Abstract
In the preceding chapters we have tried to show that sociology is characterised by the co-existence of competing theoretical projects generated by four broad strategies, each arising out of alternative answers to the same questions: how is social reality constituted?; and how can we know it? We have also shown that the existence of this common structure of thinking about the social world in no way detracts from the possibility of individual theorists developing quite idiosyncratic projects which combine elements and posit solutions drawn from more than one of these strategies. In fact, as we have argued, those theorists who do combine or synthesise the strategies appear to generate the more interesting and fruitful analyses.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes and References
The term ‘convention’ comes from the ‘conventionalism’ used by R. Keat and J. Urry in Social Theory as Science (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975).
The rule ‘anything goes’ is taken from P. Feyerabend, Science in a Free Society (London: New Left Books, 1978).
See particularly, H. Marcuse, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1955),
An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon, 1969),
and Counterrevolution and Revolt (Boston: Beacon, 1972).
K. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967).
Ibid, p. 28.
Apparently, when two sub-atomic particles collide, the net result of their fusion is sometimes more, and sometimes less, than their combined masses: F. Capra, The Tap of Physics (London: Wildewood, 1975).
Popper, Conjectures, p. 28.
A. Giddens, New Rules of Sociological Method (London: Hutchinson, 1976) pp. 140–1
T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd edn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
I. Lakatos, ‘Proofs and Refutations’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, vol. 14 (1963) pp. 1–25, 120–39, 221–45, 296–342.
Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972).
This has been a major thrust in the criticism of Althusser. See A. Glucksmann, ‘A Ventriloquist Structuralism’, New Left Review, March–April 1972, pp. 68–92.
See B. Smart, Sociology, Phenomenology and Marxian Analysis (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976).
George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934).
The most influential source for such conventionalist arguments is Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), who generalises this structural warranty to ‘free floating’ intellectuals.
J. Douglas, Understanding Everyday Life (London: Aldine, 1970).
Giddens, New Rules of Sociological Method.
Ibid, p. 14.
Ibid, p. 15.
Ibid, p. 79.
Ibid, p. 131.
Ibid, p. 92.
Ibid, pp. 85–6.
Ibid, p. 53.
Ibid, p. 121.
Ibid, p. 147.
Ibid, p. 135.
Ibid, pp. 139–40.
Ibid, pp. 85–6.
Ibid, p. 158.
Ibid, p. 144.
Ibid, p. 67.
Jurgen Habermas, Towards a Rational Society (London: Heinemann, 1971).
A. Giddens, ‘Habermas’ Social and Political Theory’, in Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory (London: Macmillan, 1983) pp. 82–99.
In A. Giddens, Studies in Social and Political Theory (London: Hutchinson, 1977).
M. Hesse, The Structure of Scientific Inference (London, Macmillan, 1974).
Giddens, Studies in Social and Political Theory.
R. Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1979).
Giddens, New Rules of Sociological Method, p. 14.
Bhaskar, Possibility, p. 14.
Ibid, i, 20.
Ibid, p. 35.
Ibid, pp. 48–9.
P. Berger and T. Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966).
Bhaskar, Possibility, pp. 41–2.
Ibid, p. 81.
Ibid, pp. 86–7.
Ibid, p. 47.
Ibid, pp. 45–6.
See P. Davies, God and the New Physics (London: Dent, 1983).
M. Harris, Cannibals and Kings (London: Collins, 1977).
Bhaskar, Possibility, p. 44.
See particularly the introductory chapters to J. W. Kalat’s Biological Psychology (London: Wadsworth, 1980) for a forceful statement of this view.
M. Harris, Cannibals and Kings, p. 154.
Copyright information
© 1984 Terry Johnson, Christopher Dandeker and Clive Ashworth
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Johnson, T., Dandeker, C., Ashworth, C. (1984). The Dialectic of Theoretical Practice. In: The Structure of Social Theory. Contemporary Social Theory. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17679-3_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17679-3_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-30625-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-17679-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)