Editor’s Introduction: the challenges facing contemporary social theory

PIET STRYDOM

School of Sociology and Philosophy, University College Cork

As a reflexive activity whose structure bears traces and signs of the historical changes

and transformations of society, contemporary social theory is grappling with the

processing of pressing problems which have been accumulating during the past four

to five decades. Since the unprecedented world-disclosing event of the dropping of

the atom bomb opened the novel, disillusioning and transformative risk and global

perspectives which started to take effect in the 1960s, a series of developments and

concomitant alterations of conditions have been confronting social theory with serious

challenges – external objective challenges which had to be reflexively translated into

internal theoretical-methodological challenges.

External challenges

The overarching historical trend that has been pushing and pulling social theory by

putting facts on the ground and projecting future scenarios is the unrelenting transition

from the national to the postnational constellation which the social sciences typically

encapsulate by the convenient albeit somewhat crude general concept of globalisation.

An understanding of the challenges social theory faces today is attained only when the

predominant objectivist approach to globalisation is mitigated and the different

dimensions involved are analytically distinguished, including from an internal and

normative perspective.

Socially, it is the crisis-ridden emergence of the world society that is at stake –

the process which, if we take our cues from the classics, is the proper concern of

contemporary social theory. Economically, this process presents itself as the socially

ambivalent and, indeed, divisive locational competition of sectors, states, regions and

blocks in the apparently irresistible globalising capitalist free market which itself is in

dire need of being limited and regulated in a new way. Scientifically, technically and

industrially, the ambivalent ecological and social consequences of the highly

exploited yet poorly controlled acceleration of innovation makes visible a world risk

society which calls for a chronopolitics commensurate with the different temporal

processes and time cultures involved. Politically, the process takes the form of the

power-drenched yet by no means normatively completely barren interrelation of states

and their populations through highly contested, emerging, multilevel governance

structures which cannot avoid reference to ideas such as democracy, constitution,

solidarity, justice and cosmopolitanism. Legally, it appears as the process of

juridification which spearheads the nascent global legal code beyond the state by

dynamically relating the competing projects of a pluralist private law society and of a

politically backed, constitutionally based, global cosmopolitan legal order. Culturally,

while a global culture of human rights provides the reference point for the

development of the structure of society, the particularistic closure of national societies

and communities contrasts sharply with efforts aimed at intercultural communication

and the generation of a new more abstract solidarity which does not threaten lower

levels. Subjectively, finally, the lack of a reflexive balancing of the interest-based

purposive-rationality, moral consciousness and aesthetic orientation directs attention

not simply to the purported anthropological revolution towards the dominance of

homo economicus as well as the capitalist exploitation of self-realisation as productive

factor, but in particular also to the pressing need for the formation of a subject

appropriate to the emerging world society.

Internal challenges

The internal development of social theory during the past number of decades is no

less dramatic than the transition from the national to the postnational constellation

with which it is reflexively connected. This internal process is marked by a long line

of transformative methodological debates since the late 1950s and especially the

1960s that, in turn, served as vehicle of a number of momentous intellectual shifts or

‘turns’ which came to define the so-called ‘post-empiricist’ situation. Having been

opened by the functionalist debate, the positivist dispute and the Popper-Kuhn debate,

the discourse about the methodological assumptions of social theory was continued by

the Habermas-Gadamer, the structuralist and the Habermas-Luhmann debates. The

way was thus cleared for the poststructuralist, realist, feminist, constructivist and

postmodernist debates which partially overlapped with or were followed by the

pragmatist, cognitivist, social criticism, public sociology, and methodological

nationalism debates – debates which stretch well into the twenty-first century and are

leaving indelible marks on social theory. Having such fundamental philosophical-

scientific events as the linguistic-pragmatic turn and the cognitive revolution in their

wings, and having taken cues from developments in the philosophy of the natural

sciences, the first group of these debates contributed to creating the conditions for the

interpretative and cultural turns in the social sciences. Still today, social theory clearly

exhibits the remarkably different ways in which social scientists processed this

effective return of historicism and concurrent rejection of so-called ‘foundationalism’

in their disciplines. Currently, in fact, the continuing debate about social criticism or

critique is the medium for the most comprehensive treatment available of these

various differences. Let us briefly note a few of these.

