Multi-level Methodology and Multi-world Ontology: A Core Architecture of Realist Social Theory
farhad
Realist Social Theory
CONTENTS
1. The Four Problems of Social Theorizing
2. The Two Levels of Facts
3. The Three Worlds of Emergent Entities
4. The Interplay Between Levels and Worlds
5. A Hypothesis for Further Research
References
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
1. The Four Problems of Social Theorizing
It would not be exaggerated to say that the central problem of social
theorizing1 lies in the relations or mediations between system (in
particular, structure and function), agency (particularly, action and
subject) and time (in particular, history and process). This problem arises
due to a number of dichotomies. Historically, these various dichotomies can
be grouped under four headings:
(1) Local vs. Global, which refers to the dichotomy of the local scale, on
which individuals interact, and the global scale, on which society as a
system is identified;
(2) Static vs. Dynamic, which refers to the dichotomy of the static aspect,
which is a feature of situations and structures, and the dynamic aspect,
which is a characteristic of interactions and processes;
(3) Circular vs. Open, which refers to the dichotomy of the circular form of
the generative mechanisms operating in focal complex of analysis - often
called "recursivity" (e.g., Giddens 1984) or "self-reference" (e.g., Luhmann
1984) - and the open form of connections between levels of analysis;2and
(4) Continuous vs. Discontinuous, which refers to the dichotomy of the
assumed continuous nature of history, which is often asserted by "grand
narratives" (Lyotard), and the discontinuous nature of distinctive episodes,
according to which there is no such thing as general plot for a historical
process.
All these dichotomies can be seen as variants of an overall micro-macro
problem. Thus, the four dichotomies listed above can be termed first order,
second order, third order and fourth order micro-macro problem respectively.
The theme of an overall micro-macro problem may be a controversial and
therefore interesting topic. However, I will not dwell here since my central
concern in this paper is not the micro-macro problem itself but the
architecture of Margaret Archer's "realist social theory" (Archer 1995) that
elegantly seeks to respond to this central challenge in sociological
theorizing.
It is tempting to reconcile dichotomies in the form of reduction, or
"conflation" in Archer's terminology. The two main traditions in methodology
of social sciences, namely, methodological individualism and functionalism,
both tend to be reductionistic or, to say with Archer, conflationary in
their own ways. Methodological individualism follows a kind of theorizing
that Archer terms "upwards conflation," while functionalism works with
"downwards conflation." Upwards conflation asserts the primacy of agency and
views "structural properties as reducible to the effects of other actors,
which are in their turn always recoverable by agency" (Archer 1995: 84). On
the other hand, downwards conflation "cede(s) the explanatory rights of
social theory to human biology, individual psychology, economic
inevitability, evolutionary adaptation or simply to speculative metaphysics"
(ibid.). In short, downwards conflation tries to establish the explanation
of social phenomena at a level outside of the one of agency. Although pure
reductionism is rare and many of sociological theories tries to search for
linkage between the micro and the macro levels (Alexander et al. 1987), the
majority of them remains reductionist in their core, for they locate their
respective theoretical (or explanatory) primacy at a single level.
In the recent time, we have witnessed another kind of conflation which does
not reduce its theoretical primacy to the micro or the macro level and
considers both as the two sides of the same coin. For our convenience, we
can lay the theoretical primacy of this kind of theory somewhere between the
micro and the macro levels. Archer calls it "central conflationism" and
refers chiefly to Anthony Giddens's theory of structuration3 as an example.
Her realist social theory (or "morphogenetic approach") is thought to be a
response to Giddens's social theory, but it is in fact an enlarged response.
The core idea of the realist social theory, which she terms "analytical
dualism," seeks to avoid what she calls the "Fallacy of Conflation," whose
three variants are downwards, upwards and central conflation. Basically, the
fallacy of conflation means the refutation of the real status of emergent
properties. By adopting the reality of emergent entities, viewing them as
really (though not always actually) existent within time and space, the
realist social theory tries to give resolute answers to the main questions
raised by the four micro-macro problems as I have identified above.
