Showing papers on "Relational sociology published in 2017"

Georg Simmel y los sentidos: una sociología relacional de la percepción.

Abstract: This article proposes a review of the program plan for Georg Simmel’s sociology of the senses, aimed at a relational sociology of perception It argues that the author’s proposal —not just fragments of his work— offers various contributions in this regard It proposes two analytical dimensions for the sociological study of perception: 1) the study of the historical conditions of perception, and 2) the effects of mutual perception or “reciprocal perception” The author seeks to show that Simmel describes the problem of perception as being relational, cognitive, sensory and emotional, and provides a relevant theoretical and methodological research proposal

Imagined Communities? Relations of Social Identities and Social Organisation among Afghan Diaspora Groups in Germany and the UK

Abstract: This paper engages with the complexity of diaspora by focusing on the links between self-identification, external categorisation and emerging ties among Afghans in Britain and Germany. Based on a q...

What Does a ‘Good Life’ Mean in a Morphogenic Society? The Viewpoint of Relational Sociology

Abstract: The basic argument of this paper is that, under conditions of radical morphogenesis, a good society is feasible only through a peculiar ‘politics of relationality’. The paper analyzes a plurality of normative logics that support different forms of social morphogenesis and, therefore, different moralities of the good life. The differences between the morality of opportunities according to lib/lab logic and relational logic are highlighted. The Author claims that, in a society conceived as a field of opportunities, the discriminating factor of ‘living well’ becomes the relational or non-relational nature of the good that is sought and realized by the acting subjects. It is a matter of clarifying the modalities with which the good life is relationally generated and which relational outcomes follow from it. Human flourishing can be produced only by a ‘society of the human’. This is a society in which the good life coincides with the creation of relational goods through an ‘agonistic sociability’.

Georg Simmel and the “Relational Turn”. Contributions to the foundation of the Lebenssoziologie since Simmel

Abstract: The first aim of the paper is an interpretation of Georg Simmel’s sociology in “relational terms” – i.e., under the categories of the “relational sociology”; it focuses, thus, to show how Simmel’s social theory and philosophy of culture fit for the construction of a Lebensoziologie. Considering Simmel as a “relational sociologist” means to demonstrate how his contribution is decisive to the history of sociology, since he defines the “Wechselwirkung” (reciprocity, relational exchange) and its forms as the very matter of the social sciences. Simmel represents the “relational turn” in the wide sociological milieu. Since Simmel’s contribution, sociology attempted to consider and investigate social facts in terms of “relation” and reciprocity. The current sociological debate insists on considering Simmel as a “relational” sociologist in various declinations (coherent to Bourdieu’s social theory or to the social network analysis framework). In his late essays and books Simmel gives a “vitalist” accent to the analysis of social facts: the social is above all “social life”, according to the consolidated forms/contents dialectical model. Grundfragen der Soziologie. Individuum und Gesellschaft represents his last attempt to corroborate a sort of “sociology of life” (Lebenssoziologie). Even if this term does not explicitly appear in Simmel’s words, it summarizes his social and cultural theory - since the volume Soziologie - and offers some key-concepts for the successive sociological debate.

The senses as a resource of meaning in the construction of the Stranger: an approach from Georg Simmel’s relational sociology

Abstract: This article explores the analytical relation between senses, space, and the stranger in Simmel’s relational thought. We can say that Simmel provides an analytical framework for thinking of how we create forms of socialization that take place from the senses. The senses mark areas of familiarity and strangeness among people and, the senses are a resource of meaning in the construction and exclusion of the stranger. Specifically, the article recovers Simmel's reflections regarding the relationship of estrangement that develops from the gaze, smell, and hearing, supplemented by recent empirical research in these fields and some examples related to Latin American cities.

Towards a Figurational History of Leicester Sociology, 1954–1982:

Abstract: This article applies Norbert Elias’s ‘processual-relational approach’ to an empirical case: the influential Leicester Department of Sociology between 1954 and 1982. Based on 42 qualitative interviews and extensive archival materials, we identify two phases: the early phase of cohesion is characterised by a strong sense of purpose and a growing influence on British sociology. The second phase is characterised by social and intellectual fragmentation. In explaining this reversal, we argue that a critical juncture of youth rebellion around 1968 provided the portents of an anti-authoritarian civilisational trend, which increasingly put strains on the established power nexus: the autocratic leadership model embodied by the department’s inspirational leader, Ilya Neustadt.

