Showing papers in "European Journal of Social Theory in 2007"

The Plurality of Cognitive Formats and Engagements Moving between the Familiar and the Public

Abstract: Cognitive forms vary considerably as a human being detaches herself from what is closest and most personal and moves to communicate — in the broad sense of taking part in a common matter — across increasing relational distances. The article proposes to deal with the variety of cognitive formats which cannot `commonize' cognition to an equal degree, relating them to a set of regimes of engagement with the world that are identified in terms of the dependency between the human agent and her environment. The good that engagement aims to guarantee orients how reality is grasped and specifies the format of what constitutes relevant information. This analysis offers new insight into the composition of communities as well as persons who have to cope with the plurality of cognitive formats and engagements from the very familiar to the most public.

The Enclave Society: Towards a Sociology of Immobility

Abstract: In contemporary sociology, there has been significant interest in the idea of mobility, the decline of the nation state, the rise of flexible citizenship, and the porous quality of political bounda...

Cosmopolitan Citizenship Virtue, Irony and Worldliness

Abstract: In this article, it is argued that cosmopolitans should elucidate the qualities and dispositions, or ‘virtues’, associated with the ideal of cosmopolitan citizenship. Bryan Turner's suggestion that...

Cosmopolitanism Europe's Way Out of Crisis

Abstract: If Europe wants to overcome its current crisis, it urgently needs to develop a new political vision and a new concept for political integration. By focusing on the idea of a cosmopolitan Europe, th...

Cultural Uniqueness and Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism

Abstract: Aesthetic cosmopolitanism is conceptualized here as a cultural condition in which late modern ethno-national cultural uniqueness is associated with contemporary cultural forms like film and pop-roc...

Scientific Communication and Cognitive Codification: Social Systems Theory and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

Abstract: The intellectual organization of the sciences cannot be appreciated sufficiently unless the cognitive dimension is considered as an independent source of variance. Cognitive structures interact and co-construct the organization of scholars and discourses into research programs, specialties, and disciplines. In the sociology of scientific knowledge and the sociology of translation, these heterogeneous sources of variance have been homogenized a priori in the concepts of practices and actor-networks. Practices and actor-networks, however, can be explained in terms of the self-organization of the cognitive code in scientific communication. The code selects knowledge claims by organizing them operationally in the various discourses; the claims can thus be stabilized and potentially globalized. Both the selecting codes and the variation in the knowledge claims remain constructed, but the different sub-dynamics can be expected to operate asymmetrically and to update with other frequencies.

Habermas and the `Post-Secular Society':

Abstract: The article appraises Habermas's recent writings on theology and social theory and their relevance to a new sociology of religion in the `post-secular society'. Beginning with Kant's Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, Habermas revisits his earlier thesis of the `linguistification of the sacred', arguing for a `rescuing translation' of the traditional contents of religious language through pursuit of a via media between an overconfident project of modernizing secularization, on the one hand, and a fundamentalism of religious orthodoxies, on the other. Several questions, however, must be raised about this current project. How far can Habermas engage adequately with religious ideas of the absolute while still retaining certain broadly functionalist theoretical premises? Is the notion of an ongoing secularization process in the `post-secular society' a contradiction in terms? What appropriate `limits and boundaries' are to be accepted between the domains of knowledge and faith, and how strictly can t...

Social Theory as a Cognitive Neuroscience

Abstract: In the nineteenth century, there was substantial and sophisticated interest in neuroscience on the part of social theorists, including Comte and Spencer, and later Simon Patten and Charles Ellwood. This body of thinking faced a dead end: it could do little more than identify highly general mechanisms, and could not provide accounts of such questions as `why was there no proletarian revolution?' Psychologically dubious explanations, relying on neo-Kantian views of the mind, replaced them. With the rise of neuroscience, however, some of the problems of concern to earlier thinkers, such as imitation, have revived because of the discovery of neuronal mechanisms, or through fMRI studies. The article reviews the history and discusses the implications of current work for the reconsideration of traditional social theory concepts. It is suggested that certain kinds of bridging work with neuroscience would enable us to answer many questions in social theory that empirical sociology has failed to answer.