In this paper, I shall reconstruct a core architecture of Archer's model of
sociological explanation, exhibiting its components and the relationships
between these components. These components are of two kinds, and I will call
them "levels" and "worlds." Archer refers her model's principal levels to
David Lockwood's "social integration" and "system integration."4 Moreover,
she has elaborated the Lockwoodian distinction by connecting it with realist
approaches, especially with Roy Bhaskar's,5 which endorses the idea of
emergence. The result is a theoretical construct, which she calls
"analytical dualism." In addition, I will argue that analytical dualism is
based upon an ontology whose fundamental worlds are identical with Karl
Popper's "three worlds."6 Thus, analytical dualism can be seen as an attempt
to marry a two-level methodology to a three-world ontology. This kind of
marriage is also the core idea that underlies some other attempts, which aim
to be both a grand synthesis of various sociological paradigms and a
solution for the micro-macro problems. By pointing that out, I will propose
the hypothesis that a solution for the four-fold micro-macro problem would
be a construct combining a multi-world ontology that allows the possibility
of emergence in social reality and a multi-level methodology that provides a
linkage between the different levels of social life.
2. The Two Levels of Facts
A starting point of analytical dualism is Lockwood's distinction between
social integration and system integration. Social integration refers to
relations maintaining between groups of actors, system integration to
relations maintaining between parts of the social system. Social integration
lies therefore at the micro level of social interaction, while system
integration at the macro level of social structure and cultural system. At
the level of social integration, there are individuals, groups, actions and
activities. In short, this is the level of people. At the level of system
integration, there are structures, relations between structures, relations
between relations, and so on. These properties are irreducible to those of
people - they are "emergent properties":
[S]ocial systems being seen as specific configurations of their constitutive
structures where the emergent features of the former derive from the
relations between the latter. Thus, unlike the 'institutional patterns,'
rightly dismissed, which confines components to observable entities,
structures themselves contain non-observable emergent powers whose
combination (relations between relations) generate the further emergent
properties which Lockwood addressed -- in particular those of contradiction
and complementarity. (Archer 1995: 69)
For Lockwood and Archer, differentiating in order to link social integration
and system integration happens "in two ways" by the same act: "[t]hough
definitely linked, these two aspects of integration are not only
analytically separable, but also, because of the time element involved,
factually distinguishable." (Lockwood 1964: 250, my italics). Here, time is
taken to link structure and agency in the fashion that, contrary to
Giddens's view of structures "virtually" (i.e., not really) existing beyond
space and time (Giddens 1979), structures are assumed to be existent within
time and space. The temporal distinction between social integration and
system integration is needed because of the historical coincidence or
discrepancy between the properties of structure and those of agency, that
is, because the two are not temporally co-variant. This necessity is
justified by the following arguments.
On the one hand, features of the social system, such as structures or the
situation in which the agents in question find themselves, have to pre-date
the interactions upon which they exercise causal influences (by
conditioning). On the other hand, the consequences of the structures have to
post-date the interaction that is necessary to mediate the reproduction or
the elaboration of these structures. The elaboration/reproduction of
structure is therefore a three-phase process of structural conditioning
(first phase), social interaction (second phase), and structural
elaboration/reproduction (third phase). In the first phase, social
structures exert causal influences on agency by framing the context of
action or dividing the population (not necessarily exhaustively) into social
groups. What is to highlight here is that causal influences operate within
the time dimension; "it takes time to change any structural property and
that period represents one of constraints for some groups at least." (Archer
1995: 78, original italic). In the second phase, social agents interact,
exerting causal influences on each other. These influences are of two kinds,
one temporal, the other directional. By temporal influences, agency can
speed up, delay or prevent the elimination of prior structural influences.