Today, many if not most regard the invasion of the social sciences by

indeterminacy as a signal that we have no option other than to proceed exclusively by

interpretation – even up to the point of completely dissociating social science from the

idea of science. Others revert more strictly to the structures of sequences of action

generated by rational actors. Still others have recourse to the rules and meta-rules of

interpretation contained in culture which guide and structure action and allow

accounting for it. Among the latter are those who develop this idea into a more

differentiated approach by stressing the diversity of relations human beings maintain

with the world or ways in which they engage with it. This approach is of course of

both social ontological and methodological significance. It applies not just to social

reality, but is characteristic also of the social sciences, sociology in particular, in so

far as they have to be conceived in a pluralistic fashion (Outhwaite 1987; Delanty and

Strydom 2003; Strydom 2008b). This means that there is life after the interpretative

and cultural turns or, more generally, after the return of historicism. Explanation and

critique remain not simply viable options, but are inalienable features of social

science. In fact, explanation is indispensable to critique – but explanation in a new

and very specific sense free from any foundationalist contagion.

One of the most significant results of the externally conditioned internal

transformation of social theory in fact concerns the nature of explanation. Indeed, it is

the characteristic achievement of the late twentieth-century methodological debates to

have demonstrated the untenability of the search for general laws in social science

and, by extension, therefore the impossibility of explanation with reference to such

laws. Instead of laws whose generality renders them incapable of accommodating the

kind of indeterminacy pervading social reality, the search now is for mechanisms of

different kinds, located at a variety of levels and appropriate to particular contexts

(e.g. Bohman 1991). Neither the explanation of the generation, organisation and

transformation of society nor the explanatory critique of impediments in the way or

the failure of such achievements is possible without reference to generative,

relational, transformative and causal mechanisms (Strydom 2011a, 2011b). A basic

problem for social theory in dealing with the challenge of making sense of and

accounting for the crisis-ridden emergence of the world society and its various

ramifications, then, is the development of a theory of mechanisms as part of a more

comprehensive theory of society.

The papers

The papers in this special issue by authors who responded to the call to address key

issues in contemporary social theory all relate in some way or another to the

challenges emanating from both external perturbations and internal demands. In fact,

the majority of the papers attend both to some problem to which a shift in the

objective order of social reality gave rise and to a corresponding methodological

requirement which must be theoretically satisfied to come to grips with the latest

phase in the emergence of the world society. It is not surprising, therefore, that most

of the papers are either concerned with clarifying or pointing to a mechanism or

mechanisms operating at some level in the crisis-ridden process we are experiencing

and witnessing today.

Ulrich Beck needs no introduction. Over the past more than twenty years, his

work has followed a line of development from risk via globalisation to

cosmopolitanism which, in inimitable fashion, paralleled the change and

transformation of society and the concurrent discourses aimed at making sense of the

events and characterising the milestones along the way. The thrust of this multi-focal

trajectory, however, is unmistakably his project of a new critical theory of reflexive

modernity (2003, 2005). Beck’s first justly famous book, Risk Society (1992 [1986]),

coincided with the highpoint which the risk discourse reached in the watershed year

of 1986 after having taken off in the 1950s in the US nuclear industry and obtained a

public character when the risk and environmental issues became connected with one

another. The early activation of the global perspective in this context allowed the

subsequent upsurge of the globalisation discourse which gave Beck the opportunity

not only to step up to the level of the world risk society (1999, 2009), but also to

investigate and theorise globalisation (2000) in detail. His current thematic concern

was made possible by the coinciding anniversaries in 1995 of the end of World War

II, the Charter of the United Nations, and Immanuel Kant’s proposal for perpetual

peace – all in the wake of the European revolution of 1989 and the end of the Cold

War, which gave cosmopolitanism its contemporary significance and made it into the

burning issue it then became. Once it had become apparent that globalisation must be

understood from the inside out in terms of cosmopolitanising forces, practices and

learning processes rather than approached externally as a purely objective process,

Beck was able – as he does in the present essay – to rescue the concept of

cosmopolitanism from philosophy and to call for a ‘cosmopolitan turn in social and

political theory and research’ in general and a paradigm shift towards a ‘cosmopolitan

sociology’ in particular. In this respect, in parenthesis, Axel Honneth (2009b: 182-83)

misses the point when he maintains against Beck that a renewal of critical theory is

impossible with reference to cosmopolitanism since the latter is a purely normative

concept. For Beck, cosmopolitanism is a matter of ‘immanent world-openness’ (Beck

and Willms 2004: 200) which, moreover, must be seen – as he makes clear in the

essay in this issue – in relation to inescapable cosmopolitanising mechanisms and

processes.