A Quest for Universalism: Re-assessing the Nature of Classical Social Theory's Cosmopolitanism

Abstract: This article re-assesses classical social theory's relationship with cosmopolitanism. It begins by briefly reconstructing the universalistic thrust that is core to cosmopolitanism and then argues t...

The Rutgers School: A Zerubavelian Culturalist Cognitive Sociology

Abstract: In this article, the Zerubavelian culturalist cognitive paradigm which comprises an emerging Rutgers School of Sociology is presented. This perspective employs a comparative cognitive pluralist approach to the study of cognition and takes as its central premise that the mind is social. The key roots of the perspective in Simmelian classical sociology and in the twentieth-century sociology of knowledge approaches of Fleck, Mannheim, Berger and Luckmann and others are outlined. The key concepts and parameters of the field and its concern with perception, attention, classification, meaning-making, memory, time and identity are discussed. Finally, its methodological approach is outlined and it is suggested that the Zerubavelian perspective provides a unique analytic literacy that cuts across the various subfields of contemporary sociology.

Introduction: A Cartography of Contemporary Cognitive Social Theory

Abstract: Higher Education Authority (Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions, Cycle 3, 2002–5)

Cognitive sociology and the theory of communicative action : The role of communication and language in the making of the social bond

Abstract: A pragmatic (communication-discursive) cognitive sociology beyond observationism (Luhmann, Turner, Conein) and individualistic reductionism (Esser, Boudon) as a way to do sociology as a critical th...

Glimpses of cosmopolitanism in the hospitality of art

Abstract: Cosmopolitanism has been used as a concept to open the horizons for being in the world. This article re-thinks the philosophical and political dimensions of cosmopolitanism by relating them to the new collaborative practices by artists. The concepts of agency and community will be grounded in a critical examination of the networking strategies and the practice of hospitality that have been cultivated by artistic collectives such as Stalker. The aim of this article is to ‘rescue’ the account of artistic practice from the extreme version of quasi-mystical universalism and dogmatic political activism. It also seeks to argue that the abstract principles of cosmopolitanism are in a dialogue with the multicultural practices of everyday life.

Sociology after Sociology

Abstract: The unity of the sociology now termed classical – because it is deemed already to belong to the past – was not that of a theory or discourse about social organization, social actors or the ways in which social wholes change; it was that of an object of knowledge, just as Auguste Comte had wanted. The object of sociology was the study of society and the latter was defined in the same manner as nature, matter or life. In fact, the definition of society was more precise: it was defined as a set of interdependent mechanisms ensuring the integration or combination of mutually opposed elements: the individualism of the actors and the internalization of institutional norms in the service of collective integration. What we call society is the whole which thus combines order and progress as well as individualism and solidarity. All past definitions of society thus rested on the idea that there exist combinations and mediations between elements so opposed to one another that only society, that is to say a set of rules and procedures, can prevent open conflict between them, which would spell chaos. What is this fundamental opposition which defines modernity? It is the dissociation of the objective order and subjective values. In many countries and situations, we have seen the development, on the one hand, of reason, measure, economic forecasting and the organization of work and, on the other, of the portrait and the novel, of history recounted in the first person and, more broadly, of moral individualism. This dissociation of two universes is the best-known definition of modernity, for the latter breaks apart the unity of the religious world in which the creator god was also a rational being. However, the idea of society did not make its appearance at the beginning of modernity. For a long time, it was thought that God had to be replaced by an absolute Sovereign, the depositary of all legitimacy, at once father of the people and manager, generous and a dispenser of justice. The formation of political power and the State was, from Machiavelli to Hobbes and from Jean Bodin to Bossuet, at the core of political philosophy; it later ceased to be so, reappearing only in relatively marginal thinkers, such as Carl Schmitt.