By directional influences, agency can re-define the contents or meanings of
concepts, theories, designs or other cultural schemas, thus affecting the
nature of structural elaboration at the exit of the next phase. In the third
phase, social interaction gives rise to some new structures (elaboration) or
simply repeats some old ones (reproduction), ending a morphogenetic cycle in
the case of elaboration or a morphostatic one in the case of reproduction.
The outcome of the third phase is a host of new social possibilities. Thus,
structural elaboration restarts a new morphogenetic/static cycle.7
This three-phase cycle represents a quantum of time arrow on which
observable events and non-observable mechanisms (mediatory, not hydraulic)
between and within the two levels of structure (or culture) and agency
subsequently take place. The problem arising here is that we cannot observe
the mechanisms by which structures exert causal influences on social
interaction. What we can observe is not the mechanisms themselves but the
mediators of the mechanisms. Yet these non-observable mechanisms take time.
This entails the ontological difficulty, namely, what exactly is the nature
of the systemic "entities," which exert causal powers upon social
interaction. In other words, the question is why persons and social
groupings cannot be parts of social system. Lockwood convincingly pointed to
the need of separating "people" from the "parts", but he left the
ontological question open. This question can be solved if emergentism is
adopted. Emergentism means that emergent properties have a real status by
virtue of causal influences they can exert upon observable processes.
Emergent properties are real, though may not actual or empirical; they are
there even when they are not "activated." In other words, emergent
properties need not to be exercised in order to become real. In the next
section, I will examine the domain of emergent properties presented in
analytical dualism.
3. The Three Worlds of Emergent Entities
Emergent properties are relatively enduring, non-observable and to be
grasped in relational terms. An emergent property maintains internal and
necessary relations among its components: It is in itself homogenous. It has
an autonomous existence and can exert causal powers upon other properties.
In short, an emergent property is irreducible to another one, though it
stays in zones of influence of some others and genealogically emerges from a
more primitive property.
In analytical dualism, three sets of emergent properties are concerned:
structural emergent properties (SEPs), cultural emergent properties (CEPs),
and people's emergent properties (PEPs). SEPs, PEPs and CEPs are the three
autonomous worlds of emergent entities and show, as I will argue below,
essential affinities with Popper's three worlds.8 Archer herself referred
CEPs to Popper's world 3. However, she did not say anything about Popper's
world 1 and world 2. I will suggest that SEPs and PEPs pertain to the
Popperian world 1 and world 2 respectively, just as CEPs belong to world 3.
For Archer, "culture as a whole is taken to refer to all intelligibilia"
(Archer 1995: 180), which are exactly what make up Popper's world 3 (cf.
Popper 1972: 154). World 3 is the world of ideas, of theories in themselves,
of contents of libraries or computer memories, the world of rules and of
arts. World 3 is also the world of problems and problem situations, of
critical arguments and states of discussion, and of solutions (ibid.:
107f.). Thus, the inhabitants of world 3 are products of human thinking;
these are, for example, propositions, whether "true" or "false", and
theories, whether consistent or self-contradictory. The Archerian cultural
system, that is the set of CEPs, is distinguished as that sub-set of
intelligibilia to which the law of non-contradiction can be applied (Archer
1995: 180).
World-3 items can be objects of our thinking, but they also and above all
exert causal influences upon our thought processes, thus indirectly, namely
through people qua thinking and acting subjects, upon the material world as
well. Popper distinguished therefore two autonomous worlds in addition to
world 3. World 1 is the physical world -- the world of material objects and
physical states. World 2 is the psychical world -- the world of thought
processes, of life experiences, and of mental states. Consequently, world 1
is objective, whereas world 2 is the world of subjects, thinking subjects
and acting subjects. The self, for example, is anchored in all three worlds
(Popper & Eccles 1977): its organism in the physical world 1, its thought
processes and life experiences as well as its consciousness in the mental
world 2, its ideas and images, which are not only products but also tools of
its thinking, in the ideational world 3. Thus, world 3 is the world of
objective knowledge, whereas world 2 is the one of subjective knowledge, and
world 1 is the world of material things, both non-human and human.
