Pub Date : 2022-10-06DOI: 10.1177/13684310221129522
O. Abbott
Noting that Benhabib’s ethical theory has seldom been engaged with by sociologists of morality, this article introduces and interrogates Benhabib’s ethical theory from a sociological perspective. It is argued that Benhabib’s critiques of Enlightenment conceptions of morality complement sociological theories of morality. Her concepts of the ‘concrete’ and ‘generalized’ other and ‘interactive universalism’ can potentially inform recurrent debates in the sociology of morality about the extent to which cultural plurality precludes the possibility of sociologists providing normative judgements, and the extent to which certain features of moral experiences can be taken to be universal. However, Benhabib’s argument that discourse ethics can provide a procedural means to judge between competing moral claims leads her to prioritize the perspective of ‘postconventional’ Western modernism as the means to adjudicate between the moral tolerability of cultural beliefs and practices. This leads her to characterize ‘conventional’ moral systems as subordinate, which succumbs to postcolonial critiques of the role of processes of domination in organizing the validity of moral claims.
{"title":"Interactive universalism, the concrete other and discourse ethics: A sociological dialogue with Seyla Benhabib’s theories of morality","authors":"O. Abbott","doi":"10.1177/13684310221129522","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310221129522","url":null,"abstract":"Noting that Benhabib’s ethical theory has seldom been engaged with by sociologists of morality, this article introduces and interrogates Benhabib’s ethical theory from a sociological perspective. It is argued that Benhabib’s critiques of Enlightenment conceptions of morality complement sociological theories of morality. Her concepts of the ‘concrete’ and ‘generalized’ other and ‘interactive universalism’ can potentially inform recurrent debates in the sociology of morality about the extent to which cultural plurality precludes the possibility of sociologists providing normative judgements, and the extent to which certain features of moral experiences can be taken to be universal. However, Benhabib’s argument that discourse ethics can provide a procedural means to judge between competing moral claims leads her to prioritize the perspective of ‘postconventional’ Western modernism as the means to adjudicate between the moral tolerability of cultural beliefs and practices. This leads her to characterize ‘conventional’ moral systems as subordinate, which succumbs to postcolonial critiques of the role of processes of domination in organizing the validity of moral claims.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":"26 1","pages":"335 - 353"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42197696","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-06DOI: 10.1177/13684310221129981
Emil Øversveen, Conor A Kelly
During the last decade, class analysis has been re-invigorated as a response to increasing economic inequality, social fragmentation and political unrest. Somewhat paradoxically, however, the perspective that has traditionally been most associated with class analysis – Marxism – has largely been absent from these debates. This article reconstructs Marxist class analysis by considering the previously unexplored relationship between social class and alienation. Incorporating insights from alienation theory, we argue, allows for an expanded conception of class that avoids economism while also retaining the distinctness of Marxist theory as compared to other approaches. Our central argument is that Marxist class analysis cannot be reduced to an explanation of economic inequality but must instead be seen as a struggle over the conditions of social development. We conclude by demonstrating the theoretical, empirical and political implications of our analysis and by arguing for a shift in the politics of class from inequality to unfreedom.
{"title":"Labour, capital and the struggle over history: Reconstructing Marxist class theory from the standpoint of alienation","authors":"Emil Øversveen, Conor A Kelly","doi":"10.1177/13684310221129981","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310221129981","url":null,"abstract":"During the last decade, class analysis has been re-invigorated as a response to increasing economic inequality, social fragmentation and political unrest. Somewhat paradoxically, however, the perspective that has traditionally been most associated with class analysis – Marxism – has largely been absent from these debates. This article reconstructs Marxist class analysis by considering the previously unexplored relationship between social class and alienation. Incorporating insights from alienation theory, we argue, allows for an expanded conception of class that avoids economism while also retaining the distinctness of Marxist theory as compared to other approaches. Our central argument is that Marxist class analysis cannot be reduced to an explanation of economic inequality but must instead be seen as a struggle over the conditions of social development. We conclude by demonstrating the theoretical, empirical and political implications of our analysis and by arguing for a shift in the politics of class from inequality to unfreedom.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":"26 1","pages":"317 - 334"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45191473","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-20DOI: 10.1177/13684310221125712
Takin Raisifard
{"title":"Book review: Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)","authors":"Takin Raisifard","doi":"10.1177/13684310221125712","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310221125712","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46397762","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-14DOI: 10.1177/13684310221125350
K. Villadsen
A steady stream of commentary criticizes Foucault’s ‘agentless position’ for its inability to observe, much less theorize, the ways in which human actors manoeuvre, negotiate, transform or resist the structures within which they are situated. This article does not so much refute this critical consensus but seeks to reconstruct a framework from Foucault’s writings, which allows space for ‘human agency’, including individuals’ pursuit of tactics, attempts at solving problems, reactions to unexpected events and their reflexive work on their own subjectivities. The revised analytical framework, ‘dispositional analytics’, integrates the study of self-techniques with the analysis of dispositifs. Recognizing that Foucault’s work eschewed an adequate consideration of individuals’ capacity to affect the forces that bear upon them, the article discusses the sociopolitical conditions for self-formation. Finally, a case study of ‘voice-hearers’ who use self-techniques to reconstitute themselves in opposition to institutional psychiatry is reinterpreted through the framework of dispositional analysis.
