Frontiers of sociology

455 Pages·2009·2.116 MB·English

by  Institut international de sociologie.;Ebrary, Inc.;Wittrock, Björn;Hedström, Peter

Frontiers of Sociology
Annals of the International
Institute of Sociology (IIS)
Since its foundation in 1893 the International Institute of Sociology (IIS) has played
an important and at times crucial role in the international world of social science.
The IIS was created as a forum for discussions among scholars whom we now think
of as classics of sociology and social science. Among its members and associates were
prominent scholars such as Franz Boas, Roger Bastide, Lujo Brentano, Theodor Geirger,
Gustave Le Bon, Karl Mannheim, William F. Ogburn, Pitirim Sorokin, Georg Simmel,
Werner Sombart, Ludwig Stein, Gabriel Tarde, Richard Thurnwald, Ferdinand Toen-
nies, Thorstein Veblen, Alfred Vierkandt, Lester F. Ward, Sidney Webb, Max Weber,
Leopold von Wiese and Florian Znaniecki. They shared a sense of urgency about social
conditions but also a conviction that systematic inquiry would make human beings
more able to grasp and overcome them. They also shared a belief that scholars from
different nations and different theoretical traditions can form an international com-
munity and engage in intellectual contestation and dialogue while remaining respectful
of each other’s diversity. This is refl ected in the publications of the Institute, the most
important one being the Annals. The fi rst volume of the Annals was published already
in 1895. In recent years the IIS has increasingly come to play a role analogous to that
of its early years. The congresses preceding the one in Stockholm in 2005 were held
in Beijing (2004), Krakow (2001), Tel Aviv (1999), Köln (1997), Trieste (1995), Paris
(1993), Kobe (1991) and Rome (1989). They have highlighted dilemmas of human
existence and societal institutions amidst processes of globalization, cooperation and
violent confl ict. They have done so in the spirit which guided the formation of the
IIS, namely that of an engagement and encounter between a variety of theoretical
positions among members of a truly international community of scholars.
The IIS Bureau 2005–2009
President
Björn Wittrock, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala
Former President
Eliezer Ben-Rafael, University of Tel Aviv
Vice Presidents
Ayse Caglar, Central European University, Budapest
Huang Ping, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing
Elke Koch-Weser Ammassari, University of Rome “La Sapienza”
Secretary-General/Treasurer
Peter Hedström, University of Oxford and Singapore Management University
Bureau Members
Alberto Gasparini, University of Trieste
Helga Nowotny, European Research Council (ERC), Vienna
Danièle Hervieu-Léger, Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris
Karen Cook, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA
André Béteille, University of Delhi
Auditor
Masamichi Sasaki, Chuo University, Tokyo
Frontiers of Sociology
Edited by
Peter Hedström
Björn Wittrock
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2009
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Frontiers of sociology / edited by Peter Hedstrom, Bjorn Wittrock.
p. cm. — (Annals of the International Institute of Sociology ; 11)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-16569-4 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Sociology—Congresses. I.
Hedström, Peter. II. Wittrock, Björn. III. Institut international de sociologie. World
Congress (37th)
HM421.F76 2008
301—dc22
2008038910
ISSN 1568-1548
ISBN 978 90 04 16569 4
Copyright 2009 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing,
IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.
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printed in the netherlands
CONTENTS
Introduction: Frontiers of Sociology .......................................... 1
Peter Hedström and Björn Wittrock
THE LEGACY AND FRONTIERS OF SOCIOLOGY
The Emergence of Universalism: An Affi rmative
Genealogy ............................................................................... 15
Hans Joas
The Social Sciences and the Two Relativisms .......................... 25
Raymond Boudon
The Return to Values in Recent Sociological Theory .............. 39
Piotr Sztompka
Sociology and Political Science: Learning and Challenges ....... 59
Jack A. Goldstone
Toward a New Comprehensive Social Science ......................... 67
Dietrich Rueschemeyer
SOCIOLOGY AND THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES
History and Sociology: Transmutations of Historical
Reasoning in the Social Sciences ........................................... 77
Björn Wittrock
Axial Visions and Axial Civilizations: The Transformations of
World Histories between Evolutionary Tendencies and
Institutional Formations .......................................................... 113
S. N. Eisenstadt
Social “Mechanisms” and Comparative-Historical Sociology:
A Critical Realist Proposal ..................................................... 147
Philip Gorski
SOCIOLOGY AND THE ECONOMIC SCIENCES
Sociology and the Economic Sciences ....................................... 197
Neil J. Smelser
vi contents
Formal Theory in the Social Sciences ....................................... 209
Richard Breen
Bourdieu’s Contribution to Economic Sociology ...................... 231
Richard Swedberg
SOCIOLOGY AND THE CULTURAL SCIENCES
Modernity as Experience and as Interpretation: Towards
Something Like a Cultural Turn in the Sociology of
“Modern Society” ................................................................... 247
Peter Wagner
Geocultural Scenarios ................................................................. 267