At the base of the proposed novel theoretical version of sociology is the most

drastic methodological reorientation of our time with which social scientists are

required to come to terms: the shift from ‘methodological nationalism’ to

‘methodological cosmopolitanism’. We owe to Beck the most persistent and coherent

advocacy of the necessity and urgency of this fundamental reorientation and the

observance of its implications for social theory. Far from just pleading for the

methodological and theoretical renewal of sociology in light of the changes and

transformations in and through which social reality is taking on an entirely new

quality, however, he substantiates his claim to the meaningfulness of cosmopolitan

sociology by carefully isolating the latter’s object of study and demonstrating it with

reference to the most serious problems facing our civilisation. A social theory capable

of such analysis requires, moreover, not simply the routine adoption of a

methodological-cosmopolitan orientation, but a reconfiguration of the sociological

imagination. The ability to grasp what Beck calls the ‘cosmopolitan constellation’ or

‘cosmopolitan world society’ (Beck and Willms 2004: 209) is going to require the

painful excision of the Western and Eurocentric biases so deeply implanted in the

sociological body by the classics.

As is well known by now in the English-speaking world, Laurent Thévenot,

together with Luc Boltanski, is central to one of the most important innovative

departures in French sociology of the past two or three decades – a departure in

particular marked by the publication of their influential De la Justification (1991;

English translation 2006). His paper, to begin with, renders an invaluable service by

providing much needed clarification on the origin, development and meaning of

pragmatic sociology in general and his own involvement in its conception and

elaboration. The real importance of the paper, however, lies in the fact that it offers

the reader insight into the latest phase in the development of French pragmatic

sociology. Not only does he go well beyond the core idea of the book on justification,

which was confined to publicly relevant conventional forms, by attending to non-

public regimes of engagement (see also Thévenot 2006, 2007), but he directly takes

on also the problem of power and oppression which can be accounted for only by

reference to structural obstacles or mechanisms. Whereas Delanty in his paper offers a

view on a selective cross-section through the ongoing debate about social criticism

and critique, Thévenot actually makes an important substantive, theoretical and

methodological contribution to the debate. He compares and contrasts his own version

of pragmatic sociology with Bourdieu’s critical sociology and Dewey’s pragmatism,

showing how his ‘sociology of engagements’ is able to mediate between two

apparently opposing social theories – one stressing a determining social order which

distributes power through unacknowledged mechanisms with which actors comply on

the basis of belief or confidence, and the other prioritising the dynamics of activities

such as doubt, inquiry, experimentation and interaction which question social orders

and introduce change. A close reading of the article makes clear, however, that

Thévenot by no means limits his argument to an innovative bringing together and

going beyond Bourdieu and Dewey. At the same time, he also enters a debate with

Frankfurt critical theory. At first sight, he links up with critical theory as represented

by Honneth, the leading third generation figure, but what he actually does is to take

up a core concern of the left-Hegelian tradition which lies behind and informs critical

theory. This concern is nothing less than the phenomenon of ‘reification’, the

alienation resulting from it, and its critical analysis which he appropriates through

engaging with Honneth’s (2008) Berkeley Tanner lectures and then expands upon.

Thévenot’s inclusion of non-public regimes of engagement beyond public

justification in fact parallels Honneth’s shift from Habermas’ theory of

communication and the public sphere to the theory of recognition and elementary

modes of relating to the other – a move enabling both to relate critique to experiences

of unease or suffering which are yet to be identified by those involved and to find an

appropriate vocabulary for public expression. But more important is his bringing to

bear of the pragmatic concept of regimes of engagement on the problem of reification.