{"title":"Goodbye Foucault’s ‘missing human agent’? Self-formation, capability and the dispositifs","authors":"K. Villadsen","doi":"10.1177/13684310221125350","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310221125350","url":null,"abstract":"A steady stream of commentary criticizes Foucault’s ‘agentless position’ for its inability to observe, much less theorize, the ways in which human actors manoeuvre, negotiate, transform or resist the structures within which they are situated. This article does not so much refute this critical consensus but seeks to reconstruct a framework from Foucault’s writings, which allows space for ‘human agency’, including individuals’ pursuit of tactics, attempts at solving problems, reactions to unexpected events and their reflexive work on their own subjectivities. The revised analytical framework, ‘dispositional analytics’, integrates the study of self-techniques with the analysis of dispositifs. Recognizing that Foucault’s work eschewed an adequate consideration of individuals’ capacity to affect the forces that bear upon them, the article discusses the sociopolitical conditions for self-formation. Finally, a case study of ‘voice-hearers’ who use self-techniques to reconstitute themselves in opposition to institutional psychiatry is reinterpreted through the framework of dispositional analysis.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":"26 1","pages":"67 - 89"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49357024","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-14DOI: 10.1177/13684310221120006
Patrick O’Mahony
The second-generation critical theory of Apel and Habermas was substantially built on the semiotic pragmatism of Charles Peirce. Along with critical theory generally, this variation requires a theory of society in which to embed its wide-ranging normative commitments. The article proposes re-orienting Habermas’s decades-old theory of communicative action, which contained essential pointers to a critical theory of society that has never been adequately taken up in either the critical social sciences or critical theory proper. Revising Habermas, Peirce is drawn upon to crystallize the preferred critical semiotic realist theory of society. Asemiotic social ontology of the necessary range and scope is accordingly put forward that centres on inferential communal reasoning within the wider contexts of social perception and social actuality. The resulting approach, overcoming established dichotomies, is realist and processual as well as substantive, critical as well as hermeneutic and phenomenological, transcendent as well as immanent, realist as well as idealist, a priori as well as a posteriori, cognitive as well as normative, macro as well as micro, individual as well as collective and creative as well as habitual.
{"title":"Critical theory, Peirce and the theory of society","authors":"Patrick O’Mahony","doi":"10.1177/13684310221120006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310221120006","url":null,"abstract":"The second-generation critical theory of Apel and Habermas was substantially built on the semiotic pragmatism of Charles Peirce. Along with critical theory generally, this variation requires a theory of society in which to embed its wide-ranging normative commitments. The article proposes re-orienting Habermas’s decades-old theory of communicative action, which contained essential pointers to a critical theory of society that has never been adequately taken up in either the critical social sciences or critical theory proper. Revising Habermas, Peirce is drawn upon to crystallize the preferred critical semiotic realist theory of society. Asemiotic social ontology of the necessary range and scope is accordingly put forward that centres on inferential communal reasoning within the wider contexts of social perception and social actuality. The resulting approach, overcoming established dichotomies, is realist and processual as well as substantive, critical as well as hermeneutic and phenomenological, transcendent as well as immanent, realist as well as idealist, a priori as well as a posteriori, cognitive as well as normative, macro as well as micro, individual as well as collective and creative as well as habitual.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":"26 1","pages":"258 - 281"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46606338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-12DOI: 10.1177/13684310221125413
James J. Chriss
{"title":"Book review: Sociology in Post-Normal Times","authors":"James J. Chriss","doi":"10.1177/13684310221125413","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310221125413","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43037802","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-21DOI: 10.1177/13684310221119399
M. Sokolov
This article aims to present regret, an emotion to which sociologists so far have paid little attention, as having great sociological significance. First, it reviews recent research in social psychology and economics which cast anticipated regret as playing a major role in human decision-making. Second, it suggests a regret-based interpretation of the sunk-cost fallacy. Such an interpretation points to the need of a specifically sociological perspective on regret, calling attention to the cultural and institutional framings of regret-arousing events. The article further argues that secular changes in the types of regret imposed on individuals are paralleled by the spread of various forms of coping with it and that anticipated regret is responsible for both commitment to a chosen life-course and for sudden changes in it. The article ends with discussing the relationship between instrumental and moral regret, as well as the general implications of regret as a phenomenon for sociological understanding of rationality and human action.
