Methodology of Relational Sociology: Approaches and Analyses 9783031416255, 9783031416262

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN RELATIONAL SOCIOLOGY

Methodology of Relational Sociology Approaches and Analyses Edited by  Elżbieta Hałas

Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology

Series Editors

Nick Crossley Department of Sociology University of Manchester Manchester, UK Peeter Selg School of Governance, Law and Society Tallinn University Tallinn, Estonia

In various disciplines such as archeology, psychology, psychoanalysis, international relations, and philosophy, we have seen the emergence of relational approaches or theories. This series, founded by François Dépelteau, seeks to further develop relational sociology through the publication of diverse theoretical and empirical research—including that which is critical of the relational approach. In this respect, the goal of the series is to explore the advantages and limits of relational sociology. The series welcomes contributions related to various thinkers, theories, and methods clearly associated with relational sociology (such as Bourdieu, critical realism, Deleuze, Dewey, Elias, Latour, Luhmann, Mead, network analysis, symbolic interactionism, Tarde, and Tilly). Multidisciplinary studies which are relevant to relational sociology are also welcome, as well as research on various empirical topics (such as education, family, music, health, social inequalities, international relations, feminism, ethnicity, environmental issues, politics, culture, violence, social movements, and terrorism). Relational sociology—and more specifically, this series—will contribute to change and support contemporary sociology by discussing fundamental principles and issues within a relational framework.

Elżbieta Hałas Editor

Methodology of Relational Sociology Approaches and Analyses

Editor Elżbieta Hałas University of Warsaw Warsaw, Poland

ISSN 2946-4110     ISSN 2946-4129 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology ISBN 978-3-031-41625-5    ISBN 978-3-031-41626-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41626-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Preface

This book is the first to explicitly and specifically address the methodological issues of relational sociology and, more broadly, the new relational paradigm in social and cultural sciences. The development of sociology is accompanied by the recurrent appearance of adjectives emphasizing some of its special dimensions. This could be observed in the classical period of the formation of this science, and it still continues today. Formal sociology, understanding (verstehende) sociology, humanistic sociology, interpretive sociology, cultural sociology, historical sociology, reflexive sociology, and systematic sociology are some of the attributives given to this science, indicating selected, distinctive perspectives and methods chosen for the study of phenomena and processes inherent in human societies. At the end of the twentieth century, relational sociology was born. In a sense, in the postmodern intellectual climate, conducive to the slogans of the end of scientific discipline and the rejection of scientific method, with which the praxis theory resonated, the emergence of relational sociology reflected the desire to resurrect and reconstruct sociology as such. The general category of relations and the category of social relations in particular, both in their objective and intersubjective sense, returned to the center of attention. Significantly, relational sociology is not limited to the sociology of reciprocal social relations, because in the latter case it would merely focus on a specific subject worthy of study, but at the same time this would limit practicing sociology tout court. Recognizing and emphasizing the processual and emergent nature of sociocultural formations on the one hand and v

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structural normative constraints, power, and social control on the other hand, relational sociology entered the territory abandoned by two opposing positions, frequently contrasted with each other: interactionism and functionalism. The formulas of society as symbolic interaction and as an all-encompassing system had to be revised, and this revision unleashed the relational movement. It is enlivened by critical and reflexive reflection on reciprocal social relations, subject to rapid transformations after modernity, as well as on relationality in general, and the relationality of social spaces in particular. New relational conceptual frameworks present in the theory of social networks, in the theory of fields of practice, or in critical realist relational sociology are a manifestation of efforts to free the sociological imagination from frozen thought patterns, which does not mean a complete break with the traditions of this discipline. Multiplying readings of the works of successive generations of sociological classics, such as Georg Simmel, Max Weber, Florian Znaniecki, George H.  Mead, Herbert Blumer, Norbert Elias, as well as authors who have been marginalized or forgotten, in the light of the new relational sociology should not lead to the misleading conclusion that this sociology actually brings little new information, or to fears that such readings threaten the integrity of the new relational perspective and dilute it. Such readings, extracting the issues of relationality and social relations from previously formed sociological theories, in fact serve to reconstruct sociology, which has become too fragmented, and allow the new relational sociology to confront the earlier varieties of sociology mentioned above. A more serious problem is posed by disputes over what is really meant by the relationality of sociology and the legitimacy of the use of the term “relational sociology”. It is a matter of acceptable differences as regards the ways of formulating problems concerning culture, social structure, and agency from the relational perspective, especially the problems of social ontology, including the concept of the relational subject. Such disputes are necessary because they sharpen the meaning of concepts and serve to clarify the relational perspective, which does not necessarily lead to its unambiguous demarcation and separation from similar perspectives. Disputation is necessary for scientific discussion as long as it does not prematurely lead to antagonistic divisions and segmentations in a given field of scientific research. Relational sociology is a perspective and a method. In the theory of science and in scientific methodology, a pluralist position has come to the

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fore, according to which the unity of science and the multiplicity of scientific methods are not in contradiction. Just as sociology shaped its specific principles of the sociological method, so one particular perspective of practicing it, the perspective of relational sociology, creates the need to search for and shape a relational methodology. Looking at the development of the new relational sociology, it must be noted that more attention has been paid to establishing a relational perspective than to defining a relational methodology, although of course various methods of relational analysis were used. The development of the theoretical perspective of relational sociology should be accompanied by the development of relational methodological reflection, and the presented volume is a step toward that goal. The presence of different variants of relational sociology and the desire to give the relational movement greater coherence are reflected in its meta-­ methodological characteristics. In the light of some of them, one could talk about strong or weak programs of relational sociology, depending on whether all the recognized criteria are met, especially assumptions about the existence of objective social relations and the generative effect of reciprocity. On the other hand, the epistemological properties of the perspective of relational sociology being taken into account, such as anti-dualist thinking, anti-substantialism, and processuality, are so general that the nature of sociological theorizing becomes blurred. Furthermore, this is yet another instance where not all such general assumptions are accepted to the same extent and in the same sense in relational sociological orientations. Consensus on common principles is not an easy matter, since what is at play here is the pursuit of an unique research program with a distinct, consolidated identity. At this point, it is possible to provisionally formulate several principles that appear to underlie relational sociology. The first of these principles may be called the general principle of relationality, which means the rejection of holism, that is, the assumption of a whole, both in relation to collective phenomena and individual subjects. Holism is usually contrasted with individualism; however, in the relational-­ holistic opposition adopted here, it also refers to those concepts of an individual subject that treat it as a monad without relational reference to other subjects, including its internal relationality, that is, the subject’s relationship to itself. The second principle may be called the principle of reciprocal sociality. It pertains to reciprocal social relations in the strict sense, which have been

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the core of sociology from the outset. They cannot be identified with interpersonal relations without the risk of sociological reductionism. Reciprocal sociality is based on intentional interactions in which its normative framework is formed. The third principle is the principle of symbolically constructing social spaces as spaces of objectified social relations and their symbolic representations and, above all, relations of power. Reciprocal sociality is built into the space of social relations and transforms this space. The fourth principle refers to the relational reflexivity of meanings and values, which means reciprocal relations between the cultural matrix of meanings and values and the social contexts of their production. This is related to the fifth principle, which assumes the potential of human agency and creativity and which can be articulated as relational reason. The relational turn in sociology holds the promise of reconstructing theory through an interdisciplinary impact in the broad field of social and cultural sciences. Relational sociology is intended to overcome the polarization of theoretical standpoints and the oppositions accumulated in the course of their development. However, questions arise whether the proposed models of relational analyses free theorizing from being locked in a binary code and whether they enable analytical openness consisting in reaching out to competing approaches. The issue of disputes within the relational orientation and tensions over its foundations, reaching back to ontological problems in sociology, proves especially important. One of the issues proposed for discussion is an attempt to answer the question of whether a consensus on ontological issues is necessary for the development of relational sociology, or whether relational methodology can develop in relative autonomy. This question is so important because having adopted the universal concept of science and the goals of scientific cognition in social and cultural sciences, the researcher faces the unique nature of the studied reality as a human reality. Thus, another question arises: whether and to what extent relational sociology takes up and develops in a novel way the classic approach of humanistic sociology, also known as understanding sociology. When considering the new developments in relational sociology, we inevitably encounter persistent methodological problems that require better solutions. These include, above all, the methodological implications of the relational concept of the social fact. In particular, its symbolic and linguistic (discursive) constitution and orientation toward values come into play here.

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The assumption about the reflexivity of social processes and their cognition also has such methodological implications, and therefore the sense in which relational sociology is a reflexive and critical sociology requires explication. Overcoming the structure-agency opposition, and therefore the opposition of domination and control versus freedom and autonomy of relational subjects, has other methodological consequences for relational sociology, albeit related to the ones mentioned above. It is the challenge of studying the processes of morphogenesis, i.e. the emergence of sociocultural formations. These are also methodological challenges that can be succinctly expressed in the question: how is relational sociology related to history? Such a broadly outlined horizon of methodological issues makes it possible to identify particularly relevant issues. Attention must be focused on both new and proven conceptual frameworks of relational sociology and on finding new relational solutions to methodological problems. Methodology in the broad sense, i.e., as part of a relational cognitive system, still requires reflection. Defining the meanings of such concepts as relational approach, relational analysis or relational paradigm calls for discussion. The principles of relational analysis as the methodological basis of relational sociology require further elaboration. This pertains both to principles relating to the study of relations between social facts and to social facts as reciprocal relations. The methodological problems of relational sociology are also the problems of broadly understood relational analyses in social and cultural sciences. Addressing these problems is important both for the development of relational theory and for relationally oriented empirical research, as well as applied research that has practical applications for organizing social life. The dynamically developing relational movement in social and cultural sciences is fueled by various classical and contemporary theoretical inspirations. Relational approaches propose various models of relational analyses, such as field analysis, social space analysis, network analysis, or the critical realist relational heuristic. The relational turn, which promotes interdisciplinarity in research, simultaneously reflects the drive toward an innovative reconstruction of sociology. Contemporary relational sociology is at the forefront of the relational movement. The program of relational sociology is still being shaped, frequently becoming the subject of discussions with different standpoints expressed.

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The aim of this book is reflection on various relational approaches and models of relational analysis. Answers to two basic questions are sought: Are there foundations for a methodological unity of relational sociology, despite the diversity of approaches? Does relational sociology form a new paradigm? To answer these questions, the authors seek to define key differences that distinguish the relational paradigm from earlier, competing sociological paradigms. The answers to crucial questions show what innovations the methodology of relational sociology brings, i.e. the methodological consequences of the relational concept of the social fact. The book presents a broadly defined horizon of methodological issues, creating an open space for discussion on various approaches and varieties of relational analysis, as well as the possibility of their methodological synthesis within relational sociology. Thirteen original chapters contributing to the development of the methodology of relational sociology are presented in three parts of the book. Part I, “Principles of Relational Methodology”, consists of four chapters showing the innovativeness of the relational perspective and discussing such fundamental issues as relational methodological rules, relational explanations, relational understanding, and the concept of relationality itself. In the opening chapter, Pierpaolo Donati explains the methodological rules of analysis developed within the framework of critical realist relational sociology. He shows how to develop a methodology that fully meets the theoretical assumptions of relational sociology. He explains in what sense relational sociology that provides observation, diagnosis, and guidance for the practice of a good society can meet the postulate of being “value-free”. Joonatan Nõgisto and Peeter Selg answer the question about the possible nature of relational explanation. They consider how its most important goal, i.e., explanation, may be achieved on the basis of relational sociology. The processual and abductive nature of relational explanation and its novelty are considered. Elżbieta Hałas attempts to answer the question about the true nature of relational understanding. She also shows how relational sociology goes beyond the juxtaposition of the interpretive paradigm and the normative paradigm. She searches for an innovative approach to the problem of relational understanding. This approach combines the relational perspectives of agents and observers, as well as objectified systems of meanings that are grounded in social relations.

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Sergio Belardinelli addresses important controversies faced by relational sociology. He analyzes two relational approaches opposed to critical realism, advocating a realistic approach that takes into account both epistemology and ontology. Part II, “Approaches for Relational Studies”, consists of five chapters presenting relational research methodologies built upon concepts of social space, field, network, critical realist relational heuristic, and emergent relational social systems. Gisèle Sapiro proposes to distinguish three varieties of relational sociology: interactive, functionalist, and genetic structuralism. The latter assumes the existence of objective relations based on unequal distribution of capital. Despite the theoretical differences she finds between network theory and genetic structuralism, she shows how it is possible to combine relational field analysis with interaction-oriented network analysis. She uses the example of the circulation of literary and scholarly translations, with publishers as intermediaries, to show the dynamic of fields and networks. Julie Sedel similarly bases relational analysis on field theory. She applies it to the study of media executives as a segment of the power elite. She argues that media executives, situated at the intersection of several social spaces, exemplify struggles between different fractions of the elite over the definition of the types of capital expected to prevail in the field of power. In the next chapter, Ivo Colozzi examines the methodological rules adopted in critical realist relational sociology and the AGIL relational heuristic model. He exemplifies the application of these rules, particularly to research on social capital. Michał Łuczewski proposes a different approach, reaching for a relational reading of Florian Znaniecki’s theory of systems with a humanistic coefficient and the methodological concept of analytic induction. This chapter shows the application of Znaniecki’s relational methodology to the study of the phenomenon of modern nationalities. In the last chapter of this part, in which the applications of relational analysis to selected areas and issues of social life play an important role, Jakub Bazyli Motrenko attempts a new approach to the social world of scientists. Taking into account criticism directed at the normative vision of the community of scholars, he reflects on the relationship between the abstract mainstream scientific community and viable and creative communities producing relational goods.

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The four chapters that constitute Part III, “Advances in Relational Analyses”, present innovative area studies on language, communication, symbolism, and normativity from a relational perspective, since this volume should promote further discussions and research directed toward the development of new relational sociology and, more generally, the relational paradigm in social sciences. The opening chapter by Hubert Knoblauch further develops his theory of communicative construction of reality, embedded in interactions and social relations. The triadic concept of relationality provided by communicative constructivism makes it possible to understand the processes of communicative action on which social relations, as well as relations to objects and the world in general, are based. The author demonstrates a link between social constructivist approaches that dominate in interaction analysis and relational sociology. On the basis of an empirical videographic study, Knoblauch explains how interaction analysis can be linked to relational sociology, proposing a triadic model of relationality based on communicative constructivism. Tomasz Zarycki outlines the new relational linguistic pragmatics. He draws inspiration from Pierre Bourdieu’s relational sociology, especially from the concept of the field of power and homology. He places the process of meaning-making at the center of sociological analysis. This will offer a new way of making the processes of meaning production a central focus of sociological analysis, avoiding, however, the risks of assuming a purely discursive vision of social relations or, as Bourdieu puts it, the semiological vision of the world. Lorenza Gattamorta also takes up pragmatic and interactive topics in regard to relational sociology, subjecting the classical concepts of George H. Mead to a relational interpretation. She shows how subjectivity arises in social relations, while not being reduced to them, and focuses on symbolic mediation to explain how creativity is possible in social relations. The closing chapter raises important issues as regards criticizing some forms of social life from the perspective of relational sociology. Davide Ruggieri focuses on normative reciprocity in social relations, and thus their inner normative dimension. In methodological terms, the purpose of this chapter is the postulate of fostering dialogue (a relation) between social sciences and moral philosophy, exploring how good relations nourish and preserve good society and good life. The book has its origins in the international conference that took place on March 14–15, 2022, at the University of Warsaw (Poland), as part of

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the project Social Space, Fields and Relationality in Contemporary and Historical Social Analysis. Research Network funded by the National Academic Exchange Agency (NAWA). This conference was preceded by a series of conferences and seminars on the relational turn, initiated in 2016 at the University of Warsaw as a venue for international meetings within the relational movement. The presented volume opens a space for further discussions on various models of relational analysis and their methodological synthesis. Warsaw, Poland

Elżbieta Hałas

Contents

Part I Principles of Relational Methodology   1 1 The  Methodology of Critical Realist Relational Analysis: The Research Design and Its Underlying Rules  3 Pierpaolo Donati 2 The  Grounds of Relational Explanation 33 Joonatan Nõgisto and Peeter Selg 3 Relational  Understanding: Beyond the Interpretative and Normative Divide 59 Elżbieta Hałas 4 Realism Versus Relationism 87 Sergio Belardinelli Part II Approaches for Relational Studies  97 5 Fields,  Markets, Institutions and Networks 99 Gisèle Sapiro

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6 French  Top Media Executives: The Sociology of a Segment of Elite117 Julie Sedel 7 The  Methodological Rules of the Critical Realist Relational Sociology: Some Examples147 Ivo Colozzi 8 Florian  Znaniecki’s Methodology for the Relational Paradigm: The Application of Analytic Induction to Nationalism Studies171 Michał Łuczewski 9 The  Scientific Community in the Perspective of Relational Sociology193 Jakub Bazyli Motrenko Part III Advances in Relational Analyses 217 10 Finger  Pointing in Early Childhood: Interaction Analysis and the Communicative Construction of Social Relations219 Hubert Knoblauch 11 Toward  a Relational Pragmatics as a Bridge Between Sociology and Linguistics247 Tomasz Zarycki 12 Beyond  Relationism? Different Relational Perspectives and George Herbert Mead275 Lorenza Gattamorta 13 Normative  Reciprocity, Relational Sociology, and the Critique of Forms of Social Life295 Davide Ruggieri Index317

Notes on Contributors

Sergio  Belardinelli  is Full Professor of Sociology of Culture at the Department of Political and Social Science of the University of Bologna. His main research interests focus on ethical and political issues connected to the development of complex societies, with particular reference to bioethics and to the relationship between religion and politics, cultural identity, and plurality of cultures. Among his books are L’altro Illuminismo. Politica, religione e funzione pubblica della verità, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli 2010; Sillabario per la tarda modernità, Cantagalli, Siena 2012; L’ordine di Babele. Le culture tra pluralismo e identità, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli 2018; All’alba di un nuovo mondo, Il Mulino, Bologna 2019 (co-­authored with Angelo Panebianco); L’inesauribile superficie delle cose, Cantagalli, Siena 2022. He was a member of the Board of the National Committee for Bioethics in 2002–2006; in 2011–2015, he was a member of the Board of the Italian Institute of German Studies. Ivo Colozzi, formerly Full Professor of General Sociology at the University of Bologna, is Professor Alma Mater of the University of Bologna. For many years he has collaborated with Pierpaolo Donati, with whom he has carried out and/or directed many researches published in various volumes. Among these, P.  Donati and I.  Colozzi, Giovani e generazioni (Young People and Generations), Il Mulino, Bologna 1997; P. Donati and I.  Colozzi (eds.), La cultura civile in Italia: fra stato, mercato e privato sociale (Civil Culture in Italy: Between State, Market and Third Sector), Il Mulino, Bologna 2002; P. Donati and I. Colozzi (eds.), Il valore aggiunto delle relazioni sociali (The Added Value of Social Relations), FrancoAngeli, xvii

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Milano 2011. Among the most recent works, we mention I.  Colozzi, Religion and Modernity. Analysis of a Complicated Relationship, Brescia, ELS La Scuola, 2016; I.  Colozzi (ed.), Social Capital and Academic Performance, Trento, Edizioni centro Studi Erikson, 2018;I. Colozzi, The (Complicated) Relations Between Sociology and Theology, in P.  Donati, A.  Malo, G.  Maspero (eds.), Social Science, Philosophy and Theology in Dialogue. A Relational Perspective, Routledge, London and New  York 2019, pp.  150–165; I.  Colozzi, A Comparison Between the ProcessualRelational Sociology of Francois Depeltau and the Relational Theory of Society of Pierpaolo Donati, in P. Donati (ed.), The Relational Theory in the Social Sciences. Developments and Perspectives, Il Mulino, Bologna 2022, pp. 79–102. Pierpaolo Donati  is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Bologna, Italy. Former president of the Italian Sociological Association, and Counsellor of the International Institute of Sociology, at present he is member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (since 1997) and of the Academy of Sciences of the University of Bologna (since 1998). He is internationally known as the founder of an original “relational sociology” or “relational theory of society”. His publications (about 820) cover both theory and field research, which are linked together on a wide variety of topics, ranging from social and cultural change to welfare policies and social services. His seminal works have been translated into various languages, including Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Greek, and Portuguese. Recent works include Relational Sociology. A New Paradigm for the Social Sciences (Routledge 2011); The Relational Subject, with M.S. Archer (Cambridge University Press 2015); Sociología relacional de lo humano (Eunsa 2019); Transcending Modernity with Relational Thinking (Routledge 2021); Lo sguardo relazionale (Meltemi 2021); La teoria relazionale nelle scienze sociali: sviluppi e prospettive (il Mulino 2022). Lorenza  Gattamorta  (PhD, University College London) is Associate Professor of Sociology of Culture at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, Bologna University. She wrote on sociology of symbols and of language, reflexivity, dialogical Self, phenomenology, symbolic interactionism, culture, and globalization. Some of her research was financed by British Academy, Accademia dei Lincei, AHRB, CNR. Amongst her books are La memoria delle parole (il Mulino, 2002) and La società e i suoi simboli  (Carocci, 2010); she edited “Persona” in sociologia (Meltemi,

