Arguments and Actions in Social Theory

198 Pages·2009·0.69 MB·English

by  Peter Preston

Arguments and Actions in
Social Theory
Peter Preston
Arguments and Actions in Social Theory
This page intentionally left blank
Arguments and Actions in
Social Theory
Peter Preston
University of Birmingham, UK
© Peter Preston 2009
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author
of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
First published 2009 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN-13: 978–0–230–57600–1 hardback
ISBN-10: 0–230–57600–1 hardback
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
Contents
Preface vi
Acknowledgements vii
Chapter 1 The Practical Nature of Social Theorizing 1
Chapter 2 Arguments from Natural Science 9
Chapter 3 Arguments from Language/Understanding 44
Chapter 4 Arguments from Political Community 78
Chapter 5 Language, Tradition and Practice 117
Notes 147
Bibliography 171
Index 183
v
Preface
This text argues that making sense of the social world is an activity
generic to humankind; that such activities are diverse; and that they
are present in the informal routines of family, everyday social life and
the mundane procedures of familiar voluntary, commercial and state
organisations. The business of making sense is also evident in more dis-
tinctive, self-conscious forms; thus the work of witch doctors, shamans,
novelists, politicians, media commentators and so on. Self-conscious
exercises in making sense are also the province of social theorists, those
who look to the resources of the disciplines of the social sciences.
Social theorists are firmly located within the social world; exercises
in social theorizing are both bounded and creative; the former enables
the latter; imagination and creativity build upon the resources of the
given context. Social theorists make arguments for audiences; the
process of social theorizing is an exchange between context, theorist
and audience; the context is both practical, the unfolding dynamics of
structures, agents and events, and intellectual, the epistemic and ethical
resources of the tradition which the theorist inhabits; social theorists,
as noted, are diverse, their exchanges with contexts and audiences will
be subtle, idiosyncratic and creative; and audiences, the addressees of
exercises in social theorizing, perhaps formal, as required by the logic
of argument, or substantive, in the form of particular social groups or
organisations, will be diverse in their make up and their requirements;
thus there is no simple, single model of social theorizing.
vi
Acknowledgements
This manuscript runs together some familiar materials from the philo-
sophy of social science with ideas taken from development theory plus
some reflections from my own experience of living and working in
mainland Europe and various parts of East Asia in order to argue for
a particular view of the social sciences as diverse, practical and carried
in tradition.
The issues addressed here have been considered in the company of
earlier enquiries in respect of development theory; this work looked at
the arguments presented and against the familiar claims of practitioners
to clarity in respect of analytical procedures and practical goals, a multi-
plicity of lines of argument were evident, each serving a particular agenda;
the context-bound and engaged nature of such argument was mapped
in a preliminary fashion using the resources of the sociology of know-
ledge and the philosophy of social science. The present text – Arguments
and Actions in Social Theory– is a synthesis of all this earlier material; it
runs together the lessons of development theory (the business of social
science is practical) with the lessons of the philosophy of social science
(the task of making arguments is both crucial and non-obvious) in
orderto argue firstthat social theorizing comprises a diversity of context-
bound exercises in argument making, each an exchange between context,
theorist and audience, each a discrete mode of social theoretic engage-
ment and secondthat social theorizing is disciplined by received tradition,
in which case, the tradition which this author inhabits is the classical
European tradition of social theorizing, concerned with the elucidation of
the dynamics of complex change in the ongoing shift to the modern
world.
The manuscript has been assembled over a lengthy period of time but
as the intellectual issues addressed are both entertaining and enduring
there has never seemed to be much of a rush to finish. The work has been
pursued in the company of friends, students and colleagues in various
locations in Singapore, Scotland, Germany, Japan, England and Hong
Kong and I am happy to record my thanks to them all.
vii
This page intentionally left blank
1
The Practical Nature of Social
Theorizing
If one stands back from the day-to-day demands of professional
routine, it becomes clear that an intellectual trajectory is not organised
in advance, we do not begin by surveying the intellectual ground before
deciding upon a line of enquiry; rather, as Hans-Georg Gadamer1might
put it, we fall into conversation; our starting points are accidental, our
early moves untutored, they are not informed by a systematic pro-
fessional knowledge of the available territory, rather they flow from
curiosity; we read what strikes us as interesting, we discard what seems
dull. All this means that our early moves are quite idiosyncratic, shaped
by our experiences of particular texts, teachers and debates with friends/
colleagues. Thereafter matters might become more systematic, we might
decide to follow a discipline, discover an absorbing area of work or
find ourselves slowly unpacking hitherto deep-seated concerns. It
also means that we can bestow coherence only retrospectively. This
idiosyncratic personal aspect to scholarly enquiry is part and parcel
of the trade, not something to be regretted, denied or avoided; none-
theless systematic reflection offers a way of taking stock, of present-
ing critical reflexive statements in regard to the formal commitments
made in substantive work. This text turns to one familiar source of
such reflection, the philosophy of social science, where claims about
the nature, intellectual value and utility of social theorizing are rou-
tinely disputed, and offers a particular restatement of the classical
European tradition of social theorizing, with its central concern for
elucidating the dynamics of complex change, arguing that social
theorizing comprises a wide diversity of situation-bound attempts to
make practical sense of shifting circumstances; each a discrete instance
of argument and action; each oriented towards particular audiences
and objectives.
1