Showing papers on "Relational sociology published in 2016"

Relational agency Relational sociology, agency and interaction

Abstract: This article explores how the concept of agency in social theory changes when it is conceptualized as a relational rather than an individual phenomenon. It begins with a critique of the structure/agency debate, particularly of how this emerges in the critical realist approach to agency typified by Margaret Archer. It is argued that this approach, and the critical realist version of relational sociology that has grown from it, reify social relations as a third entity to which agents have a cognitive, reflexive relation, playing down the importance of interaction. This upholds the Western moral and political view of agents as autonomous, independent, and reflexive individuals. Instead, the article considers agency from a different theoretical tradition in relational sociology in which agents are always located in manifold social relations. From this, an understanding is created of agents as interactants, ones who are interdependent, vulnerable, intermittently reflexive, possessors of capacities that can onl...

The ‘Relational Subject’ According to a Critical Realist Relational Sociology

Abstract: The article aims at clarifying the viewpoint of a critical realist relational sociology when dealing with the notion of ‘relational subject’. The term ‘relational subject’, as developed by Donati and Archer, The Relational Subject (Cambridge: CUP, 2015), indicates individual and social subjects as ‘relationally constituted’, i.e. in as much as they acquire qualities and powers through their internal and external social relations. The validity of the relational (not transactional, and not relationist) perspective can be seen on different levels in social ‘collective’ subjects: on the micro level (for example, in the couple relation), on the meso level (civil associations and organizations) and on the macro level (for example, in citizen/state relations).

Networks of Sound, Style and Subversion: The Punk and Post-Punk Worlds of Manchester, London, Liverpool and Sheffield, 1975–80 by Nick Crossley (review)

Abstract: Networks of Sound, Style and Subversion: The Punk and Post-Punk Worlds of Manchester, London, Liverpool and Sheffield, 1975-80. By Nick Crossley. (Music and Society.) Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015. [xi, 268 p. ISBN 9780719088643 (hardcover), 75 [pounds sterling]; ISBN 9780719088650 (paperback), 17.99 [pounds sterling]; ISBN 9781847799920 (e book), 17.99 [pounds sterling].] Graphs, tables, bibliography, index. "I don't think you can explain how things happen, other than sometimes they just should. And the Sex Pistols should've happened and did." So states Sex Pistols front man John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon in the opening scene of the documentary The Filth and the Fury (dir. by Julien Temple, New Line Home Video [2000, 2005], DVD). While the Sex Pistols most certainly happened, to date no one has come as close to explaining how as Nick Crossley in his new book Networks of Sound, Style and Subversion. In Networks, Crossley presents a sociological retelling of how punk and post-punk musical styles arose in late-1970s England. Expanding his previous work on social networks, Crossley argues that both styles were preceded and eventually popularized by intricate networks comprised of "bands, audiences, venues, managers, promoters and others." "It was their interactions," he contends, "both competitive and cooperative, imitative and self-distinguishing ... which generated what we think of as punk and post-punk music" (p. 10). Crossley is a professor of sociology at the University of Manchester, and Networks is primarily written for those in the social sciences. It is filled with elaborate charts, graphs of data, and discussions of theoretical models. It also takes its mapping of social networks literally--describing them in terms of density, number of components, and path lengths, and separately categorizing "key participants" (or "nodes") by their relative "degree," "closeness," and "betweenness" (pp. 17-18). Such mathematically-inflected prose appears throughout the book, and Crossley spends nearly as much time explaining the models being used as he does describing the people involved. This approach may be off-putting to some in the humanities; certainly the book's data-driven methodology is not for everyone. Nevertheless, Crossley's exhaustive model of how new genres are established and propagated provides a brilliant and valuable tool for any scholar interested in tracing the emergence of new musical styles. Crossley begins by laying out the fundamental question of the book: "Why and how did punk and then post-punk emerge, when, where, in the way and involving the people they did?" (p. 2). The answer, he claims, lies in "relational sociology" (p. 13)--specifically in social network analysis--which he then broadly describes. The second and third chapters present a literature review of previous sociological approaches to punk. Chapter 2 deconstructs Dick Hebdige's concept of punk as a "subculture," arguing that a sociological analysis of punk needs to be grounded in both musical aesthetics and the practice of music making itself. Building on Christopher Small's concept of "musicking" and Howard S. Becker's concept of "art worlds," Crossley suggests that it is better to conceive of punk and post-punk as "music worlds," ones formed and sustained through collective engagement with music. Chapter 3 explores six sociological interpretations of the emergence of British punk. Crossley evaluates accounts such as "punk was a response to alienation and domination on behalf of working-class youths" and "punk was a reaction to the crises (economic, political and social) of UK society in the mid 1970s" (p. 49), ultimately rejecting these explanations as either too vague or historically inconsistent. He instead proposes that punk came about due to the workings of a small, regionally-specific social network of actors motivated by and through musical practices. In the next section of the book, Crossley provides his own explanation of British punk. …

