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Book part
Publication date: 6 November 2015

Michael J. Thompson

To defend the thesis that critical theory has become unable to call into question and challenge the main impulses of modern capitalist societies. The reason for this is that the…

Abstract

Purpose

To defend the thesis that critical theory has become unable to call into question and challenge the main impulses of modern capitalist societies. The reason for this is that the capacities of language on the one hand and the hermeneutic processes that underlie the process of “recognition” are insufficient to counter the power of socialization to shape subjectivity and the cognitive and evaluative capacities of subjects.

Methodology/approach

I provide a critical reading of the methodology of linguistic and recognitive theories of intersubjectivity by means of a theory of domination derived from Rousseau which shapes the cognitive and epistemic powers of subjects thereby weakening their capacity to be socialized via the media of language and social recognition.

Findings

By divorcing our cognitive ideas about the social world from the social-ontological processes that shape and deform it under capitalism, this brand of critical theory succeeds in sealing off the mechanisms of social domination and power relations that were at the heart of the enterprise from its inception.

Research limitations/implications

Critical theory must move toward a more comprehensive theory of the social totality in order for it to retain its critical character.

Originality/value

The paper questions the main ideas held by the mainstream of critical theory such as its reliance on hermeneutic and linguistic forms of consciousness and social praxis as well as a theoretical reliance on pragmatic theories of mind and Mead’s conception of socialization.

Details

Globalization, Critique and Social Theory: Diagnoses and Challenges
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-247-4

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 12 February 2013

Julian Go

What is “postcolonial sociology”? While the study of postcoloniality has taken on the form of “postcolonial theory” in the humanities, sociology's approach to postcolonial issues…

Abstract

What is “postcolonial sociology”? While the study of postcoloniality has taken on the form of “postcolonial theory” in the humanities, sociology's approach to postcolonial issues has been comparably muted. This essay considers postcolonial theory in the humanities and its potential utility for reorienting sociological theory and research. After sketching the historical background and context of postcolonial studies, three broad areas of contribution to sociology are highlighted: reconsiderations of agency, the injunction to overcome analytic bifurcations, and a recognition of sociology's imperial standpoint.

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Postcolonial Sociology
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78190-603-3

Book part
Publication date: 12 August 2014

Gil Richard Musolf

This is an interpretive study in the sociology of literature that explores Aeschylus’s trilogy of dramatic plays known as the Oresteia. The plays dramatize a normative argument…

Abstract

This is an interpretive study in the sociology of literature that explores Aeschylus’s trilogy of dramatic plays known as the Oresteia. The plays dramatize a normative argument that exemplifies the dialectical struggle between domination and democracy. Social relations are characterized by agon (struggle), domination, and contradictions brought about by learning through suffering. These social realities reflect the primary theoretical claim of radical interactionism (RI) that domination and conflict are profound, pervasive, and perennial. On the interpersonal level, the plays dramatize structure, agency, role-taking, and the Thomas Axiom. As the first drama to interrogate an inchoate polity as an object of the public’s gaze, the Oresteia anticipates the sociological importance of critical consciousness, collective decision-making, political institutions, moral and, ultimately, cultural transformation. Despite a social context of slavery, imperialism, xenophobia, ostracism, misogyny, exclusivity, and constant warfare, the Oresteia foreshadows Western civilization’s ideals of legal-rational domination, citizenship, human rights, persuasion, and justice that have been imperfectly institutionalized to reduce surplus domination. The West still struggles to realize those ideals.

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Revisiting Symbolic Interaction in Music Studies and New Interpretive Works
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78350-838-9

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Book part
Publication date: 5 April 2012

Mike Reed

This chapter reviews three analytical perspectives – ‘structural’, ‘network’ and ‘cultural’ – on the study of power and their implications for theorizing elites. It builds on this…

Abstract

This chapter reviews three analytical perspectives – ‘structural’, ‘network’ and ‘cultural’ – on the study of power and their implications for theorizing elites. It builds on this initial theoretical review by developing a critical realist approach to the study of organizational elites out of the structurally based perspective identified in the first section of the chapter. The explanatory potential of this critical realist approach is then illustrated through two case studies of ruling elites embedded in contrasting historical, political and social contexts. The final section of the chapter provides a discussion of the wider implications of these case study analyses for understanding and explaining the ‘new feudalism’ which is emerging in advanced political economies and societies.

