2021). A critical review on the mimetic theory of René Girard: Politics, religion, and violence. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 52(2), 362–376. https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12330.

The above article, published on 19 December 2021 in Wiley Online Library (Wiley Online Library), has been retracted by agreement between the journal Editors-in-Chief, Alex Gillespie and Doug Porpora, and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

The retraction has been agreed due to concerns raised by multiple third parties that there is substantial conceptual overlap between this article and (1). An investigation by Wiley and the Editors-in-Chief supported this conclusion. The authors disagree with the retraction.

In the present article, we outline basic assumptions and conceptual tools for a sociology of existence. First, we address man's fundamental conditions of existence: that life's finitude and encounters with the uncertainty of existence are fundamental experiences that construct social relations. Second, we outline how existential meaning-making and the ability to cope with the unpredictability of life are dependent on power resources, where especially the resource poor may experience ‘existential nausea’. Third, we discuss how existential dilemmas may intensify under certain historical eras. Therefore, studying individuals' existential dilemmas is a tool to examine the dominant social issues at a particular time and place. Fourth, we elaborate on the importance of studying turning points during individuals' life courses, as existential meaning – or lack thereof – becomes particularly salient at these times. This includes an understanding that death and rebirth are experienced in the form of various endings and beginnings in everyday life. Fifth, and finally, we emphasize an analysis in which the direction of people's lives is conceptualized in a broad time perspective, where past, present, and future interact and influence life choices and social relations constructed during a lifetime.

In everyday discourse, and also in the academic literature, the expressions “regulatory interventions” (i.e. interventions intended to regulate behaviours) and “normative interventions” (i.e. interventions which set norms/rules) are usually assumed to be synonymous. From this perspective, any regulatory intervention is also normative, and vice versa. This article investigates the relationship between regulation and rules/norms in order to verify whether the “regulatory” and the “normative” aspects are intrinsically and essentially connected, as is usually thought (on the assumption that there is no regulation without rules and no rules without regulation).

This paper aims to discern, clarify, criticise, and advocate some uses of phenomenology in sociological research. Phenomenology is increasingly evoked or implicitly employed in sociological endeavours. Little attention, however, is paid to what is entailed in taking a phenomenological approach, and whether it is employed to advance empirical or theoretical knowledge. I build an analytic typology of different empirical and theoretical uses of phenomenology, criticise a range of these uses, and argue that other uses bear significant potential for the advancement of theoretical and empirical knowledge. The paper's main contribution lies in comparing and contrasting the many invocations of phenomenology in contemporary social scientific research to discern their benefits and shortcomings.

Emergence is central to critical realism, but there has been little attempt to develop a systematic account of this concept within the tradition. Two notable exceptions are seen in the work of Dave Elder-Vass and Tony Lawson. However, both face problems in responding to reductionist claims and accounting for downward causation. This paper proposes contextual emergence as a robust alternative that overcomes these issues and provides a better justification for critical realism's stratified worldview. Contextual emergence explains that while properties at a lower ‘level’ offer necessary conditions, for emergence to obtain, there must also be contingent conditions at a higher ‘level’. This approach maintains many of critical realism's intuitions about emergence, providing a robust account of ontological stratification and downward causation.

Connecting the critical realist morphogenetic model to insights made by Nicholas Rescher, this paper argues that our predictions are always subject to chance and contingency but nevertheless ineluctably useful for both practical and scientific inquiry. Contingency results from the causal openness of the world, including the causal openness of our own decision-making. On the other hand, as Rescher notes, human interaction would fail without a degree of stability, which makes the predictions of morphostatic relations if not lawlike at least predictable in a practical sense. Nor is it just habit that makes for morphostasis. Human agents strive reflectively to produce in morphostatic ways the human goods they have created by their interaction. And beyond individual actors, there is, from the critical realist point of view, the combined effects of structure and culture inclining at least in the short-term to reliably predictable if not lawlike outcomes. With that background, the paper reflects on the dual role of coincidence in social theory, on the one hand signalling contingency and the other on what, according to the active causal mechanisms, generally co-occur.

The intersection between Critical realism, complex system thinking and Luhmannian autopoiesis has been subject to various debates. By showing how a complex system necessitates a trans-immanent philosophical foundation, Knio proposed in a previous article a problématique of calibration which seeks to bring back to the fore the importance of considering a complex causality generated by environments onto boundaries and systems in an iterative, recursive, and emergentist way. The next step is to understand the motivation behind the actions of a trans-immanent system. This paper contributes to this discussion by operationalizing the motivation behind action in terms of the Spinozian conatus. In so doing, this research shows how trans-immanent systems such as people and society not only objectify (socially construct) but objectivate (create) objects behind desire. Finally, the forgoing shows how systemic persistence is not a simple matter of inertia or imitation but it is a matter of empowering reflexivity or, perseverance. This is shown through a thorough overview of the different interpretations of the conatus, followed by their application to several case studies within pre-existing and prominent theories of institutional change within capitalism. As a result, the conatus as based on a trans-immanent system offers great potential in institutional analysis; exemplified in the Critical Realist model of social change: Morphogenetic Régulation. This research contributes not only to political, economic, social, and cultural analyses of institutional change but analyses of complex and open systems as a whole, and thus understandings of human empowerment.