At bottom, there is undoubtedly a certain similarity between Thévenot’s distinction

between the ‘factual’ and ‘form’ (or ‘the good’) and critical theory’s concept of

‘immanent transcendence’ (Strydom 2008a, 2011b) as well as between Thévenot’s

differentiation of engagement with form into ‘closing and opening one’s eyes’ and

critical theory’s understanding of transcendent socio-practical ideas of reason as both

orienting norm-setting ideals and concealing illusions calling for critique. As regards

the recovery of a stronger concept of critique for pragmatic sociology, however, the

real advance lies in his conceptualisation of a reductive mechanism which operates

differently in four regimes of engagement – ‘publicly justifiable engagement with the

common good’, ‘engagement in a plan’, familiar engagement’ and ‘explorative

engagement’ – due to a short-circuiting of factual causality and engagement with a

view to a particular kind of good. Thévenot finally illustrates the methodological

significance of this theoretical development with reference to the currently highly

relevant examples of welfare and educational policies under contemporary capitalist

conditions – to be sure, not without an enlightening effect for sociologists in the

context of the neoliberal university.

Against the background of a track record in social theory (1999, 2000, 2010)

and the philosophy of social science (Delanty and Strydom 2003; Delanty 2005),

Gerard Delanty starts in his contribution on critique from the classical conceptual pair

of crisis and critique, thus suggesting the relevance and urgency of his theme under

contemporary conditions. He deals with a particularly topical aspect of one of the

most important methodological debates of the past number of decades which has been

undergoing a remarkable upsurge in more recent years. It is the debate about social

criticism and critique which has its roots in the Habermas-Gadamer debate of the

1960s, but periodically has been given a new lease of life by the respective

contributions of interpretativists (e.g. Taylor, Walzer, Rorty), critical realists (e.g.

Bhaskar), Kantian constructivists (e.g. Rawls, O’Neill), genealogical critics (e.g.

Dreyfus, Rabinow, Hoy, Butler), critical sociologists (e.g. Bourdieu, Wacquant),

normative and critical pragmatists (e.g. Brandom, McCarthy, Bohman), Continental

and US critical theorists (e.g. Habermas, Honneth, Forst, Fraser, Benhabib) and

pragmatic sociologists of critique (e.g. Boltanski, Thévenot and Chiapello). Having

settled for a carefully chosen cross-section of the debate, Delanty gives his account

the form of a comparison and contrast of different approaches to critique – five to be

precise: critical theory, Bhaskar’s critical realism, Bourdieu’s critical sociology,

Foucault’s genealogical critique and Boltanski and Thévenot’s critical practice or

what may be called the ‘sociology of critique’ (Boltanski and Honneth 2009). While

approaching it from the perspective of the Frankfurt tradition, he carries out the

exercise in the conviction that the renewal of critique in a manner appropriate to

contemporary circumstances requires critical theory to learn from the other competing

programmes. Critical theory indeed has the upper hand when it comes to the

normatively sensitive and informed diagnostic critique of problem situations, yet it

suffers from a number of methodological weaknesses which could be compensated by

the judicious appropriation and incorporation of advances made since the 1960s. From

critical sociology and critical realism it could learn to strengthen the neglected

explanatory dimension without which critique remains a toothless normative affair.

As it is, publications emanating from the Frankfurt tradition of the recent past either

exhibit or admit the explanatory weakness of critical theory (Honneth 2007b; Iser

2008; Celikates 2009). Despite earlier sharp criticism, Honneth (2009a: 145) is taking

a more positive view of Bourdieu, but as far as critical realism is concerned the

critical theorists give no indication that they are even aware of this development,

although Outhwaite (1987, 2000) has on several occasions pointed out certain

important similarities between critical theory and critical realism. Then there is