Popper did not work out his model of these three worlds in details but
nevertheless he has hinted an emergentist view of each world (cf. Popper
1972, Popper & Eccles 1977). For Popper, our world is "a world of
propensities," propensities being properties of the overall situation and
sometimes even the ways in which a situation changes (Popper 1990). The
properties pertaining to each world are to be grasped above all in
relational terms. As a result, Popper preferred to say about world 1 and
world 2 as constituted respectively of physical states and mental states,
rejecting the Cartesian terms of "extended substance" and "thinking
substance," whilst claiming to be a dualist in the sense that he believes in
the existence of both physical and mental states, and besides, even in the
existence of more abstract things such as states of a discussion, which
belong to world 3 (Popper 1972: 231: fn. 43).
Therefore, world 1 cannot be restricted to the world of observable physical
objects and events only as Habermas might interpret it (cf. Habermas 1981:
124). Even non-observable material states, which are for example
resource-to-resource relations, do belong to world 1 (Archer distinguishes
four types of SEPs: distributions/positions, roles, institutions, and
systems, see 1995: 176-7, 185-90). Thus, SEPs, though non-observable,
pertain to Popper's world 1. Indeed,
structural emergent properties (SEPs), irreducible to people and relatively
enduring, as with all incidences of emergence, are specifically defined as
those internal and necessary relationships which entail material resources,
whether physical or human, and which generate causal powers proper to the
relation itself (Archer 1995: 177)
Because "[w]hat differentiates a structural emergent property is its primary
dependence upon material resources, both physical and human" (ibid.: 175,
original italics), SEPs make up a sub-set of Popper's world 1.
Regarding Popper's world 2, I believe there are two interpretations that are
equally adequate, which I will call the "limited-world-2" and the
"enlarged-world-2 interpretation." According to the limited-world-2
interpretation, world 2 is the mental world of an individual. Consequently,
there are as many world 2s as there are persons. As people engage in social
games, an additional "world 2/2" emerges as a multiplication of world 2.9 In
the enlarged-world-2 interpretation, world 2 consists of not only individual
minds and their thought processes but also of relations between these
properties, relations between relations, and so forth. Since Popper's
three-world model remains at a general philosophical level, I propose the
enlarged-world-2 interpretation. In this sense, PEPs can be seen as world-2
properties. For this statement, I have provided two main arguments.
First, PEPs are those emergent properties pertaining to individual people
and their various groupings which are irreducible to either material
resources (SEPs) or cultural sources (CEPs). Secondly, Archer endorses a
stratified model of people, whose various strata are "person,"
"personality," "consciousness," "mind," "matter," etc. on the personal side,
and "agent" as well as "actor" on the social side. As a practical social
theory, the morphogenetic approach deals however only with persons, agents,
and actors, reserving perhaps personality, consciousness, mind and matter
for psychology and biology (Archer 1995: 254f.). The relationship among the
Archerian person, agent and actor is that "the human Person as fathering the
Agent who, in turn, fathers the Actor, both phylogenetically and
ontogenetically" (ibid.: 255). In other words, the agent and the actor
belong to the same ontological realm as the person does, though they are
irreducible to the person and therefore present emergent strata in this
realm (the world of "people"). The very nature of this "world of people" can
be detected by looking closely at the genealogical thread that sews the
person, the agent and the actor together.
