Modern and Postmodern Social Theorizing: Bridging the Divide
Cambridge University Press, 11/20/2008
EAN 9780521515856, ISBN10: 0521515858
Hardcover, 326 pages, 23.4 x 15.7 x 2.3 cm
Language: English
There is a growing conflict between modern and postmodern social theorists. The latter reject modern approaches as economistic, essentialist and often leading to authoritarian policies. Modernists criticize postmodern approaches for their rejection of holistic conceptual frameworks which facilitate an overall picture of how social wholes (organizations, communities, nation-states, etc.) are constituted, reproduced and transformed. They believe the rejection of holistic methodologies leads to social myopia - a refusal to explore critically the type of broad problems that classical sociology deals with. This book attempts to bridge the divide between these two conflicting perspectives and proposes a novel holistic framework which is neither reductionist/economistic nor essentialist. Modern and Postmodern Social Theorizing will appeal to scholars and students of social theory and of social sciences in general.
Introduction
Part I. The Theoretical Background
The Development of the Agency-Structure Problematic
1. From Parsons' to Giddens' synthesis
Part II. Parsonian and Post-Parsonian Developments
2. Parsons and the development of individual rights
3. Evolution and democracy
Parsons and the collapse of communism
4. Post-Parsonian theory I
neo-functionalism and beyond
Postscript
Alexander's cultural sociology
5. Post-Parsonian theory II
beyond the normative and the utilitarian
Part III. Agency and Structure
Reworking some Basic Conceptual Tools
6. Social and system integration
Lockwood, Habermas and Giddens
7. The subjectivist-objectivist divide
against transcendence
8. Habitus and reflexivity
restructuring Bourdieu's theory of practice
Part IV. Bridges Between Modern and Late/Postmodern Theorizing
9. Modernity
a non-Eurocentric conceptualization
10. Ethical relativism
between scientism and cultural relativism
11. Cognitive relativism
between positivistic and relativistic thinking in the social sciences
12. Social causation
between social constructionism and critical realism
Part V. Towards a Non-Essentialist Holism
13. Grand narratives
contextless and context-sensitive theories
14. The actor-structure dimension
anti-conflationist holism
15. The micro-macro dimension
anti-essentialist holism
16. The inter-institutional dimension
beyond economism and culturalism
Instead of Conclusion
twelve rules for the construction of an open-ended holistic paradigm
Appendix
In defence of 'grand' historical sociology.