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Index
Ontological Explorations
Contents
Figures
Tables
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The issue
Social relations as the object of sociology
The category of the social relation in modern sociology
The Parsonian attempt to ‘systematize’ social relations.
The category of social relations in postmodern sociology
About ‘reconstructive’ attempts
‘Relational thinking’ in sociology: an epistemology (based upon a social ontology of the relation), a paradigm (society as a web of relations) and a pragmatic (networking)
The proper and sui generis reality of social relations
Sociology as the relational definition of objects
Relational epistemology
The relational methodological paradigm
Relational pragmatics
Summary: a program of work
1 The relational paradigm
The underlying issue: when the ‘social’ is no longer ‘human’
Why a paradigm based on ‘social relations’?
Why the relational viewpoint was incomprehensible in modernity
The ‘problem of the human’ in modern society
The postmodern challenge: fractures, discontinuity, dilemmas
The perspective of relational sociology: restarting from the human/non-human distinction
Persons and relations: ‘who we are is what we care about’
Relational society as a civilizational project
2 Society as a relation
Introduction: what is society? What is a ‘social fact’?
The social relation as the basic concept and object of sociological knowledge
The emergence of the social relation as a reality and scientific term in the modern and contemporary world
The different approaches to the study of social relations
The Marxist approach
The positivist approach
The interpretative understanding approach
The formalist approach
The phenomenological approach
The symbolic interaction approach
The structural-functionalist approach
The communicative neo-functionalist approach
The hermeneutic (dialogical) approach
The fundamental semantics of social relations: problems of definition
Forms and types of social relations: associative and dissociative processes
Society as a network of relations
The future of society is that of social relations
3 Critical realism as viewed by relational sociology
The issue: what is social reality?
The framework of critical realism, as viewed by relational sociology
Critical realism’s explanatory theory and its articulations
The advantages of critical realism and some open issues
Why it is worth adhering to critical realism’s sociological theory
4 Observing and thinking relationally
The ‘relational turn’ in sociology
The premises of ‘relational thinking’: an epistemology with the relation as its ontological premise and a paradigm for practical application through network interventions
A shift
The reality of social relations on their own terms
The social relation as a means of defining research in the social sciences
Relationality in the social sphere entails a symbolic code of its own
Social relations entail network patterns which do not eliminate subjectivity or the importance of individual elements, although transforming them
Relationality is not relativism but specific determinacy
An example
The new paradigm
Relational epistemology
The relational paradigm
Relational practice
Relationality as the game of the games
The network paradigm: relational, not systemic!
The network paradigm
Overcoming functionalism through relational sociology
What is AGIL?
AGIL according to Talcott Parsons
AGIL according to Luhmann
AGIL according to Pierpaolo Donati
First example: the corporation
Second example: unemployment
Third example: the theory of social goods
Fourth example: unseen citizenship rights
Fifth example: the identification of civil welfare
The relational approach beyond functionalism: network intervention and the ‘society of the human’
5 Social change in the light of relational sociology
Understanding ‘understandings’ of social change.
Theories which follow methodological holism
Theories that follow methodological individualism
‘Combinatory’ attempts
Understanding relations: towards a relational theory
Causality
The registers of social time
Contingency (as a relation between determinism and indeterminacy)
The passage from modern to postmodern
Let us examine some more concrete examples
Summary: social change indicates the time of the social relation (or, the social time of the relation)
6 Reflexivity after modernity
Introduction
Reflexivity as viewed from relational sociology
Globalization and new forms of social differentiation. Relational differentiation as an outcome of reflexive processes at the micro–meso–macro levels
Globalization produces an ‘emergent society’
Reflexivity as a need induced by relational differentiation: structural and agential
Conclusions: social differentiation through reflexivity
7 Doing sociology in the age of globalization
Can sociology still theorize about the future?
The end of classical and modern sociological interpretations
Globalization and social relations: some unexpected social phenomena
Example 1: Gesellschaft produces Gemeinschaft (association generates community)
Example 2: Religion re-enters the public sphere
Example 3: The de-rationalization of labour
Example 4: The diversification of the gift and the rise of organizations promoting disinterested behaviour
Example 5: The emergence of ‘ethical markets’ as alternative economies, in contradiction with the modern paradigm of instrumental rationality
Example 6: The rise of new forms of multiple citizenship and non-state membership following the crisis of citizenship based on the nation-state
Example 7: So-called ‘virtual communities’
Example 8: The disappearance of class-based conflict and the rise of conflict over ecological issues
Redefining ‘what makes society’
The globalization of social relations and sociological theory
Global society requires a new theory of social differentiation
Bibliography
Index
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