{"title":"A sociology of regret","authors":"M. Sokolov","doi":"10.1177/13684310221119399","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310221119399","url":null,"abstract":"This article aims to present regret, an emotion to which sociologists so far have paid little attention, as having great sociological significance. First, it reviews recent research in social psychology and economics which cast anticipated regret as playing a major role in human decision-making. Second, it suggests a regret-based interpretation of the sunk-cost fallacy. Such an interpretation points to the need of a specifically sociological perspective on regret, calling attention to the cultural and institutional framings of regret-arousing events. The article further argues that secular changes in the types of regret imposed on individuals are paralleled by the spread of various forms of coping with it and that anticipated regret is responsible for both commitment to a chosen life-course and for sudden changes in it. The article ends with discussing the relationship between instrumental and moral regret, as well as the general implications of regret as a phenomenon for sociological understanding of rationality and human action.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":"26 1","pages":"3 - 23"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43013586","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-21DOI: 10.1177/13684310221119032
K. Eder
The public sphere is the site where the collective will of the people is formed. The thesis is that to the extent that the people are constructed as entities that pre-exist their collective will, the public sphere contributes to fostering the evil among a people and between the people. This is discussed using the cases of nationalism, sovereigntism and populism. The narrative of Pandora’s box provides the analytical leverage for retelling the theory of the public sphere. The story is that after the evils escaped Pandora’s box, hope remained. This leads to two propositions: hope as preventing the closing off of the future of a people and hope as fostering collective learning processes that rectify the evils. These propositions provide the ground for a critical theory of the public sphere in which the force of the better argument is insufficient to explain the capability of a people to rectify the bad. It is a theory in which social relations matter that turn individuals into a people beyond national, statist or populist containers, making a people that is open to define and redefine itself in collective learning processes.
{"title":"Pandora’s box: The two sides of the public sphere","authors":"K. Eder","doi":"10.1177/13684310221119032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310221119032","url":null,"abstract":"The public sphere is the site where the collective will of the people is formed. The thesis is that to the extent that the people are constructed as entities that pre-exist their collective will, the public sphere contributes to fostering the evil among a people and between the people. This is discussed using the cases of nationalism, sovereigntism and populism. The narrative of Pandora’s box provides the analytical leverage for retelling the theory of the public sphere. The story is that after the evils escaped Pandora’s box, hope remained. This leads to two propositions: hope as preventing the closing off of the future of a people and hope as fostering collective learning processes that rectify the evils. These propositions provide the ground for a critical theory of the public sphere in which the force of the better argument is insufficient to explain the capability of a people to rectify the bad. It is a theory in which social relations matter that turn individuals into a people beyond national, statist or populist containers, making a people that is open to define and redefine itself in collective learning processes.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":"26 1","pages":"136 - 152"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43520282","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-12DOI: 10.1177/13684310221117353
J. Arnason
This article discusses successive positions of the Frankfurt School, contrasts them to the unfolding ideas of Castoriadis and argues for a critical theory centred on a concept of autonomy, but aware of the obstacles and complications inherent in social–historical reality and its modern configuration. To clarify this perspective, we need a concept of society that distances itself from the Parsonian paradigm, more so than recent theorists of the Frankfurt School have done. The critique of over-integrated images of society, developed by various sociologists in the 1970s and 1980s but not properly assimilated by the mainstream of the discipline and never taken on board by Frankfurt theorists, is an important source of reference, and it can be taken further in the light of Castoriadis’s reflections on the social–historical. The result is a definition of autonomy as a capacity of explicit and unlimited interrogation, confronted with its own hubristic temptations in the context of a multidimensional social world.
{"title":"Lessons from Castoriadis: Downsizing critical theory and defusing the concept of society","authors":"J. Arnason","doi":"10.1177/13684310221117353","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310221117353","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses successive positions of the Frankfurt School, contrasts them to the unfolding ideas of Castoriadis and argues for a critical theory centred on a concept of autonomy, but aware of the obstacles and complications inherent in social–historical reality and its modern configuration. To clarify this perspective, we need a concept of society that distances itself from the Parsonian paradigm, more so than recent theorists of the Frankfurt School have done. The critique of over-integrated images of society, developed by various sociologists in the 1970s and 1980s but not properly assimilated by the mainstream of the discipline and never taken on board by Frankfurt theorists, is an important source of reference, and it can be taken further in the light of Castoriadis’s reflections on the social–historical. The result is a definition of autonomy as a capacity of explicit and unlimited interrogation, confronted with its own hubristic temptations in the context of a multidimensional social world.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":"26 1","pages":"180 - 200"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49173629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-07DOI: 10.1177/13684310221117769
K. Németh
{"title":"From the pluralisation of habitus towards the theory of plural habitus","authors":"K. Németh","doi":"10.1177/13684310221117769","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310221117769","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42784584","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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