Social theory

About: Social theory is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 11421 publications have been published within this topic receiving 624898 citations.

Schumpeter's Legacy? Interaction and Emotion in the Sociology of Entrepreneurship

Abstract: This article revisits the work of Joseph Schumpeter using a sociological view to explore his early writings and focus on the apparent contradiction between his view of the inhibitory effects of social control (structure) and the entrepreneur's strength of will (agency). This tension is resolved by recourse to the contemporary social theory of Randall Collins' interaction ritual theory and emotional energy, which provides a way to extend and deepen Schumpeter's ideas. The core of interaction theory is the concept of emotional energy. Also provided is a micro-translation of Schumpeter's key entrepreneurial concepts of routine, innovation, social sanctioning, and motivation. Interaction ritual theory serves to extend Schumpeter's theory, especially of its routine and innovation dimensions. By way of synthesis, two hypothetical modes of entrepreneurial action are proposed. Each examines ways interaction ritual chains build to produce high levels of emotional energy and direct it to innovative business venturing. One mode is colored by pride, the other by shame. The combination of interaction ritual and emotion in these two modes helps explain how entrepreneurs can draw others into a new sector and create the momentum for new combinations to occur within social practice. In conclusion, it is suggested that viewing entrepreneurship as a form of social action rather than systemic function encourages one to look for new and emerging forms of entrepreneurship.(TNM)

Interpretation and Social Knowledge: On the Use of Theory in the Human Sciences

Abstract: For the past fifty years anxiety over the problem of naturalism has driven debates in social theory. One side pursues the idea of social science as another kind of natural science, while the other radically rejects the possibility of objective and explanatory knowledge. All of the various developments in social scientific theory since then have reflected this dichotomy between naturalism and post-modernism. "Interpretation and Social Knowledge" suggests a third way, reframing this debate and offering a synthetic vision that sets out a new understanding of sociological interpretation. Analyzing the work of writers such as Theda Skocpol, Clifford Geertz, Leela Gandhi, Roy Bhaskar, Foucault, and Habermas, Isaac Ariail Reed delineates three epistemic modes of social research: realism, normativism, and interpretivism. Reed argues that the last mode provides a way forward for an anti-naturalist sociology that overcomes the opposition between interpretation and explanation and uses theory to build concrete, historically specific causal explanations of social phenomena. Both an examination of and a theoretical meditation on how social investigators do their work, "Interpretation and Social Knowledge" is an ingenious and fruitful exploration of what makes the human sciences uniquely capable of revealing and explaining our world.

The Mental and the Material: Thought Economy and Society

Abstract: What is the specificity of the human race within nature? How is its history to be explained? What impact do material realities, natural and man-made, have on human beings? What role does thought, in all its dimensions, play in the production of social relations? How are the human sciences to be advanced today? These are among the crucial questions confronted by Maurice Godelier, the world's most distinguished Marxist anthropologist, in this key book of contemporary social theory. Its point of departure lies in a fact and a hypothesis. The fact: in contrast to other social animals, human beings do not just live in society, they produce society in order to live. The hypothesis: because they have the unique capacity to appropriate and transform nature, they produce culture and create history. Drawing on his own extensive fieldwork and ranging over the most diverse ethnographic data, Godelier substantiates his case by attending to the analysis of both social relations of production and the production of social relations. In a sustained challenge to currently dominant schemas, he offers a series of highly original theses on the constitution, reproduction and transformation of societies, recasting the distinction between infrastructure and superstructures, illuminating the relations between economic determination and political/ideological dominance, and clarifying the character of ideology and its central role in the perpetuation of dominance and exploitation. Theoretically ambitious and empirically rigorous, The Mental and the Material constitutes a great advance in the mode of production debate and demonstrates the enormous explanatory potential of historical materialism.

Mobility as a Tool for Sociology

Abstract: xAccording to Marcel Mauss’ definition, mobility is a “total” social phenomenon, in other words a lens through which may be read all of the social relationships of a given society. As early as the 1920s, Robert Park declared that “the man gifted with locomotion” is the subject of urban sociology. The idea is therefore not new but, rather, was long left fallow. Concretely, the central place of mobility in sociology was ignored until the 1970s, when it resurfaced first in urban sociology and then, more recently, in general sociology. However, this rediscovery is accompanied by a multitude of works on mobility whose scope is often very general and theoretical. In this article, we would like to seriously consider the idea that mobility is a “total” social phenomenon and, therefore, that the analysis of mobility teaches us about the composition of and changes in a society. This implies seeing mobility as a tool that must be well defined and finely tuned to be able to “read” a society. As such, we will revisit and identify common conceptual limits of understanding mobility to address the urban phenomenon. Then, using theoretical works on mobility, we will diagnose the pitfalls that a re-conceptualization of mobility must avoid. Thirdly, we will develop a new conceptual proposition based on motility. Finally, from the research findings based on this conceptualization, we will attempt to highlight its contribution to knowledge.

Philosophy Of Social Science The Philosophical Foundations Of Social Thought

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