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2008); Riflessività e sé dialogico (FrancoAngeli, 2008); Verso una società post-secolare?  (Rubbettino, 2009);  I valori hanno bisogno della religione? (Rubbettino, 2012). Elżbieta  Hałas  is Full Professor of Humanities and Sociology at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw, Poland. Her fields of interest include cultural sociology, relational perspectives in social theory, symbolic interactionism, social symbolism, and memory and politics of symbolization. Her research is focused on the relational, semiotic, and pragmatic dimensions of contemporary cultural and social transformations. In 2016, she initiated international seminars on relational sociology in Poland. In 2021, she founded the Center for Relational Analyses of Culture and Society at the University of Warsaw. She has published numerous articles in international journals, such as European Journal of Social Theory, Journal of Classical Sociology, Time and Society,  Sign System Studies,  Symbolic Interaction, Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Trames, and Polish Sociological Review, as well as several books including  Towards the World Culture Society: Florian Znaniecki’s Culturalism (Frankfurt am Main 2010); Symbole i społeczeństwo  [Symbols and Society] (Warsaw 2007; Russian transl. in 2021);  Przez pryzmat kultury [Through the Prism of Culture] (Warsaw 2015); Etos altruizmu i jego odmiany [The Ethos of Altruism and Its Varieties] (Warsaw 2023). She has also edited books, including Life-World, Intersubjectivity and Culture: Contemporary Dilemmas  (Frankfurt am Main 2016);  Relational Reason, Morals and Sociality  (Berlin 2021, coeditor); Politics of Symbolization Across Central and Eastern Europe (Berlin 2021, co-editor), and written multiple book chapters. Hubert  Knoblauch  Professor and Chair for General Sociology at the Technical University of Berlin; elected member on the Board of the German Sociological Association; co-speaker of the Concerted Research Consortium (SFB) “Re-figuration of Space” in the German Science Foundation (DFG); co-editor of the book series Knowledge, Communication and Society (Routledge); co-editor of the series Refiguration of Space (Routledge); Christa-Hoffman-Riem Award for Qualitative Research. Recent books include Communicative Constructions and the Refiguration of Spaces (2022), editor with Gabriele B. Christmann and Martina Löw; The Communicative Construction of Reality (2020); Die Refiguration der Religion. Perspektiven der Religionssoziologie und Religionswissenschaft (2020); and Social Constructivism as Paradigm? The Legacy of the Social Construction of Reality (editor with Michaela Pfadenhauer).

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Michał  Łuczewski, PhD, sociologist, psychologist, and Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw. In the past decade, he combined his academic career with taking on leadership roles and growing engagement in the public life of Central Eastern Europe. As an academician, he was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University, a Józef Tischner fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, and a lecturer at the joint MA program of Centre for Social Studies in Warsaw and Lancaster University. His books were published in Polish, German, English, and Czech. His first book Eternal Nation. How Catholics Became ̇ Poles? (Odwieczny naród. Polak i katolik w Zmia ̨cej) was awarded Stanisław Ossowski prize and Józef Tischner prize for the best Polish books in the humanities. His book  Moral  Capital. The Politics of History in Late Modernity  (Kapitał moralny. Polityki historyczne w późnej nowoczesnosci) ́ addressed the question of emerging political and public religions in Poland, Germany, and Russia. He is looking for practical applications of relational sociology to organizational development, leadership, and psychotherapy. Jakub Bazyli Motrenko  philosopher, sociologist, and assistant professor at the Faculty of Sociology of the University of Warsaw. He is the author of a book titled The Anti-positivist Turning Point in Polish Sociology (Scholar 2021; in Polish). His interests lie at the meeting point of the philosophy and sociology of science, and the history of sociology. Joonatan Nõgisto  is a PhD candidate and junior researcher in the School of Governance, Law and Society at Tallinn University, Tallinn Estonia. His main research interests include philosophy of social science, social metaphysics, epistemic authority, and wicked problems. His PhD thesis focuses on the methodology of constitutive explanation in political science. Davide Ruggieri  PhD in sociology at the University of Bologna where is a research fellow and adjunct professor. His main academic and scientific interests deal with the relation between culture and individualization within the social processes, particularly focusing on Georg Simmel’s sociology, critical theory, and the relational sociology. Research and archive deliverables abroad in the Universities of Mainz, Frankfurt am Main, Bielefeld, and Munich. He is the author of monographies on Georg Simmel as well as many scientific articles on the aforementioned research interests. Gisèle Sapiro  is Professor of Sociology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and Research Director at the CNRS, member of

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Academia Europeae, silver medal of the CNRS 2021. Her areas of interest are sociology of culture, literature, intellectuals, translation, publishing, freedom of expression, and the epistemology and history of the social and human sciences.She is the author of La Guerre des écrivains, 1940–1953 (Fayard 1999; transl. French Writers’ War, Duke UP, 2014), La Responsabilité de l’écrivain (Seuil 2011), La Sociologie de la littérature (La Découverte 2014; transl. Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Turkish, Bulgarian, English: Stanford UP 2023), Los Intelectuales: profesionalizacion, politizacion, internationalizacion (Eduvim, Cordoba, 2017), Les Ecrivains et la politique en France (Seuil 2018), Peut-on dissocier l’œuvre de l’auteur? (Seuil 2020; transl. Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, forth. Dutch, Korean), Des mots qui tuent (Points Seuil 2020).She has also (co)edited Pour une histoire des sciences sociales (Fayard 2004), Pierre Bourdieu, sociologue (Fayard 2004), Translatio. Le marché de la traduction en France à l’heure de la mondialisation (CNRS Eds. 2008), Les Contradictions de la globalisation éditoriale (Nouveau monde 2009, transl. Spanish), L’Espace intellectuel en Europe (La Découverte 2009), Traduire la littérature et les sciences humaines (DEPS 2012), Sciences humaines en traduction (Institut français 2014, online), Profession? Ecrivain (CNRS Eds 2017), Ideas on the Move in the Social Sciences and Humanities: The International Circulation of Paradigms and Theorists (Palgrave Macmillan 2020), Dictionnaire international Bourdieu (CNRS Ed. 2020), The Routledge Handbook of the History and Sociology of Ideas (2023). Julie Sedel  is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Political Science at the University of Strasbourg. Her research focuses on the role of the media in the construction of public problems (Les médias et la banlieue, 2009, reed. 2013) in relation to spokesmen (with Juhem, Agir par la parole. Asymétrie des l’espace public, PUR, 2016). She is also interested in the reconfigurations of journalism, both from the point of view of hierarchies, its feminization (“The Gender or Mediatic Power”, 2018; “The Gender of Fourth Power”, 2021), and its modes of financing. Defended in 2018, her HDR analyzes press executives through the prism of their recruitment and their trajectories (Dirigeants de médias. Sociologie d’un groupe patronal, PUR, 2021; Sociologie des dirigeants de presse, La Découverte, 2022). Since 2010, she has been working on press shareholding, in the framework of a comparative collective survey with R. Benson, M. Hessérus, and T. Neff, as well as from her own fields. She is studying, with S. Michon, professional reconversions through the careers of former journalists who have gone into politics.

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Peeter  Selg,  PhD, is Professor of Governance and Political Analysis in the School of Governance, Law and Society at Tallinn University, Tallinn Estonia. His work has been published among other outlets in Sociological Theory, PS: Political Science & Politics, Journal of Political Power, and The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology. His recent book (with Georg Sootla and Benjamin Klasche) is titled A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems: From Governance Failure to Failure Governance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). He is the editor (with Nick Crossley) of the book series Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology. Tomasz  Zarycki  is Full Professor and deputy director of the Robert Zajonc Institute for Social Studies at the University of Warsaw, Poland. He holds “habilitation” degree in sociology from the Institute for Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. His research focuses on historical sociology of politics, sociology of elites, sociology of knowledge, critical sociology, and discourse analysis, with particular focus on Polish and Eastern European societies. His latest books in English are: The Polish Elite and Language Sciences: A Perspective of Global Historical Sociology, Palgrave Macmillan 2022, Ideologies of Eastness in Central and Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2014). His earlier books include Gra peryferyjna: Polska politologia w globalnym polu nauk społecznych (A Peripheral Game: Polish Political Sciences in the Global Field of Social Sciences, coauthored with Tomasz Warczok, Warszawa, 2016), Totem inteligencki: Arystokracja, szlachta i ziemiaństwo w polskiej przestrzeni społecznej (An Intelligentsia’s Totem: Aristocracy, Nobility and Landowners in the Polish Social Space, co-authored with Rafał Smoczyński, Warszawa, 2017), Peryferie.  Nowe ujęcia zależnos ́ci centro-peryferyjnych (Peripheries. New Approaches to Centre-­Periphery Relations, Warsaw: Scholar, 2009), Kapitał kulturowy. Inteligencja w Polsce i Rosji (Cultural Capital. The Intelligentsia in Poland and Russia, Warszawa 2008), New Regional Identities and Strategic Essentialism. Case Studies from Poland, Italy and Germany (coauthor, Münster: LIT Verlag, 2007), Region jako kontekst zachowań politycznych (Region as a Context of Political Behavior, Warszawa, 2002). His articles appeared in such journals as Communist and Post-Communist Studies, East European Politics and Societies, Europe-Asia Studies, GeoForum, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Kultura i Społeczeństwo, Russian Education & Society, Social Science Information, Theory and Society, and several others.

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2 Fig. 1.3 Fig. 1.4 Fig. 1.5 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 7.1

The research design according to Donati’s relational sociology 6 Relational analysis seeks to link the micro level (qualitative) and the macro level (quantitative) through the meso level 9 The molecular structure of a social fact as a relational AGIL 13 The morphostatic/morphogenetic dynamics in the black box 23 An example of an action research configured as an ODG system 27 Graphic representation of the MCA. Treatment performed by the author 129 The components of the sociological discipline as a cognitive system (aimed at formulating a theory). (Source: Donati (ed.) 2010: XIV) 156

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List of Diagrams

Diagram 10.1 Diagram 10.2 Diagram 10.3

Triadic relation of communicative action Bühler’s model of pointing Vector sum

225 226 237

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List of Graphs

Graph 5.1 The structure of the French literary field in the 1940s (simplified representation of MCA) Graph 5.2 The relationships between American publishers: shared French authors in translation. (Source: Sapiro 2015) Graph 5.3 MCA of American publishers having translated at least 5 French literary works (1990–2003). Thirteen variables and 45 modalities, of which 10 active variables and 31 active modalities (in red), and 3 illustrative variables and 9 illustrative modalities (in blue). The size of the square indicates the weight of the contribution to the axes Graph 5.4 The relationships between American and French publishers (1990–2003): shared titles. Asymmetrical matrix of American and French publishers according to the number of titles, e.i. titles translated from French into English Graph 5.5 Network of most translated SSH authors from English, German, Italian into French and their publishers (2003–2013). French publishers having translated at least 3 titles and authors having at least 3 titles in translation. In blue the publishers; in red the authors. The size of the nod indicates the centrality according to the number of translated authors. (Source: Sapiro 2023b) Graph 5.6 Network of German and French publishers (2003–2013). French publishers having translated at least 2 titles and German publishers having translated at least 2 titles. The size of the nod indicates the number of translated titles. (Source: Sapiro 2023b)

104 106

108

109

110

112

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List of Graphs

Graph 5.7 Network of French publishers having translated at least 2 titles from English, German and Italian, according to the most translated language (2003–2013). The ties are the number of shared authors. The dimension of the nod represents the number of titles translated. The color indicates the most translated language: blue for English, orange for German and red for Italian. In yellow publishers who translated the same amount of books from different languages. The form of the nod signals the author’s period: squares publish more classics; circles publish more twentiethcentury authors; triangles more contemporary ones; diamond: same proportions (Source: Sapiro 2023b)

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List of Tables

Table 1.1 Table 1.2 Table 6.1 Table 6.2 Table 8.1 Table 8.2

Types of goods according to Wagner (1989) 16 Donati’s typology of social goods 16 Contribution of active modalities to axis 1 128 Contribution of active modalities to axis 2 130 Reconstruction of Znaniecki’s theory of nation and nationalism185 The reconstruction of Znaniecki’s theory of nation-state and world-society188

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PART I

Principles of Relational Methodology

CHAPTER 1

The Methodology of Critical Realist Relational Analysis: The Research Design and Its Underlying Rules Pierpaolo Donati

1   In Search of a Methodology that Makes Relational Sociology Operative In the last three decades, relational sociology has greatly developed as a theoretical paradigm, while the methodological aspects have lagged far behind. In this contribution  from the perspective of critical realism, I would like to clarify how relational sociology, as I understand it, can carry out the empirical analysis of social facts through research rules and conceptual tools capable of bringing out the relational character of social reality. Here I will limit myself to examining the overall logic of relational analysis, i.e., its methodological framework, leaving aside the specification of the technical instruments of field investigation.

P. Donati (*) University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Hałas (ed.), Methodology of Relational Sociology, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41626-2_1

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Sociological research follows from our examination of the question of why a certain social phenomenon (Y) occurs. For example, we may ask ourselves why youth unemployment exists, or why people commit suicide, or why so many couples get divorced. The analysis can be explanatory (erklärung), if it aims to identify the ‘causes’ of the phenomenon Y (i.e., which factors generate or constitute that phenomenon, and in what way); or it can aim to provide an interpretative understanding (verstehen), that is, it can contemplate the meaning of the phenomenon under investigation from a certain point of view. In explanatory analysis, the researcher’s task is to explain the variations of a social fact (Y) in terms of because motives. The variations in Y are due to the different weights of the generative factors and the dynamics of their relationships (for example, why do suicides increase or decrease at different times of the year within the same society?). In interpretative analysis, on the other hand, it is a question of understanding the different meanings that the phenomenon (Y) and its variations have with regard to the in-­ order-­to-motives of the agents of the phenomenon as viewed by the observer (for example, why is the pursuit of individual success in the economic field more widespread in Protestant countries than in Catholic ones?). From the viewpoint of relational sociology, causal and interpretative analyses are not in themselves mutually exclusive. They can be—and in fact are—complementary. This complementarity is achieved using a particular methodological tool, namely the relational version of the AGIL (or MINV)1 scheme, which will be discussed later. The connection between explanatory and interpretive analysis lies in the fact that explanatory analysis which seeks to uncover existing causal (generative) mechanisms concerns social relations, which contain cultural dimensions which are subject to interpretation. For example, the explanatory analysis limits itself to asking what the impact is of certain environmental factors (material and cultural) on suicide rates in different societies A, B, C, D (or during different periods of the year in the same society) and to deduce certain structural generative mechanisms from the comparison between different contexts. However, 1  The relational schema AGIL (adaptation, goal-attainment, integration, latency, respectively understood as means, goals, norms, values) presented here is my revision of the Parsonian theory, which reinterprets the elements and relationships of the schema. In my view, AGIL can be referred to by other acronyms, such as MINV (means, intentionality, norms, values) as presented inDonati (2019), and can be further elaborated as in other writings of mine.

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the analysis of causal factors cannot be done without attributing a meaning to the gesture of suicide as a relational phenomenon (Donati 2022), which implies an interpretative analysis of agency. Therefore, the relational researcher, in my opinion, proceeds through these three steps: (1) first of all s/he will ask himself: “Why does Y happen?”, in such a way that the question is instructive and not trivial, which happens when the phenomenon social Y appears paradoxical or is formulated in a paradoxical key; (2) second, s/he will make a research design suitable for identifying the generative mechanisms of Y and their meaning from a relational point of view; (3) to conclude with an explanation and interpretation of Y as a relational phenomenon. To accomplish this sequence, a few basic rules are useful. I now present these rules in a synthetic way, to clarify how the research design is constructed. Later, I will detail the rules and how to apply them. (I) The first rule states that one must start from the observation of a social fact by distinguishing between the descriptive observation (e.g., one wants to know the figures for unemployment and how unemployment is distributed in a given geographical area, or know the marriage rate trend in a certain population, etc.) on the one hand, and the problematizing observation on the other (e.g., why is there unemployment? why is it increasing/decreasing? what does being unemployed mean? why is the number of polyamorous couples growing?). The process of problematization of the observed social fact concerns both the because-motives and the in-order-to-motives. (II) The second rule states that the observed fact must be defined, hypothetically, as a social relationship generated by a relational context (e.g., unemployment as a relationship, suicide as a relationship, etc.). It is a question of expressing the highlighted sociological fact (e.g., unemployment, marriage, polyamorous couples, suicide, the influence of religion on social mobility) as a phenomenon (Y) consisting of a certain relational process resulting in a given relational structure. The AGIL relational scheme allows us to analyse the structure of the phenomenon as a social relationship. The relational use of the AGIL scheme is designed to clarify both the causal factors generating the phenomenon and the meaning of the phenomenon itself, since both aspects are interconnected. (III) The third rule states that the social fact to be investigated must be expressed as a relationship emerging from a “black box” in which Y’s generative processes take place.

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(IV) The fourth rule states that the black box must be investigated as a process of morphostasis/morphogenesis (i.e., the reproduction of forms or the generation of new social forms) which produces a relational outcome. It is a question of highlighting the peculiarity of the phenomenon Y as a relational sui generis reality with an emerging structure. (V) The fifth rule concerns intervention-oriented research to bring about social change; it states that, where required, sociological analysis may produce operational guidelines for social actions aimed at modifying the phenomenon Y; in my approach, these guidelines derive from setting up the research according to the perspective of what I call ODG (Observation-Diagnosis-Guidance) relational system. Based on these rules, relational analysis constructs the research design as shown in Fig. 1.1. According to Fig. 1.1, the research design follows a logical sequence whereby, in practice, the sociologist proceeds: (1) to problematize the observed social fact Y (rule 1: the researcher formulates the problem); (2) then to define the objective of the research target (i.e., the phenomenon Y to be explained), as a relationship hypothetically configured as AGIL (rule 2); (3) then to identify the Xi factors, and their relationships, that can be considered key to explaining the way in which phenomenon Y is

Fig. 1.1  The research design according to Donati’s relational sociology

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generated, and to transform the Xi factors into indicators (rule 3); (4) after having taken the needed quantitative and/or qualitative empirical information required in order to understand the Xi factors and their interrelationships, the researcher then constructs the black box in which the Xi factors and their Rj relationships generate morphostatic/morphogenetic (M/M) processes in an AGIL structure resulting in the emergence of the Y phenomenon (rule 4). (5) If the research is designed for the purpose of implementing social action in order to modify the phenomenon Y (by means of social policies or relational social work),2 rule 5 also applies. If the researcher realizes that s/he has not clearly identified the Xi and/ or their relationships, or that something is lacking in the black box, then the research design will have to be completely rethought. This is normal for all research, which never really ends. The research design I am proposing uses a ‘constitutive explanatory’ methodology involving an abductive logic, as suggested by Peeter Selg (2022). However, I will not only use the abduction method, which is generally used by pragmatists and phenomenologists. As a critical realist, I want to combine abduction with the method called ‘retroduction’.3 In my opinion, as Ritz (2020) argues, abduction in the Peircean sense and retroduction in the critical realist sense refer to different but complementary modes of inference. The abductive conclusions that result from relying on Peirce’s method provide the starting point for retroductive inferences. The latter informs the sustainability of the former. Together, abduction and retroduction contribute to the theoretical explanation. The use of the relational version of the AGIL allows the researcher not only to analyse how the structural interactions between the elements of AGIL configure the resultant phenomenon Y (erklären), but also to understand the meanings (verstehen) that the single elements of the AGIL (that is, its value-pattern, norms, means and purpose) assume for the agents in the flow of processes and in the modification of structures. The interactions and structural relationships within the AGIL do not exhaust 2  To understand in what sense I refer to relational social work, see Folgheraiter (2004) and Folgheraiter and Raineri (2017). 3  According to Olsen (2007), the four modes of reasoning used most in social research are induction, deduction, abduction and retroduction. In brief, these mean (respectively). Induction: reasoning from data to generality. Deduction: reasoning from generality to data via hypothesis testing. Abduction: reasoning from immersion in a scene to a verbal summary. Retroduction: reasoning about why things happen including why the data appear the way they do (used by critical realists).

