Topic
Relational sociology
About: Relational sociology is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 215 publications have been published within this topic receiving 6927 citations. The topic is also known as: Structural interactionism.
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1 citations
01 Jan 2018
TL;DR: The authors discusses relational sociologists' efforts to reconnect, in more deliberate terms, with the primacy of relations and process thinking in the social sciences and discusses the importance of relational embeddedness of human activity.
Abstract: The recent “relational turn” in the social sciences is bringing much needed attention to the study of social relations. This chapter discusses relational sociologists’ efforts to reconnect, in more deliberate terms, with the primacy of relations and process thinking. For some theorists, all is social relations insofar as interdependent actors, transactions, and emergent patterns exist always-already in constant motion. This avidly anti-essentialist view of lived experience differs notably from the critical realist notion that relations can give rise to sui generis social effects, events, or phenomena. Notwithstanding different streams of thought on such matters, there is general agreement concerning the relational embeddedness of human activity. There is considerable theoretical value in thinking about community as a confluence of multifaceted relations and as an emergent phenomenon that possesses distinct properties.
1 citations
01 Jul 2014
TL;DR: In this article, the authors compare Pierpaolo Donati's Relational Theory of Society (also called Relational Sociology), and the theoretical proposal of Jan Fuhse's relational Sociology.
Abstract: This paper aims to compare Pierpaolo Donati’s Relational Theory of Society (also called Relational Sociology), and the theoretical proposal of Jan Fuhse’s Relational Sociology. It focuses on two main issues: 1) Epistemology - the «Relational Sociology» paradigm; 2) Ontology - what the social relation consists of. Both perspectives (Donati and Fuhse) aim at describing the social reality as a "relational construct". The core issue and the real distinguishing divergence point between these two theories is precisely the concept of "relation", then its application in methodological and empirical fields. Fuhse starts with the network analysis sociological tradition (White) to reach a relational "communicative" theory of society (Luhmann), whereas Donati insists to build his sociological paradigm from the perspective of the "relation" concept. The former reduces and considers networks as "communicative events", the latter does not renounce to analyse social facts as "relations", synthetizing structure, culture and agency in a wide "relational" social theory.
1 citations
DOI•
01 Jan 2007
TL;DR: In this paper, the relational definition of the community social capital is presented, which is assumed by the social capital when the latter becomes an attribute (or quality, or characteristic) of the informal, friendly and neighbouring networks.
Abstract: This article presents the relational definition of the community social capital. This form is assumed by the social capital when the latter becomes an attribute (or quality, or characteristic) of the informal, friendly and neighbouring networks. The main purpose of this article is to present the way relational sociology conceives of the concept of community social capital. First, the author focusses on the central position of the community contents in different theories of social capital, and on the specific contribution of the individualist and holistic paradigms of social research; secondly, he illustrates the theoretical and empirical research that allowed the relational paradigm to suggest a particular definition of the community social capital. He goes on to suggest a way of operationalizing the theoretical concept. In this part of the article, the author analyses the data collected on the occasion of two different researches. Finally, he outlines some of the main analytical implications of the relational definition suggested for the concept of the community social capital.
1 citations
01 Feb 2016
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that sociological research is necessarily connected to moral choices, and that ethical references can be classified in four ideal-types, and 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.
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
1 citations