Ulf Hannerz
SOCIOLOGY AND THE COGNITIVE SCIENCES
The Social Stance and Its Relation to Intersubjectivity ............ 291
Peter Gärdenfors
Shared Beliefs about the Past: A Cognitive Sociology of
Intersubjective Memory .......................................................... 307
Jens Rydgren
The Analytical Turn in Sociology ............................................. 331
Peter Hedström
SOCIOLOGY AND THE MATHEMATICAL AND
STATISTICAL SCIENCES
We Always Know More Than We Can Say: Mathematical
Sociologists on Mathematical Sociology ................................ 345
Christofer Edling
Statistical Models and Mechanisms of Social Processes ........... 369
Aage B. Sørensen
Causal Inference and Statistical Models in Modern Social
Sciences ................................................................................... 401
Hans-Peter Blossfeld
Notes on Contributors ................................................................ 433
Author Index ............................................................................... 439
INTRODUCTION: FRONTIERS OF SOCIOLOGY
Peter Hedström and Björn Wittrock
Since its foundation in 1893 the International Institute of Sociology (IIS)
has played an important and at times crucial role in the international
world of social science. The IIS was created as a forum for discussions
among scholars whom we now think of as classics of sociology and
social science. They shared a sense of urgency about social conditions
but also a conviction that systematic inquiry would make human beings
more able to grasp and overcome them. They also shared a belief that
scholars from different nations and different theoretical traditions can
form an international community and engage in intellectual contestation
and dialogue while remaining respectful of each other’s diversity.
In recent years the IIS has increasingly come to play a role analogous
to that of its early years. World Congresses of the IIS have highlighted
dilemmas of human existence and societal institutions amidst processes
of globalization, cooperation and violent confl ict. They have done so
in the spirit which guided the formation of the IIS, namely that of an
engagement and encounter between a variety of theoretical positions
among members of a truly international community of scholars.
There may be a greater urgency today than for a very long time
for sociology to examine its own intellectual and institutional frontiers
relative to other disciplinary and scholarly programs but also relative to
a rapidly changing institutional and academic landscape. In this sense,
current sociology may be in a situation more analogous to that of the
classics of sociology and of the IIS than has been the case for a large
part of the twentieth century.
The 37th World Congress of the IIS focused on theory and research
at the forefront of sociology and on the relationship between sociology
and its neighboring disciplines. This volume constitutes a sustained
effort by prominent sociologists and other social scientists to assess the
current standing of sociology. It is a stocktaking of the unique nature
of sociology in the light of advances within the discipline itself and
within a range of neighboring disciplines. Some of the chapters outline
institutional and professional strategies for sociology in the new millen-
nium. Others trace scholarly advances and propose ambitious research
2 peter hedström and björn wittrock
programs drawing on recent developments not only within traditional
neighboring disciplines such as history, political science, and economics,
but also within the cognitive, cultural and mathematical sciences.
A little more than half of the chapters of this book draw on texts
that were originally presented at the 37th World Congress. They have all
been subject to revision and rewriting. The other half is constituted by
texts that have been written specifi cally for the book. In one case—the
chapter by the late Harvard sociologist Aage B. Sørensen—there is a
previously unpublished text which has been graciously offered to the
editors by his widow, Professor Annemette Sørensen.
The volume is divided into six parts. The fi rst part, The Legacy and
Frontiers of Sociology, is constituted by a series of efforts to explore the
cognitive, cultural and institutional commitments of sociology. They
do so by way of an analysis of intellectual traditions in historical
context but also by arguments for sociological research programs that
encompass and expand core components of these traditions. Thus
Hans Joas brings out the relevance to contemporary sociology of the
legacies of two originally non-sociological traditions, namely those of
the predominantly German tradition of historicism and hermeneutics
and of the American tradition of pragmatism. He traces ways in
which these two traditions infl uenced classical sociology but also how
they may be related to each other in ways of the highest relevance to
contemporary sociology. In particular he outlines a sociological research
program for the study of what he calls “major innovations in the fi elds
of values” and in particular of “The Emergence of Universalism”. Such
an “affi rmative genealogy of moral universalism” will re-establish links
between sociology and moral philosophy that were taken for granted in
the period at the turn of the eighteenth century when modern social
science emerged but which became increasingly tenuous already in the
course of the nineteenth century. For any sociological analysis of any
issue related to human rights and violations of such rights, a research
program, which probes the frontiers of sociology, philosophy and his-
tory, seems indispensable.