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the autonomous contribution given by each element of the AGIL, by virtue of the fact that these elements have a substantial reality of their own, even if the relational games played by the agents/actors can give them different meanings depending on time and context. A relational gaze (Donati 2019) is adopted whereby entities4 and relations are co-principles of reality. It is true that a knife can be used to cut food at the table or to injure or kill a person, but it is always a knife; and, in any case, one cannot caress a person with a knife. It is true, as Shaikh (1990) states, that a loom can be used by a family to make its fabrics, or by a capitalist to make a profit, but it is still a loom; what changes is the relationship of use, not the entity as such. This allows for a deeper understanding of the involvement of agential and non-agential elements in the processes giving rise to the outcome Y.  Here we see the original contribution of the critical realist relational approach. In fact, in most sociologies there is a discrepancy between the understanding of the phenomenon, which is generally sought at the micro level of the phenomenon as a processual transaction between agents (see, for example, Emirbayer 1997), and the explanation of the phenomenon at the macro level, which is most often investigated as an effect of mechanical feedbacks (for example, Marsden and Lin 1982). In this case, the micro and the macro, in effect, can appear as irreconcilable dialectical oppositions, while they are not. Instead, they are ‘polar oppositions’ (Gegensatz) in the sense of Romano Guardini (1925), which means that they define a field of tensions generative of an emerging entity and not a conflicting duality of mutual exclusion. What relational analysis does is to connect the micro and macro levels through the meso level, analysed on the basis of a stratified social ontology and an analytic epistemology (see Fig. 1.2). In this way, the relational approach seeks to avoid both constructivist subjectivism (at the micro level) and mechanical structuralism (at the macro level). Let us now examine in detail each of these rules and the ways in which they are used to construct the research design.

4  By ‘entity’ I mean here the elements of the AGIL (purposes, means, norms and values), as they have their own autonomous reality, which is usually called ‘substance’. Of course, it may be that one element is mistaken for another. For example, work, from being a value in itself can become a means. This changes the meaning and use of that entity (job) in the relational context, but does not change the nature of the entity itself (in the example of work, the object of the work performance retains its nature as an entity endowed with its own reality, although subjectively lived in a different way and made functional to another purpose).

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Fig. 1.2  Relational analysis seeks to link the micro level (qualitative) and the macro level (quantitative) through the meso level

2  First Rule: “Distinguish between descriptive and problematizing observation, and connect them” An empirical sociological study, whatever the reason behind it, aims to comprehend a social fact in terms of its determinants and its consequences. But what is a ‘social fact’ exactly? Let me explain. A social fact is not a material “thing” that exists independently of human action. A fact is social insofar as it is generated by the relations between the social agents/actors. Certainly, the social fact consists of a reality in itself; however, from the point of view of sociological analysis, it becomes a sociological object if, and insofar as, it is observed “in a certain way”. What is ‘social’ in poverty? What is ‘social’ in suicide, unemployment or the breakdown of marriage? The researcher tries to give an answer to these questions by constructing the problem. In doing so, s/he gives importance to certain aspects of the social fact that are of interest to him/her. S/he ‘indicates’ it in a

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certain way, using qualifications which must be given a name. The social fact therefore has two aspects: on the one hand, we have what happens in objective reality (the phenomenon lying outside of the observer); on the other hand, there is the way in which that phenomenon is observed (i.e., what the observer defines as relevant for an understanding and explanation of the social nature or quality of the fact). Sociological knowledge is a way of relating these two aspects. For example, official statistics show that the birth rate is lower in country A than in country B, and one wonders “why is it lower?”. Before collecting data relating to the phenomenon of births, relational observation problematizes the social question inherent in the empirical fact of differences in birth rates, in the sense that the researcher poses the problem of data collection in the light of the question: “why the phenomenon Y (having children) occurs, and what is its meaning for the people involved in the various contexts?”. Since the answer is not immediately evident, the social fact described must be expressed as a sociological (not demographic) problem and investigated as such. This can be considered where ‘real’ sociological analysis begins, i.e., a kind of reasoning that begins with abduction and continues with retroduction. From the very outset, the problematizing observation conditions the way in which the investigation of the phenomenon will be organized, because it is the type of question (the “why?”, i.e., the because motives and in-order-to motives) that determines the direction and formulation of the research design. A question is trivial if the answer is immediate and obvious. On the other hand, it is all the more “instructive” (and, in a certain sense, “intelligent”—that is, it helps to intus legere) the more it aims at resolving an apparent paradox or a counterfactual expectation. For example, it is expected that, if the economic welfare of the population improves, couples will have more resources to have children, but instead the opposite happens: why? If we observe a statistical increase in the number of households, we also expect to see a parallel increase in the number of the target population; however, demographic data indicate that the population is decreasing. Hence the question: why is the population falling while the number of families increases? Other examples include questions like the following: if there is economic growth, why is it that unemployment is on the increase?; why is it that people greet each other when they meet strangers on mountain trails, and yet on city streets they do not? Any social fact contains both objective and subjective dimensions: for instance, poverty has material aspects (the lack of means) as well as

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subjective aspects (the perceptions and experiences of what people lack, the meaning and value of what is lacking). The reason why it is important to see and keep together the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of the social fact Y lies in the fact that the observed reality is a relational network of these dimensions, which are each relational in themselves. It is so in phenomenological reality, and it must remain so in analysis. The quality of what we call the ‘social’ aspect of a fact is inherent in the relational characteristics of that fact. The social aspect is the embedding of actions within a relational context; the phenomenon Y is enmeshed, entangled, embodied, embedded in a network of relationships (Manterys 2021), and yet it must be traced back to the reciprocal actions of the agents, because the influence of the structural conditioning of the network is mediated by the subjective reflexivity of the agents (Donati 2021). In short, relational analysis aims to define social facts as emerging from relational subjects and their relationships in contested relational contexts. If I ask myself “why is there a high rate of poverty in this region?”, the question must be formulated in such a way as to suggest that poverty is a relationship generated by a certain specific framework of relationships which need to be investigated; likewise with unemployment, or the perception of immigrants as a danger, or marital instability and so on. This being the case, the description of a social fact is not immediate, but reflects the need to understand what is social in the phenomenon observed, as said phenomenon refers to a relational context that generates and constitutes it, and determines its own consequences. In summary: the first rule of relational analysis therefore suggests distinguishing between descriptive observation and problematizing observation. True social research begins with the second type of observation, when one wonders why the social fact occurs, and what is “social” about it, which presupposes that the description of the phenomenon gives an answer to the problematization of the social fact.

3   Second Rule: “Define the observed fact as a relational social molecule configured as a relational AGIL scheme” 3.1. Once the social fact Y has been expressed as a problem, we can move on to the second rule. This states that the observed fact Y must be hypothetically defined as a relational product, that is, as a social molecule generated by a specific relationally contested context.

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To say that the phenomenon Y must be expressed as a relational product (i.e., a social relationship having its own structure, albeit produced by transactions and flows of interactions) means that the sociological problem raised (e.g., why unemployment increases? Why does drug use increase? Why fewer people get married?) has to be expressed as a phenomenon constituted by the relational mode of being of social reality, which has its own ‘consistency’. The social facts of unemployment, drug use, birth rates and so on need to be defined as social relations generated by a relational context (not as reified or reifiable ‘things’ or mere ‘events’). To define the phenomenon Y as a social relationship, i.e., a molecular relational structure, I propose to use the relational AGIL scheme (which is a revised version of the Parsonian model).5 What does this scheme consist of? Here we get to the most challenging, difficult and important part of my relational analysis. The researcher needs to be able to define phenomenon Y, by way of hypotheses, as a social relationship composed of factors that can be boiled down to four different dimensions: the means (A from adaptation), the situated goals (G from goal-attainment), the norms (I from integration) and the value-pattern (L from latency), which together constitute the relational form AGIL (Fig. 1.3). AGIL is the acronym—a recursive acronym6—of these four dimensions, which should all be present in order for a social relationship to exist. 5  On the origins and historical development of relational AGIL, and the various ways of reinterpreting it, as MINV or other equivalent acronyms: see Donati (2011, 2021, 2022). 6  Saying that AGIL is a recursive acronym means that each of its letters can be broken down into another AGIL, i.e., in each letter there is another AGIL (the letter A can be broken down into its own AGIL, the letter G into its AGIL, and so on). Theoretically, the distinction process can extend to infinity  (as claimed by Luhmann 1995), but in reality the internal (recursive) differentiation process has its limit. This limit is the point at which a further differentiation can no longer be produced without substantially altering the qualities and properties of the initial phenomenon (the AGIL molecular relational structure) we wanted to investigate. This process can be understood by drawing an analogy with the differentiation of embryonic cells, which originate different tissues and organs, to the point of giving life to a specific human individual; it is only an analogy of course. When I say that the AGIL is a mutually recursive scheme, I mean that the differentiation of relations occurs within each dimension (A, G, I, L) in its own AGIL in relation to what happens in the AGILs of the other dimensions. For example: if A is the market that differs internally through different means, located purposes, norms and values (profit-making ​​ market, social market, civil market, etc.), this involves the modification of the relations that these internal components of the market have with the components of the differentiation which, sooner or later, takes place in the political-administrative system (G), in the associative spheres of civil society (I) and in family networks (L). The mutual recursion of the AGIL schema establishes the new form of social differentiation (in addition to the segmented, stratified and functional ones) that I call relational differentiation, because it occurs in the relationships between the innermost components of the dimensions of the AGIL scheme from which we began the analysis.

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Fig. 1.3  The molecular structure of a social fact as a relational AGIL

The difference with the Parsonian model lies in the fact that the structure of the AGIL relational model does not have a cybernetic order, but is free in its internal relationships and is open to the environment. The four dimensions A, G, I and L can be defined as analytical and relational components. Indeed, it is their relational combination that produces the social fact as a social relationship having a molecular structure. For example, we can define the AGIL dimensions of poverty in a population or social group in the following way: poverty depends on the means (A) available within the group in relation to a certain standard of living desired as an aim (G), which in turn is related to the value-pattern (L) attributed to goods prevailing in the group, and to the norms (I) that combine means, purpose and value attributed to goods. These elements or dimensions of poverty as a social relationship are based on the interactions

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of the group with the external social context (e.g., local, national and international rules of exchange). Each of these elements is related to its own external environment (Donati 2021: 84–86). Here, in Fig.  1.3, I limit myself to pointing out that the means depend on interaction with external material conditions, and that the value-pattern depends on the system of ultimate values (in a broad sense) prevailing within the group. A more complete conceptualization of AGIL defines its four dimensions as suprafunctional components endowed with their own symbolic code that relate to each other through the generalized symbolic means of communication and interchange. The researcher must attribute to the four components A, G, I, L empirical correspondents, at the various micro, meso and macro levels. The AGIL scheme (Fig. 1.3) has a “molecular” structure, as the molecule is what confers the qualities and causal properties to each specific social fact to be investigated as a relational product. Unemployment, drug use and birth rates are examples of relational forms. The form inherent in every empirical fact constitutes what we call the social dimension of the phenomenon (the ‘social’), as it indicates that sui generis reality which relationally links the elements of AGIL in that phenomenon. Each relational product (a certain birth rate, a certain type of poverty, etc.) possesses a molecular structure, insofar as it is made up of simpler elements that must exist and interconnect in a certain way; that is, these elements must be combined relationally to generate a certain phenomenon. The AGIL scheme is tasked with grasping this molecular relational structure of the studied phenomenon. The molecule can be seen as the result of processes that combine two axes: the means-norms axis (A-I), which is the religo (bond) of the relationship, and the value-goals axis (L-G), which is the refero (symbolic reference) of the relationship (with regard to such concepts, see Donati 2021). The phenomenon Y (Fig.  1.1), as the product of the combined effect of these two axes which in operating together, is an emergent. For example, if, in a certain population or social group, drug use is observed to increase, relational analysis will consist of investigating the structure and dynamics of these relationships in the social context of drug users, on the assumption that the increase of consumption is an emerging effect of changes in the combination of means-norms and values-­objectives that characterize the relationships that lead to drug use in that context.

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What I want to highlight is the structure and dynamics of the relationality that characterizes a certain phenomenon or behaviour, which can be observed as a social molecule of its own kind. For example, the doctor-­ patient relationship has a different ‘molecular’ structure from that of the mother-child relationship. The sui generis quality of one relationship differs from that of another in terms both of the elements (A, G, I, L) that compose it and of the links between the specific elements of that relationship. The differences can be analysed in terms of both the internal structure of the relationship and the way in which it relates to other, external relations. In short, the second rule of relational analysis requires sociological problems to be studied in the following manner: (1) the problem is defined as the existence of a phenomenon with a relational molecular structure that gives rise to a certain problem, and this problem comprises four dimensions (A, G, I, L) whose connotations must be empirically verified each time with regard to each social phenomenon; (2) precisely by observing how the four components are present and how they are configured in fact (i.e., in more or less appropriate and consistent ways), can the cause of the problem (deficit or other) in each dimension be highlighted; (3) the exchange relationships and interactions between the four dimensions is investigated; and (4) in the end, the problem to be dealt with must be formulated as the generation of an emergent specific (sui generis) relationality that is considered to be problematic. 3.2. The usefulness of the relational analysis is already evident in this first phase of research (i.e., the interpretation of Y as a molecular structure AGIL) which, after all, determines the nature of the rest of the investigation. Take the following three examples. Example (a): the identification of those social goods not conceived of by lib/lab sociology (i.e., methodological individualism and holism). When dealing with the question of social goods, modern social science divides them into private goods (lib) and public goods (lab) (Donati 2021). In short, it is argued that social goods have the relational structure of one or the other such category. The question then arises: are there no other types of goods? If my problem is to understand a ‘community’ (or a non-profit third-sector organization), how can I do so using the private/ public distinction, that is, using the methodologies of individualism and holism? In investigating the types of goods that serve people’s lives, Antonine Wagner (1992) proposed a typology comprising three types of goods:

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public goods, private goods and collective goods. Their definitions were based on the intersection of two distinctions: sovereign/non-sovereign consumption, rival/non-rival consumption by the users. One space remained empty (see Table 1.1). I thought that by applying the AGIL scheme, I could fill the aforesaid void, and from there give a more detailed and complete meaning to Wagner’s typology. Wagner had identified goods corresponding to the political system (public goods, G), those corresponding to the market (private goods, A) and a category of goods he called ‘collective’ that are produced by voluntary sharing, as in voluntary associations (in the AGIL scheme it was clear to me that they should be placed in I). The letter L in the AGIL scheme remained uncovered, and so I then tried to fill in the gap with what I have called “primary relational goods”, consumed by sovereign and non-rival consumers. The goods that Wagner called “collective”, without being able to distinguish them from those contained in the blank cell, were actually relational goods of an associative character, which I have called secondary relational goods to distinguish them from the primary goods pertaining to families and informal networks (see Table 1.2) (Donati and Archer 2015: 210). There are many examples of analysis of common goods conducted with the relational methodology set out here, which I do not have enough space to explain in detail (see Donati 2014; Sánchez and Jovita 2018). Example (b): Unseen citizenship rights. Table 1.1  Types of goods according to Wagner (1989)

Non-sovereign consumption Sovereign consumption

Non-rival consumption

Rival consumption

Public goods ?

Collective goods Private goods

Table 1.2  Donati’s typology of social goods Non-competitive consumption Non-sovereign consumption

Sovereign consumption

Public goods (governed by the political-administrative system) (G)

Competitive consumption

Secondary relational goods (associative, as in the organized third sector) (I) Primary relational goods Private goods (free market) (families and informal networks) (A) (L)

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The debate on citizenship rights has not so far clarified the difference between human rights and the other rights that make up the complex of rights of citizenship rights (i.e., civil, political and social ones). To clarify the differences, I have applied the AGIL methodology to the theory of T.H. Marshall (Citizenship and Social Class, 1950), which for a long time was regarded as the leading theory in this field. According to Marshall, citizenship rights are of three types: civil rights (those relating to individual freedoms, freedom of speech, the right of association, the right to due process when accused of a crime, and so on); political rights (i.e., electoral rights in a democratic political system); and social (or welfare) rights. Once again, the accounts did not add up, because this theory included A (civil rights), G (political rights) and I (social welfare rights), but the L was missing (L is always the most problematic dimension). Hence the question: what could the L of citizenship rights contain? The answer I gave was that the L included human rights, which therefore had to be distinguished from civil rights under the AGIL scheme (Donati 1985: 405–437). The relational approach also leads to criticism of the idea of human rights proposed by Parsons. Parsons had identified them as cultural rights in the form of rights to higher education. In fact, from the viewpoint of relational analysis, rights are to be seen as social relations, and human rights are not the rights to a performance (e.g., obtaining an educational qualification), but are precisely rights to those social relations that make humans flourish; for example, the right of children to be raised in a family rather than on the street or in an institution. However, that was not all. According to Marshall, citizenship rights had historically emerged “in single file”: that is, first civil rights, then political rights and then social rights. In light of the AGIL scheme interpreted relationally, that is, with free relations between the four elements (A, G, I, L), this may not be true, since on an historical level, the four dimensions of citizenship rights may have developed following very different, and not necessarily linear, paths. In fact, historical research conducted after Marshall showed that this was in fact the case. For example, in some countries political rights were established before civil rights, while in other countries political democracy was not the consequence of liberal civil rights but of a revolution. In other nations social rights exist but civil rights are scarce, and political rights are a mere facade (e.g., in dictatorial regimes). Example (c): the identification of civil welfare.

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When pondering the problem of coming to grips with the various types of welfare policies, I examined Richard Titmuss’ theory on welfare state models (Social Policy: An Introduction, 1974). He developed three models of the welfare state: the residual welfare state model (which discharges the responsibility of welfare to the family); the acquisitive-performative welfare state model (which links welfare to the “merits” that each person can obtain in carrying out his or her job, and to the social security that can be acquired on a voluntary contractual basis); and the institutional-­ redistributive welfare state model (based on the idea that citizens must be guaranteed social well-being by the state according to their needs, regardless of whether they are ‘deserving’ or not). By applying the AGIL approach to this theory, the result is an empty AGIL cell. The acquisitive-­ meritocratic model corresponds to the primacy of the market (A), the institutional model to the primacy of the state (G) and the residual model to the family (L): but what corresponds to the I? Clearly, Titmuss had forgotten the third-sector organizations, associations and entities (foundations, forms of cooperatives, NGOs) that care for the frail, the poor, the sick and the various fringes of civil society, which he evidently did not regard as generators of social welfare. To put it briefly, there was no civil welfare, which I identified in the social integration cell (the “I” of AGIL). Applying the relational methodology, it was clear that the welfare state could assume many more very different forms, precisely due to the fact: (1) that it is necessary to take into account the role of the third dimension (the third sector, the community organizations) in the creation of welfare, (2) and this entails redefining the other three dimensions (residual, acquisitive-­meritocratic, institutional) and their interrelations with other welfare producers. In short, welfare systems could, and still can, be configured in a more complex, flexible and rich relational manner than was indicated by Titmuss. Many other examples could be given here. In the past, I have applied this methodology to many topics, such as, for example, the analysis of health (in the WHO definition) as a social relationship, the study of risk, investigations into family transformations, the dynamics of social networks, the prevention of certain diseases, the effectiveness of social services in helping people, the vicissitudes of social capital and many other topics.