Specificities of the Third Sector: The Relational Approach

Abstract: The paper considers the recent critical and sceptical perspectives of social sciences on the Third sector. Above all, it reflects on the difficulty in identifying specificities of this supposed sector of contemporary society. Starting from this scenario, the author introduces the perspective of relational sociology as a possible way of defining a specificity of the sector, on the basis of the different ‘semantics of social relation’. In the second part of the work, a review of ten years of empirical research on the third sector, conducted in Italy, by a team of relational sociologists, puts the theory to the test finding both confirmations and disconfirmations.

Pierre Bourdieu: View Points and Entry Points

Abstract: This chapter introduces the principles of Bourdieu’s relational sociology of science . The scientific field is depicted as a locus of struggle between agents with differing symbolic and material assets. This chapter accounts conceptually for the interests, strategies, and investments of those who act in scientific fields: Homo Academicus. It also makes salient the struggles between newcomers and dominant agents as a key facet of scientific fields. It is proposed that understanding language choice entails understanding discipline-specific values. Bourdieu’s idea of ‘relational thinking’ brings forth the understanding that discipline-specific values have two modes of existence: in disciplinary fields and in field agents—that is, researchers. The chapter explicates how this conception is translated into the study’s design and provides information on the study’s procedure and dataset.

Spontaneous order and relational sociology: from the Scottish Enlightenment to human figurations

Abstract: If viewed from a long-term and large-scale perspective, human interdependencies today can be seen as approaching species integration on a worldwide level. However, emergent worldwide processes of integration and differentiation tend to be reduced to static concept-things such as “governmentality”, “globalization”, “cosmopolitanization”, “mobilities”, and “networks”, helping to obscure the mundane processes of institution formation, in particular the tenacious endurance of the nation-state. This paper argues that the pathological realism of neoliberal globalization today can be more adequately approached by engaging with the historical precursors of the so-called “relational turn” in contemporary sociology. The earlier relational sociology of the Scottish enlightenment, particularly Adam Ferguson (1767), Adam Smith (1776) and David Hume (1739) developed ideas of spontaneous order and such related concepts as “the invisible hand” and “unintended consequences” in an attempt to understand and control the rapid transformation of Scotland, a relatively under-developed economy on the edge of Europe. The Scottish spontaneous order tradition is compared to Elias’s idea of “figuration” as an unplanned but patterned process of increasingly complex and opaque social interdependencies and functional democratization. This process appears to have reached definite limits. Humanity is ensnared in a compelling global double-bind process of armed states that continue to threaten, endanger and fear each other, and a pervasive elite belief in the spontaneous efficiency and self-correcting mechanisms of the global “magic market”.

La Teoría Relacional: Una propuesta para la comprensión y resolución de los conflictos en la institución educativa

Abstract: Social precariousness is manifested today in the difficulty of man to create and maintain solid and lasting relationships, being germ of new social pathologies and cause of diverse conflicts such as school violence. This paper proposes a change of approach in understanding and solving conflicts in the educational context as the one adopted in Pierpaolo Donati’s relational sociology. Man is a relational being that coexists with others, by the same token, social relationships mean approaching and distancing, which is why the risk is always present as a potential conflict. Reflective and relational rationality allow us to appreciate the generative capacity of relationships to introduce changes that modify and humanize the relational context and make of the educational institution a relational context.

Relational Versus Relationist Sociology: A New Paradigm in the Social Sciences

Abstract: The paper presents a general outline of the author’s relational sociology, showing it to be different from other relational sociologies, which are, in fact, figurational, transactional, or purely communicative. Relational sociology is conceived as a way of observing and thinking that starts from the assumption that the problems of society are generated by social relations and aims to understand, and if possible, solve them, not purely on the basis of individual or voluntary actions, nor conversely, purely through collective or structural ones, but via new configurations of social relations. The social is relational in essence. Social facts can be understood and explained by assuming that “in the beginning (of any social fact there) is the relation.”Ultimately, this approach points to the possibility of highlighting thoserelational processes that can better realize the humanity of social agents and give them, as relational subjects, the opportunity to achieve a good life in a society that is becoming increasingly complex as the processes of globalization proceed.

An outline of relational sociology from a critical, analytical and realist viewpoint

Abstract: In this paper, the author presents his original version of relational sociology (critical realist relational sociology-CRRS), which is also called ‘relational theory of society’. It shares with other versions of relational sociology the aim to understand social facts as relationally constituted entities stemming from the dialectic between structures and interactive processes. But it diff ers from the radically constructivist and relativistic versions (here referred to as ‘relationist sociologies’) as regards the way in which social relations are defi ned, the kind of reality that is attributed to them, how they confi gure social formations, and the ways in which they are generated (emergence) and changed (morphogenesis). Th e paper clarifi es the advantages that this original perspective off ers in explaining a series of social issues. In particular, it can orient social research toward unseen and/or immaterial realities. Empirically, it can show how new social forms are created, changed, or destroyed depending on diff erent processes of valorization or devalorization of social relations. Ultimately, the task of this approach is to point to the possibility of envisaging those social relations that can better realize the humanity of social agents and give them the opportunity to achieve a good life.

