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Purpose – Stryker's identity theory has impacted sociological social psychology for a half century and still inspires an active research agenda. To date, however, its terms and arguments have not been analyzed closely. Our purpose with this project was to conduct such an analysis.

Design/Methodology/Approach – We provide a detailed rationale for our analytic method that entails an objective examination of a theory's clarity, parsimony, precision, and other essential scientific qualities. It is applied using procedures that, among other functions, check terms for clarity and consistency of usage, and ensure that key arguments are logically valid.

Findings – The analysis revealed significant gaps and ambiguities in the core theory. We offered a series of recommendations designed to supply missing logical elements, clarify definitions, and streamline the terminological system. We sought to remain true to the original theory's purposes while further strengthening its coherence, transparency, and overall utility.

Practical Implications – Kurt Lewin's famous maxim applies well here: “Nothing is so practical as a good theory.” To the extent that a body of research is claimed to be theory-driven, gaps and ambiguities throw into question the results of empirical tests and applications that ostensibly are backed by the theory. Without theoretical support, findings are neither meaningful nor generalizable.

Social Implications – A logically sound and semantically transparent identity theory will have the greatest chance for making real differences in society via practical applications.

Originality/Value of the Chapter – We offer a straightforward method to ensure meaningfulness and integrity in social science theories. Such analyses are rare, but we hope that their utility for theory-driven research programs such as identity theory's is evident.

Michael Brown argues that what unites the human and social sciences is their evolving character, made explicit in the concepts of “reflexivity,” “course of activity,” and “theorizing.” Once the social sciences are taken as a whole, the notion of “sociality” will allow to grasp society as ever changing, as a becoming. I shall examine the notion of sociality in the literary criticism of Lukács, Goldmann, and Adorno, three authors who consider the essay as the adequate open form of critique in times of rapid social change. Originally adopted by the young Lukács, the essay tended to be abandoned by him when elaborating the concept of critical or socialist realism as a repository of timeless cultural values. In his studies in the European realist or the soviet novel, for example, on Balzac, Stendhal, Thomas Mann, or Solzhenitsyn, the dialectical concept of social totality becomes a sum of orientations, presenting the individual writer with the moral task to choose “progress” and discard “negativity.” The social is thus narrowed to individual choice. Different from Lukács, Goldmann's literary theory defines cultural production as a matter of the social group, the transindividual subject. Goldmann was deeply marked by Lukács's early writings from which he gained notably the notion of tragedy and the concept of maximum possible consciousness—the world vision of a social group which structures the work of a writer. Cultural creation is resistance to capitalist society, as evident in the literature of absence, Malraux's novels, and the nouveau roman. In the writings of Adorno the social is lodged within the avant-garde, provided that one takes its means and procedures literally, e.g., the writings of Kafka. By formal innovation—among others the adoption of the essay, the small form, the fragment—art exercises criticism of the ongoing rationalization process and preserves the possibility of change (p. 319).

We explore the role of workplace friendships as a lens for understanding the emotional element and relational context for personal engagement (Kahn, 1990). The review of engagement theory differentiates personal engagement, recognizing the role of emotions play in enabling individuals’ “preferred selves.” Workplace relationships and friendship provide a conceptual discussion of individuals in social and workplace roles in engagement, drawing on friendship, emotion, attachment theories, particularly Kahn’s work. A case study drawn from recent research illustrates our discussion before concluding with ideas for the development of a future research agenda in answer to recent calls for work on the social context of engagement.

Relationships between adult children and their aging parents are challenged when parents need help or care. As a consequence, adult children often experience a transition in their filial role as older parents experience functional losses and the children have to reorganize and restructure their relationship with them (Lang & Schütze, 2002). This filial task competes with other demands of midlife (such as family and career demands). As a consequence, the filial role in midlife may be associated with contradictory experiences in the relationship with one’s parents, typically entailing a high potential for ambivalence.

This paper endeavours to translate Peirce's ideas into paradigmatic sociological theory in general, and praxis linked to that paradigmatic theory. Greater comprehension of the general usefulness of a Peircian Pragmaticist semiotic perspective (and ‘fallibilism’) will enhance social action and collective responsibilities. As a philosopher, C. S. Peirce interpreted the world, but he himself did not attempt to change it. How can we incorporate a unifying ‘perspective’ such as Peirce's theory into ‘method’ (both methodology and techniques)? How does that an emphasis on methodology improves sociology as an empirically based, rigorous discipline (a human ‘science’) and various forms of praxis, especially applied sociology and public sociology? If politics is going to have any long-term impact, there has to be a degree of sophistication about the theories involved (e.g. conservation of fundamental human rights and liberties, reform within liberal parliamentary democracies, transformation within neo-conservative regimes, applied sociology in professions and occupations like social work and criminology, Feminist critique and action, GLTB action, neo-Gramscian critiques and Michael Burawoy's ‘public sociology’ in the narrow, technical sense.) Praxis can include many forms of political activity that are not specifically informed by any well-developed and coherent theory. In terms of Peirce's Pragmaticist semiotics, we can translate theoretical awareness into praxis, to interpret and to change the world. Good theory and methodology is the most practical way to promote useful social action, applied sociology and public sociology. Anything less than Peircian Pragmaticism and semiotics tends to lead to fragmentation of ‘paradigms’ or postmodernist nihilism.