Because of the overlapping and intertwining of SEPs, CEPs and PEPs in the
concrete human being, it must be emphasised that agency covers only certain
ways of being in society but not all ways of being human in the world. The
actor, for example, is the role incumbent in an individual human. However,
on the one hand, "roles themselves have emergent properties which cannot be
reduced to characteristics of their occupants" (ibid.: 276) and, on the
other hand, the actor deals only with the social identity, which is not the
same as the personal identity of a person (ibid.: 281f.). Similarly, agents
are defined by positions and material as well as cultural interests, that is
by "life chances," but they are not the positions themselves; the agent
deals with the specific collectiveness of a collectivity of persons, that
is, it presents a kind of relation between persons. The person, in turn, is
made up by the personal identity. Personal identity, according to Archer,
can be pictured in the formula "the body plus sufficient continuity of
consciousness" (ibid.: 289). Body pure cannot makes up a human. Here, Archer
has adopted a neo-Lockean or Kantian standpoint, which says that there needs
to be "myself" who records that I am the same person as I before and this
"sense of self" is universal or transcendental in Kant's terms, yet not
social as Durkheim might think of (see ibid.: 285-9). The person's existence
is dependent upon world-1 conditions (the body primarily), but what makes a
person out of a body is the continuous sense of self, an inhabitant of world
2. For Archer, the person's existence has to depend on the body because "no
body, no mind," but "a person is not necessarily a material concept" (ibid.:
287). Moreover, what Archer endeavoured in defining the human person is to
point out that the person is, by its body and its universal sense of self,
literally personal, that is, extra-social (see ibid.: 280-292). It is in no
doubt that the Archerian person settles on the frontier of world 2 to world
1. If a distinction between world 2 and world 2/2 is preferred, then agents
can be seen as citizens of world 2/2 and actors inhabit the border zone
between world 2 and world 2/2. It is so far evident that the genealogical
thread which sews the Archerian person, agent and actor together starts from
the subjective (and extra-social) part of the person, from the "non-social
experiences of non-social reality" (ibid.: 291), which are exactly world-2
items, and ends at the subjective (and social) part of the actor, the social
identity, at the personal experiences of social reality, which are also
world-2 inhabitants.
4. The Interplay Between Levels and Worlds
So far we have talked about non-observable entities (emergent properties)
only. Where are the observable ones? Obviously, they are located at the
level of events. Thus, at the level of social interaction, there are not
only observable properties but also people's emergent properties. People can
be considered as the hosts, where SEPs, CEPs and PEPs are incorporated. As
people interact, they interact under the conditioning of SEPs, CEPs and
PEPs, but they in turn mediate the change or the persistence of these
emergent properties.
Within and between social structures, there are internal and necessary
relations. Between the components of the cultural system, there are internal
and logical relations. Between groups and individuals, there are causal
relationships. The relationships between the level of system integration and
the level of social integration are also causal (Archer 1995: 168-9).
Between people's emergent properties, by definition, there are internal and
necessary relations. It is important not to conflate concrete people or
groups (e.g., taxonomic categories) with people's emergent properties.
Concrete people, concrete institutions or concrete cultural works are
heterogeneous, that is they are constituted of both observable (e.g.,
bodies, facilities) and non-observable properties (e.g., life experiences,
institutional structures, meanings). The task of analytical dualism is to
resolve this problem of heterogeneity by analytically differentiating
concrete things into homogeneous, emergent properties. In so doing, it
focuses chiefly on the interplay between these emergent properties, which
pertain to three worlds of facts and reside at two levels of integration. An
elementary diagram of analytical dualism can be illustrated as in Figure 1.