Networks, Interaction, and Conflict: A Relational Sociology of Social Movements and Protest

Abstract: In this chapter I consider how social movements and protest are conceptualized within a relational-sociological approach. Relational sociology affords particular attention to processes of social interaction, the ties that interaction generates and which act back upon it, and the networks which form as ties concatenate and impact upon one another. However, this chapter focuses upon networks in particular, discussing their crucial role in social movement mobilization. The chapter begins with a general discussion of the relational approach, followed by a brief introduction to networks and social network analysis (SNA). The discussion then turns to networks and social movements more specifically, considering both how networks shape and facilitate collective action but also how they themselves are formed. In this latter connection the chapter also briefly considers the impact upon the process of network formation of the need which some movements have to remain covert. Special attention is also afforded to the role of networks in recruitment to collective action.

Structure, Culture and Agency: Selected Papers of Margaret Archer

Abstract: Professor Margaret Archer is a leading critical realist and major contemporary social theorist. This edited collection seeks to celebrate the scope and accomplishments of her work, distilling her theoretical and empirical contributions into four sections which capture the essence and trajectory of her research over almost four decades. Long fascinated with the problem of structure and agency, Archer’s work has constituted a decade-long engagement with this perennial issue of social thought. However, in spite of the deep interconnections that unify her body of work, it is rarely treated as a coherent whole. This is doubtless in part due to the unforgiving rigour of her arguments and prose, but also a byproduct of sociology’s ongoing compartmentalisation. This edited collection seeks to address this relative neglect by collating a selection of papers, spanning Archer’s career, which collectively elucidate both the development of her thought and the value that can be found in it as a systematic whole. This book illustrates the empirical origins of her social ontology in her early work on the sociology of education, as well as foregrounding the diverse range of influences that have conditioned her intellectual trajectory: the systems theory of Walter Buckley, the neo-Weberian analysis of Lockwood, the critical realist philosophy of Roy Bhaskar and, more recently, her engagement with American pragmatism and the Italian school of relational sociology. What emerges is a series of important contributions to our understanding of the relationship between structure, culture and agency. Acting to introduce and guide readers through these contributions, this book carries the potential to inform exciting and innovative sociological research.

Established-Outsider Relations and 'Figurational' Analysis

Abstract: In the introduction to this HSR Special Issue we provide an exposition and over- view of Elias and Scotson's Established and Outsiders, seeking to identify the empirical and conceptual significance of the relational model of inter-group tensions contained therein. Our core argument is that Elias and Scotson wrote in the historical context of a British intellectual Zeitgeist in which a preoccupa- tion with 'established' groups followed from proto-Marxist political/macro- sociological concerns with the reproduction of social elites; and an engage- ment with 'outsiders', which followed from an ascendant micro-sociological concern with sub-cultural and 'deviant' groups who defined themselves in op- position to a dominant mainstream. Elias and Scotson's contribution, viewed in this vein, was to provide a radically relational theoretical-empirical model which synthesised micro, meso and macro sociological concerns with social power dynamics into a unified synthetic scheme. We propose that while such a model is entirely consistent with the broader conceptual architecture of Elias's approach, it is important also to recognise the not insignificant influence of Scotson's empirical work in informing the specific concerns of their study. We further reflect upon the origins of the study and its implications for our more general methodological questions relating to undertaking 'figurational analysis' in the context of historical social research.

Symbolic Boundaries and Collective Violence. A New Theoretical Argument for an Explanatory Sociology of Collective Violent Action

Abstract: The sociology of violence still struggles with two critical questions: What motivates people to act violently on behalf of groups and how do they come to identify with the groups for which they act? Methodologically the article addresses these puzzling problems in favor of a relational sociology that argues against both micro- and macro-reductionist accounts, while theoretically it proposes a twofold reorientation: first, it makes a plea for the so called cognitive turn in social theory; second, it proposes following praxeological accounts of social action that focus on the dynamic interpenetration of cognition and socio-cultural practices. The argument is that symbolic boundaries constitute the “missing link” that allows for overcoming the micro-macro gap in violence research: Symbolic boundaries can cause people's participation in collective violence by providing the essential relational resources for violent action and by triggering the cognitive/affective mechanisms necessary for social actors to become drawn into mobilization processes that can cause their engaging in coordinated attacks on sites across the boundary. The article offers a new theoretical argument by drawing on knowledge from violence research, social action theory and cognitive science allowing for a non-reductionist theory of action that explains how and why people engage in collective violence.