Foucauldian genealogy which is highly relevant for enhancing critique, particularly in

view of the fact that contemporary critical theory by Honneth’s (2007a) own

admission as yet lacks a theory of power. In Delanty’s estimation, with which

Honneth (2009b: 177-78) would be in agreement, genealogy is capable of

contributing to the analysis of positionality, modes of categorisation and modes of the

constitution of the self. It should be pointed out, further, that a number of conferences

on Foucault had been held in Frankfurt, most recently in 2001 (Honneth and Saar

2003), and that the latest stage of appropriation takes the form of the incorporation of

genealogy as but one element in the more complex Frankfurt model of critique. Its

function is to keep a critical check on the normative presuppositions of critique, as is

indicated by Honneth’s formulation: ‘reconstructive critique with a genealogical

proviso’ (2007b: 57). The shift by Bourdieu’s former collaborators from his critical

sociology to the sociology of critique has more than one lesson for critical theory. The

first is the need to concretise and thus further pluralise the pragmatic relations social

actors maintain with their world, as suggested by the manner and degree to which

Boltanski and Thévenot’s orders of worth or justification go beyond – i.e. effectively

substantialise and situate – Habermas’ rather abstract validity claims. The second

lesson is pragmatic sociology’s related prioritisation of the reflexive and critical

capacities of social actors and thus embedding of critique in everyday situations and

practices. Critical theory has in fact already embarked on this learning process.

Honneth’s theory of recognition as well as Iser’s (2008) proposal to combine

Habermas’ theory of communication and Honneth’s theory of recognition with an

emphasis on the sources of indignation in social life can be regarded as relating to the

first desideratum, while Celikates’ (2009) turn from Habermas and Honneth’s concern

with the normative foundations of critique to take up once again the question of the

relation of critical theory to its addressees is a direct response to the prompt issued by

pragmatic sociology. As regards the disadvantage of pragmatic sociology’s rather

weak concept of critique which is confined to an achievement of ordinary social

actors rather than linked to theoretical activity, it should be noted that both Boltanski

and Thévenot have begun to work towards a mitigation of this limitation. In a

discussion that took place in 2008, Boltanski (Boltanski and Honneth 2009: 82; see

also Boltanksi 2009) submitted that the horizon within which he is pursuing his work

is the development of a theoretical framework that integrates French critical

sociology, which fundamentally shaped his thinking as long-time assistant of

Bourdieu, and the pragmatic sociology of critique which he developed in

collaboration with various colleagues since the 1980s. As for Thévenot, the article

included in this issue shows him grappling with the broadening and strengthening of

the concept of critique. Towards the end of his paper, Delanty draws some general

conclusions on the basis of the comparison of the five concepts of critique regarding

the development of critical theory’s methodology.

In keeping with his sharp-edge social epistemological perspective, long

established and well demonstrated (e.g. 2000, 2006), Steve Fuller offers the reader a

carefully selected, incisive view on the emerging world society. His focus is trained

on emerging and anticipated strategies of dealing with suffering in the twenty-first

century and corresponding modes of justification. As his overall framework serves

what can be regarded as a particular aspect of secularisation – namely, ‘theodicy’

transformed into ‘sociodicy’ in the sense of a central idea of the religious tradition

shaping philosophical, scientific, political and everyday consciousness. Extrapolated

by secularisation, he portrays theodicy’s structuring thrust as being comprehensive.

Systematising his highly profiled account a little, it not only covers centuries, but

asserts itself in moral philosophy, political economy, social theory, politics and policy

as well as with particular force and therefore rather consequentially in the sciences.

As Weber had made clear, since theodicy succeeded fate in the wake of the

rationalisation of the worldview and the development of moral consciousness to the

point where ethical justification was required, its purpose was to render acceptable the

absurdity of what just happens and, thus, to bridge the incongruity between merit and

destiny and to close the gap between existing unbridgeable tensions. In all the social

spheres coded by theodicy into sociodicies, more of less significant contributions have

been or are still being made to the concrete realisation of this central justificatory

concern – irrespective of whether the utilitarian ethical recommendation to advance

the happiness of all, or the principled ethical (Kantian) imperative to treat every

human being as an end in itself; Ricardo’s political economic recommendation to

advance the level of general welfare by increasing productivity, or Marx’s call for a

proletarian revolution to offset the resultant externalisation taking the form of

impoverishment; Durkheim’s unified theory of solidarity designed to incorporate both

archaic and modern societies within a normatively regulated division of labour, or

Weber’s theory of rationalisation calculated to free human beings from worry about

the long-term negative consequences of actions influenced by past behaviour; policy

recommendations and decisions favouring either social democratic redistribution

measures such as fair taxation or rightwing Austrian economic deregulation and

privatisation; or, finally, the relentlessly accelerating drive by the info-, bio-, cogno-

and nano-sciences to overcome the carbon-based limits of human capacities and

performance and thus, inadvertently or not, irreversibly altering the conditions of life.