5. A Hypothesis for Further Research
I have shown that analytical dualism can be viewed as a linkage between a
multi-world ontology based on Popper's three-world model and a multi-level
methodology which endeavours a linkage between the micro level of social
integration and the macro level of system integration. It is worth noting
that analytical dualism does not remain the only attempt of this kind. Here
I will refer to three other models of "micro-macro linkage + Popperian
three-world ontology" provided by German sociologists, namely Jürgen
Habermas's "theory of communicative action," Bernhard Giesen's
"evolution-theoretical model," and Manfred Hennen's and Elisabeth Springer's
"basic schema of action theories."10
More than a decade before the publication of Archer's Realist Social Theory
(1995), Habermas already tried in his Theory of Communicative Action (first
published 1981) to link, on the basis of Popper's three-world model, with
some modification, the life-world level of social integration and the
structural level of system integration. Armed by these ontology and
methodology, he reconstructed the main paradigms in the social sciences,
channelled them into four basic concepts of action and combined these
different paradigms into a comprehensive social theory.11
Giesen's evolution-theoretical model is not monumental in the quantity of
letters but also claims to be a grand synthesis. Upon grouping the
micro-macro problems into three problems of emergence,12 examining the
sociological theory programmes (including Habermas's) and classifying them
into three types of micro-macro connection,13 Giesen outlines a fourth
model, which tries to connect the three previous models and above all to
provide a solution for all the three problems of emergence in sociological
theorizing. On the one hand, Giesen's model enlarges the opposition of macro
structure and interaction process by introducing the level of situations as
a kind of linkage between the macro level of structures and the micro level
of interaction. On the other hand, the three worlds (called also "levels" by
Giesen) of social reality are distinguished. "This distinction between the
symbolic 'reality' of subjective meaning and claims on validity, the
practical reality of action and social rules in operation, and the material
reality of technical adaptation to nature refers to the three-world ontology
of Karl Popper" (Giesen 1987: 349).
With a rational choice background, Hennen & Springer (1996) coined a concept
of action theory as a metatheory and, from this point of view, reconstructed
a series of social theories into a "basic schema of action theories."14 This
basic schema is a four-cell matrix which distinguishes between the macro and
micro levels and between the static and dynamic aspects of social life. It
is also here that Popper's three-world model is applied to solve the
ontological problem arising in linking the two oppositions, although with a
fine-tuning, namely, that Hennen & Springer argue for the existence of a
fourth world, the "world 2/2" of the limited-world-2 interpretation I
mentioned above.
A main feature of these three models is that they try to make use of
Popper's three-world conception in order to solve the ontological difficulty
that is unavoidable in the linking of the micro and macro levels of social
life. Another common denominator of the three models is their "grand
synthesis" characteristic, that is, they reconstruct various social theories
from different traditions (or "paradigms" in a post-Kuhnian sense) and embed
these into themselves or formulate themselves as a linkage between all these
previous theories.
In analytical dualism, too, Popperian ontology supplies the ontological
basis that is missing in Lockwood's model. What is distinct in Lockwoodian
model of linking social integration with system integration is its
endorsement of the time element. In Lockwoodian methodology, the coincidence
or discrepancy between the properties of structure and those of agency
generate not only analytical differentiation but also prove the temporal
separation between the two levels of social life. However, if the
non-observable mechanisms between the two levels take time, a crucial
difficulty arises as to how to ground that ontologically. For this problem
Popper's three-world model provides a general solution. Thus, Popperian
ontology and Lockwoodian methodology seem to be not only compatible but also
complementary.
With regard to the four-faceted micro-macro problem I have identified above,
it is remarkable that (1) all the four models of "linkage methodology +
Popperian ontology" I have introduced seek a solution of the micro-macro
problem and (2) the three "grand syntheses" implicitly remain within the
rationalist or "modernist" tradition of historical sociology, whereas
Archer's realist social theory explicitly fights against the mainstream of
post-modernism (if post-modernism has any mainstream).15 Analytical dualism
elegantly resolves the first and the second order micro-macro problem by
approving a new way of viewing society. But this solution entails heavy
consequences for the solving of the third and the fourth order micro-macro
problem as well. On the one hand, starting from the assumption of society
being open, therefore requiring the open form of connection between levels
of analysis, analytical dualism simply throws the problems of self-reference
overboard. On the other hand, in rejecting the opposition of the narrative
and the analytical, analytical histories of emergence (which analytical
dualism seeks to narrate) tries to transcend the gap between the grand
narrative and the small episode by the double act of "recognizing the
intervention of contingency," that is, acknowledging "the strong likelihood
of uniqueness at the level of events", and directing analysis towards "the
interplay between the real, the actual and the empirical to explain precise
outcomes" (Archer 1995: 343).