Sociology, Nostalgia, Utopia and Mortality: A Conversation with Zygmunt Bauman

Abstract: Any conversation with Zygmunt Bauman is exhilarating, and this is especially true of the many interviews that have been published over recent years. Like many of those pieces, this conversation was carried out by email, and therefore it has a focus and solidity that might otherwise be missing from a verbal interchange. Bauman’s answers are characteristically wide-ranging, circuitous and fascinating. He tends to approach a question from the side rather than head on, all the better to strike up a relationship with the interlocutor and the reader, all the better to make the conversation an opportunity for engagement and communication. Moreover, the status of the answers that Bauman provides in this piece – as in many conversations – have textually different statuses. It is obvious that some responses paraphrase already written texts, others allude to previous publications, while some answers tackle a question head-on. All the time the reader is being encouraged to engage with the text, think about it, work with it and against it; all the time the reader is being invited to enter into a relationship. In short, this conversation is an invitation to think at once about one’s own interpretation of the world and, indeed, about the possibilities and provocations of Bauman’s own intellectual activity. But perhaps even more than that, this conversation is one small attempt to help make a human encounter. Moreover, the present conversation touches upon aspects often neglected in existing interviews – the undercurrents, as it were, of Bauman’s work such as utopia and nostalgia – thereby allowing the reader to get a glimpse of Bauman ‘between the lines’ and of sentiments and perspectives ‘hiding in the light’ in his work. In this piece, Bauman is openly reflexive. The conversation can be read as an instance of this most important of sociologists reflecting on the context, categories and reception of his own work. There is a sense running through his piece that Bauman is not simply presenting a point of view but also thinking through what has happened to his work as it has been carried out in different situations and aimed at different audiences; audiences that can no longer be presumed but need now be constituted in and through the act of communication. To this extent, the conversation form is particularly appropriate for the constitution of an audience precisely because of its intrinsically dialogic character. And that is perhaps the best way to approach this piece; as an opportunity to engage with Bauman and his work. European Journal of Social Theory 10(2): 305–325

‘Political’ Cosmopolitanism and Judgment:

Abstract: This article addresses the issue of future cosmopolitanism, building on a minimal reconstruction of what cosmopolitanism has been in the past. It will elucidate the notion of ‘political’ cosmopolitanism in its relation to a certain methodological option which is designated by the shorthand term ‘judgment’. Cosmopolitanism is not a new idea but a new version of it is constituted by ‘political’ cosmopolitanism, bound up with a judgmentbased, as opposed to principle-based, understanding of normativity.

Hannah Arendt's Jewish Cosmopolitanism Between the Universal and the Particular

Abstract: This article conceptualizes the lofty term of cosmopolitanism from people's historical experience. It attempts to find a bridge between theory and life. Many writers now maintain that cosmopolitanism is no longer a dream, but rather the substance of social reality - and that it is increasingly the nation-state and our particular identities that are figments of our imagination, clung to by our memories. The aim of this article is to concretize this argument and demonstrate how some of the Jewish intellectuals who emerged from World War II and the Holocaust argued passionately about the status of their Jewishness and how this related to abstract and universal ideals of modernity and human rights. The article focuses on Hannah Arendt's responses to her critics instead of her vast theoretical work to illustrate this point. In responding to her critics, Arendt came closest to providing a formula for a concept of cosmopolitanism, which attempts to square the circle between the universal and the particular.

The Cosmopolitan Language of the State: Post-national Citizenship and the Integration of Non-nationals

Abstract: This article looks at the cosmopolitan potential of post-national citizenship working at the state level. The article stresses the idea of post-national citizenship as capable of translating cosmopolitan language into one that can be developed within the state-society relationship. To this end, four questions designed to clarify this relationship are raised.