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4  Third Rule: “Express social fact Y as the product of a combination of Xi factors in a black box” The third rule states that the phenomenon Y (already interpreted and expressed as a relation) must be reconstructed as the effect of a set of factors and processes which, combining in certain ways within a “black box” inaccessible to the naked eye, bring out Y as an emergent (as shown in Fig. 1.1). We now enter the black box, i.e., the configuration of the space-time mode in which the objective and subjective factors Xi are supposed to combine with each other to generate the outcome Y. Of course, the black box can be both ‘trivial’ and ‘non-trivial’. It is considered trivial when the inputs into the black box always produce the same output. It is considered non-trivial or complex when it generates different effects from the same inputs due to its degrees of internal contingency. The structure of the black box can be designed according to the configuration of AGIL. Let us examine the individual dimensions A, G, I, L concerned. (G) The black box, observed as a process, is a ‘system’ that establishes its internal relationships on the basis of a situated goal (G). If I observe a person going to the bar, the person’s aim will presumably be to get some coffee or other drink or item that can be found at the bar, while the bartender is there to serve such items to that person. The relationship that connects one subject to another (customer-bartender) is first of all characterized by the situated purpose for which a subject has acted. The form of the relationship is characterized by the complementarity between that purpose (“get something at the bar”) and its contact person (the bartender in his bar). If the individual went to ask the butcher for a coffee, that relationship would not arise, and the butcher would probably reject any such relationship. Likewise, if the person went to the bar only to meet a friend, the relationship sought would have another form. As obvious as this consideration may seem, it is a fact of daily life that in the face of a certain need or desire, people do not know which relationships to activate. And even when they activate them, they never quite know how to qualify them. The case of the bar is trivial, but we could make non-trivial examples, such as looking for a partner or a job, not to mention the needs relating to existential problems.

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(A) The system observed as a black box contains means in relation to the purpose for which the system is implemented. The means can be different and more or less suitable for the purpose. What are they? This obviously depends on the case in question. In the customer-bartender relationship, for example, there are specific means concerned (money is what you need to get a coffee in a bar, or is friendship with the bartender enough?); in the doctor-patient relationship, the proper means are the details and information that the patient gives to the doctor in order to receive a correct diagnosis and treatment, or is the visit just to be consoled? Sometimes they are enigmatic: what means can be used to recover the trust or esteem of colleagues, or lost love? The use of inadequate means modifies the relational quality and the structure of the outcome Y as AGIL. (I) The system seen as a black box has norms that are specific to that relationship. When we are at the bar we observe certain rules, and these rules differ from those that apply when we visit the doctor for a check-up. (L) The system viewed as a black box has a cultural pattern of value attached to the desired thing (purpose G) seen as a relationship (Lidz 1981 calls it ‘value-relevance’). This value is in fact latent, because it is most often not well aware, often habitual, for the social agent/actor. The value can be seen as a criterion of choice of how to organize the relationship with the Other. The value criterion when going to the bar is the customer’s wish for a moment’s relief by drinking or eating something, and the bartender is supposed to behave accordingly, and thus to try and offer a good degree of relief (if this were not the case empirically, the relational analysis would serve precisely to highlight how and why it is not). The value criterion of going to the doctor consists in the treatment of ill-­ health, both on the part of the patient and, one presumes, on the part of the doctor. Obviously, if Ego and Alter do not share the meaning (value) of the relationship, this changes the outcome Y. The researcher obtains important information from the individual subjects involved, but his/her analysis does not concern their inner conversation. It concerns the quality and causal properties of the social relationship emerging from them. Sociology does not look “into the minds of individuals”. Rather the opposite is true. The analysis of the interpersonal relationship that emerge between Ego and Alter reveals the subjectivity of the agents, given that people are individuals-in-relationships, and the relationships are constitutive of the making (to flourish or not to flourish) of

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the human person. The biological nature and the inner psychic and moral consciousness of the person remain outside of the scope of sociological analysis and are dealt with by other disciplines. The same can be said when the agents/actors are collective (corporate) and not individual. If, for example, the sociologist investigates electoral behaviour, s/he does not investigate what happens in the psyche and moral conscience of individuals, but studies how political opinions are formed and expressed as social relations in a certain contested relational context, and only then will s/he be able to infer anything about what were the real causes which induced voters to cast their vote and the meaning given to the vote. The example of the analysis of electoral behaviour offers us the opportunity to clarify the difference between understanding and explaining the phenomenon Y. On the one hand, explanation concerns the mechanisms by which subjective motives (values and purposes) combine with situational factors (the means to express the vote, for example, paper or electronic, and the norms of the electoral system)—the religo or A-I axis of the relationship—so as to generate the phenomenon Y (electoral behaviour). On the other hand, the understanding of the phenomenon concerns the subjective motivations of the actors in referring to the objectives (G) with value criteria (L) different from those referred to the other voters. These aspects constitute the refero—that is, the L-G axis—of the relationship. The black box is a relational structure that emerges from the combination of these two axes through morphostatic/morphogenetic processes. It is there that the specifics of relational analysis are exercised, as I shall explain in the following section. The result of a well-executed relational analysis offers a comprehensive explanation of the emergence of Y from the Xi factors and their relations Rj, where Y indicates a relationship between Ego and Alter (individuals or groups) which corresponds to the relational structure of the black box. The construction of the research design up to this point can be summarized as follows. We start from the observation that there is a social fact Y. It is thematized as a problem (why does it exist? How is it possible?). It is defined as a relationship (AGIL). Then one wonders why such a relationship has emerged. The design is constructed by identifying the subjective factors (value orientations and attitudes) and objective factors (adaptive conditions, i.e., means and norms, independent of subjective will) that are deemed key to the generation of the observed fact. The Xi

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factors are then placed in a relational structure (the system of relations AGIL) constituting the ‘black box’. This black box must offer a comprehensive explanation of how the phenomenon Y is produced. The question is: how does the black box work? We shall see in the next section.

5  Fourth Rule: “Investigate the black box as a morphostatic/morphogenetic process that generates the social fact Y” The fourth rule says that the black box can be conceptualized as a morphostatic/morphogenetic process of structures and relationships interpreted according to the AGIL scheme. The morphogenetic analysis of the black box aims to highlight the sui generis character of the emerging phenomenon (Donati 2021: 71–110). Let us see what that means exactly. The Xi factors that the researcher identifies as relevant information are, at this point, placed in one of the four dimensions of the AGIL configuration in the black box. Whether they are placed in A or G or I or L depends on the meaningful position they have in relation to the other factors. For example, if the researcher assumes that the disposable income of individual Z is a relevant factor in explaining-understanding his/her way of life (life opportunities, conceived as possible social relationships), then the researcher will reflect on where to place the income of the individual Z in his/her AGIL relational system depending on whether this income is considered by him/her as a means with which to pursue another purpose (and therefore to be placed in A) or rather as an end in itself (and therefore to be placed in G). Once the researcher has ‘filled’ the AGIL of the black box with the Xi factors, then s/he has obtained the initial (hypothetical) structure of the Y-relationship phenomenon to be investigated. The configuration given to the black box must be such as to permit the interactions between the factors Xi over time/in space to be highlighted, so as to be able to describe the processes of morphostasis/morphogenesis that generate Y as a sui generis social reality (relationship) having its own peculiar structure (see Fig. 1.4). Figure 1.4 indicates that social fact Y is understood and explained as an emerging phenomenon, starting from the initial (hypothetical) structure of the phenomenon (which we call the “Y1-relation”—the initial AGIL) which has been subsequently modified over time by the interaction

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Fig. 1.4  The morphostatic/morphogenetic dynamics in the black box

between the Xi factors, acted on by the actors, who have produced a new relational structure, the “Y4-relationship” phenomenon (the final AGIL in this cycle, which will be the starting point of a new cycle). If Y4 is equal to Y1, then the process is morphostatic. If they are significantly different, then the process is morphogenetic. It can be said that in static societies (such as simple or primitive ones), morphostasis is prevalent, while in modernizing societies morphostasis (or pure reproduction) is something of an exceptional, borderline case. The relational analysis emphasizes that the social fact always has an emergent character. What does “emergent” mean? The time has come for us to clarify the difference between additive and emergent phenomena. The distinction arises from the fact that the logics governing social relations are incapable of being reduced to the logics governing individual actions, since relational logics are the expression of another order of reality. When relational logics are such as to create social forms endowed with the characteristics of irreducible systems, we speak of emergent effects. What are the characteristics of the emergents? They are: non-aggregativity, non-decomposability (or quasi-decomposability), high diffusivity or low localization and the high complexity of interaction. (i) First difference: the emerging phenomenon is constituted by interactive processes and not simply additive combinations. Aggregative phenomena arise from the sum or juxtaposition of the elements and properties of the component parts, while a phenomenon is considered emergent when it is

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a relational form that arises from interactions which generate an entity that possesses its own causal qualities and properties independent of the qualities and properties of the individual elements that compose it. Non-­ aggregative systems constituted interactively. (ii) Second difference: the emerging phenomenon is not decomposable. Aggregative systems are modular because they can be broken down into parts that operate through their intrinsic functions and exchange only their inputs/outputs; they can replace parts, remove them, break them down and re-aggregate them, since there are no substantial relationships between the parts that act as load-bearing structures. Emerging systems are governed in the opposite way, because the relations between the parts are qualifying for the system itself. Parsons’ AGIL is modular, while relational AGIL is non-modular. For example, a bureaucratic organization (such as a municipality) is made up of parts that have their own functions and have to exchange their inputs/outputs. Anything that goes beyond mere bureaucratic exchanges represents a problem because the system has difficulty seeing and managing the effects of the relations between the parts. An organization (for example, non-profit) that is established and operates in view of relational goods, on the other hand, is of the second type in that it operates on the relationships between the parts, and governs its effects by operating on these relationships; here, the modular characteristics are not valid because the internal and external interactions continually modify the way the parts operate, and, if a part is missing, the emergent effect is not produced. This is why we can say that third-sector systems producing relational goods are non-decomposable (or scarcely decomposable). (iii) Third difference: the emerging phenomenon is diffusive, that is, it is weakly localized. Localizable systems are those in which each function corresponds to a physical place (a structure, an institution) in which it resides. Non-localizable systems, on the other hand, are those in which the functions are not physically localizable in a role or in a specialized structure or in a circumscribed place. Their functions are “widespread”, that is, participants share in them to a considerable degree. For example, social welfare states that operate as bureaucratic organizations are of the first type. The social networks that provide welfare or social assistance through informal relationships (informal helpers), on the other hand, are of the second type. More generally, third-sector welfare organizations have the properties of systems with a high degree of diffusivity (i.e., weak localization), since

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their functions are not spatially or physically localizable, not being specialized to the point where they can be located in a precise place. (iv) Fourth difference: the emerging phenomenon is characterized by its highly complex interaction. Social systems have a different complexity due to the fact that the interaction can be linear or non-linear (linear insofar as their response is directly or inversely proportional to a given variable; non-­ linear meaning that there is no predictable proportionality). Aggregative systems generally behave in a linear manner, while non-aggregative ones display non-linear behaviour. For example, hospitalization of a patient typically follows linear procedures. On the other hand, assisting a child or an elderly person suffering from a chronic disability on a daily basis is activity characterized by non-linear interactions with often unpredictable outcomes. More generally, in third-sector organizations the interaction is predominantly non-linear. This is like saying that the third sector is more complex than other societal spheres such as the state and the market. In summary, the peculiarity of the third-sector sphere lies in the fact that the organizations that are part of the third sector are characterized to a greater extent by non-aggregation, non-decomposability, limited localization and complex interaction. These types of systems are also the ones that are most likely to generate relational goods (Donati 2021). The difference between additive and emergent social facts is also crucial for disguising so-called collective movements. There are collective movements of the additive-aggregative type (such as those of pure protest, which are born and die without producing new social subjects) and others instead of the emergent type which are formed on the basis of networks that generate social subjects (communities, cooperatives, other organized associative entities).

6  Fifth Rule: “If the research is aimed at social intervention, configure the research design as an ODG system” As I have already said, relational analysis can be directed towards knowledge (the understanding and explanation) of the social fact, or may go further and also aim to support social action to change an unwanted phenomenon (e.g., poverty traps, vicious circles of social deprivation, unemployment, drug addiction) understood as a product of a relational context. The fifth rule provides support for social interventions designed to modify

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phenomenon Y by operating on the processes that generate it. It is a question of understanding how to proceed in this case. To apply this rule, research should be designed from the outset in such a way as to foresee its practical impact. This presupposes the adoption of a research approach entailing a reflexive sequence of three operations: (i) The relational observation (O): by relational observation I mean the ability to interpret a social fact Y as a problematic relationship, that is, as an undesirable state of affairs consisting of certain relations generated by a potentially modifiable relational context. (ii) The relational diagnosis (D): by relational diagnosis I mean the introduction of an evaluative distinction (e.g., between satisfactory and unsatisfactory, physiological and pathological) in the observed state of affairs. These distinctions are obviously cultural elaborations. The distinction can be made by the observer, by the actors involved, or by a third party. (iii) The relational guidance (G): by relational guidance I mean the social intervention designed to change a state of things Y considered undesirable (e.g., deviant, unsatisfactory, pathological) through the modification of the factors generating Y; in practice, it is a question of designing the research in such a way that, once the dynamics that produce the social problem Y are known, a steered morphogenetic process that produces a change in the relational context so as to achieve a desired state of things can be implemented. For example, if the disorganization of a family is due to people’s rhythms, schedules and working conditions, it means changing the relationship between the family and the workplace with a relational employment contract that allows people to have a style of life that is balanced between the two spheres. The above sequence, called the ODG system, allows the sociologist to go from the cognitive level (why phenomena occur) to the operational level (modification of phenomena), which is the level of professional application. ODG systems are the specific systems that relational theory offers to participatory action research and practice. The above sequence (i–ii–iii) is reflexive, in the sense that it must continually operate on itself by starting over again. In short, with reference to Fig.  1.4, the researcher starts from an ODG system at time T1 and re-­ applies it to the T4 structure that the operating system has produced through the interaction of the actors.

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For example, if I observe that problematic behaviour (such as drug abuse, violence, bullying, etc.) is on the rise among the young people of a specific neighbourhood, and I diagnose this phenomenon as a social pathology emerging from the relational context in which they live, relational guidance will consist in involving the actors from that neighbourhood (first of all young people and their families, then neighbours, schools, social workers, etc.), guiding them using appropriate non-directive support methodologies in order that they may reflexively interact with one another in order to generate a morphogenetic process that can lead to the emergence of social relations favourable to the avoidance of anti-social misbehaviours. A concrete example of analysis and social intervention to prevent deviant youth gangs and make them desist from crime is summarized in Fig. 1.5. Suppose the researcher is charged with carrying out a field research aimed at avoiding the formation of gangs of deviant youth in a certain territorial area. Having established the problem (1), the next step (2) consists

Fig. 1.5  An example of an action research configured as an ODG system

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in carrying out a research project that defines deviance as a social relationship and the deviant group of young people as a particular relational network, which can hypothetically be investigated as an AGIL relational structure. Then (3) the subjective and objective Xi factors that push young people to commit crimes must be investigated. These factors are placed in the four dimensions of AGIL (4), assuming that their interactions and relationships generate a social network from which the juvenile gang emerges. If this is verified, it is then a question of assess how it is possible to modify the social network that generates a youth gang by intervening on the factors (elements and relationships) that characterize it (5). The cycle resumes by modifying the previous sequence (points 2–5) with experimental interventions to verify that the modified social network (the new AGIL black box in cell 4) generates less or no deviant bands (final AGIL in cell 5). To design social intervention, as shown in Fig. 1.5, AGIL is strategic as the intervention consists, precisely, in modifying the configuration of the relational network that generates the youth gang (AGIL) in order to reach a more satisfactory state of affairs. The action research system should modify the four components of AGIL and their relationships in such a way that the specific contributions of each component operate in view of the desired result(s). The ODG systems operate through actions called ‘networking actions’ as they aim to involve all the stakeholders interested in solving a social problem. As a matter of fact, relational guidance is characterized by changing relationships through and together with the subjects who experience them. The effectiveness, efficiency, regulatory and value-cohesion capacity of each specific network will depend on how the AGIL performs its functions in a super-functional way: that is, how it responds to needs that are not limited to explicit and formalized objectives, but also include the potential needs that can develop over time and in space; in other words, needs that go beyond mere functional performance, because they are capable of emergence. A typical emergent product is the relational good, defined as a good that consists of social relations, and is neither strictly public nor strictly private, but is shared on the basis of primary and/or secondary associative relations.

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7   In Which Sense Relational Analysis Is Value-Free Relational analysis is value-free in a specific sense. After Max Weber, sociological research was dominated by the idea that the sociologist should adopt an agnostic methodology. In practice, this means that sociologists should only provide data and knowledge, while refraining from any personal reference to ethical values or criteria (Wertfreiheit). This is usually called ‘non-evaluative sociology’. What does relational sociology have to say about it? My answer is that sociology is very rarely non-evaluative, and in principle cannot avoid problems of value, starting from the very formulation of the research design. The idea of a value-free methodology responds to just demands, but it needs to be discussed as it can be a source of error and misunderstanding. Indeed, if taken to the extreme, ethical agnosticism “neutralizes” sociology, that is, it condemns it to total sterility from the point of view of its practical influence. It is no coincidence that sociology suffers from a permanent crisis and is often condemned to uselessness. This permanent crisis is to the result of the ambiguous relationship that sociology has always had with ethics and morals. Said relationship is both sought after and denied at the same time, while in fact the agnostic methodological criterion favours the lack of any ideal inspiration of sociology (Burawoy 2005; Hałas 2016). How does the relational analysis I have presented so far respond to the problem of the relationship between ethics and sociology? Well, first of all we need to distinguish between positive and positivistic science. Undoubtedly, sociology is a positive science since it “stands by the facts”: it cannot and must not manipulate the facts at will. It would be scientifically incorrect for the sociological observer to evaluate phenomena based on his/her own values. However, this does not mean that sociological research must be a positivist science, if by positivism we mean an approach that requires the sociologist to treat social facts as having no ethical value. If the sociologist behaves in this ‘positivist’ way, then s/he is merely following a fashion: s/he specifically denies the “stuff” of the social, which is its “morality”, that is, the fact that social phenomena are imbued with values and norms. In other words, the researcher ends up by treating social facts as if they were determined by mechanical automatisms, when on the

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contrary they depend on the strongly contingent value choices of the subjects who create social relations. If at a given historical moment certain social fashions or trends take root, this does not mean that social evolution must necessarily follow in that direction. The criterion of non-valuation indicated by Max Weber (1949) must be understood in the sense that while the sociological observer ought not to make his/her own judgments or introduce his/her own values (Wert) into the analysis, nonetheless he/she cannot ignore the fact that the matter dealt with, that is, social relationships, always contain a “relation to value” (Wertbeziehung) (Lidz 1981). Again, the category of the ‘social relation’ (which means reciprocal action) leaves no way out: relational analysis cannot avoid considering values. Analysis will be value-­ free to the extent that he researcher honestly declares what values he/she refers to and subjects his/her value choices to scrutiny for their justifiability.

References Burawoy, Michael. 2005. 2004 American Sociological Association Presidential Address: For Public Sociology. The British Journal of Sociology 56 (2): 259–294. Donati, Pierpaolo. 1985. Considerazioni conclusive: Vecchie e nuove politiche sociali. In Le frontiere della politica sociale. Redistribuzione e nuova cittadinanza, ed. P. Donati, 405–437. Milan: FrancoAngeli. ———. 2011. Relational Sociology. A New Paradigm for the Social Sciences. London: Routledge. ———. 2014. Relational Goods and Their Subjects: The Ferment of a New Civil Society and Civil Democracy. Recerca. Journal of Thought and Analysis 14: 19–46. ———. 2019. The Sociological Gaze: When, How and Why Is It Relational? In The Relational Gaze on a Changing Society, ed. E. Carrà and P. Terenzi, 11–44. Berlin: Peter Lang. ———. 2021. Transcending Modernity with Relational Thinking. London: Routledge. ———. 2022. A Critical Realist View of Gesture. International Review of Sociology 32 (2): 217–237. Donati, Pierpaolo, and Margaret Archer. 2015. The Relational Subject. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Emirbayer, Mustafa. 1997. Manifesto for a Relational Sociology. American Journal of Sociology 103 (2): 281–317.