Raymond Boudon explores the growth of two types of relativism,
which he calls cognitive and cultural, within the social sciences in the
course of the last thirty years. He traces their intellectual origins and
the particular constellations of conditions that contributed to their
rapid diffusion in the last decades of the twentieth century. Interestingly
enough Boudon then cautiously proceeds to subject these two types
of relativism to a sociological inquiry in the tradition of Durkheim.
introduction: frontiers of sociology 3
In consequence, he comes to probe, or perhaps rather expose, the
socially and constructed nature also of prevalent relativist assumptions
and concludes by arguing how these presuppositions may indeed be
transcended.
Joas and Boudon share an interest in the emergence and constitution
of values both in daily life and in research practices. Piotr Sztompka’s
chapter is explicitly devoted to an inquiry in the return of values in
sociological theorizing. He starts out by distinguishing two different views
on the role of values, namely as a source of bias and as a facilitator of
ideology. He then relates the role of values to different strands in cur-
rent sociology sharing an anti-naturalistic stance and emphasizing the
cultural, transformative, agential, refl exive nature of practices both at
a micro-processual and at a global level. They all help to underpin an
increasing emphasis on dialogue, on the constitution of meaning, on
the role of values in social practices and on contributions of sociology
to public debates, public actions, and ultimately to the way sociologists
may contribute to a higher degree of collective rationality. Although
different both in rhetorical style and in terms of theoretical tradition,
the argument of Sztompka is largely parallel and complementary to
that pursued by Boudon.
Whereas the focus of Joas, Boudon and Sztompka alike is on the
historical evolution and current viability and promise of different
intellectual traditions and of some key modes of sociological theoriz-
ing, the focus of the contributions by Jack Goldstone, and Dietrich
Rueschemeyer is a different one, namely on the formulation of insti-
tutional strategies for the future development of sociology. Goldstone
and Rueschemeyer have a similar view of the great potential and actual
contribution of sociology to a well-founded understanding of central
features of the contemporary world. Their prescriptions for the future
success of sociology are, however, radically different. Both of them
contrast the more open intellectual landscape of academic sociology to
the clearly demarcated and compartmentalized institutionalization of
disciplines such as economics and political science. Goldstone espouses
a strategy that would entail an ordering of the teaching and research
activities of sociology into four clearly demarcated subfi elds—sociology
of the nation, macro-sociology, micro-sociology, and organizational
sociology—in a mode reminiscent of that practiced within economics
(micro-economics, macro-economics, international economics, and eco-
nomic history) and political science (home country politics, comparative
politics, international relations, and political theory). Goldstone argues
4 peter hedström and björn wittrock
that this would constitute an important step towards further develop-
ment of sociology as a discipline and a profession and would make
the impressive range of achievements of sociology more visible also
to the public at large.
Rueschemeyer on the other hand argues that it is now time to over-
come the long-term development of social science into panoply of
different and diverging disciplines and specializations that have evolved
since the late nineteenth century when a comprehensive social science,
what we now call classical sociology, was fragmented into specialized
fi elds of sociology, political science and ethnology/anthropology. Soci-
ology as a discipline may still be more open to methodological and
theoretical explorations than, say, political science, but both disciplines
and others would profi t from closer collaboration and from a systematic
effort to strengthen macro-comparative research in the social sciences
at large and to make their impressive achievements more apparent also
to a wider audience.
A new comprehensive social science is however, Rueschemeyer argues,
not just a program but rather something that has already been partially
realized. This is clearly the case in the comparative study of revolutions
and democratization or the comparative study of welfare societies or
the study of economic transitions or the research program of institu-
tionalism. In all these areas of frontier research, sociologists, economists,
political scientists and scholars from organizational and cultural studies
are already cooperating in comparative empirical research on a vast
scale while exploring theoretical avenues at the frontier of their own
and neighboring disciplines. A new comprehensive social science faces
far less obstacles in intellectual terms than the corresponding program
at the turn of the nineteenth century when it was largely “pre-empted
by politics and simple ideological thrusts as was the case between 1914
and 1945”.
The renewal and growth of a comprehensive social science would
not replace but signifi cantly complement the different existing disciplines
and help bring out commonalities in their legacies and current orienta-
tions but also enhances further research advances beyond those which
have already been achieved. It would, perhaps most importantly, help
bring out the true potential of systematic research to an understand-
ing and overcoming of the current dilemmas of humankind which,
in Rueschemeyer’s words, are “fundamentally the old problems writ
large: extreme forms of poverty and inequality; coexistence of rich and
poor nations; weak and ineffective institutions related to growth and