Commentary on Pierpaolo Donati’s „What does a ‘good life’ mean in a morphogenic society? The viewpoint of relational sociology”

Abstract: One of the important innovations in Donati’s analysis is his introduction of the category of opportunity.1 The novelty does not reside solely in the employment of the term, but specifically in its exaltation to a key concept. As an analogy—not necessarily within the horizon of Donati’s social theory—one can mention, for example, Peter M. Blau (1994), whose macrostructural theory attempts to define opportunities ascribed to social positions that, like Durkheim’s (1964a [1895]) constraint, correspond to chances/probabilities of forming specific associations, i.e., relations between actors and their environment. Parsons (1968 [1937], 1951, 1960, 1977, 1978), like Donati, had a similar way of thinking: from the first scheme of the actor-in-a-situation, defining a voluntarily constrained ego, through pattern variables seen as tools characterizing the set of possible categorizations of human actions or the choices from a wide variety of structural and cultural possibilities, to a systemic interpretation presenting the interpenetration of the universe’s various components, which from the actors’ viewpoint create strings of legitimized goals and the means of their acquisition.

The Place of Culture in Relational Sociology

Abstract: The roots of sociology are relational (Donati 2011: 3), but the modern current of relational sociology either radically transforms classic theories or proposes a new language of social theory in order to tackle the complexity of processes taking place in the domains of culture and society. Distinctions and divisions both among and within American and European variants of relational sociology become apparent. The American orientation has become particularly visible after Mustafa Emirbayer published his Manifesto for a Relational Sociolog y (Emirbayer 1997), which publicized certain issues from the agenda of many scholars representing the group known today as the New York School of Relational Sociology (Mische 2011: 81). The place of culture in this current of relational sociology is still debated. The central significance of this issue1 naturally stems from the radical transformation of social network theory by Harrison C. White, who used it as a framework for his concepts regarding processes of communication, interpretation, and constructing meaning (Hałas 2011; White 1992, 2008). The conversion of network theory into relational theory may be justified and desirable, but genuine relational theories of society that originated in Europe deserve particular attention, especially the robust theories of Margaret S. Archer and Pierpaolo Donati, which have for some time been merging to a degree. Their cultural aspect will be the focus of this article. The theme introduced here—the place of culture in relational sociology—alludes to the subtitle of Margaret S. Archer’s important work Culture

A Relational Sociological Approach to Active Ageing: The Role of Intergenerational Relations and Social Generativity

Abstract: “Active ageing” indicates an attitude toward ageing that promotes lifestyles able to maintain acceptable levels of well-being, satisfaction, and social participation in later life. “Active ageing” is a recent concept developed by the European Commission and also used in Human Resources management, and it evokes the idea of a longer period of activity. In the concept of “activity” applied to the condition of the elderly there is both an individual and a social component. The origin of the propensity for activity is therefore to be sought in the individual motivations and personal resources resulting from the experiences of a lifetime. This personal choice assumes, however, a specific social significance because, through activity, it is possible for the individual to experience an intersubjective and associative dimension that contributes to the perception of playing a satisfactory social role. In this perspective, the past, the expertise, and the experience of the elderly shed light on the social dimension of activity, becoming actual resources for everyone. Both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Union (EU)1 have been emphasizing the importance of being active. However,

A Study on the Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and Conducting Social Research with Gypsy / Roma Groups

Abstract: In social science discourse, the dichotomy between agency and structure tends to dominate debates pertaining to identity construction When complex social facts are viewed through a simplistic prism of either individual activities or dominant structural impacts is likely to lead to a conclusion, - particularly when the subjects of research are members of communities at risk of vulnerability which are merely two-dimensional; omitting essential elements and interplays of circumstances, agency and structures which can rapidly shift dependent on both personal and external contexts and stressors In this article, we discuss ways of utilising Pierre Bourdieu's theoretical model to explore the potential for creating a more nuanced theory of identity construction in the context of case studies focused on Gypsy/Roma(ni) people, whose identities depend both on internal identifications and those of the (dominant) groups with whom they live We also aim to consider how in two widely contrasting international contexts – that of Roma people in Turkey and Gypsy/Traveller communities in the UK – use of Bourdieuian analysis provides appropriate tools that enable an analysis of daily living and the associated sense of active agency of these populations without minimising or excluding the structural effects which impact them This approach enables a nuanced relational approach to understanding Gypsy/Roma(ni) groups’ identity construction in its entirety, whilst taking account of the specific geographical context in which the populations reside