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Folgheraiter, Fabio. 2004. Relational Social Work. Toward Networking and Societal Practices. London: J. Kingsley. Folgheraiter, Fabio, and Maria Luisa Raineri. 2017. The Principles and Key Ideas of Relational Social Work. Relational Social Work 1 (1): 12–18. Guardini, Romano. 1925. Der Gegensatz: Versuche zu einer Philosophie des Lebendig. Mainz: Matthias-Grunewald. Hałas, Elzbieta. 2016. Through Social Values to the Reinterpretation of Sociology’s Ethical Neutrality. Sociologia e Politiche Sociali 19 (1): 67–79. Lidz, Victor. 1981. Conceptions of Value-Relevance and the Theory of Action. Sociological Inquiry 51 (3–4): 371–408. Luhmann, Niklas. 1995. Social Systems. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Manterys, Aleksander. 2021. Social Bonds and the Relational Nature of Embeddedness. In Relational Reason, Morals and Sociality, ed. Elżbieta Hałas and Aleksander Manterys, 95–128. Berlin: Peter Lang. Marsden, Peter, and Nan Lin, eds. 1982. Social Structure and Network Analysis. Beverley Hills: Sage. Olsen, Wendy. 2007. Critical Realist Explorations in Methodology. Methodological Innovations Online 2 (2): 1–5. Ritz, Bridget. 2020. Comparing Abduction and Retroduction in Peircean Pragmatism and Critical Realism. Journal of Critical Realism 19 (5): 456–465. Sánchez, Guadarrama, and Gloria Jovita. 2018. Las asociaciones y los bienes que generan. El debate conceptual y metodológico. Espiral, Estudios sobre Estado y Sociedad 25 (71): 39–70. Selg, Peeter. 2022. What Is Relational Explanation. Paper Presented at the Conference “Methodology of relational sociology. Approaches and analyses”, University of Warsaw, March 14–15. Shaikh, Anwar. 1990. Capital as a Social Relation. In The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economic Theory and Doctrine, ed. J. Eatwell, M. Milgate, and P. Newman, 72–78. London: The Macmillan Press. Wagner, Antonine. 1992. On Sharing. Preface to an Economic Theory of Voluntary Action. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 20 (4): 359–370. Weaver, Beth. 2016. Offending and Desistance. The Importance of Social Relations. London: Routledge. Weber, Max. 1949. The Methodology of the Social Sciences. New York: Free Press.

CHAPTER 2

The Grounds of Relational Explanation Joonatan Nõgisto and Peeter Selg

1   Introduction Methodological advancement within a scientific discipline requires clarity about research objectives along with conditions for success and failure. Curiously, there has been little explicit attention within relational sociology to how a relational worldview fits with and enables specific kinds of social scientific achievement such as description, interpretation, or explanation. This chapter begins to fill this gap by focusing on explanation within the context of relational sociology. What characterizes the explanatory commitments of relational sociology? How can adopting a relational perspective offer novel and insightful explanatory knowledge on the why of social phenomena? In answering these questions, we seek to explicate a concept of relational explanation—a distinctive form of constitutive explanation characteristic of the research program of relational sociology. Our account of relational explanation as constitutive explanation connects with a recent focus on non-causal explanations within the sciences, a move that has challenged the longstanding orthodoxy that all explanation

J. Nõgisto • P. Selg (*) Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Hałas (ed.), Methodology of Relational Sociology, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41626-2_2

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is causal (Lange 2018). By turning to recent developments on constitutive explanation in the philosophy of science, and on grounding in analytic metaphysics, we believe we can best make sense of the central explanatory commitment of relational sociology to understand social phenomena through the social relations that constitute them. We can thereby begin to bring into focus methodological principles for how such commitments can be met. As we will argue, relational explanations entail a distinctively abductive mode of reasoning in the form of “a processual movement from puzzling empirical phenomena to theoretical propositions and other observations making them intelligible and then back to the phenomena through which both the identity of the phenomena as well as the corresponding theoretical premises and statuses of other observations can change, and the process is never completely final, since the ‘final’ result itself is a part of the process” (Selg and Ventsel 2020, 233). Bringing these various conceptual tools together, we build up to a view of relational explanations as explanations of nonseparable social phenomena through abductive inference to their common ground in features of dynamic and unfolding social relations. In Sect. 2, we unpack what we take as the central explanatory commitment of relational sociology to understand social phenomena through the social relations that constitute them. Section 3 presents recent literature on constitutive explanation and grounding and introduces the notion of “common ground inference” (Ismael and Schaffer 2020). Finally, in Sect. 4, with new tools in hand, we explicate the concept of relational explanation and demonstrate its processual and abductive nature by considering an example from Marx’s critique of political economy.

2  The Explanatory Commitments of Relational Sociology There is a certain prestige attached to explanation compared to other scientific achievements such as description, interpretation, or typology. Explanatory knowledge (knowledge why) is thought to provide deeper insight than “merely” factual knowledge (knowledge that). As reflected in an often-quoted passage from Aristotle’s Physics, “men do not think they know a thing till they have grasped the ‘why’ of it” (1991, 194b16–194b23). To know that something is the case is well and good, to know why it is the case is better still—the additional value that explanatory knowledge is

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thought to provide is typically known as understanding (Friedman 1974). In view that social science can hope to provide a deeper understanding of what goes on in the social world, it is no surprise that our most widely known methodological texts devote a great deal of space and detail to covering the intricacies involved in explaining social phenomena (Gerring 2012, Part III; Creswell and Creswell 2018; King et al. 2021). Of course, controversies abound as to under what conditions explanations are possible, and “behind many ostensibly theoretical disputes […] lurk disagreements about the nature of valid explanations” (Tilly 2001, 22). Different traditions have advanced opposing views on whether explanations are best or even exclusively sought in covering laws, the propensities of social actors, the functional needs of social systems, or generative causal mechanisms and processes (Tilly 2001; Elster 2015, Part I). We propose that the issue of explanation is similarly crucial for understanding the positioning of relational sociology within the broader social sciences. Relational sociology is not simply the “study of social relations”—it is difficult to imagine a social science that did not study social relations in one form or another. Even the most atomistic of social theories recognize that human beings are related to each other in various ways through their mutual orientation in thought and action. Therefore, what is distinctive about relational sociology cannot be a particular object of research. Instead, relational sociology is above all characterized by the unique structuring role that its adherents attribute to social relations. A quick glance at any work on relational sociology published over the past few decades sees this point highlighted in a variety of ways, in references to the primacy (Selg 2020, 32) or fundamentality (Powell 2013, 90) of social relations as units of analysis. Summarizing different strands of relational thinking within the movement, Vandenberghe (2018, 39) proposes that what they all have in common is the view that “at the ontological level, […] relations essentially create social life.” Similarly, as presented in another general overview of the field of relational sociology, Dépelteau (2018a, 3) suggests that for relational sociologists “whatever we study and however we do it, the mode of production of social phenomena is based on relations between interactants.” In these various ways, over and against various individualisms and holisms, relational sociologists express an ontological commitment to the unique productive or generative structuring role of social relations at the heart of social life. Notions such as production, generation, or determination are intimately connected to the notion of dependence. It is natural to think that

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what is produced, generated, or determined somehow depends upon its source: without the latter, the former would not be (what it is). To summarize a common theme in the contemporary epistemological literature on explanation, explanation is about the tracing of dependencies backed by underlying relations of productive determination, that is, relations that “make or bring about certain events or facts so that they are responsible for their occurrence or obtaining” (Roski 2021, 14124, see also Kim 1994; Ruben 2012, Part VII). To provide an explanation of something (an explanandum) is to give an account of what was responsible for producing, generating, or determining the phenomenon to be explained (the explanans). To be sure, explanation is an irreducibly epistemic activity and thus involves context-dependent and pragmatic considerations about the agents engaged in giving and receiving them. In this perspective, explanation involves “the furnishing of a putative explanans, whose justification is related to an ability to make intelligible the explanandum under investigation” (Howarth and Glynos 2007, 47). While “justification” and “intelligibility” clearly make sense only in view of epistemic agents, the “ability to make intelligible” is something we expect of the furnished explanans. The concept of explanation is simultaneously epistemic and ontic: for an explanans to have this ability (and thus to be justified as an explanans), it must succeed in being related to the explanandum in the appropriate ontological way. Put another way, “Objects or events in the world must really stand in some appropriate ‘structural’ relation before explanation is possible. Explanations work, when they do, only in virtue of underlying determinative or dependency structural relations in the world” (Ruben 2012, 194, italics in the original). In view of relational sociology, social relations are justified as the fundamental unit of analysis because they are productively responsible for all social phenomena and, therefore, unique in their ability to make intelligible the social world. The central ontological commitment of relational sociology thus leads quite naturally to an explanatory commitment to understand social phenomena through the social relations that produce them. What does it mean for social relations to “produce” social phenomena in view of relational sociology? For social scientists who are accustomed to thinking of explanation as involving the making of valid causal inferences, the productive role of social relations might first be interpreted as a claim that social relations play the dominant causal role in the social world. In this view, relational sociologists would merely be adding a new contender to the list of candidates for “valid” causal explanations: instead of causal

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mechanisms or covering laws, one should look toward social relations (however conceived) as playing the crucial causative role. But this is not quite what relational sociologists have in mind when they emphasize the primacy or fundamentality of social relations. One can study social relations as something that are “between” or “among” social entities (actors, individuals, groups) that themselves are conceivable as being separate from each other and the relations they happen to be engaged in. Relational sociologists, however, are interested in relations that are not something added to social entities or something “between” or “among” them, but relations that are constitutive of those very entities, that, in turn, are inconceivable as being what they are if separated from these relations. The specificity of relational sociology is in presuming relations to be constitutive of elements. In that sense relational sociologists often emphasize the primacy of relations in social research. This is clear from the “principle of co-production” that Dépelteau sees as part of the “ideational core” of relational sociology (2018a, 18–19), broadly shared by scholars associated with the movement: “any natural or social phenomenon is constituted through interactions between various human and non-human interactants.” The constitutive role or primacy of relations to entities is also highlighted by the notion of trans-action that Emirbayer borrows from Dewey and Bentley (1949) and uses for explicating the core of relational sociology: “the very terms or units involved in a transaction derive their meaning, significance, and identity from the (changing) functional roles they play within that transaction” (Emirbayer 1997, 287). Such trans-actional approach entails a research strategy “where systems of description and naming are employed to deal with aspects and phases of action, without final attribution to ‘elements’ or other presumptively detachable or independent ‘entities,’ ‘essences,’ or ‘realities,’ and without isolation of presumptively detachable ‘relations’ from such detachable ‘elements’” (Dewey and Bentley 1949, 101–102). Dewey and Bentley basically argue here for an approach that takes into account the following: when explaining through X (the explanans) a Y (the explanandum), one should not view X and Y as being conceivable separately from their relation(s) and their relations as being something “added” to them or being yet another “element” to be analyzed. But such trans-actionalism is, in fact, contrasted with inter-actional approaches that presume a world where “thing is balanced against thing in causal interconnection” (Dewey and Bentley 1949, 101). In fact, one of the side effects of inter-actionalism is aptly captured by Dewey and Bentley (1949, 102):

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“when ‘things’ are too sharply crystallized as ‘elements,’ then certain leftovers, namely, the ‘relations,’ present themselves as additional ‘things,’ and from that pass on to becoming a variety of ‘elements’ themselves, as in many current logics.” This is what is mostly at stake not only in “logics,” but in the entire tradition of the so-called variable-centered approaches (Abbott 1988; Emirbayer 1997) that forms the bulk of causalist analyses in the social sciences: “relation(s)” here is/are deemed to be yet another variable or “entity” among other variables or entities. When it comes to relational explanation, then, it is not presuming social relations to be yet another entity (variable, causal factor) that enters the causal chain leading from causes to outcomes, but we can restate the central explanatory commitment of relational sociology as being to understand social phenomena through the social relations that constitute them. But now we have to specify what does this constitutive production mean more precisely. A felicitous route for doing that seems for us to be the reflections on “grounding.”

3  Constitutive Explanation and Grounding Understood in the constitutive sense, the explanatory commitment of relational sociology runs against a longstanding causalist orthodoxy, especially prominent in the social sciences, which has treated all explanation as causal. We find this attitude demonstrated in one of the most influential methodological texts of the past 30  years, King, Keohane & Verba’s Designing Social Inquiry: “real explanation is always based on causal inferences. We regard arguments in the literature about ‘noncausal explanation’ as confusing terminology; in virtually all cases, these arguments are really about causal explanation or are internally inconsistent” (2021, 259). Yet in recent years, interest in non-causal explanations has blossomed in a wide variety of disciplines (Lange 2018), such that the causalist view of explanation is by no means dominant. We now have good reason to think that it is simply wrong—we can and regularly do provide genuine explanations that do not rely on causation. Indeed, such explanations are by no means unusual or arcane, playing an important part in everyday reasoning as well. To borrow a seemingly trivial example from Dasgupta (2017, 75), asking why there is a table here could receive a causal answer: “Because someone put it there yesterday” or a constitutive answer: “Because there are pieces of wood arranged table-wise.” These explanations are both straightforwardly intelligible and not in conflict, suggesting that there is more than one possible sense to many “why” questions. While the causal

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explanation appeals to the events that led to the table ending up where it did, the constitutive explanation appeals to that in virtue of which a table is present at a given time. One visual way of thinking about the difference between these two explanations is that while the causal explanation is horizontal, linking events that occur at different times, the constitutive explanation is vertical, linking facts or entities synchronously at different levels of fundamentality. Since the underlying relation is synchronous—the explanans and explanandum exist necessarily at the same time—it immediately runs against any standard view of causation according to which causes must precede their effects, or at least, that causes and their effects cannot be simultaneous.1 Yet there remains an intuitive sense of non-­ temporal priority present even in the constitutive example. It is intuitive to think that the fact about the arrangement of pieces of wood is somehow ontologically primary compared to the table, which we commonly express by using the locution “in virtue of.” Just as one could in principle trace the causal history of the table back further in time (perhaps all the way back to the Big Bang), constitutive explanations can typically move further and further down toward what is relatively more fundamental—perhaps ultimately all the way to whatever state of affairs would most appropriately be described by fundamental physics. Like with causal explanation, which particular step in this sequence is most helpful in making the explanandum intelligible (and thus best justified as an explanans) is already a highly contextual and pragmatic issue. The recognition of such “constitutive” explanations varies by discipline, being so far perhaps least understood in the social sciences.2 In the life sciences, where explanation commonly hinges on in-depth understanding of the mechanisms responsible for generating biological phenomena, the existence and scientific importance of constitutive explanations is by now widely acknowledged (Craver et  al. 2021). Following Carl Craver’s (2007) highly influential work on the constitutive relevance relations in neuroscientific explanations, the issue of constitutive explanation has been brought to center stage in the new mechanistic philosophy of science (Bechtel 2008; Ylikoski 2013; Kaiser and Krickel 2016; Baumgartner and Casini 2017), although the origins of the present 1  In this light, consider Jon Elster’s (2015, 1) claim that “all explanation is causal. To explain a phenomenon (an explanandum) is to cite an earlier phenomenon (the explanans) that caused it.” 2  Alexander Wendt’s (1998, 1999) work on constitutive theory is a notable exception.

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discussion can be traced at least back to Salmon’s (1984) distinction between the etiological and constitutive aspects of causal-mechanical explanations. While etiological explanations explain phenomena through the antecedent causes that brought them about, constitutive explanations are thought to explain by giving an account of the mechanism underlying a phenomenon itself. This means explaining the activity of a system (S’s ψ-ing) in terms of the activity of its component parts (Xn’s Φn-ing) during the period when the activity occurs (Craver 2007, 7). As a cursory example, biologists explaining the activity of a heart’s pumping blood will refer to numerous underlying and interrelated physiological processes (signals being sent by the autonomic nervous system, contraction and relaxation of the heart muscles, etc.). Since constitutive explanations of this kind are not only a hypothetical possibility but form a crucial part of widely accepted scientific practice (Kaiser and Krickel, 2016, 2–3), we believe we are well justified in asserting that not all scientific explanation is causal. We hope that we have convinced the reader that constitutive explanations are at the very least intelligible and not easily mistakable for causal explanations. But how are constitutive explanations possible, and how can we begin to make constitutive inferences? We have so far suggested that, in part, explanation relies on tracing dependencies backed by relations of “productive determination.” While causal explanations can be said to be backed by relations of causation, constitutive explanations are backed by grounding relations (Roski 2021; Schaffer 2017a, 303). Over the last 25 years, the concept of grounding has quickly become one of the most influential and explored topics in analytic metaphysics (Schaffer 2009; Fine 2012; Rosen 2010). Grounding is typically characterized as a non-­ causal determinative relation between entities at different levels of fundamentality. While some have understood grounding more narrowly as a relation between facts (Fine 2012; Rosen 2010), thereby accounting for what it means for one fact to hold in virtue of another, for our purposes, we follow Schaffer (2009) in thinking that grounding can in principle relate entities from any arbitrary ontological category (events, processes, properties, etc.). What is crucial is that grounding is a relation of vertical priority, whereby “the grounded is non-fundamental, and is generated by, dependent upon, and explicable on the basis of the grounds” (Schaffer 2017b, 2454). Although conscious and explicit attention to the concept of grounding has been rather recent, issues of “what grounds what” arguably figure prominently throughout the history of philosophy and

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science.3 Most recently, grounding has also been introduced to discussions in social ontology and the foundations of social science (Epstein 2015). For example, it has been used to analyze the social construction of social categories such as gender or race (Griffith 2017; Schaffer 2017b). With this chapter, we aim to introduce grounding to relational sociology as well. In a recent publication, one of us has provided a detailed comparison between grounding4 and causation that focuses primarily on the differences between the two relations along with the implications for trans-­ actional social science methodology (Selg 2020). We highlight some important distinctions insofar as they prove relevant in view of relational explanation. We have already pointed out that a key difference between grounding and causation is that the relata of grounding relations do not exist at separate times. However, as Selg (2020, 47–48) points out, this does not mean that grounding relations do not have a temporal dimension. Grounding itself might not take time (as is the case with causal processes), but grounding can relate occurrent entities extended through time, such as events and processes. Echoing Searle (1995), Selg considers the example of money. Searle points out that “the grammar of the noun phrases conceals from us the fact that, in such cases, process is prior to product. Social objects are always … constituted by social acts; and, in a sense, the object is just the continuous possibility of the activity. A twenty dollar bill, for example, is a standing possibility of paying for something” (1995, 36, italics in the original). Making social facts out of brute facts involves collective-intentional acceptance of constitutive rules whose general formula is “X counts as Y in C.” But, since the “features specified by the X term are insufficient to guarantee success in fulfilling the assigned function, there must be continued collective acceptance or recognition of the validity of the assigned function; otherwise, the function cannot be successfully performed. It is not enough, for example, that we agree with the original assignment, ‘This stuff is money’; we must continue to accept it as money or it will become worthless” (Searle 1995, 45, italics in the original). Thus, there is no reason why constitutive explanation cannot trace the counterfactual dependence of this kind where the constitutive relation is that of “continued collective acceptance or recognition of the 3  Perhaps one of the most famous grounding questions in history is the Euthyphro dilemma: “Is what is holy holy because the gods approve it, or do they approve it because it is holy?” (Plato 1961, 178, 10a) 4  Selg uses the term “constitution,” which we take as synonymous with grounding.

