Back to Sociological Theory: The Construction of Social Orders PDF
Preview Back to Sociological Theory: The Construction of Social Orders
BACK 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
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