Taken together, the four examples I have sketched above suggest that a
solution for the problem of emergence in sociology, i.e., the micro-macro
problem in broader terms, can be made available by a joint venture of a
multi-level methodology that endeavours certain kinds of linkage between the
different levels of social life, especially between the life-world level of
social interaction and the systemic level of social structure, and a
multi-world ontology that acknowledges the possibility of emergence in
social reality. If this hypothesis is proved true, the result may not be a
glorious feat, however. First, this leads to the recognition that the
central problem of historical sociology and sociological theorizing is after
all an epistemological plus metaphysical problem. More ironically, as
concerns Archer's construct, by refusing both grand narrative and
relativism, analytical histories of emergence are confined to be
"explanatory, retrodictive and corrigible accounts" (ibid. 344). In other
words, prediction cannot be a task of the Archerian practical social theory
because "the future is open" (Popper). Still, sociology is not only a
science of the past but also of the present and, as such, it has its own
contribution to the shaping of the future. If analytical dualism means
giving up the task of providing foresight -- what I hope to be wrong --,
then, is it doomed to be a kind of l'art pour l'art, a fun for its own sake?
The solving of the lower order micro-macro problems may pose novel problems
of higher order.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
NOTES
* This paper is given to the seminar "Der Beitrag Margaret Archers zur
modernen soziologischen Theoriebildung", Institute for Sociology, University
of Mainz, 1998-1999.
[1] There is an ideological and/or epistemological distinction between
"social theory" and "sociological theory", which entails a division between
social theorizing and sociological theorizing. This distinction is pushed
forward by some post-modernist authors in order to categorically reject,
among others, the micro-macro theme as one of the main concern in social
theorizing (e.g., Seidman 1994). Their argument is that sociological theory
has become more and more "divorced from current social movements and
political struggles, and either ignorant of major political and moral public
debates or unable to address them in ways that are compelling or even
understandable by nontheorists" (Seidman 1992: 47). Or that sociological
theory is founded on a positivist epistemology which is a kind of
"scientific imperialism." However, the cleavage between rationalists and
post-modernists can be seen as one of the facets of the micro-macro problem
as I conceive of in this paper. Hence, I do not ideologically contrast
social theory with sociological theory, nor do I reduce social to
sociological theory. By sociological theory I mean that kind of social
theory which is pursued within the discipline of sociology.
[2] The concept of level, as Niklas Luhmann correctly noted, "has been
invented to exclude self-references insofar as they amount to tautologies or
paradoxes" (Luhmann 1987: 126, original italic). In order to approach
self-references as empirical phenomena, other concepts such as "duality" (of
structure in Giddens 1984), "complex" (of power/knowledge in Foucault 1980),
or "system" (Luhmann 1984) have been utilised. However, some authors still
employ the concept of level to describe the collapse of the different levels
and to approach, in this way, the problems of self-reference, circularity,
"tangled hierarchy," and paradoxes (Luhmann 1987: 130f, fn. 69).
[3] See Archer (1995) and Giddens (1984). It is worth noting that Michel
Foucault (1978) has applied a quasi-conflationary theory to approach the
problems of emergence by using his "nominalist" concept of power, in which
power relations provide "matrices of transformation," and power can be
imagined as deeply sitting in and going through subject as well as
structure, thus resolving the structure vs. subject dilemma by going
underneath and avoiding both. Probably this "depth" of power in Foucault's
model causes people to label him as post-structuralist.
[4] For Lockwood's social integration and system integration see Lockwood
(1964).
[5] Archer's morphogenetic approach is developed on the "general platform"
of Bhaskar's "transformational model of social action." See this model in
Bhaskar (1979, 1989).
[6] Popper's philosophical standpoint is also realist. His three-world
ontology is mainly treated in Popper (1972) and Popper & Eccles (1977).
[7] For illustration, see the "Castro's example" in Archer (1995: 76-79).
[8] For Popper's three-world model, see Popper 1972 and Popper & Eccles
1977.
[9] This interpretation is proposed by Hennen & Springer (1996).
