Journal ArticleDOI
From Weber to Parsons and Schutz: The Eclipse of History in Modern Social Theory'
TLDR
Parson's and Schutz's use of Weberian sociology to derive general theories of social action has been examined in this article, showing that the success of general theory over historicism is a hollow one.Abstract:
Sociologists have generally dissociated theoretical synthesis from historical research, but the triumph of general theory over historicism is a hollow one. Efforts to formulate general theories of society devoid of historical limitation have created serious problems for theoretical work. This article examines two important examples of this tendency: Parson's and Schutz's use of Weberian sociology to derive general theories of social action. A historically grounded procedure for generating concepts was central to Weber's work. It united explanatory and interpretative analysis within a reflexive framework that responded to the intellectual and political interests of the theorist. Early writings of Parsons and Schutz surmount, in different ways, Weber's strictures on the limits of general theory by eliminating the historical component of Weber's thought. This development reversed Weber's theoretical achievement, decomposing his synthesis into hostile theories based on key fragments of his analysis.read more
Citations
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The Matter of Habit
TL;DR: The concept of "habit" was long a staple term in the conceptual vocabulary of Western social theorists and continued to function as a major background factor in the substantive writings of both Emile Durkheim and Max Weber as discussed by the authors.
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On the Determination of Social Action in Space and Time
TL;DR: In this article, a preliminary attempt to work out what a nonfunctionalist social theory which still retains the crucial element of determination would look like is made, and the paper is arranged in th...
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The Institutionalization of Social Investment: The Interplay of Investment Logics and Investor Rationalities
TL;DR: In this article, the authors take an interpretive approach drawing on institutional theory and other work on the sociology of markets to conceptualize social investment as a socially constructed space within which different investment logics and investor rationalities are currently in play.
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Structure After 50 Years: The Anatomy of a Charter
TL;DR: The Structure of Social Action has emerged as one of the classics of the sociological tradition as mentioned in this paper, but there is no agreement about the status of the book's argument among all those who still appeal to the volume.
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Cultural Hegemony and the Race-Definition Process in Chinatown, Vancouver: 1880–1980:
TL;DR: The study of systems of racial classification is not well developed in the social sciences as mentioned in this paper, and within the liberal tradition of race relations research, race has more often been taken for granted than...
References
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Book
The Social Construction of Reality
TL;DR: Scheleris et al. as mentioned in this paper proposed a sociologijos disciplinos raida, which is a discipline for sociologists to discipline themselves in the discipline of social sciences.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Social Construction of Reality
Book
The phenomenology of the social world
TL;DR: Schutz as mentioned in this paper provided a sound philosophical basis for the sociological theories of Max Weber using a Husserlian phenomenology, and provided a complete and original analysis of human action and its "intended meaning."