Under these new conditions, indexed for instance by abortion, euthanasia, regenerated

body parts, prosthetic enhancement, payable damages instead of incarceration, carbon

trading schemes, levies on currency transactions and Fuller’s own proposal for a

transnational epistemic tax to compensate brain drain – all the signs are that suffering

is being approached through the reassertion of theodicy. For the twenty-first century,

it is shaping up to assume the form of ‘moral entrepreneurship’ which is designed to

‘normalise() evil by recycling it into good’. One might feel like objecting that the

rather speculative portrayal of the idea’s impact is too strong, so strong that

contemporary and even future justification cultures and related practices are and will

continue to be determined by one particular thought model of the past. It is

remarkable also that Fuller does not make a link to risk which, like theodicy, is a

successor of ancient and traditional fate, nor mention Hegel’s version of theodicy, his

philosophy of history, in which he gave centre stage to one of those absurd things

which just happens, namely the death of civilisations. Yet some mitigating

considerations immediately come to mind. One is that deeply embedded in Fuller’s

global vision are various potentially fruitful abductive insights regarding the possible

analysis of late twentieth- and twenty-first-century Ireland. For example, given the

‘peculiar coalition’ dating from the early modern period of Catholicism and free

market thinking noted by Fuller, what exactly is the case with the relation between

religion and neoliberalism not only during the Celtic Tiger years, but also in the post-

2009 crisis-ridden NAMA period? Or given the sense inherited from theodicy of the

pervasiveness of imperfection and of the need neither to avoid suffering nor to

eliminate it immediately, what can one make of virtually impassable stretches of main

road which are left in disrepair for twenty years, or of a crippling bank strike left to

fester for the best part of a year, or an asymmetrically organised health service with a

dark underbelly, or a clearly visible expanding bubble unmistakably signalling an

impending financial, economic and social crisis which is exuberantly embraced while

those pointing to the folly are cruelly ridiculed? Another consideration is that Fuller’s

account could be appreciated as a disclosing critique – a narrative construction

possessing a rhetorical dimension of stylisation, even exaggeration and hyperbole

reminiscent of Nietzsche, Adorno and Foucault, which is calculated to make one see

social reality as well as both classical and contemporary social theory and the values

underpinning them in a new light. His plea for social theorists to rise to an appropriate

contemporary level of ‘realism, imagination and will’ by no means excludes, but

rather includes, a sensitivity for the failings and vulnerabilities of what Beck long ago

characterised as our civilisation of self-endangerment, self-injury and potential self-

destruction.

The 1980s in France registered a growing interest in ethnomethodology,

conversation analysis and related developments which eventually provided the basis

for the original departures of actor-network theory, pragmatic sociology and cognitive

sociology which have come to define the unique character of contemporary French

sociology. Bernard Conein was not only in the forefront of the introduction and

appropriation of these foreign imports, but all along made well-defined contributions

to the articulation of cognitive and pragmatic sociology. This is reflected, for instance,

in his conspicuous role as both editor and contributor in the influential book series of

the Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales published under the title of Raisons

Pratiques as well as his presence in two important volumes which resulted from

Parisian conferences on cognitive sociology. Among other things, he dealt with

categorisation, the pragmatics of situated action, its material dimension, the

importance of spatial position, objects in action, the recognition of social relations,

conversation and joint action, the social group and the elementary forms of social

cognition – with a systematic presentation of his cognitive sociology in Les sens

sociaux (2005). What is remarkable about his work is the way in which he is able to

combine insights from a variety of directions in the development of his characteristic

position and, consequently, the ease with which he is able to cooperate with social

scientists of different theoretical persuasions – including pragmatic sociologists (e.g.

