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
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