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validity of the assigned function.” Therefore, according to Selg, temporality can be central for constitutive or “grounding”-based explanations: “Studying what makes some stuff money should not be the only role of constitutive explanation, but in addition the continuation and changes of this making could be too” (2020, 48). Similarly, Brian Epstein emphasizes that “This is a pattern that continually crops up in social ontology: social facts commonly have diachronic grounds. Often, some effort and special circumstances are required to make a social entity exist, or for some property to hold of it” (Epstein 2015, 185). A further distinctive feature of grounding is that the relata of grounding relations cannot be conceived as “separate existences” to use the Humean term about the constituents of causal relations. In other words, “they can be considered separately, but not as being separate” (Elias, 1978, 85, italics added). The latter quote from Elias has become an ontological and methodological maxim that captures for us the core of relational thinking (Selg 2020; Selg et al., 2023). We can call it the nonseparability maxim. We can understand this maxim more precisely in terms of modally necessary connections linking the entities. For example, as Ylikoski (2013, 278) points out, to have a particular causal capacity is to have parts that are organized in a certain way—it is impossible for the causal capacity to exist by itself. Yet, since the same causal capacity can be grounded in a variety of mutually exclusive organizations of parts, grounding cannot be reduced to mere identity. Here, we briefly add to the previous discussion by highlighting some relevant similarities between causation and grounding. Since grounding and causation are both relations of productive determination capable of doing explanatory work, it should not be surprising that they share much in common as well. Highlighting these commonalities may prove helpful for developing methodology for constitutive explanations in relational sociology, as certain principles of reasoning may carry over. A particularly in-depth comparison between grounding and causation comes from Jonathan Schaffer’s (2016) work on the subject, and we only highlight a few points that will prove relevant for our purposes of explicating relational explanation. The orthodox view of both causation and grounding presents them as partial ordering relations, i.e., they are irreflexive, asymmetric, and transitive. In case of grounding, we can think through what this means in view of the previously established example of the table: (1) grounding is irreflexive in that the table does not ground itself being a table; (2) grounding is asymmetric, in that if the parts of the chair ground the table, then the table cannot ground the parts; (3) grounding

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is transitive in that if an arrangement of atoms grounds the arrangement of the pieces of wood, then that arrangement of atoms also grounds the table. We also highlight a tripartite distinction between partial, complete, and total causes and grounds. To produce an outcome, a given condition may be an insufficient, but necessary part (a partial cause or ground) of an unnecessary but sufficient configuration of conditions (a complete cause or ground). When more than one sufficient condition is present, the outcome is overdetermined, in which case all the conditions taken together form the total cause or ground for that outcome. 3.1   Grounding Inference and Common Ground Ismael and Schaffer (2020) have proposed that the formal similarities between causation and grounding suggest analogous principles of default reasoning apply to both. In the case of causation, consider a scientist who observes a statistical correlation between two distinct events A and B. Given the irreflexivity and asymmetry of causation, it would be rational for the scientist to infer that either (i) A causes B, (ii) B causes A, or (iii) both A and B are effects of an underlying common cause C.  This is Reichenbach’s famous Principle of Common Cause (1956). The principle becomes especially useful in instances where we can rule out one or two of the options. For example, if the two events appear to be simultaneous yet distinct, we have good reason to rule out options (i) and (ii), since causes should precede their effects. Reichenbach considers the example of two geysers erupting at the same time, which naturally leads to an abductive inference to an unobserved underground reservoir of hot water connecting both geysers and therefore acting as a common cause for both events. When it comes to grounding, Ismael and Schaffer (2020, 4137) propose an analogous rule for grounding inference: “Grounding Inference: If non-identical entities a and b are modally connected, then either (i) a grounds b, or (ii) b grounds a, or (iii) a and b are joint results of some common ground c.”

Unlike causal inference, which requires that the relata be distinct, grounding inference applies only to entities where the maxim “separately, but not as being separate” applies, i.e., non-identical entities that nevertheless exhibit a modal connection. This makes grounding inference central to constitutive explanation, where we are interested in “why certain events and conditions belong together and why it is impossible to

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de-couple them without turning them into something else” (Selg and Ventsel 2020, 235). Since the formal features of grounding are similar to causation, the existence of such modal connections once again allows us to infer an exclusive disjunction with three options for what grounds what. As Ismael and Schaffer point out, it is the third option that “underwrites as rational a specific sort of inference to the best explanation for the presence of potentially unobserved structure, namely a common ground as the explanation for the modal connection” (2020, 4136, emphasis added). To show briefly such an inference in action, suppose that Joonatan has two friends, Peeter and Maria. Joonatan only ever meets with one friend at a time and has no reason to think Peeter and Maria know each other. Suppose further that Joonatan suddenly begins to notice some surprising correlations: whenever Peeter is out on a date, so is Maria. Whenever Peeter is on a weekend trip to the countryside with his new girlfriend, then Maria is on a weekend trip to the countryside with her new boyfriend. The most obvious explanation for Joonatan to infer is that Peeter and Maria are in a romantic relationship. The modal connection between facts about Peeter and facts about Maria would be a matter of course if there is an underlying common ground linking both Peeter and Maria: the fact that Peeter and Maria relate to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend. Ismael and Schaffer put common ground inference to use in the context of fundamental physics, explaining the nonseparability of entangled quantum systems through inference to a “quantum holism” where the entangled particles are “scattered reflections of a more unified underlying reality” (2020, 4132). Far from being limited to the weirdness of the quantum realm, a form of nonseparability exists in the social world, and attention to this fact is precisely what draws relational sociologists together as “an open association of sociologists focusing on relations and raising our consciousness about our inescapable state of interdependency” (Dépelteau 2018a, 7). With conceptual foundations now in place, we move on to explicating relational explanation as the explanation of exactly such inescapable interdependencies.

4   What Is Relational Explanation? What we have termed “relational explanation” is the explanation of nonseparable social phenomena through abductive inference to their common ground in features of dynamic and unfolding social relations. Although we are first to offer a detailed conceptualization of relational explanation, the

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concept itself is already a fundamental part of relational sociology. The basic form for such explanations can be seen expressed in the “principle of interdependency,” a pillar at the ideational core of relational sociology (Dépelteau 2018a, 17–19). As presented in the Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology, we find two formulations of the principle of interdependency from Dépelteau: [1] “‘Entities’ are interdependent, meaning they are what they are and do what they do because they are Interacting with each other within this or that social field, network, figuration, social world and so on.” (Dépelteau 2018a, 17) [2] “Sociologically speaking A is what she is and is doing what she is doing because she is ‘trans-acting’ with B, and vice versa. […] In other words, A and B are interdependent.” (Dépelteau 2018b, 502)

What should immediately draw our attention is the use of the connective “because,” suggesting that the principle conveys an explanation (or at least the scheme for one, as is the case with the second formulation). This is clearly not a causal “because”: if we follow the second formulation, it would make little sense to suggest that after inter-/trans-acting with B, A would begin to be what she is or start to do what he is doing. What A is doing is not a distinct event from her interaction with B.  Rather, A is doing what she is doing in virtue of the inter-/trans-action with B. As an example, Dépelteau asks us to consider that “a patient is not a patient in itself, as a ‘thing’ or an ‘essence’ existing outside of specific relations. She is a patient and behaves as she does only through her interactions with the psychoanalyst. The same is true for the psychoanalyst” (2018a, 17). With an understanding of grounding in hand, it is natural to understand the principle of interdependency as conveying a claim about what grounds what: The inter-action/trans-action between A and B is what grounds the facts about A and B taken separately. In general (facts about), social entities are merely derivatives of the underlying inter-action/trans-action they are involved in. A further observation is that the principle of interdependency goes further than simply pointing out a modal connection between social entities. It is not enough to say that the activity of a patient entails the activity of a psychoanalyst and vice versa. The identification of such connections is in fact only the first step toward relational explanation. The explanatory step comes in identifying the source of this interdependency

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in a shared productive activity—the unfolding chain of trans-action in which both the patient and the psychoanalyst are participants. Of course, the principle of interdependency only serves as a basic explanatory scheme, helpful in illustrating the form of relational explanation. In actual practice, relational explanations will doubtlessly be more complicated: the modal connections and underlying social relations need not be (and usually are not) dyadic. The unfolding social relation we call a social movement involves potentially millions of trans-actants all over the world—drawing out the relevant interdependencies will already be a pragmatic and contextual affair. Furthermore, since grounding allows for overdetermination, not all “interdependencies” are strictly symmetric. A psychoanalyst is generically dependent on trans-acting with her patients in general—she can afford to lose a particular patient without losing her status as a psychoanalyst—while the patient is dependent on her trans-actions with the psychoanalyst in particular. But how then does relational explanation work in terms of research logic? Why is relational explanation inherently abductive? 4.1   Relational Explanation as Inherently Abductive Reasoning Our claim is that epistemologically speaking, relational explanation entails inherently abductive mode of reasoning, unlike the inductive and deductive reasoning characteristic of most causalist explanations. Why do we think so? First of all, because abductive reasoning views theory and observations as interdependent rather than dependent or independent as do deductive and inductive forms of reasoning or logic. In deduction the observation and the general rule that are required for making inference have identity (truth-value, meaning) independent from one another, they can be considered as being separate from each other. In fact, even the correct conclusion of deduction has a truth-value and meaning—identity—that is independent from the truth values of the premises. It is inferred from the premises, but the inference is not constitutive of the identity of the conclusion. This can be explained by the simple fact that a deductively logically correct argument can be built up of 100% (factually) false propositions: Premise1: All wives of Plato are immortal. Premise2: Socrates is a wife of Plato.

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Conclusion: Socrates is immortal. The reason we cover this elementary point here is that such underdeterminedness of factual truth in deductive logic stems from the fact that the identities of its premises containing a general theory and (an) observation(s) and its conclusion containing a particular theory about the observation are independent from each other. Inductive reasoning has the same independence relationship between theories/rules and observations. Only its direction is reversed, since it does not have any general rules in its premises, but infers the theory/rule from observations: All observed A are C. Therefore, all A are C. It is important that although the multiplication of observations makes the inductive inference more certain “the very definitions of A and C and the connection between them cannot themselves be explained by induction” (Timmermans and Tavory 2012, 171). The reason, again, for that is that the theory/rule in the conclusion and the observations in the premises are presumed to have identity (truth-value, meaning) independently from each other. We move from independence to mutual dependence or interdependence between theories and observations, when we consider abduction, often referred to (with good reasons) also as retroduction by its modern formulator Charles Sanders Peirce. Its general logical structure is the following: . The surprising fact C is observed. 1 2. But if A were true, C would be a matter of course. 3. Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true. (CP, 5.189)5 From that we can see that this logic is essentially relational, since “it seeks a situational fit between observed facts and rules” (Timmermans and Tavory 2012: 171). Note that this reasoning starts with neither 5  We follow here the most frequently used reference source to the eight-volume Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (Peirce 1931–1966, Harvard University Press). It is usually referred to by giving the number of the volume and the number of the fragment cited (CP 5.189, for example, is fragment number 189 in volume 5).

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independent observation, nor theory, but with their interdependence: the observed fact C can only be surprising in view of the background knowledge or theory one has. In that sense C’s identity (truth-value, meaning) is what it is in view of this background knowledge/theory which we could refer to as K (from the word “knowledge”). In that sense observation is not presumed to be independent, but already knowledge/theory-laden. The second step in this reasoning is not, again, neither an input of independent observation, nor theory, but their interdependence: the observed surprising fact C would be unsurprising—“a matter of course”—in view of A. Usually the A under question is considered a theory, but it could as well be another observation or set of observations. The final step in this reasoning, again, is putting forth a proposition whose identity (meaning, truth-­ value) cannot be considered as being separate from the identities of the propositions in the previous steps: it puts forth a suspicion that A is true, given that we have an observation C that is surprising, given our background knowledge K. Note again that there is interdependence of theory and observation at all the three steps in this reasoning: (1) C is surprising in virtue of its relation to K; and K is false (or at least lacking in explanatory or predictive capacity) in virtue of its relation to C; (2) C is a matter of course in virtue of its relation to A; and A is suspected to be true for the reason that it would make C a matter of course; (3) Finally, even A and K are interdependent through their interdependence with C: the reason A is suspected to be true, is that in virtue of its relation to K C is surprising, entailing a need to suspect that A is true, since it would make C unsurprising or a matter of course. To render those interdependencies more accessible, let us consider a trivial example of abductive reasoning: 1. A surprising fact C is observed that Socrates is dead. What could be the sources of surprise here? Let us put forth a “theory” or background knowledge K in view of which C is surprising: All men are immortal and Socrates is a man. K is ridiculous but, in its robustness, it helps bring out concisely why Socrates’s death is a surprising fact. 2. If another theory A were true, that all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, then C would be a matter of course (at least from the viewpoint of 2023 A. D). 3. Hence, there is a reason to suspect that A is true: All men are mortal and Socrates is a man.

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Note that the fact of Socrates’s death C is interdependent with K, since in virtue of its relation to K it is surprising: if all men are immortal, then Socrates’s death is puzzling, or surprising. Therefore, K can be considered false (or lacking in explanatory capacity), since it cannot explain or otherwise contain the fact of Socrates’s death. The theory A that all men are mortal would make C an unsurprising fact, and in that sense C is a matter of course in virtue of its relation to A. And since the reason to suspect that A is true is exactly that it would make C unsurprising and the surprising character of it comes from its relation to K, we can say that A and K also mutually dependent: the falsity of the theory K that all men are immortal comes not from the alternative theory A that all men are mortal—this would be just putting forth alternative theories. It comes from the fact that the observation of Socrates’s death C is surprising according to K and unsurprising according to A. And the same holds to the suspicion of A’s truth. So, there is an interdependence of A-C-K throughout the reasoning. Now, let us put the three logics in perspective when it comes to social research. Comparing it with induction, the reasoning that is usually conflated with abduction, since the end result of both could be a general rule, Peirce states: “Abduction seeks a theory. Induction seeks for facts” (Peirce: CP 7.218). Glynos and Howarth explain via Peirce that strictly speaking neither from deductive nor inductive reasoning stems any new theory when faced with data: “[f]rom the inductive view, this is because theories are simply summarized projections of these data, while from the deductive perspective they are derived from a law or an axiom. Retroduction by contrast moves from data to hypothesis to laws” (Glynos and Howarth 2007, 26). What is at stake here, is that though “deductive reasoning purports to prove what is the case, and inductive reasoning purports to approximate what is the case, retroductive reasoning conjectures what is the case” (Glynos and Howarth 2007, 26). For Glynos and Howarth (2007, 47) “explanation in social science is closely tied to the context of discovery, thereby making retroduction central to it”. Consequently, abduction is a processual movement from puzzling empirical phenomena to theoretical premises making them intelligible and then back to the phenomena through which both the identity of the phenomena as well as the corresponding theoretical premises can change, and the process is never final, since the ‘final’ result itself is a part of the process. (Selg and Ventsel 2020, 233)

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This interdependency of theoretical and empirical parts of abduction, and the “perpetual motion” of this reasoning point directly to the response to our question: why does constitutive or ground-based explanation entail inherently abductive reasoning? To be sure, abduction can be used to put forth causal explanation too, as pointed out by Peirce and those who follow him. However, we point to a certain asymmetry here: namely that constitutive or ground-based explanation is inherently abductive. We have argued for this conclusion extensively already elsewhere (see Selg and Ventsel 2020, chapter 7). The reason why constitutive or ground-based explanation cannot be based on either inductive or deductive logic is that the latter are forms of the “art of separation” at the level of reasoning. It was only the abductive reasoning that was based on the interdependency of theoretical and observational aspects. To put this in terms of the discussion of the connection between constitutive and causal inference we have to emphasize that for the latter a gold standard for research design is experiment and that causal inference can be made sense of in terms of idealized or actual experimental design that is based on manipulability of factors. Nothing of the sort is possible for constitution or ground. Manipulability requires that at least in principle (in an idealized experimental situation) we can imagine how to isolate a causal factor from all the other causal factors and observe whether changing it (increasing/decreasing the dose of a medicine in a patient, amount of a chemical in a solution, electric impulse in laboratory animal, etc.) changes also the outcome. But “the inference to constitution is inherently underdetermined by experimental evidence” (Baumgartner and Casini 2017, 215). The reason is that the components of constitutive dependence can be considered separately, but not as being separate, while “[c]auses and effects are mereologically independent entities” (Ibid., 222–223). In other words, “there exist ideal discovery circumstances in which causal relations can receive unambiguous empirical support” (Baumgartner and Casini 2017, 223, italics added). No such circumstances exist for constitutive dependency—even ideally—and hence constitutive analysis can never presume possibility of intervention, breaking the interactions or isolating their constituents. From this experimental underdetermination comes a certain pragmatism related to constitutive inference. Although constitutive relations cannot, strictly speaking, be demonstrated, constitutive inference might still

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be warranted. Constitutive explanation provides a unifying account that ties together necessarily connected phenomena—absent such an explanation, the modal connection would remain an “inexplicable mystery” (Ismael and Schaffer 2020, 4138). Even if experimental design gives no conclusive evidence for such an explanation, it can give negative information which warrants constitutive inference. But it is important that “such an inference is ultimately grounded in pragmatic considerations concerning explanatory power, and is not forced upon the modeler by the evidence” (Baumgartner and Casini 2017, 216). Note that we are talking about experimental or even ideal experimental testing—a setting that has very little relevance in most of the social research where experimentation is almost always ruled out by practical and ethical concerns. But even in this highly idealized situation, constitutive inference is not forced by the evidence, but has to be created or invented and can be tested only in the negative sense. Baumgartner and Casini conclude their argument as follows: “The inference to constitution is thus inherently abductive: constitutional models are preferable over pure causal models because they explain both the highly correlated behavior of phenomena and their constituents as well as the impossibility to de-couple them” (2017, 226). From the beginning, relational sociologists have emphasized that the relational approach “sees relations between terms or units as pre-eminently dynamic in nature, as unfolding, on-going processes rather than as static ties among inert substances” (Emirbayer 1997, 289). The principle of processual-thinking carries with it a shift in the phenomena we view as explananda (that is, in need of explanation): “By making change our constant, we also exchange our explananda. It becomes necessary to explain reproduction, constancy, and entity-ness, rather than development and change” (Abbott 1997, 98). As Crossley (2011, 2) puts it, “[t]he key properties of social actors […] are not primordial properties of the biological organism but rather capacities and dispositions acquired in and sustained through interaction.” In fact, this points to an important feature of relational explanation: it itself is in principle always a dynamic process of unfolding phenomena (in the transitive sense of the word “unfolding”). This is because unlike induction and deduction, which are forms of “jumping to conclusions,” abduction is inherently “jumping to premises”— which by definition can be a “perpetual motion.” Let us illustrate this by considering a less hypothetical example from the very foundations of the social sciences.

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4.2   Relational Explanation in Marx’s Capital To see relational explanation in action, we turn to an example from Marx. Marx is often seen as an early forerunner for relational thinking in the social sciences, although his proper place within the canon of relational sociology is somewhat controversial (Emirbayer 1997, 288; Vandenberghe 2018; Fish 2013). Nevertheless, we can consider Marx’s analysis of the commodity at the beginning of volume I of Capital (Marx, 1996) to be a paradigmatic example of relational explanation. To see why this is the case, we can trace the line of reasoning Marx uses to arrive at the concept at the center of his entire critique of political economy: value. Marx begins his analysis of the commodity by treating it simply as a “useful thing.” By abstracting away from the many qualitatively different ways commodities might be useful (to satisfy hunger or to provide entertainment, as something consumed directly or used as a means of production, etc.), he first arrives at a general concept of use-value: the essential feature of commodities of being able to satisfy the wants, needs, and desires of human beings in virtue of their physical properties. As far as use-values go, “there is nothing mysterious about it” (Ibid., 68), yet a surprising observation emerges when Marx moves on to consider commodities as things exhibiting exchange-values: commodities are commensurable. Every commodity is qualitatively equal to every other commodity in terms of some quantitative relationship. To use Marx’s examples, a given quantity of iron would be worth some quantity of corn, linen, wheat, or any other commodity. Furthermore, all commodities used to represent the exchange-value of this quantity of iron are themselves interchangeable with each other in the same quantities as they would exchange with the iron.6 This seemingly trivial observation is surprising given that this qualitative equality cannot consist in “a geometrical, a chemical, or any other natural property of commodities” (Ibid., 47). In the act of exchange, we abstract away from all use-values: two ­commodities that share no physical properties in common may nevertheless be expressed as being equals in some relationship of exchange-value. Therefore, Marx reasons, exchange-values “do not contain an atom of use value” (Ibid., 48). Nevertheless, the exchange-value between any two commodities “tells us that in two different things […] there exists in equal quantities 6  That is, exchange-values are equivalence relations (reflexive, symmetric, and transitive), ensuring substitutivity.