Laurent Thévenot), rational choice theorists (e.g. Alban Bouvier) and naturalistically

inclined anthropologists (e.g. Dan Sperber). A basic feature of his approach, which

accounts for his penetrating understanding of Goffman’s contribution as a ‘naturalistic

interactionism’ (1990: 315), is his pursuit of the construction or formation of human

social relations on both a socio-cultural and a naturalistic dimension. In this vein, he

seeks to overcome a longstanding divide in the social science by insisting that

interpretation must be balanced with a naturalistic perspective and by regarding the

interrogation of the link between sociology and ethology – primatology in particular –

as essential. The essay included in this issue is accordingly devoted to a meticulous

investigation of an elementary mechanism related to language that plays a vital role in

group formation in which he, in his own unique way, brings together a wide range of

both classical and contemporary theoretical strands. Starting from Simmel and

Goffman’s interactionism and Margaret Gilbert’s concept of joint commitment, he

shifts to Tomasello’s biological theory of culture and Dunbar and others’

primatological studies. Then he establishes a link with Granovetter’s concept of social

ties and Harrison White’s imposing network theory of the emergence of formations

and the role of stories in tie creation, and having done so, he interprets the implicated

structure formation in terms of Livet and Nef’s processual ontology. Finally, an

example of Schegloffian conversation analysis is presented to illustrate the crucial

role of the virtual or projected moment in the formation of human social relations.

Conein does not draw out the implications of his pinpointing of this vital mechanism

for our contemporary situation, but there can be no doubt about its relevance for

understanding the possibilities and demands of relation formation in the context of the

emerging world society.

The reality reference of Marinus Ossewaarde’s article is the shift from the

Cold War era to the contemporary period dominated by neoliberalism. He reminds

sociologists of their own most characteristic mode of thinking, the sociological

imagination, and the urgency of renewing it under contemporary conditions –

externally, the new welfare-warfare state and internally the strong taste of sociologists

for adopting a limiting micro-perspective and associated interpretative approaches. By

contrast with both the deductive and inductive modes of inference, especially the

latter which underpins interpretative approaches, the sociological imagination

exemplifies the abductive mode of inference which amounts to making a creative,

insightful, potentially fruitful and practically effective, threefold connection in a

historically specific context among experience at the micro level, the social structure

at the macro level, and cognitively secured normative principles such as justice,

freedom, equality, solidarity, democracy and so forth at the meta-level. Its origin lies

in Kant’s notion of schematism and in particular in the Left-Hegelian tradition, shared

by the critical tradition and pragmatism – Charles S. Peirce, the founder of

pragmatism, having formalised a mode of thinking which at the time was clearly

exhibited also by his contemporary, Karl Marx. It was first raised in an

epistemological-methodological dispute in the social sciences in the late 1850s when

Rudolph Haym, representing the left-Hegelian tradition, defended the imagination

against the claim of Karl Twesten, a liberal who imported Comtean positivism into

Germany, that it had been made redundant by observation. It was again the core issue

in the sociology of knowledge dispute of the 1920s–30s in which the critical theorists

Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse clashed with Karl

Mannheim over his structurally limited and normatively deficient type of sociology. It

is against this background that C. Wright Mills, with a pragmatist-critical theoretical

education behind him, was able to coin the famous phrase, ‘the sociological

imagination’, which he understood as the abductive forging of potentially practically

effective relations under historically specific conditions among ‘personal troubles of

milieu’, ‘public issues of social structure’ and ‘master symbols of legitimation or

justification’ such as freedom or reason (1970 [1959]: 14, 45) – the last of which

sociologists typically ignore to the detriment of their discipline and their

responsibility. Ossewaarde offers an account of Mills’ rationale for the introduction of

the sociological imagination under the conditions of the welfare-warfare state of the

Cold War era and, considering the societal transformation since the 1960s and 1970s

which eventuated in the new welfare-warfare state of our time, argues for the urgent

need to reactivate and shoulder the responsibility associated with this characteristic

sociological competence. In his survey of contemporary sociology from this

perspective, fortunately, Ossewaarde finds that the cause is not completely lost. At

least five contemporary sociologists can be singled out who are avowedly committed

to the recovery of the sociological imagination in a form appropriate to the challenges

of the time: Ulrich Beck, Michael Burawoy, Steve Fuller, Anthony Giddens and

Gerard Delanty – that is, including three of the authors represented in this special

issue and whose articles can without hesitation be described as part of their respective

efforts to further this defining sociological enterprise.