Social Networks and Relational Sociology

Abstract: In this chapter I outline and develop the key principles of relational sociology, as I conceive of it, showing how this approach affords a ‘third way’ between methodological individualism and unhelpful forms of holism. The chapter is theoretical in orientation and argues that the concepts ‘interaction’, ‘tie’ and ‘network’ should be at the forefront in our attempt to understand the social world. I argue that theoretical innovation must be mirrored in the domain of methodology, however; that relational theory calls for relational methodologies and methods. To this end I offer a brief introduction to social network analysis (SNA), an approach to data gathering and analysis (albeit one amongst others) which, in my view, allows us to translate theoretical ideas regarding relationality into research practice. The chapter concludes with a reflection upon relational sociology’s capacity to deal with issues of both agency/structure and the so-called micro/macro divide.

The Relational Understanding of the Origin and Morphogenetic Change of Social Morality

Abstract: According to the Author, the prevailing modalities for explaining social morality in current sociologies reflect the cultural and structural dualisms of modern Western society (based on the individual/state, private/public, micro/macro axes) and their compromises. The theory of ‘institutionalised individualism’ is intended to grasp the distinctive trait of the dominant morality, which today faces a profound crisis. This chapter argues that, with globalisation, new processes generating moral norms are emerging that, alongside sequential and concomitant forms typical of modern morality, represent a transmodern form of normative morphogenesis (normogenesis) that the Author calls ‘relational’. Relational morality is characterised by the fact that moral norms must respond to new needs in the ways in which human beings relate to each other and with nature. This ‘relational normativity’ asserts itself wherever social relations are considered as a reality endowed with sui generis qualities and causal properties, thus becoming the foundational moral criterion of new social practices.

Sociologia ed etica nella società morfogenetica : un'interpretazione relazionale delle loro connessioni

Abstract: Today the issue of the relations between sociology and ethics is emerging anew as a consequence of the crisis of neo-positivism and, in parallel, the sweeping changes of social morality in postmodern societies. Divisionist theories (going back to Hume’s guillotine) seem to become untenable for many reasons. Not only sociological researches reveal themselves necessarily related to moral values, but the question "knowledge for what?" places new requests on sociology to give practical orientations. The issue takes on a new face with the advent of the morphogenetic society. The Author claims that: (i) as a matter of fact, every sociological research is necessarily connected to moral choices; (ii) ethical references can be classified in four ideal-types; (iii) the moral values that the researcher necessarily adopts (either explicitly or implicitly) depend on a meta-theory of moral norms that supports the epistemic values of the researcher; (iv) meta-theories can be individualist, holist or relational. The paper argues that the individualist and holist paradigms do not explain the moral changes that emerge in a morphogenetic society. It becomes indispensable to appeal to the relational paradigm. In conclusion, the paper offers a "compass" useful to understand how sociological research is connected to different forms of ethics

Al di là del bene e del male. la vocazione etica della sociologia relazionale e la ricerca sociologica come coscienza critica della modernità

Abstract: The paper aims at analyzing the relation between ethics and sociology, wondering the chance to get beyond the actual divisionism (and the impossibility to reduce prescriptive assertions - ethical field - to descriptive assertions - sociological field). From the very beginning the social science had to do with moral facts and the first sociologists (Simmel, Durkheim and Weber) treated the moral phenomena such as relevant to the comprehension of the social and collective agency. Despite of a first fruitful dialogue between ethics and sociology, in the present debates both of them seem to be recognized as irreconcilable and autonomous sciences. Pierpaolo Donati’s Relational Sociology demonstrates how to save the original and authentic relation between sociology and ethics: the former has indeed the purpose to describe the intersection between individual and social sphere by the emergent form of the "social relation". It is necessary to treat together the value dimension of social relation (the L of "latency" in the relational reformulation of AGIL scheme) and the intrinsic normative social agency of individuals (the I of "integration"). For heuristic reasons the reflexivity issue in the relational paradigm implies that we must consider sociology as the "moral conscience" of modernity (Donati). In his last studies the reflexivity is considered the connotation of inner social relation in the morphogenetic society: sociology may, then, represent the way to get access to the reflexive-relational capability of modern individuals-in-society.