[10] See Habermas (1981: vols.1 and 2), Giesen (1987), Hennen & Springer
(1996).
[11] Beside the concept of world, Habermas added the concept of life-world,
but Popper's three-world theory is used to serve as "ontologische
Voraussetzungen" for the four concepts of action, namely the teleological or
strategic action (von Neumann and Morgenstern), the norm-regulated action
(Durkheim and Parsons), the dramaturgic action (Goffman) and the
communicative action (Mead and Garfinkel) (see Habermas 1981: vol. 1:
114-151).
[12] The problem of descriptive emergence, the problem of practical
emergence, and the problem of explanatory emergence (Giesen 1987: 338f.).
[13] Namely, (1) the "model of coordination" of individual actions and
macrosocial effects, which is by and large congruent with the rational
choice paradigm, (2) the "categorial-analytic model", which is based on the
analogy of "language and speech act," and (3) the "model of antagonism"
between social repression and individual autonomy (Giesen 1987).
[14] Explicitly, it is Smith, Weber, Simmel, Mead, Schütz, Goffman, Berger &
Luckmann, Parsons, Homans and Blau whose theories are embedded in this basic
schema.
[15] "[A]nalytical histories of emergence (i.e., the Archerian model of
sociological explanation - HLV) stand equally opposed to those strands of
post-modernism which eschew analysis in the name of incommensurability and
non-comparability yet whose vituperations against grand narratives leave
them puzzlingly free to engage in Foucauldian-type rhetorical persuasion."
(Archer 1995: 343)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
REFERENCES
Alexander, Jeffrey C. / Giesen, Bernhard / Münch, Richard / Smelser, Neil J.
(eds.) 1987: The Micro-Macro Link. Berkeley et al.: University of California
Press.
Archer, Margaret 1995: Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bhaskar, Roy 1979: The Possibility of Naturalism. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester
Wheatsheaf.
Bhaskar, Roy 1989: Reclaiming Reality. London: Verso.
Foucault, Michel 1978: The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction.
New York: Pantheon. Originally published in French as Histoire de la
sexualité, vol. 1: La volonté de savoir. Paris: Gallimar, 1976.
Foucault, Michel 1980: Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other
Writings 1972-1977, edited by C. Gordon. New York: Pantheon.
Giddens, Anthony 1979: Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure,
and Contradiction in Social Theory. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Giddens, Anthony 1984: The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of
Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Habermas, Jürgen 1981: Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Vol. 1&2.
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Hennen, Manfred / Springer, Elisabeth 1996: Handlungstheorien - Überblick,
in Druwe, Ulrich / Kunz, Volker (eds.): Handlungs- und Entscheidungstheorie
in der Politikwissenschaft. Opladen: Leske + Budrich: 12-41.
Lockwood, David 1964: Social Integration and System Integration, in:
Zollschan, George K. / Hirsch, Walter (eds.): Explorations in Social Change.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin: 244-57.
Luhmann, Niklas 1984: Soziale Systeme: Grundriß einer allgemeinen Theorie.
Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Luhmann, Niklas 1987: The Evolutionary Differentiation between Society and
Interaction, in: Alexander et al. (eds.): The Micro-Macro Link. Berkeley et
al.: University of California Press: 112-31.
Popper, Karl R. 1972: Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach. Oxford:
Clarendon.
Popper, Karl R. 1990: A World of Propensities. Bristol: Thoemmes.
Popper, Karl R. / Eccles, John C. 1977: The Self and Its Brain. New York:
Springer.
Seidman, Steven 1992: Postmodern Social Theory as Narrative with a Moral
Intent, in Seidman, Steven / Wagner, David G. (eds.): Postmodernism and
Social Theory: A Debate over General Theory. Cambridge (MA), Oxford (UK):
Basil Blackwell: 47-81.
Seidman, Steven 1994: The End of Sociological Theory, in: Seidman, Steven
(ed.): The Postmodern Turn: New Prospectives on Social Theory. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press: 119-139.