In his article, prompted by the current financial, economic and social crisis,

Patrick O’Mahony extends the critical line of inquiry pursued in a series of previous

publications (e.g. O’Mahony and Delanty 1998; Delanty and O’Mahony 2002) to an

exploration of the parameters of a sociologically based critique of contemporary

capitalism. Given that it is implausible, indeed impossible, under the drastically

transformed conditions of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century globalising

and cosmopolitanising communication society to approach such analysis according to

the dominant traditional models, this probe necessarily takes the form of a theoretical

and methodological exercise. The principal contribution of the piece lies precisely in

this twofold clarification. Theoretically, a critical assessment of both Marxism’s all

too heavy-handed approach to capitalism and the earlier Parsons’ dissipating

functionalist alternative leads to an identification and finely balanced interrelation of

the complementary aspects of the writings of such authors as the later Parsons,

Habermas, Rawls, Luhmann and Honneth which are relevant to the construction of a

more appropriate and justifiable theoretical framework. While it has a cognitive

component at its core, it is differentiated yet dynamic and allows for the sociological

adoption of the standpoint of a critical reflexive participant rather than simply that of

either the observer or the interpreter or even the participant observer. The

epistemological meaningfulness and nuanced applicability of this theoretical model to

the concrete case is demonstrated by a penetrating and thus illuminating account of a

corresponding, equally dynamic, communication methodology. Without diminishing

the relevance of the traditionally emphasised modes of inference of induction and

deduction, it gives centre stage to abduction instead. Deriving from Charles S. Peirce

and Karl-Otto Apel, this approach exemplifies the general epistemological and

methodological assumptions – as intimated earlier – common to the traditions of

critical theory and pragmatism which share a subterraneous link through left-

Hegelianism. It is at this point in O’Mahony’s presentation that the implicit links with

the other articles in this issue become graphically apparent – from the drastic

transformation of social reality and contemporary capitalism, through communication,

critique and the sociological imagination, to the cognitive dimension of social theory.

In the final article, I offer an outline of a cognitive sociology which is

designed with the intention of being attuned to the nature, spirit and problems of our

time. Rather than a systematic or direct account, however, the focus on the defining

core structure of this approach is gradually adjusted and sharpened through a critical

yet sympathetic assessment of Habermas and Honneth’s respective social theories.

The argument is that their respective language-theoretical and recognition-theoretical

versions of critical theory contain different types of cognitive elements which,

although understated or even denied, provide contact points for the construction of a

new kind of cognitive sociology which fills a theoretical – and, by extension, a

methodological – gap in critical theory. While assigning central significance to the

reflexively emergent cognitive order, it is far removed from the conventional

idealistic understanding of cognitive sociology by having learned from both the

cognitive revolution and post-empiricism. By the same token, it is not a purely

naturalistic approach. The cognitive revolution reasserted the urgent need to reassess,

rethink and reconfigure the relations between the socio-cultural form of life and

nature. In turn, post-empiricism made clear that the proper task of social science

understood as forming part of the social world and its collective organisation,

including its relation to nature, is neither a fixation on general laws nor a return to

historicism, but rather uncovering the generative as well as contextual – including

deforming, pathogenic – mechanisms operative in social life. Although the proposed

cognitive theoretical innovation in a strategic respect goes beyond both Habermas and

Honneth, the dynamic complex of relations on which it trains its analytical and critical

vision nevertheless remains within the metatheoretical parameters of critical theory as

encapsulated by its key concept of immanent transcendence.

Without exception, the contributions to this special issue on ‘key issues in

contemporary social theory’ delineate in some way or another the formidable external

and internal challenges social theory faces today. At the same time, however, they

also make a variety of different proposals about possible ways of perceiving, making

practically relevant sense of, and dealing with these challenges. It is beyond question

that the current generation of sociologists not only has its task cut out for it, but also

bears a not inconsiderable responsibility on its shoulders.

Piet Strydom

University College Cork

(November 2010)

Acknowledgements

My thanks are due to a number of people without whose encouragement, advice,

support and cooperation this special issue would not have seen the light of day: the

members of the editorial team and board, particularly Tracey Skillington as well as

Paula Meaney, Aifric O Gráda and Patrick O’Mahony, the reviewers of the papers,

and last but not least the contributors to whom I wish to offer my sincere appreciation.

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