Thinking Relationally

Why it is important and how you can use it in your research

Dr. Norman Gabriel

Dominant Substantialist Tendencies

• Misguided dichotomies in social thought:• Individual and Society• Subject and Object• Internal and External• Reason and Emotion• Mind and Body• Micro and Macro• Qualitative and Quantitative

Relational, Processual Thinking

• Classical sociological tradition – Marx and Simmel• American pragmatists such as Dewey and Mead• Phenomenologists like Heidegger and Merleau-

Ponty• All share a concern for ever-shifting, evolving webs

of relations• My research has focused on the work of Norbert

Elias

An brief introduction to Norbert Elias (1897-1990)

Emancipating sociology from static polarities

• Individual/group, nature/culture, action/structure• Sociology as a relatively autonomous discipline

attuned to the dynamic and relational aspects of human beings in their societies

• Unique, emergent properties and regularities at the human-social level of natural integration

• Webs of interdependence: a flexible lattice work of tensions in every figuration

How I am using this relational perspective in my research

• Inter-generational relationships and institutions – focusing on power dimensions and processes between young children and adults

• Potential for interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary collaboration

• How do we integrate relevant disciplines – for example, biology, psychology and sociology?

An example from educational philosophy

• A child is born human; but this humanity consists in being without instincts, totally dependent, in an environment which is not natural, but the product of human artifice. He can survive only by being cared for. He can do nothing just nothing to help himself. He has to learn everything to see, to move about, to walk, to speak: and while he is learning these basic elements of humanity, his human life consists in his relation to those who care for him who feel for him, think and plan for him, act for him. This dependence on others is his life - yet to be human he must reach beyond it, not to independence, but to an interdependence in which he can give as well as receive (Macmurray, 2012: 666)

How can you use this in your research

• What is your research question?• Understanding and explaining dynamic fields of

practice• Examining shifting social relations among

interdependent people, positions and institutions within society

• Focusing on changing balances of power – resources emerge out of, function within and restructure social relationships

References

• Elias, Norbert (2009) ‘Figuration’, in Essays III: On Sociology and the Humanities (Dublin: University College Press, 2009 [Collected Works, vol. 16], pp. 1-3.

• Norbert Elias (2010) The Society of Individuals. Dublin: UCD Press [Collected Works, vol. 10]

• John Macmurray (2012), ‘Learning to be Human’, Oxford Review of Education, 38, 6: 661-674