M.J. Mulkay traces the development of certain recent versions of functionalism and exchange theory in sociology, with special attention to 'theoretical strategy'. He uses this term to refer to the policies which theorists adopt to ensure that their work contributes to their long range theoretical objectives. Such strategies are important, he believes, because they place limits on the theories with which they are associated. He shows how each of the theorists he studies devised a new strategy to replace the unsuccessful policies of a prior theory in a process of 'strategical dialectic'. This often has unforeseen consequences for the direction of theoretical growth, and the author interprets changes in theoretical perspective largely as products of these strategical innovations.
M.J. Mulkay traces the development of certain recent versions of functionalism and exchange theory in sociology, with special attention to 'theoretical strategy'. He uses this term to refer to the policies which theorists adopt to ensure that their work contributes to their long range theoretical objectives. Such strategies are important, he believes, because they place limits on the theories with which they are associated. He shows how each of the theorists he studies devised a new strategy to replace the unsuccessful policies of a prior theory in a process of 'strategical dialectic'. This often has unforeseen consequences for the direction of theoretical growth, and the author interprets changes in theoretical perspective largely as products of these strategical innovations.
This study examines the development of functionalism and exchange theory in sociology by looking closely at the work of five major theorists in chronological order. Particular attention is given to variations in theoretical strategy and to the way in which each theorist was led to devise a new strategy in response to the demonstrably unsatisfactory strategies of his predecessors. Intellectural change during this phase of sociological theory is seen to have been neither continuous nor cumulative but to have been characterized by radical alterations in direction as theorists tried unsuccessfully to find the procedures which would generate a truly scientific theory of society. The reasons for this disappointing pattern of uncertain theoretical development are studied in depth.
This volume begins by challenging the bases of the recent scientization of sociology. Then it challenges some of the ambitious claims of recent theoretical debate. The author not only reinterprets the most important classical and modern sociological theories but extracts from the debates the elements of a more satisfactory, inclusive approach to these general theoretical points.
This account of Talcott Parsons’s work clarifies his basic concepts and sets out their correlation. Dr Menzies believes that the philosophy of science working within the confines of the analytic-synthetic distinction tends to provide a rigid, static and sterile account of theories. He presents a more dynamic account of the scientific enterprise in order to come to grips with the amorphous nature of theory, and to provide the basic framework for his analysis of Parsons. Menzies argues that Parsons’s central problematic in The Structure of Social Action is utilitarianism in general and the classical economists’ account of the rise of capitalism in particular, and as such the book is not a reconciliation of positivistic and idealistic elements and these run throughout his subsequent work. Two major strands in Parsons’s work – the social action theory and the systems theory (structural-functionalism) – are separated and examined individually.
This book addresses political instability and the role of the military in unstable politics, as well as to class formation, class conflict, and prolonged economic dependency in Africa. It uses a comprehensive theoretical approach based on systems-functionalist theories in solving these issues.
This four volume work, originally published in the 1980s and out of print for some years, represents a major attempt to redirect the course of contemporary sociological thought. Jeffrey Alexander analyses the most general and fundamental elements of sociological thinking about action and order and their ramifications for empirical study. He insists that sociological thought need not choose between voluntary action and social constraint. The four volumes can be read independently of one another as each presents a distinctive theoretical argument in its own right. The first volume is directed at contemporary problems and controversies, not only in ‘theory’ but in the philosophy and sociology of science. The last three volumes make interpretations, confronting the individual theorists, and the secondary literature, on their own terms.
This volume challenges prevailing understanding of the two great founders of sociological thought. In a detailed and systematic way the author demonstrates how Marx and Durkheim gradually developed the fundamental frameworks for sociological materialism and idealism. While most recent interpreters of Marx have placed alienation and subjectivity at the centre of his work, Professor Alexander suggests that it was the later Marx’s very emphasis on alienation that allowed him to avoid conceptualizing subjectivity altogether. In Durkheim’s case, by contrast, the author argues that such objectivist theorizing informed the early work alone, and he demonstrates that in his later writings Durkheim elaborated an idealist theory that used religious life as an analytical model for studying the institutions of secular society.
Is there a place left in international politics for the real use of violence as an instrument of policy in the nuclear age? Originally published in 1981, Dr Atkinson attempts to answer this question with new considerations in the presentation of a general theory of strategy. He argues that the classical theory of strategy, so influential for the 19th century and for the better half of the 20th century, was built on a mainly hidden structure of reasoning that still infests theory today. The larger and socially-rooted lessons that insurgent warfare can inform, as best exemplified in the primary sources of the Chinese Civil War period, reveal in a new light this hidden structure of which Clausewitz is the earliest and most eloquent example. By this analysis of the insurgent and classical paradigm opposites the author intends to strip away the blinds of convention still circulating in theory today so that observers and students of international politics may see where new forms of politically motivated violence in the nuclear age seem more than ever to be headed. Here we have perfect paradigm opposites. In the conventional world battle-field action and ideally 'decisive battle' is the center of all other issues in which such conventional logic in the end sweeps up everything else and runs it back through the logic into success or failure of armed power on the battle-field. Everything hangs on this. In the 'revisionist' insurgent world where social order is weaponized as an object and source of military power through its inherent and valuable (armed) power structures social order replaces narrow battle-field action (ideally focused on 'decisive battle') and alternatively redirects the entire logic and all other considerations, including previously heroic conventional military assets, are remodeled to act against (armed) enemy power structures inherent (as always) in social order for the ultimate object of military victory. Again, everything is on this alone. Which paradigm - one the opposite mirror image of the other - will prevail will depend on the stability and power of the nation state and its institutions, the continued and unhappy collapse on which I base the General Theory.