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Rethinking Power in Organizations, Institutions, and Markets
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-665-2

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 6 May 2008

Ira L. Strauber

This chapter addresses commentary about constitutional law and politics in this current era of a conservative domination of the judiciary.1 Its primary concern is the different…

Abstract

This chapter addresses commentary about constitutional law and politics in this current era of a conservative domination of the judiciary.1 Its primary concern is the different ways in which a working majority on the Court and its judiciary of appointees by Presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush might be conservative,2 and the different ways in which domination might take place.3 The frame for the chapter is what I call an “indifference thesis” for analyzing constitutional law and politics. Stated boldly, the thesis is that there should be a commentary distinguished by an interpretive attitude that distrusts, and intentionally resists, analysis based on preconceived notions about the strengths and weaknesses of any constitutional law and politics, be it conservative or left-liberal.4 Perhaps, to many readers, an indifference thesis for commentary appears methodologically odd, if not politically perverse. Therefore, the first order of business is to try to make the thesis less odd and perverse by explaining its provenance and attributes.5

Details

Special Issue Constitutional Politics in a Conservative Era
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-7623-1486-7

Book part
Publication date: 12 December 2022

Michael J. Thompson

This chapter develops a sketch of a critical social ontology and contrasts it to a theory of sociality as presented in the work of Michael Brown. I argue that the ontology of our…

Abstract

This chapter develops a sketch of a critical social ontology and contrasts it to a theory of sociality as presented in the work of Michael Brown. I argue that the ontology of our social forms requires categories for understanding them descriptively, functionally as well as in evaluative terms. I contend that a theory of power is needed for an understanding of the ontology of our social forms and that this can contribute to the construction of a more critical social ontology. I argue that a critical social ontology is a more attractive and satisfying paradigm for critical theory than current post-metaphysical approaches that emphasize discourse, recognition or other neo-Idealistic aspects of human sociality.

Details

The Centrality of Sociality
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80262-362-8

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 12 January 2021

Roger Friedland

In this paper, I compare Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory, the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger upon whom Schatzki drew in its formation, and my own theory of…

Abstract

In this paper, I compare Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory, the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger upon whom Schatzki drew in its formation, and my own theory of institutional logics which I have sought to develop as a religious sociology of institution. I examine how Schatzki and I both differently locate our thinking at the level of practice. In this essay I also explore the possibility of appropriating Heidegger’s religious ontology of worldhood, which Schatzki rejects, in that project. My institutional logical position is an atheological religious one, poly-onto-teleological. Institutional logics are grounded in ultimate goods which are praiseworthy “objects” of striving and practice, signifieds to which elements of an institutional logic have a non-arbitrary relation, sources of and references for practical norms about how one should have, make, do or be that good, and a basis of knowing the world of practice as ordered around such goods. Institutional logics are constellations co-constituted by substances, not fields animated by values, interests or powers.

Because we are speaking against “values,” people are horrified at a philosophy that ostensibly dares to despise humanity’s best qualities. For what is more “logical” than that a thinking that denies values must necessarily pronounce everything valueless? Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism” (2008a, p. 249).

Details

On Practice and Institution: Theorizing the Interface
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-413-4

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 27 April 2004

Henry A Walker

This chapter revisits and extends the multiple-source, multiple-object theory of legitimacy in organizations. It introduces the idea of legitimized regimes and uses it to extend…

Abstract

This chapter revisits and extends the multiple-source, multiple-object theory of legitimacy in organizations. It introduces the idea of legitimized regimes and uses it to extend the theory’s range beyond the usual focus on power and domination. The theory describes mechanisms that: (1) establish the legitimacy of new or contested regimes; and (2) facilitate the spread of legitimacy to structures and processes that lie outside organizational boundaries. The chapter uses current affirmative action debates to illustrate the mechanisms under study. The work concludes with a summary that includes discussion of prospects for research on extensions of the multiple-source, multiple-object theory.

Details

Legitimacy Processes in Organizations
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-008-1

Book part
Publication date: 5 July 2005

Martijn Konings

Over the last decades, the social sciences have become increasingly concerned with the role of the state and the politics of institutional restructuring. Within mainstream…

Abstract

Over the last decades, the social sciences have become increasingly concerned with the role of the state and the politics of institutional restructuring. Within mainstream political science this has led to the development of a “state-centered” research program that emphasizes the autonomy of institutions. Marxist theory, however, has continued to adhere to a “society-centered” perspective, seeking to combine an ability to account for institutional change with the analysis of more structural social and economic forces. After some introductory comments that frame the problematic within which the paper is situated (Section 1), I discuss in Section 2 three of the most important recent Marxist attempts to construe the relation between socio-economic imperatives and political institutions. My argument is that Marxists’ attempts to relativize the autonomy of state institutions are too often still based on the postulation of an unexplained structural moment. This leaves them vulnerable to institutionalist claims concerning the autonomous nature of institutions. Section 3 proposes a different way of thinking the role of institutions in capitalist society. This approach breaks with a causalist, structuralist mode of explanation and relies on a more hermeneutic understanding of the role of institutions. I will shift the problematic to the relation between institutions and agency, arguing for a more pragmatist understanding of the role of institutions and an agency-based understanding of the formation of socio-economic imperatives. Section 4 concludes with some thoughts on the prospects held out, as well as the challenges faced, by the approach proposed in this paper.

Details

The Capitalist State and Its Economy: Democracy in Socialism
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-176-7

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