We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
The paper presents a general outline of the author’s relational sociology,showing it to be different from other relational sociologies, which are,in fact, figurational, transactional, or purely communicative. Relational sociologyis conceived as a way of observing and thinking that starts from the assumption that the problems of society are generated by social relationsand aims to understand, and if possible, solve them, not purely on the basisof individual or voluntary actions, nor conversely, purely through collectiveor structural ones, but via new configurations of social relations. Thesocial is relational in essence. Social facts can be understood and explainedby assuming that “in the beginning (of any social fact there) is the relation.”Ultimately, this approach points to the possibility of highlighting thoserelational processes that can better realize the humanity of social agentsand give them, as relational subjects, the opportunity to achieve a goodlife in a society that is becoming increasingly complex as the processes of globalization proceed.
More...
This article is an analysis of three original variants of relational sociology. Jan A. Fuhse’s conception, which is part of the tradition of social network research, situates network analyses in the context of connections between culture and symbolic forms and styles. Fuhse’s idea involves a communicative base of relations, and he perceives institutions as spheres of communication that reduce uncertainty and activate roles in the process of communication. François Dépelteau’s approach, which is inspired by Dewey’s pragmatism, recognizes transaction fields as configurations of relations forming interdependency between people. The practices of actors entering transactions within social fields are important, and this makes it possible for an impression of continuity, order, and complexity to be created. Pierpaolo Donati’s relational realism is an attempt to describe the relational dimensions of human actions, while at the same time it is a consistent “relationization” of key social categories, and is also useful in understanding after-modernity. This article emphasizes the fruitfulness of new attempts to demarcate sociological genealogies and to read the classics of relational sociology. The author discusses the creation of new puzzles for sociological theory, the necessity of analysing the ontologies of social life, the phenomena of emergency and agency, and the use of relational theory in regard to categories of the common good and social capital. He encourages multidimensional and multilevel analyses of social reality.
More...
This paper discusses the philosophical background and socio-theoretical affinities of Pierpaolo Donati’s relational sociology, focusing particularly on language as a missing element in relational social ontology. Following a discussion of Norbert Elias’s and Charles Wright Mills’s ideas of modernity as a counterpart to Donati’s theorizing, the paper criticizes the concept of relational society and the limitations to its applicability. The author argues that the communicational aspect of social relations calls for linguistic normativity as the basis of all normativity in a society that Margaret Archer and Donati call “morphogenic.”
More...
Relational sociology rejects substantialism and focuses its attention on the complexity and dynamics of all forms of social life and the subjective nature of action. Relational thinking is an alternative attitude to both functional structuralism and strongly individualistic-oriented theories. Relationality emphasizes the processual and emergent nature of reality. Actions— individual and collective—appear as successive stages of a specific process of events, and result from the configuration of relations and social interactions constituting a particular situation. Different conceptions of identity have been developed within relationally oriented sociology. The aim of the article is to summarize the narrative and realistic approaches, and to present how much they differ in their ontological assumptions. The constructionist concept of narrative identity presented by Margaret R. Somers, and Kenneth J. Gergen’s project of a “relational self,” illustrate the narrative approach. Pierpaolo Donati’s concept of the relational subject and the theory of agency developed by Margaret S. Archer exemplify the position of critical realism.
More...
This paper analyses the concept of everyday life as formulated in relational sociology. It shows that Pierpaolo Donati’s historical analysis of the dualist nature of everyday life is similar to that of Alvin Gouldner but that the two authors’ approaches differ in terms of the possibility of overcoming this dualism. From the perspective of relational sociology, sociological interpretations of everyday life can be traced to two paradigms. The first is the Marxist paradigm, in which everyday life is primarily characterized by forms of alienation. The second is the phenomenological paradigm, in which everyday life primarily consists of producing meaning. The first paradigm examines stories and cultures of subordinate social groups, and denounces domination and alienation in everyday life. The second paradigm examines the common-sense world, and how it is taken for granted, structured, and inter-subjective. Relational sociology seeks to overcome these two paradigms by highlighting their aporias, and considers alienation to be the outcome of a deep division between the ultimate meaning of life and the culture of everyday life. While in order to overcome this dualism, Gouldner offers an immanent reading of everyday life, relational sociology tries to show how in everyday life the relationship between social practices and culture may give rise to a new form of secularism that is accepting of non-fundamentalist aspects of religious belief.
More...
Taking social relations into consideration allows us to be mindful of the life-world and the social system. A social relation should be intended as an emergent phenomenon of a mutual act, with an autonomous connotation that goes beyond those who implement it. At the same time, it can be traced back to referential semantics, as it exists within a framework of symbolic meaning, and to structural semantics, because it is at the same time a resource and a constraint for the social system. If these are the general foundations of the relational theory of society, adding risk to this perspective as a descriptive model has some distinguishing features. For example, as a dimension of everyday life it is a “neutral category.” It is based on that “insecure security” whose results, positive or negative, will derive from the kind of balance established between “resources and challenges” or, as we claim in this paper, between “goals and means.”
More...
The strategic capacity of human agency to orient itself in a context of growing uncertainty and complexity depends on the degree and quality of its reflexivity and relationality, and of the civic impulse arising from the connection between both. The present article explores this capacity by analysing the results of an opinion survey carried out in May 2016, and by developing an argument about one collective agent: the Spanish citizenry. Spanish citizens send three main messages. First, they opt for a European course and for a range of policies consistent with convergence (and debate) between the traditions of social democracy and conservative liberalism. Second, they are attentive to the task of recreating a political community. Third, they ask for civil forms of doing politics. To send these messages they draw on socio-cultural resources, and forms of reflexivity and relationality. The article addresses society’s relations with the political class and with itself and the cultural resources (economic knowledge, historical narratives) that map these relationships within their global context and their past.
More...