Niklas Luhmann, Carl Schmitt and the Modern Form of the Political

Abstract: Niklas Luhmann elaborated his account of the political system in a complex, though often implicit, debate with Carl Schmitt. Underlying his systems-theoretical model of politics, and of the legitimacy of politics, is the anti-Schmittian view that modern society's communications about itself are neither coordinated by, nor embodied in, a political centre, and that politics is always an unemphatic aspect of these communications. However, this article proposes an immanent critique of Luhmann's analysis of the political system, and it argues that his theory uses highly selective and puristic techniques to support its limitation of society's politics. If interpreted critically, in fact, Luhmann's political sociology illuminates the specific politicality and political emphasis of certain communications, it underlines the distinction of politics from other systems of social communication, and it calls for a re-insistence on the political as a primary category of social analysis.

A Cross-National Consensus on a Unified Sociological Theory? Some Inter-Cultural Obstacles

Abstract: The universal fragmentation today of Sociology as a discipline tempts sociological theorists in every nation to question whether a standard set of theories can be formulated that would command consensus across the globe. The discipline would benefit, it would seem, from a common language shared by sociologists: communication across nations and among theorists and practitioners would be facilitated, research methods and procedures would be standardized, and confusion among students new to the discipline would be minimized. Are uniform theories at all possible in Sociology? This query is addressed here in a preliminary manner. A skeptical position is adopted, although one that diverges from familiar arguments on this question. The formulation of consensus theories is rendered improbable, many commentators contend, owing to the penetration of Sociology’s boundaries by adjacent disciplines and the challenges posed by a variety of new approaches: Literary Studies, Cultural Studies, Post-modernism, and Post-structuralism. Even attempts to define the field clearly have been hindered to a great extent by these developments, the critics hold. The radical dispersal today of Sociology’s intellectual capital, they maintain, precludes all attempts to reach consensus. Although uncritical of this argument and arriving at the same conclusion, this investigation follows a different line of reasoning. Sociology, it will be maintained, developed in the context of region-based and nation-specific knowledge communities – as well as delineated historical, political, religious, and social dynamics – and hence constitutes a project anchored to a significant extent in the singularity of the regions and nations of its birth. Modes and traditions of sociological analysis varied substantively, and the discipline’s journey was characterized in each region and nation by particular achievements, problems, tensions, dilemmas, and parameters. Moreover, certain approaches and schools in certain regions and nations more effectively withstood external homogenizing pressures. On the other hand, certain modes of analysis typically located deep in a specific

A Science of Life Together in the World

Abstract: Borrowing Hannah Arendt’s phrase ‘to live together in the world’ (Arendt, 1958) for the title of this article is a way of situating the sciences of society in the past of moral and political philosophy, while at the same time choosing an author particularly sensitive to the reality of this politics, in the double sense of a practical undertaking and of a propitious material environment. And adding science as the objective is a way of making immediately visible the discordance implicit in the project of sciences of society. That the two terms clash when they are paired is what Arendt strove to convince us in the implacable indictment that she formulated against the social sciences. The thesis set forth summarily in this article, omitting more detailed arguments developed elsewhere, is that this discordancy is the source of a renewal of the sciences of life in society, resulting from a reappraisal of the critical points in their original project. This thesis will take on consistency in the course of answers offered, one by one, to the fruitful questions submitted to us by Alain Caillé.

Analytical Sociology and Its Discontents

Abstract: Despite the many attempts to hide, or even ghost of Talcott Parsons is still haunting soc nize the continuing importance of his sem 1995), other scholars around the globe are Parsonian tradition alive and further it in its two collections of essays under review are i can be conceived and approached today. Ac the first volume in a series entitled Studie Helmut Staubmann and dedicated to the do and application of the intellectual tradition Parsons: A Theory of Social Action for the Tw the papers presented at a conference held i 2002 to commemorate the centenary of P Studies (henceforth MS) focuses mainly on issues – with chapters by H. Staubmann, V G. Sciortino, and a hitherto unpublished the history of ideas, – After Parsons (hence social institutions and processes (chapters by and H. Bershady), societal community an Alexander, G. Sciortino, R.N. Bellah, and in sociological theory and research (chap U. Gerhardt, and C. Camic) and the h Tiryakian, R.C. Fox, and V.M. Lidz). European Journal of Social Theory 10(1): 153–172

Cosmopolitan Justice and Immigration A Critical Theory Perspective

Abstract: The pressures of globalization have resulted in shrinking distances and increased contact among people, rendering state boundaries and jurisdiction insufficient to deal with claims of justice exclu...