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something common to both. The two things must therefore be equal to a third, which in itself is neither the one nor the other. Each of them, so far as it is exchange value, must therefore be reducible to this third” (Ibid., 47, emphasis added). It is easy to interpret what Marx is doing here as a common ground inference. Using our previously established vocabulary, we can say that the exchange-values of all commodities are modally connected in that they can be taken separately, but not as being separate—a change in the exchange-­ value of one commodity to another entails some change in the exchange-­ values between other commodities (assuming all else remains equal). This follows naturally from the equivalence relations connecting all commodities, given that the quantities are right. But what explains the nonseparability of exchange-values? Why are all commodities commensurable with each other? It would seem arbitrary to posit any particular exchange-value as somehow privileged, so in following Marx, we would be reasonable to infer the presence of some unobserved structure that underlies all of them. Since this common ground cannot be any natural property shared by all commodities (having abstracted away from use-values), it must be something else. Here, Marx famously makes the abductive leap to value— abstract human labor, measured in socially necessary labor-time—as the ground of all exchange-values (Ibid., 48–49). In other words, the exchange-value between two commodities, a social fact, holds only in virtue of the amount of socially necessary labor-time that those commodities both represent. But what kind of a “thing” is value, given that “not an atom of matter enters into its composition”? (Ibid., 57). Although Marx is popularly depicted as a radically, even reductively materialist thinker, the central category of Marx’s political economy rejects anything like a simplistic reduction to matter in motion: Turn and examine a single commodity, by itself, as we will, yet in so far as it remains an object of value, it seems impossible to grasp it. If, however, we bear in mind that the value of commodities has a purely social reality, and that they acquire this reality only in so far as they are expressions or ­embodiments of one identical social substance, viz., human labour, it follows as a matter of course, that value can only manifest itself in the social relation of commodity to commodity. (Marx 1996, 57)

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Marx tells us that value is very much “real” even if it is not a physical property detectible within the thing itself. The “purely social reality” of value means that it is nothing other than a “social relation taken as a thing” (Rubin 1973, 69)—a process which is reified or congealed into a commodity. What Marx means by the “social substance” of human labor is therefore not itself another “object” or “thing” in the world, but “the productive activity through which the species distinguishes itself as such” (Fish 2013, 36). The value of a commodity expresses a continuous possibility to engage in a social act: the exchange of equivalent reified portions of the total productive activity of society. An enormous amount of work must go on to ensure the continuation of this possibility. The price of any commodity in the supermarket is an expression of a perpetually unfolding process that links consumers and laborers all over the world—people who have probably never met and know nothing of each other, but who are all nevertheless interdependent. In our everyday experience as consumers, this remains obscured. This, of course, is the phenomenon of commodity fetishism: we experience the price of a commodity as expressing an intrinsic property of the thing itself, and thereby “our social relation to the laboring activities of others is disguised in the relationships between things” (Harvey 2010, 40). To summarize, Marx moves from a surprising observation—the commensurability of commodities—to a theoretical premise that renders it intelligible: the crystallization of the continuous process of human social labor into the value of commodities. By stopping at the inference to value, we have in some sense made an arbitrary break in the abductive chain of reasoning exhibited in Capital. David Harvey (2010) summarizes Marx’s method in Capital as “a gradual unfolding of the argument that works through oppositions that are brought back into unities that internalize a contradiction which in turn generates yet another duality.” In some sense, the entirety of Marx’s critique of political economy is a relational explanation of the capitalist mode of production taken as a totality. Each new step in this dialectical chain reveals new surprising interconnections, which require further explanations. Although we cannot pursue this unfolding further in this chapter, we hope that we have demonstrated that one of the most (in)famous examples of abductive theorizing in all of social science is an example of exactly the kind of explanation that finds its home in the contemporary movement of relational sociology. Relational sociologists

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have good reason to accept Marx as a forefather, not only because of his ontological and methodological presuppositions, but because of his actual explanatory practice.

5  Conclusion In this chapter, we have introduced the concept of relational explanation as the explanation of nonseparable social phenomena through abductive inference to their common ground in features of dynamic and unfolding social relations. We have suggested that relational sociologists’ shared emphasis on the constitutive structuring role of social relations carries with it an explanatory commitment to explanations precisely of this kind. Relational explanation allows relational sociology to bring explanatory insight to the many surprising ways social phenomena are mutually implicated and fundamentally nonseparable, illuminating their underlying unity in ever unfolding productive processes of trans-action. Much work remains to be done on developing methodological principles for relational explanations. What we have done is shown that the conditions of possibility for such explanations lie in their backing in grounding relations, and highlighted how we can reason about what grounds what in the social world through abductive grounding inference. While the methodological literature on causal explanation is vast, no such systemic body of literature yet exists on constitutive explanation. During a period when attention to constitutive forms of explanation is becoming widespread in many scientific fields, relational sociology shows considerable promise to be at the forefront of such developments in the social sciences.

References Abbott, Andrew. 1988. Transcending General Linear Reality. Sociological Theory 6: 169–186. ———. 1997. On the Concept of Turning Point. Comparative Social Research 16: 85–105. Aristotle. 1991. Physics. In The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, by Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Baumgartner, Michael, and Lorenzo Casini. 2017. An Abductive Theory of Constitution. Philosophy of Science 84 (2): 214–233.

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Bechtel, William. 2008. Mental Mechanism: Philosophical Perspectives on Cognitive Neuroscience. London: Routledge. Craver, Carl F. 2007. Explaining the Brain: Mechanisms and the Mosaic Unity of Neuroscience. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Craver, Carl F., Stuart Glennan, and Mark Povich. 2021. Constitutive Relevance & Mutual Manipulability Revisited. Synthese 199: 8807–8828. Creswell, John W., and David J.  Creswell. 2018. Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. 5th ed. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, Inc. Crossley, Nick. 2011. Towards Relational Sociology. London: Routledge. Dasgupta, Shamik. 2017. Constitutive Explanation. Philosophical Issues 27 (1): 74–97. Dépelteau, François. 2018a. Relational Thinking in Sociology: Relevance, Concurrence and Dissonance. In The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology, ed. François Dépelteau, 3–34. Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2018b. From the Concept of ‘Trans-Action’ to a Process-Relational Sociology. In The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology, ed. François Dépelteau, 499–520. Palgrave Macmillan. Dewey, John, and Arthur Bentley. 1949. Knowing and the Known. Boston: Beacon Press. Elias, Norbert. 1978. What Is Sociology? Columbia: Columbia University Press. Elster, Jon. 2015. Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Emirbayer, Mustafa. 1997. Manifesto for a Relational Sociology. American Journal of Sociology 103 (2): 281–317. Epstein, Brian. 2015. The Ant Trap: Rebuilding the Foundations of the Social Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fine, Kit. 2012. Guide to Ground. In Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality, ed. F. Correia and B. Schnieder. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fish, Kenneth. 2013. Relational Sociology and Historical Materialism: Three Conversation Starters. In Conceptualizing Relational Sociology: Ontological and Theoretical Issues, ed. Christopher Powell and François Dépelteau, 27–44. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Friedman, Michael. 1974. Explanation and Scientific Understanding. The Journal of Philosophy 71 (1): 5–19. Gerring, John. 2012. Social Science Methodology: A Unified Framework. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press. Griffith, Aaron M. 2017. Social Construction and Grounding. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research XCVII (2): 393–409. Glynos, Jason, and David Howarth. 2007. Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory. London and New York: Routledge.

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Harvey, David. 2010. A Companion To Marx’s Capital. London, New York: Verso. Ismael, Jennan, and Jonathan Schaffer. 2020. Quantum Holism: Nonseparability as Common Ground. Synthese 197: 4131–4160. Kaiser, Marie I., and Beate Krickel. 2016. The Metaphysics of Constitutive Mechanistic Phenomena. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 0: 1–35. Kim, Jaegwon. 1994. Explanatory Knowledge and Metaphysical Dependence. Philosophical Issues 5: 51–69. King, Gary, Robert O.  Keohane, and Sidney Verba. 2021. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inferences in Qualitative Research. New Edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lange, Marc. 2018. Because Without Cause: Scientific Explanations by Constraint. In Explanation Beyond Causation: Philosophical Perspectives on Non-Causal Explanations, ed. Alexander Reutlinger and Juha Saatsi, 15–38. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marx, Karl. 1996. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 35, in Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. New York: International Publishers. Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1931–1966. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Plato. 1961. Collected Dialogues. Edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton University Press. Powell, Christopher. 2013. Radical Relationalism. In Conceptualizing Relational Sociology: Ontological and Theoretical Issues, ed. Christopher Powell and François Dépelteau, 187–208. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Reichenbach, Hans. 1956. The Direction of Time. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Rosen, Gideon. 2010. Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction. In Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology, ed. Bob Hale and Aviv Hoffman, 109–136. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Roski, Stefan. 2021. In Defence of Explanatory Realism. Synthese 199: 14121–14141. Ruben, David-Hillel. 2012. Explaining Explanation. London & New  York: Routledge. Rubin, Isaak Illich. 1973. Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value. Montreal & New York: Black Rose Books. Salmon, Wesley C. 1984. Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Schaffer, Jonathan. 2009. On What Grounds What. In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, ed. David Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, 347–383. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2016. Grounding in the Image of Causation. Philosophical Studies 173: 49–100.

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———. 2017a. Laws for Metaphysical Explanation. Philosophical Issues 27: 302–321. ———. 2017b. Social Construction as Grounding; Or: Fundamentality, a Reply to Barnes and Mikkola. Philosophical Studies 174: 2449–2465. Searle, John. 1995. The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press. Selg, Peeter. 2020. Causation Is Not Everything: On Constitution and Trans-­ Actional View of Social Science Methodology. In John Dewey and the Notion of Trans-action, ed. C. Morgner, 31–52. Palgrave Macmillan. Selg, Peeter, and Andreas Ventsel. 2020. Introducing Relational Political Analysis: Political Semiotics as Theory and Method. Tallinn, Tartu: Palgrave Macmillan. Selg, Peeter, Georg Sootla, and Benjamin Klasche. 2023. A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems From Governance Failure to Failure Governance. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Tilly, Charles. 2001. Mechanisms in Political Process. Annual Review of Political Science 4: 21–41. Timmermans, Stefan, and Iddo Tavory. 2012. Theory Construction in Qualitative Research: From Grounded Theory to Abductive Analysis. Sociological Theory 30 (3): 167–186. Vandenberghe, Frédéric. 2018. The Relation as Magical Operator: Overcoming the Divide Between Relational and Processual Sociology. In The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology, ed. François Dépelteau, 35–58. Palgrave Macmillan. Wendt, Alexander. 1998. On Constitution and Causation in International Relations. Review of International Studies 24 (5): 101–118. ———. 1999. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ylikoski, Petri. 2013. Causal and Constitutive Explanation Compared. Erkenntnis 78 (2): 277–297.

CHAPTER 3

Relational Understanding: Beyond the Interpretative and Normative Divide Elżbieta Hałas

Below, I will present an outline of the problems of relational understanding. They concern the relationship between understanding by participants in social life (first-person understanding) and an observer’s understanding of the processes of social life (third-person perspective). As shown further on, relational understanding together with its problems goes beyond the relations between these perspectives as a relational analysis in a broader sense.

1   Understanding the Paradigmatic Divide In 1970, Thomas P. Wilson published the text Normative and Interpretive Paradigms in Sociology (Wilson 1970), which was to prove extremely influential. This theoretical and epistemic differentiation also contained a normative premise of a new approach to pursuing sociology. This new approach attempted to imbue sociology with the power to regulate

E. Hałas (*) University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Hałas (ed.), Methodology of Relational Sociology, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41626-2_3

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sociocultural changes, beginning with the level of the life-world or everyday life. Understanding Everyday Life by Jack Douglas (Douglas 1974), the book where an updated version of Thomas P. Wilson’s text (a manifesto of sorts) was published, does not attempt to conceal its transformative, even revolutionary message, rendered more radical by a discipline formed within the interpretative paradigm: ethnomethodology, with its leading idea of reflexivity. Reflexivity as the process of creating meanings was to influence their previous modeling through normal (in other words: taken for granted) forms of understanding and action. The hermeneutic circle was to be breached thanks to the discovery of the principles by which interpretative procedures operate. The proclaimed interpretative paradigm, as opposed to the normative paradigm, was to revolutionize the understanding of understanding. It offered freedom from cultural predetermination of actions by a matrix of values and norms. The concept of interaction refers to the reciprocal influence of the actions of a single individual or collective subject on another subject’s actions, where those actions are significant, and thus influence takes place via communication. The notion of reciprocity is a common feature of all concepts of interaction (Hałas 2019: 93–94). Reciprocal social relations involve interactions. Interaction entails intentionality. Those who engage in reciprocal influences are pursuing some end. The intersubjectivity of intentionality is possible thanks to cultural systems of meaning shared by the interaction participants. “Cultural mediation” differentiates the sociological concepts of interaction. In the normative model of interactions, the greatest importance is ascribed to the norms that define their course. Interaction thus perceived has an objective normative structure, to which the normative orientation of interaction participants corresponds. The normative orientation of actions manifests itself in the reciprocal expectations of interaction participants (Wilson 1974: 59). The relative stability of interactions allows the assumption that participants define situations in a similar manner. This assumption, of essential importance for the normative paradigm, is in essence semiotic (Hałas 2006: 113). It proposes the existence of a cognitive consensus, i.e. a common minimum of norms, their symbols and meanings. The culturally determined definition of the situation contains elements of the situation of action. Thus, it is commonly accepted that interactions

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are culturally determined. Their definition is stable and predates action. Defining the situation involves culturally determined and shared symbols (Parsons 1951: 56). The existence of a cognitive consensus between participants is the basic assumption in the normative model of interaction. Communication is not directly taken into account in this model. The normative model of interaction takes its semiotic dimension into account. The meaning of actions lies in their compatibility with the ideological system symbolically expressed in language. It is implicitly recognized that communication enables the symbolic transmission of norms and values in the socialization process. This model limited the analysis of interactions, as well as of social relations as processes based on communication. Symbolic expressions of the normative element present in the situation are interpretations that precede action. In this framing, the definition of the situation is a constant that precedes action, and the course of action is structurally prescribed. The normative model shows the stability of symbolic elements, whereas continual interpretation of the interactional situation is a key dimension in the interpretative model. Social order does not consist in normative integration, but in communicative coordination, as shown by George H. Mead (Joas 1985: 13n). In the interpretative paradigm, interaction is a sequence of processes of interpretation of successive phases of actions. Thus, it has been termed “symbolic interaction”. This does not necessarily mean departing from the established cultural context of meanings and values, since a certain degree of their stability and common knowledge guarantees the intersubjectivity of communication. Here, the definition of the situation acquires another sense. It is not external or precedent in regard to interaction, nor stable. It belongs to the essence of interaction as a constant process that occurs before action is undertaken, during action and after its completion. The changing definition of the situation influences the emerging form of interaction. In the interpretative model of interaction, “culture” means a sphere of shared perspectives, modes of perception based on shared knowledge. It is framed as a constantly changing result of communication. In fact, culture may be identified with communication. It is not limited to an official, established system of values and meanings. The consensus of interaction participants is shaky; it must be confirmed and recreated over and over again.

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Whenever the interpretative paradigm was contrasted with the normative paradigm, the two different models of interaction outlined above1 were brought into the spotlight. The first one focuses on the cultural rules that govern interaction, and the second on the process of interpretation that reveals the order and direction of interaction. Importantly, setting these paradigms in opposition to each other was primarily a demonstration of differing perceptions of culture, either as a system that models meanings in terms of norms, values and social roles, or as a system of meanings that is created in the process of interaction and can be remodeled in the same manner. Since meanings are of key importance for both juxtaposed paradigms, establishing the interpretative paradigm was associated with a radical shift in the perception of culture. Although Thomas P.  Wilson denied that the notion of a normative paradigm is a proscriptive definition that recommends values and norms, the sociological theories based on that paradigm dealt with that cultural proscriptivity. As a result, the change of perspective offered by the interpretative paradigm necessarily led to questioning cultural normativity, and thus to a critical orientation. The opposition between the normative and interpretative paradigms lies not only in disparate models of interaction, and thus in disparate models of relations. The contrast between these paradigms should be perceived as a contrast between disparate epistemologies and methodologies. Recapitulating this paradigmatic division, which has created opposing models of interaction and opposing epistemologies, I discuss these issues in connection with theoretic models of social relations and with problems of relational epistemology and methodology. It must be noted that the paradigmatic division discussed here is by no means equivalent to the divide between holism and individualism in social ontology, since each of these paradigms takes into account, albeit in a different manner, the relational phenomenon of interaction, differently modeled because the concept of culture differs in each case. A cognitive consensus forms the basis of an explanation that calls upon the function of rules in establishing recurrent interactions in time and space (Wilson 1974: 61). In the interpretative paradigm, however, definitions of the situation and the order of interaction aren’t determined by culturally defined systems of symbols, established meanings of situations and reciprocally 1  My characterization of the normative and interpretative models of interaction is based on my own findings published previously (Hałas 2006: 110–118).

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oriented actions. They depend on the process of interpretation, and thus on defining the formed situations of reciprocal influence. Contrasting the interpretative paradigm with the normative paradigm used to be synonymous with radically negating culture as established symbolic systems functioning as vehicles of values and norms that define forms of social life. Such a radical juxtaposition even led to the paradoxical statement that, although symbolic interactionism helped shape the interpretative paradigm, neither its precursor George H.  Mead (who utilized the notion of meaningful symbols that form the basis of the dramaturgical model of interaction as a conversation of gestures) nor such creators of symbolic interactionism as Herbert Blumer or Ralph H. Turner represent the interpretative paradigm understood as radical interpretationism: radical symbolic interactionism (Wilson 1974: 69f). Thus, from the methodological angle, radical interpretationism had to imply rejection of deductive reasoning based on a theoretical framework of concepts referring to culture, social structure and subjectivity (in individual subjects, subjectivity is shaped in the process of socialization). In the place of deductive reasoning, an imperative was introduced to use interpretative description based on the documentary method (Garfinkel 1962). The documentary method would primarily be a feature of interpretative work performed by interaction participants. It involves the dialectics of relations linking the comprehensive pattern (assumed in the process of interpretation) of the imputed meaning of interactions and of meaning interpreted during fragmentary situational actions. In the interpretative paradigm, as opposed to the normative paradigm, understanding means an interpretative description, rather than a literal description of social facts that utilizes established meanings, regardless of the conditions of their use during the interaction process. In the interpretative paradigm, indexability of meanings was radicalized (Wilson 1974: 71) unlike intersubjective, taken-for-granted linguistic meanings as a condition of intercommunicability. Thus, we are dealing with a polar contrast between the postulate of a description based on a shared system of symbols and meanings assumed in the normative paradigm, and the postulate of an interpretative description of the ambiguity of an interactive situation in the interpretative paradigm. This contrasting juxtaposition was only possible under the assumption that theories belonging to the normative paradigm don’t take the context of meanings into account, as Thomas P.  Wilson asserted (1974: 75). The truly contrasting elements in these paradigms are, on the one hand, the reality of interactions and other

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emergent forms that make up the structure of the social world as a relational structure, and on the other hand, the interpretative processes that constitute this world, which become the main topic of research (Wilson 1974: 78). The interpretative paradigm has strengthened itself in many ways, drawing inspiration from hermeneutics, phenomenology and pragmatism to build a sociological theory of meaning and its social context. Understanding remains the central issue in the interpretative paradigm. It is an interpretative understanding of the meanings of social life. Bearing in mind the next paradigm today, namely the relational paradigm in social sciences, particularly relational sociology, we should take note of the orientation of symbolic interactionism, which co-created the interpretative paradigm. Symbolic interactionism shares many premises with relational sociology. This stems, among other reasons, from the fact that both of these approaches are rooted in Georg Simmel’s concept of socialization (Vergesellschaftung) and Wechselwirkung. There should be no doubt as to the relational premises of symbolic interactionism and to the fact that symbolic relationism can play a role in the creation of a new relational sociology (Mützel, Kressin 2021: 225–226), because Simmel’s Wechselwirkung was seminal for two concepts: the concept of symbolic interaction and of social relations, both of them inextricably linked as meaningful and understandable phenomena. Symbolic interaction is a process of establishing meanings in the cultural context and in the social situation, in order to establish identities and roles that constitute a social relation. The concept of understanding appears intuitively comprehensible, but has accrued various meanings. The German term Verstehen carries multiple meanings which have often dominated the understanding of understanding in the social sciences, particularly in sociology. Theodore Abel’s translation of Weber’s verstehende Erklären as “interpretive” (Abel 1929: 125) helped shape the interpretative paradigm, but it also complicated the understanding of understanding on the basis of that paradigm. The emphasis placed by Weber on subjective meaning, i.e. the subjective orientation of action, has more than once stood in the way of a consistently interactive understanding of meaning, proclaimed by pragmatism. It must be noted, however, that motivational understanding was not the only meaning ascribed to Verstehen by Weber, whose starting point was the fact

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that some kind of action is subject to direct observational understanding.2 Relational sociology requires relational understanding of understanding. Certain steps will be undertaken in this direction, primarily aiming to reestablish a relation between interpretation of meanings and normativity. When discussing relational understanding, I assume a basic unity of the relational approach in the social sciences, even though the modern relational movement is linked with various theoretical orientations, separate thought traditions or emerging relational schools, which often compete with each other as to which of them represents the true identity of relational sociology. Simplifying the image of relational sociology, it can be assumed that in the first generation of its classics, Georg Simmel should be considered its progenitor to the greatest extent. He focused on the elementary phenomenon of reciprocity. Representatives of contemporary relational sociology constantly confirm Simmel’s status as its founder (Dépelteau 2018: XIII). However, the notion of relationality in relational sociology must encompass many more different relation types than interpersonal relations, created and experienced as actual social life. It must be emphasized that interpersonal relations, too, assume a broad range of forms: between the polar opposites of engaging the whole person or only anonymous social types that exert an influence on each other, as described by Alfred Schutz when he presented the structure of the social world. Relationality not limited to reciprocal social relations is a constitutive feature of the social world’s structure, composed of social spaces, where social networks and social systems of varying scope and duration emerge and undergo transformation. Thus, it must be remembered that the term “social relation” is ambiguous: it may refer to a reciprocal relation in the life-world or to relations that structurize the social space. When reciprocal interpersonal relations become the focus of attention of relational sociology, Martin Buber’s book I and Thou is often quoted as a poster example of this approach. This significantly limits the issue of relationality to relations between persons, in the sense of their full existence and ontological constitution, which isn’t typical for sociology. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of spaces and fields of practices (1994) and Harrison C. White’s concept of social networks and cultural domains (2008) were important for contemporary relational sociology, 2  Stephen Turner discusses the various ways in which Weber understood Verstehen, and points out that Weber didn’t take into account empathy as complete understanding, phenomenologically analyzed by Edith Stein (Turner 2019: 4–5).

