Table Of ContentBACK TO SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
Also by Nicos P. Mouzelis
MODERN GREECE: Facets of Underdevelopment
ORGANISATION AND BUREAUCRACY: An Analysis of Modern Theory
POUTICS IN THE SEMI-PERIPHERY: Early Parliamentarism and Late
Industrialism in the Balkans and Latin America
POST-MARXIST ALTERNATIVES: The Construction of Social Orders
Back to Sociological
Theory
The Construction of Social Orders
Nicos P. Mouzelis
Professor of Sociology
The London School of Economics & Political Science
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-21762-5 ISBN 978-1-349-21760-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21760-1
e
Nicos P. Mouzelis 1991
Softcover reprint of the hardcover Ist edition 1991
All rights reserved. For infonnation, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Irre., 175 Fifth Avenue
New YoIk, NY 10010
First published in the United States of Arnerica in 1991
ISBN 978-0-312-06175-3
L1brary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publicatlon Data
Moozelis, Nicos P.
Back to sociologica1 theory: the construction of social orders I
Nicos P. Mouze1is.
p. cm.
Irrcludes bibliographical references and index.
Additional material to tbis book can be downloaded from bttp:/Iextras.springer.com.
ISBN 978-0-312-06175-3
1. Sociology - methodology. 2. Sociology - Philosophy. I. Title.
HM24.M68 1991
301'.01 - dc20 91-9240
CIP
To the two Zairas
Contents
Acknowledgments IX
Introduction 1
1 Philosophy or Sociological Theory? 11
2 Restructuring Structuration Theory: Duality
and Dualism in Sociological Theory 25
1 Core Elements of Structuration Theory 26
2 Duality and Dualism on the Paradigmatic
Level 27
3 Social and System Integration 31
4 Institutional Analysis and Strategie Conduct 34
5 Duality and Dualism on the Syntagmatic Level 37
6 Conclusion 39
Postscript: Degrees of Constraint/Enablement 41
3 Social and System Integration: Back to Lockwood 48
1 Lockwood's Basic Formulation 49
2 Actors and System Parts 50
3 Material base and Institutional Patterns 53
4 Differences between Parsonian Functionalism and
Marxism on the Social-Integration Level 55
5 Concluding Remarks 58
4 Social Hierarchies and Some Sociological
Theories of Micro/Macro Integration 67
1 On the Importance of Social Hierarchies 67
2 The Dialectics of Institutionalisation 71
3 Methodological Situationalism 80
4 The Representation Hypothesis 88
5 Conclusion 93
Vll
viii Contents
5 Hierarchies, Social and System Integration,
Duality and Dualism 99
1 Social Hierarchies: Duality and Dualism on
the Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic Levels 99
2 Social Hierarchies: A System-Integration
Perspective 104
3 Social Hierarchies: A Social-Integration Perspective 106
4 On the Hierarchisation of Social Systems 109
6 Reification: Ignoring the Balance between
Social and System Integration 117
1 The 'Society-individual' Syndrome 117
2 Reification in the Strict Sense of the Term 121
3 Anthropomorphism 123
4 Teleology 125
7 Reductionism: Neglecting Hierarchica1 Levels 137
1 Downward Reductionism 138
2 Upward Reductionism: Development
and Personality Structure 141
3 Upward Reductionism: Rational Choice Marxism 146
4 Conclusion: Reductionism, Reification and
the Neglect of History 158
Conclusion 166
Appendix I Social and System Integration:
Habermas' View 172
Appendix II The Interaction Order and the
Micro/Macro Distinetion 194
Index 202
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following people who have eontributed in a direet
or indireet way to the eompletion of this work: Erie Dunning, Anthony
Giddens, Alexis Krokidas, David Lockwood, Leslie Sklair, Anthony Smith
and Alan Swingewood. I am also very grateful to Ellen Sutton for her
excellent editing.
NICOS P. MOUZEUS
ix
Introduction
One of the major contributions classical sociology has made 10 the social
sciences is its successful establishment of that discipline's autonomy
from both philosophy and such neighbouring fields of knowledge as
biology and psychology. So Marx, for instance, left the philosophical
anthropology of his early writings for historical materialism in his attempt
to translate his ontological views on matter and consciousness into a
concrete historical analysis. For hirn, historical materialism was the better
vehiele for showing the construction, reproduction and transformation of
social formations, and for demonstrating the primary role played in that
process by social elasses situated in specific technological and economic
contexts. Durkheim, on the other hand, by insisting that social facts most
primarily be explained by other social facts, attempted to establish the
relative autonomy of sociology as a discipline and the impossibility of
reducing social phenomena to psychological or biological ones. Weber,
finally, despite his methodological individualism, engaged in comparative
analysis of social structures, and of corresponding modes of cognition
and affect, in a way which was remarkably free of both moralising and
psychologisticall y reducti ve explanations.
Another important feature of classical sociology has been the relative
non-differentiation between theory and empirical analysis. In so far as
the three founding fathers developed a variety of conceptual tools and
methodological directives, primarily in order 10 understand the types of
society that came into being with the indostrial and the French revolutions,
there was a very elose connection between theoretical and methodological
insights on the one hand, and their comparative analysis of industrial
societies on the other.
This elose link between theoretical and empirical concems and orienta
tions could not withstand the growth during this century of sociological
theory as a distinct sub-field of sociological enquiry. For some, the relative
disconnection between theory and empirical research has been an unfor
tunate development that inevitably and predictably led to the type of arid,
sterile theorising that is seen in Parsons' work, the excessive abstractness
of which renders it untestable.1 For others, myself included, this devel
opment is not as regrettable or as disastrous as critics of Parsonian
functionalism would imply, but rather an unavoidable and irreversible
1