How is Sociological Realism Possible?: Sociology after Cognitive Science

Abstract: This article explores the limits of social constructionism and criticizes the `demiurgic conception of society' associated with it. It contemplates the possibility of sociological realism by investigating the intrinsic and objective properties of action, cognition and morality. The incorporation of intrinsic meanings and intentions in social actions, the objective information supporting cognitive processes and human sensitivity to pleasure and pain as well as the normative rejection of undue suffering, delineate the objective core of social facts, which can be interpreted or influenced, but not arbitrarily or capriciously constructed or manipulated. This general argument is supported by various illustrations drawn from the semantics of social actions and classical puzzles of interpretative sociology such as the meaning of suicide or the morality of social sanctions.

An Argumentativist Point of View in Cognitive Sociology

Abstract: Methodological Individualism and Rational Choice Theory (broadly understood) can integrate various research programmes in cognitive sociology (itself broadly understood). This article sets out two different but closely related conceptions, depending on the focus of the analysis (macro-sociological or micro-sociological) and the goals, although both deal — to some extent — with the bridge between these levels. Raymond Boudon's programme is relevant when the focus is the macro-sociological level but can be considered as weakly `cognitive'. Alban Bouvier presents a slightly stronger cognitive programme — the argumentativist programme — that makes sense when the focus is on the micro-sociological level. This new programme leads to integrating cognitive psychology and recent argumentation theory more and, as well, the philosophy of mind and social philosophy. Examples here are borrowed from historical sociology.

The Dialectic Between Romanticism and Classicism in Europe

Abstract: This article provides an application of Alvin Gouldner's dialectic between Romanticism and Classicism to the constitutional process of European identity formation. Gouldner introduced his dialectical sociology in a critical attempt to destroy compulsive identification with any fixed idea of order. In an attempt to destroy compulsive identification with any Romantic or classical idea of Europe, this article shows how Europe's identity, as it has been represented in the Constitutional Treaty (CT), as well as in sociological works, is being shaped by predominant Romantic and classic thought structures and social movements. The central argument is that the dialectic between Romanticism and Classicism in Europe is most clearly observed in the debates about democracy, human rights and rule of law — the classical values that constitute the EU's entry criteria.

Process narratives, grey boxes, and discourse frameworks : Cognition, interaction, and constraint in understanding genetics and medicine

Abstract: The article presents a model of understanding that takes into account interaction, cultural knowledge, and the constraints of organizations and institutions. It analyzes discourse and cognition in high school biology classes and clinical consultations involving discussions of genetics. The analytical lenses of constraint satisfaction, coherence-based reasoning, and collective cognition reveal multilayered social, cultural, and interactional components of authority and agency that influence understanding. The analysis reveals similarities across settings in discourse structure and the ways that participants relate to local constraints. In both types of settings, participants attempt to develop process narratives that present a sequential or causal relationship between information and lead to remembered understandings of concepts. However, the absence of certain process information that links terms or concepts functions like a missing plot point in a story, hindering the development of process narratives and understandings. In order to cover such information gaps, students and patients construct and display grey boxes. In addition to talk and text, these consist of various actions and resources specific to a local discourse framework such as pointing at graphics, tabular information, and symbols. Grey boxes satisfy the organizational constraints of time, resources, and task structure that affect interaction related to understanding concepts and procedures, but their connection to a particular discourse framework restricts the transfer of knowledge between settings. The power of medical practitioners and teachers to enhance or restrict understandings relates to the ways that they accommodate the use of grey boxes during interactions with clients and students. Professional frames of reference that teachers or practitioners apply to task interactions may constrain the ways students or clients apply grey boxes and process narratives. Awareness of the functions of process narratives and grey boxes presents opportunities to modify local discourse frameworks and increase understandings of concepts, medical conditions, and treatment options.

