Essays in Social Theory

231 Pages·1977·21.16 MB·English

by  Steven Lukes (auth.)

Essays in Social Theory
Also by Steven Lukes
EMILE DURKHEIM: HIS LIFE AND WORK (Allen Lane)
INDIVIDUALISM (Blackwell)
POWER: A RADICAL VIEw(Macmillan)
Edited by Steven Lukes and Anthony Arblaster
THE GOOD SOCIETY (Methuen)
Essays in Social Theory
STEVEN LUKES
M
© Steven Lukes 1977
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1977
All rights reserved. No part ofthis publication may
be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, without permission.
First published 1977 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS L TD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in New York Dublin
Melbourne Johannesburg and Madras
ISBN 978-0-333-19693-9 ISBN 978-1-349-15729-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-15729-7
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For Nina
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements ix
Part 1 POLITICS AND SOCIETY
1 Power and Structure 3
2 The New Democracy 30
3 Political Ritual and Social Integration 52
4 Alienation and Anomie 74
5 Socialism and Equality 96
Part 2 RATIONALITY AND RELATIVISM
6 Some Problems about Rationality 121
7 On the Social Determination of Truth 138
8 Relativism: Cognitive and Moral 154
Part 3 ASPECTS OF INDIVIDUALISM
9 Methodological Individualism Reconsidered 177
10 No Archimedean Point (A Review of John Rawls's
A Theory ofJ ustice) 187
11 State of Nature (A Review of Robert Nozick's
Anarchy, State and Utopia) 191
Notes and References 197
Preface and Acknowledgements
These essays, written over the last fourteen years, doubtless have more
in common than their author realises. Their general approach Polonius
might have described as critical-analytical-conceptual-philosophical.
Their subject-matter falls under no obvious label - which will annoy
those with a taste for labels. I see no great point in, for instance, drawing
a sharp line between the 'social' and the 'political', consigning the
former to sociology and the latter to political science or political theory.
Some of these essays are more sociological, others more political.
Certain perennial, evergreen issues recur - the distinction between
empirical and normative theorising and the relations between them, and
the bearing of theory on evidence and evidence on theory (themes
dominant in Part I); the alleged relativity of standards of rationality and
of criteria of truth and validity (see Part 2); and the relation between
'individual' and 'social' factors, and the wide-ranging implications of
different ways of conceptualising that relation (see Part 3). For some,
such issues are best uprooted and weeded out; others tend them with
loving care as prize exhibits in the academic flower garden. In my view,
they form the roots of the tree of social-scientific knowledge. Those
roots certainly need care and attention, but the tree's only fruit is
explanatory theory, based on and vulnerable to evidence.
All the essays have previously appeared in journals or books, except
the first, 'Power and Structure'. An earlier version of that essay was
delivered at the British Sociological Association's Annual Conference
in 1975, the present version at the American Political Science
Association's Annual Meeting in 1976. Chapter 2, written with Graeme
Duncan (whom I thank both for the pleasures of that collaboration and
for his permission to reprint here), first appeared in Political Studies,
vol. XI, no. 2 (1963); Chapter 3 in Sociology, vol. 9, no. 2 (May 1975);
Chapter 4 in Philosophy, Politics and Society, 3rd series, edited by
x Preface and Acknowledgements
P. Laslett and W. G. Runciman (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967); Chapter 5
in The Socialist Idea: A Reappraisal, edited by L. Kolakowski and S.
Hampshire (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974); Chapter 6 in the
European Journal of Sociology, vol. 8 (1967); Chapter 7 in Modes of
Thought: Essays presented to E. E. Evans-Pritchard, edited by R.
Horton and R. Finnegan (London: Faber, 1973); Chapter 8 in the
Supplementary Proceedings oft he Aristotelian Society (1 974); Chapter
9 in the British Journal of Sociology, vol. XIX (1968); Chapter 10 in
the Observer (4 June 1972); and Chapter 11 in the New Statesman
(14 March 1975).
Oxford S. L.
June 1976
Part 1
Politics and Society