This thesis examines the methodological context, nature, strengths and weaknesses of an unconventional approach to the explanation of human action: 'the argument from rationality.' The study focuses on Martin Hollis' innovative presentation of this alternative method of social science. The argument from rationality proposes that in the explanation of human actions consideration must be given to an asymmetry in modes of explanation: nonrational actions are subject to causal analyses, but rational actions are their own explanations. A rational action, that is, is a free action; and the social scientist is under a methodological obligation to discover whether an action is free prior to formulating a causal explanation. The argument from rationality suits the needs of students of the social scientific study of religion. With its development and legitimation two points of antagonism between the scientific and the religious worldviews are ameliorated. The argument from rationality directly curbs the reductive thrust of scientific accounts of religion by giving methodological voice to the freedom of will asserted by the great religious traditions. Indirectly, the epistemological framework of the argument indicates that reference to the transcendent is a conceptual a priori of 'talk of religion,' just as rational human agency is for 'talk of human action.' The thesis has three parts. First, the parameters of the problem of human freedom are established through discussion of the two sociologies conflict. the positivism-humanism debate, and the struggle of determinists and libertarians. Second, the epistemological and methodological legitimacy of the

The Two Sociologies

Freedom, Rationality and the Explanation of Religious Action: A Critical Examination of Martin Hollis' Philosophical Thoughts on Social Action

In its broadest aspect, this thesis constitutes a demonstration of the substantive utility of a political sociology that pays serious regard to the issues surrounding the notion of subjectivity. More specifically, it takes the form of a sustained argument concerning the relationship between political mobilisation and the various structures and dynamics associated with subjectivity. In the first part of the thesis, a theory of consciousness, subjectivity and intersubjectivity is developed. It is argued that as a result of a number of existential facts about consciousness, individuals manifest and are subject to various socio-existential dynamics of subjectivity. The most important of these are: (a) the necessity experienced by individuals to reaffirm their senses of self; (b) their desire for the symbolic mastery of the "external-world"; and (c) the compulsion experienced to negate symbolically the foreignness of the other. The second part of the thesis is devoted to exploring some of the political consequences and implications of the existence of these dynamics. By means of a number of case studies - specifically, analyses of political conflict, political ritual and populism - it is demonstrated that in order to understand various kinds of political mobilisation, it is necessary to understand the sense in which political action and discourse dovetail with the structures and dynamics of subjectivity. It is concluded that to the extent that this is the case, a political sociology which neglects issues of subjectivity is necessarily partial.

Political mobilisation and the question of subjectivity

This article explains the genesis and development of the concept of societal community, created by functionalist sociologist Talcott Parsons. It is assumed that societal community concept involves certain novelty. This article shows the paths of this concept following the works of Parsons as well as specialized bibliography, in an attempt to synthesize it. Finally, the article presents two internal tensions of the concept itself: regarding the inclusion of non-member groups and the use of coercion.

/pdf/genesis-y-tensiones-en-la-comunidad-societal-de-parsons-3kc7uglair.pdf

Génesis y tensiones en la comunidad societal de Parsons

In 1977, on the occasion of the forty-third Hobhouse Memorial Lecture presented at the London School of Economics and published in the December issue of the British Journal of Sociology, Daniel Bell noted that the first was given in 1930 by J.A. Hobson on the topic ‘Towards Social Equality’: ‘are there no constants in sociological thought?’ Bell (1977: 419) asked, ‘or is it that there is no progress?’ Reviewing the contents of the BJS over the 1970s, Bell’s question is both easy and hard to answer. The easy part is the question of constants – articles appearing during this decade engage with long-standing, even foundational, debates in the discipline as well as with more specific skirmishes of the time; they also portend newer concerns that remain critical today. The harder question concerns the matter of progress. Certainly it is possible to note the changes that have taken place within the discipline in the last three to four decades; that it is difficult to say whether these mark any kind of progress probably has most to do with a recent scepticism about the very concept that was not so typical of the 1970s. Bell was not himself concerned with the issue of social equality. His lecture and article were on ‘The Return of the Sacred? The Argument on the Future of Religion’ (‘are there no constants in sociological thought?’ one might echo, ‘or is it that there is no progress?’) The sociology of religion is one of the constants that link the 1970s to current debates in sociology, in terms of both continuity and change. In the 1970s, the greater number of the papers in this field extended the exegetical treatment of Durkheim’s and Weber’s works on religion, with several also cast in an anthropological understanding of religion in terms of belief-systems, magic, occult or ritual behaviour.A small number of contributions presage the analysis of religion and politics that is so current today, including studies of the Orange Order in Ireland (Roberts 1971), Islam and political behaviour in Malaysia (Kessler 1972), the Nation of Islam in the USA and Rastafarianism in Jamaica (Watson 1973), and race, religiosity

background

https://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2009.01280.x

The Two Sociologies

Citations

Freedom, Rationality and the Explanation of Religious Action: A Critical Examination of Martin Hollis' Philosophical Thoughts on Social Action

Political mobilisation and the question of subjectivity

Génesis y tensiones en la comunidad societal de Parsons

The British Journal of Sociology in the 1970s: continuity and crisis

A sociologist's perspective on teaching general studies in a technical college: Some practical considerations

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