Sociology as Anti-Utilitarianism:

Abstract: If one were to go by the incredible variety of writings that lay claim to the sociological label, or the improbable heterogeneity of training programmes in sociology – at every university what is taught under this name is different – one would have to conclude that the discipline exists only in the form of a fiction and that, as much as it would like to be scientific, it closely resembles an unattainable science of imaginary questions or solutions. In no other field of thought with pretensions to specialized knowledge does one find so great a gap between equally possible and accepted definitions of the object or of the method. As to its aim: following the French positivist tradition (from Saint-Simon to M. Mauss via A. Comte and Durkheim), sociology can be seen as the other name designating social science in general, including anthropology, history and part of economics and political philosophy, or else, on the contrary, as one particular social science discipline among others. And each of these two choices – the generalist or the particularist one – opens in its turn onto a whole series of possible options. Thus, the generalist aim can be pursued in a systemic perspective, with a strong emphasis on synchrony. Then the main focus of attention is on the more or less fragmentary unity of society and on the way in which it breaks down into more or less systemic and functional sub-systems, more or less mutually compatible or more or less irreducible and ‘differentiated’ (ausdifferenziert). Or else, on the contrary, priority is given to history, to chance, to contingent events, and the very idea of society or of a possible systemic coherence of the spheres of social action in their entirety is then minimized, if not ruled out altogether. The first option, which extends from Durkheim to Luhmann via Talcott Parsons, LéviStrauss and Louis Dumont, is that of the French sociological school, of functionalism, culturalism and structuralism. The second opens onto the gigantic field of comparative historical sociology whose incontestable champion is Max Weber. But it should be added that each of these two possible options is only able to fulfil its true potential by creating space within itself for the opposite option. European Journal of Social Theory 10(2): 277–286

Instituting Society, Our Mirage:

Abstract: GEODE convened a theory conference in Paris in June 2005 to worry about how the ‘dissolution of the very idea of society’ disrupts sociological theory. (‘Globalization’ is seen as the villain, as usual this year, Immanuel Wallerstein forgotten.) When I declined to worry, Stephane Dufoix of Nanterre asked me to come and argue, and to send a short script in advance. Meanwhile, from out West, Roger Friedland had been badgering me to send a short script for discussion by a group at his and John Mohr’s Conference on Instituting Institutions. It came to me that this paper, on how social organization and language jointly construct each other, for this conference at U.C.-Santa Barbara helped to clarify the issue. The GEODE position paper had triggered my realizing that I had never construed sociology as about ‘society’, that it was a mirage engendered by our civilization. And it became clear in writing my new paper that ‘society’ in the vaguely national sense we take for granted in everyday life is an institution which although worthy of study is inept as a guide to the practice of sociology. Let me begin by sketching alternative bases for framing sociological exploration, and then I’ll fill out the one I prefer in more detail. In most actual research projects, sociologists need not trouble themselves with notions of society. Research often works outward from some tangible behavior patterns or topics which need not call for bounding, implicit or explicit. Think of the qualitative work of Erving Goffman (1971), or turn to most of the quantitative studies in our journals. Nonetheless, theorists will note that some important framing is requisite for us observers even though it need not conform to the framings by those being observed. One coherent account of these framing and boundary issues is the systems theory developed by the late Niklas Luhmann (1995). A new version that ties in better with actual research is Against Essentialism by Stephan Fuchs (2001). Fuchs takes the key step of formulating social construction in terms of social networks. (The term society, included in his subtitle, is used by Fuchs in its sense as mirage.) It is only fair to the GEODE organizers, however, to address more directly what can stand in for their notion of ‘society’, rather than wandering off into general