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which goes beyond the microsociological relations of reciprocity, in order to transcend the opposition not only of the individual versus society, but also of culture and society. Referring to the question of relational understanding, I will locate it on both planes of relationality distinguished above. Simplifying the issue, I call them the microscopic plane (reciprocal social relations) and macroscopic plane (relations that constitute the social space). When I speak about relational understanding, I refer to understanding in the humanistic sense: understanding the human world, whether created or constructed. However, the problems of understanding are broader in the field of epistemology, and this requires attention as well. Thus, I will show that this general epistemological understanding of understanding is present in research on relationality of the social space. Subsequently, I will focus on relational understanding in regard to reciprocal social relations in the life-world. I will attempt to show how far relational understanding extends beyond what the interpretative paradigm in sociology had to say on the topic of understanding. I regard relational understanding as formative for the new relational paradigm, in the light of which the division and conflict between the interpretative and normative paradigms should be considered erroneous. It should be noted at this point that this division and conflict were beneficial to critical praxis theory. Qualifying understanding as relational indicates that different kinds of understanding exist. As regards the understanding of understanding, the questions presented here pertain to social phenomena. This requires taking note of their relationship with cultural phenomena in general. Outlining the problem of understanding on the grounds of contemporary relational sociology, I attempt to show that relational understanding constitutes an achievement compared to what the interpretative paradigm has offered. Relational understanding makes it possible to avoid the trap of contrasting the interpretative paradigm with the normative paradigm.

2  The Return of Understanding to Epistemology Considering the aspirations of relational sociology to overcome the limitations of modernist thought formation, we should note the new trends in epistemology that have been felt since the 1980s, i.e. more or less from the time when the development of relational perspectives accelerated in the social sciences. There is a resurgence of interest in the problem of

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understanding as a fundamental category for epistemology. This issue warrants attention, although (as I emphasized earlier) I will deal with understanding in a narrower sense than its framing in general epistemology. The revival of interest in understanding seems to be heading toward reevaluating the current understanding of knowledge. This is shown by new interpretations of the meaning of the ancient term episteme, for which the concept of knowledge has been the commonly accepted equivalent (Grimm 2021). From the new readings of the sense of episteme it would appear that “understanding” is a more appropriate term. Thus, meaning is accorded a prime place in epistemology. Understanding cannot be confined to the peculiarities of cultural and social sciences (Grimm 2021). The new reading of episteme understood as understanding appears in opposition to the concept of rational, true and justified knowledge (justification) shaped by modern science and philosophy. It is a criticism of propositional knowledge, or knowledge contained in statements that adjudicate certain states of affairs. The key argument is relevant from a relational point of view. Critics argue that the modern understanding of knowledge is in fact atomistic; it deals with autonomous phenomena, whereas understanding includes interconnected objects and their structures (Zagzebski 2019: 135). Understanding is supposedly more difficult to achieve than knowledge. Understanding is supposed to surpass knowledge;3 it sees its object as structured and bound by relations. Regardless of the validity of these arguments, or the success of attempts to dethrone the concept of knowledge in epistemology and replace it with the concept of understanding, this new current of epistemology appears important for the methodology of relational sociology. Significantly, in this new trend, epistemological issues are also normative issues, not only in the sense that cognition may be valued as better or worse. Understanding is presented as an epistemic good (Grimm 2021). The idea of virtue epistemology is being developed (Trinkaus Zagzebski 1996: 43–51). Understanding is supposed to be an epistemological good that wrongly remains overshadowed by knowledge. Introducing epistemic virtues emphasizes the social aspects of cognition. Alluding to Isaiah Berlin’s famous essay, woven around the adage ascribed to the Ancient Greek poet Archilochus: The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing, Linda Zagzebski contrasts 3  The domination of the concept of knowledge over understanding is an interesting issue from the perspective of history and sociology of ideas, but cannot be discussed at length here.

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understanding as “big knowledge” with “little knowledge”, which is brought down to many assertions (Trinkaus Zagzebski 1996: 274). She considers understanding (and, by extension, wisdom) an epistemic value consisting of cognitive contact with reality. This contact cannot be viewed simply as the mind’s relationship with true assertions, even though earlier scholars focused on the issue of the certainty of knowledge, not on understanding. Understanding lies at the root of the ethical model of normative epistemology. The perception of epistemic virtue depends on how we understand virtue in general. After Zagzebski, we might enumerate the following elements: virtue is a trait that determines a person’s identity in a relatively constant fashion. It is obtained through a person’s efforts over a long period of time. It is a characteristic associated with perfection of some kind. “A virtue, then, can be defined as a deep and enduring acquired excellence of a person, involving a characteristic motivation to produce a certain desired end and reliable success in bringing about that end. What I mean by a motivation is a disposition to have a motive; a motive is an action-guiding emotion with a certain end, either internal or external.” (Trrinkaus Zagzebski 1996: 137)

The quoted definition encompasses various types of virtues, including intellectual or epistemic virtues. While the importance of understanding as, overall, a hermeneutic problem in the humanities and social sciences (particularly in sociology) has never been endangered, especially after the antipositivist breakthrough (Giddens 1976), the understanding of understanding was not a significant issue in broadly understood epistemology. Addressing it and restoring it to its central place in the philosophy of science may shed new light on issues important for the optics of relational sociology. Thus, the new epistemology seeks to broaden the concept of knowledge without limiting it to true claims. This understanding is to facilitate overcoming the limited concept of knowledge utilized by modernist epistemology descended from positivism, which separated explanation from understanding. Understanding was reduced to a subjective feeling; therefore, little importance was attached to it (Grimm 2021). Henk de Regt played a special role in overcoming the skeptical approach to understanding in epistemology. He distinguished the phenomenology of understanding from understanding in the epistemological sense (de

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Regt 2017: 22–23). This decoupling of understanding from its subjective feeling marks a new stage in epistemology, which is worth looking at when addressing the issue of relational understanding in social sciences. Of significance here are the object of understanding and the normative relationship between the subjective feeling of understanding and its object. There is an obvious reluctance to treat knowledge as true beliefs, i.e. beliefs that pertain to justified judgments (true statements). The assumption that relations or links are the object of understanding is significant here. This question must be readdressed when we discuss relational understanding in regard to social phenomena and social actors. In my opinion, relational sociology is a new understanding sociology, where understanding is not limited to the Weberian Verstehen. It is worth noting the metaphors that refer to understanding, such as seeing and grasping relations or links. According to some, understanding means grasping coherence; in this framing, coherence is the relationship between beliefs, it does not mean grasping actual relations. Thus, the question whether understanding should be seen as subjective or objective obviously remains controversial. Before continuing my train of thought, I want to emphasize that the concept of relational understanding remains in opposition to the tradition of subjective understanding, especially motivational understanding, upon which Max Weber based his project of understanding sociology. Understanding relations in the world may take the form of various concepts of relations, such as nomic relations, where understanding means explanation by laws. It can also take the form of understanding focused on causal relations or dependence relations (Grimm 2021). One of the more interesting epistemic standpoints regarding the object of understanding is an extension of the concept of dependence relations: the concept of possibility states (Grimm 2021). This standpoint is an extension of Robert Nozick’s belief. According to this philosopher, explaining shows the current connections, whereas understanding means pointing out a network of possibilities: showing connections with things that haven’t yet become current, or links to processes (Nozick 1981: 12). If we assume that relations pertaining to reality are the object of understanding, the argument follows that mental representations or logical-­ linguistic relations are vehicles for understanding actual relations (Grimm 2021). Understanding as a cognitive achievement is not limited to first-person experience, and thus to the phenomenological dimension. Of significance

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at this point is the association between explaining and understanding. There is an ongoing dispute whether understanding should be accorded priority, or whether explaining precedes understanding. In the first case, understanding becomes a kind of litmus test for proper explaining. The opposing standpoints depict understanding merely as good explaining based on a certain state of knowledge. However, according to the proponents of epistemic priority, understanding “why?” means something more than knowing “why?”. While the problem of understanding is discussed anew in epistemology as scientific understanding of the phenomena of the natural world, in the humanities and in philosophy of social sciences the issue of understanding has remained constantly present. Understanding was considered a key difference between the methodology of these sciences and the methodology of the natural sciences. This difference supposedly lay in specific properties of the subject of understanding in the humanities and social sciences: the human factors and significant products of human activity. Thus, Stephen Grimm (2021) introduces the term “humanistic understanding”, which differs from naturalist understanding. In this way, the problem of understanding in the humanities and social sciences is no longer linked solely with the German tradition of Verstehen, especially since it can be traced back to the views of Giambattista Vico. At this point, it is worth recalling Florian Znaniecki’s principle of the humanistic coefficient, which explains why understanding the world of human culture requires a unique approach (Znaniecki 1934). Characterizing humanistic understanding, which in a broad sense is the understanding of human beings, brings the problem of their perspectives into the discussion. Raising the issue of relational understanding, I will refer to the humanistic tradition, to which relational sociology belongs. The issue of understanding is not only a matter of understanding other people as persons, nor can it be reduced to reconstructing perspectives from which the world is viewed and the semantic constructs that create those perspectives, because relational understanding comes into play here, and it is multidimensional. However, Dilthey saw the uniqueness of the humanities (Geisteswissenschaften) in the idea of lived experience, which includes beliefs, emotions and volitional states. Thus, understanding referred to understanding lived experience. It was a life philosophy (Hałas 2016: 10). The problem of interpreting the understanding present in the humanistic tradition requires forsaking the first-person perspective, especially

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since it is a relational perspective. Understanding, also as adopting a perspective, is deeply relational, and this is how Znaniecki presented it in the concept of the humanistic coefficient.

3   Understanding and Relationality Relational understanding on the grounds of social sciences and cultural sciences is a humanistic understanding, since it pertains to the meanings of social life. It is my intention to show that relational understanding transcends the opposition between the normative paradigm and the interpretative paradigm, since it pertains both to significant reciprocal social relations and to their emergent effects, and thus to various levels of the complexity and objectivization of social systems or social formations, where relations are no longer exclusively reciprocal. If the normative paradigm consisted in recognizing significant cultural and social structures, whereas the interpretative paradigm consisted in analyzing the creation of their meaning during the process of interaction, then the relational paradigm, if it is to advance sociological understanding, should solve the dilemma associated with viewing either of those perspectives as the only correct one. We will attempt to trace how relational sociology advances our understanding of understanding, in which various perspectives of the participants and observers of social and cultural phenomena come into play. Doubling the perspective, when the observer’s perspective also includes the perspective or perspectives of the participants in significant sociocultural phenomena and processes, is only one of the issues of relational understanding; Anthony Giddens called it “double hermeneutics”. It is associated with the problems of reflexivity, variously articulated, but in essence pertaining to the critical issue of reproduction or questioning, as Pierre Bourdieu does, the normal forms of meanings, which are generally taken for granted. When relational sociology focuses on social relations of reciprocity, it also immerses itself in the phenomenology of experiencing relations, but (as demonstrated by Florian Znaniecki, the author of the concept of the humanistic coefficient of social and cultural phenomena) they are not limited to the phenomenology of their participants’ experience, forming systems of actions and values (Znaniecki 1934). One can say that social systems and cultural systems happen, in a sense, because their meanings are something in between experiencing content and performing actions.

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Per analogiam to the humanistic coefficient, Pierpaolo Donati mentions the human gaze (Donati 2019) as a relation with the observed object. This relation is entangled in a relational context, and thus perception of the object is not exclusively individual and subjective, but assumes culturally determined images of that which is being perceived. Similarly, and following in the footsteps of Blaise Pascal, Pierre Bourdieu mentions the viewpoint assumed in social space. Understanding, whether viewed from the participant’s or from the observer’s standpoint, creates a perspective. The viewpoint from which an object is regarded leads to questions regarding the construction of that perspective, as well as the possibilities for translating the perspectives and questions regarding the identity of an experienced or observed object, regardless of the differences in how it is viewed. In different variants of contemporary relational sociology, the issue of reflexive gazing upon an object remains significant. The notion of “reflexivity” refers to a process; in this case, the process of “gazing”, when it is directed back upon the same process, and this “gazing back” may effect a change. At present, reflexivity thus understood finds itself in the center of interest of sociological theory; examples include Giddens’s structuration theory, Luhmann’s systems theory or Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology. In relational sociology, as I show, reflexivity is mostly limited to reflexivity of understanding. The issue of reflexivity in sociology is the fruit of a long tradition of philosophy of reflection dating back to Plato, and its intricacies are reflected in the confusion around two terms: reflection and reflexivity. This is exemplified by the concept and typology of reflexivity introduced in the field of relational approaches by Margaret S.  Archer, where reflexivity is depicted simply as the subject’s internal reflexivity in internal conversation (Archer 2012: 16–17). As an epistemological issue, the relationship between the subject and the object of cognition (seeing), or the issue of the human gaze as a relation with the object of observation, has been presented in different ways. These different viewpoints can be divided simply into contemplative (passive spectator) and performative (active experience) ones. In relational sociology, choosing one or the other perspective makes a difference. It seems that different varieties of relational sociology have one thing in common: viewing the relationship between the subject and object of cognition as an active experience, to quote Florian Znaniecki, for whom all data about culture and society are data with a humanistic coefficient: they are meaningful and evaluated from the viewpoint of the situation and

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context of action. Not excluding phenomenological analysis, this is the general standpoint of pragmatism adopted in such relational approaches as symbolic interactionism or Harrison C. White’s social network theory of identity and control, or Bourdieu’s praxis theory. Donati, too, defines the human gaze as an active relation with that which is being observed; hence, to be more precise, he speaks of “relating”. Thus, thinking is simultaneously action in relation (in regard) to a certain object in general and to a social object, or rather (using the language of Florian Znaniecki’s theory) to the Other as a social value. The human gaze as cognition and action in one (a cognitive act) directed toward a certain intentional object requires certain means or tools and is subject to axionormative models of experiencing meaning and valuation, as well as emotional reference points. Thus, Donati brings order into the structure of understanding, using the acronym MINV: means, intentional object, norms and value. Intentional objects given with a humanistic coefficient are data of active experience with a humanistic coefficient. In the MINV scheme, the problem of meaning is hidden behind an intentional object that possesses a certain value in the given relation in regard to it. Meaning is crucially important for relational understanding, the object of reflection in relational sociology. Thus, the relational gaze is a viewpoint establishing a perspective that yields a certain image of the observed object. This perspective is not fully objective, since the subject functions as a participant in social networks and cultural domains of meanings (White 2008: 7–8). Hence, the issues of reflexivity and criticizing the way in which perspective has been established are important ones. Of significance is the axiological dimension of how objects are given in active experience. This experience depends on its relational context: the position it takes or can take in some social or cultural system (Znaniecki 1934). Donati is seemingly heading in a similar direction when he takes up the issue of object recognition in the frames of the adopted perspective of viewing an object. He explains this recognition as determining the object’s identity and establishing some type of relations: inclusion into a system of actively experienced meanings or positive/negative values, as Znaniecki described. Narrowing the completed relational gaze exclusively to positive valuation of an object and understanding recognition as synonymous with moral recognition (Donati 2019) may hinder analysis of reflexivity. When we move on to the issue of understanding and scientific explanation in general, an important question inevitably comes up: how do

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experience and common observation relate to scientific observation? Donati asserts sententiously: “to ask for a viewpoint is to ask for a relation”. Here, the relation has a logical (or, more broadly, epistemic) and not strictly social sense. Does the constitution of a commonsense point of view: the gaze, or common understanding, with no additional qualifications also applies to scientific observation? I doubt it. I think that reflexivity is not the only factor that differentiates the scientific gaze (scientific understanding) from common observation. Not only special equipment or criteria that render various elements of MINV “scientific” are of significance here. In my opinion, scientific cognition is in essence constructionist. It involves constructing a viewpoint and constructing an object: nonetheless, it is still an epistemic relation with the existing reality, and there is no contradiction here. Significantly, Donati recognizes weak constructionism, which isn’t inconsistent with critical realism. Since the studied cultural and social reality is already “someone’s” reality (Znaniecki 1934), the relationship of an observer of these phenomena with the observed reality is complex, and involves understanding a world that is already understood somehow. Alluding to Goffman’s, essentially constructionist, concept of framing the meanings of reality, Donati describes relational perception (understanding) as creating frames for the observed phenomenon, which is initially placed in a frame that defines an object as a relation. The sense ascribed to relations by Donati is unclear. Sociological understanding as relational understanding cannot be depicted simply as understanding objects of observation in the form of reciprocal relations between intentional individual and collective subjects. Such a limitation is seemingly indicated by the four dimensions used to study thus perceived relational objects (MINV), the four dimensions of human action: means, intentions, norms and values. This model does not include the dimension of communication, which is central for the interpretative paradigm: creating meanings in the course of social processes, which is responsible for their emergence. It is not enough to reject one-sided simplification of social phenomena to phenomena of subjective experiences or to objective structures, in order to simultaneously research the normative dimension and the interpretative dimension in relational terms. On the one hand, relational framing of sociological observation appears to pertain to relative subjects and their relations; on the other hand, it seemingly encompasses more complex mechanisms and causal forces on the systemic level of the state, market,

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civil society and the life-world (Donati  2011). As a result, the so-called relational gaze seems a broadly perceived scientific understanding that also includes explaining. The fact that the terms “gaze” and “observation” are being interchangeably used indicates ambivalence (Donati 2019). Both these terms assume a subjective perspective, not the methodology of relational analysis, which represents a depersonalized route. Commenting critically upon Paul Ricoeur’s criticism of a sociology limited to a superficial gaze “that sees, but does not observe”, Donati proposes differentiating between seeing and gazing. In the English language, seeing may also mean understanding (as in the expression “I see”). In Donati’s language, the term “seeing” means describing, whereas “gazing” means critically observing that which is given in observation, as well as becoming engaged in the observed phenomena. This engagement is simultaneously a kind of critical action. Ambivalence appears: the theoretical value of searching for true knowledge becomes linked with the value of practical criticism. Consequently, this concept of “gazing” as critical understanding is not only understanding in impersonal or third-person terms; it is also a viewpoint that links first-person and second-person perspectives. According to Donati, understanding social facts requires us to take all three perspectives into account, along with their mutual relations. Because relational perception is proposed on the basis of critical realism, this means gazing at the empirical layer of the observed phenomenon, at the layer of current issues, hidden structures and mechanisms of interactions and relations, and finally at the layer of “real reality”: some deep, empirically inaccessible reality, potential structures and mechanisms that transcend the present. These are metatheoretical assumptions of some epiphany; in a covert, ambiguous manner they seem to indicate sociology as a calling, but not in the sense proposed by Max Weber. Certain varieties of the interpretative paradigm have evolved in a similar direction, rejecting theory and method as tools leading to true knowledge; this was considered a limitation of positivist epistemology in favor of differently understood epistemic values, such as illumination (Lincoln, Denzin 2000). One may agree that the truly relational gaze (understanding) is metareflexive: it is relationally reflexive in regard to the subject/object relationship. When speaking about relational understanding, one must ponder what the expression “relational” actually means, bearing in mind the complexity of the problem of relations (Hałas, Manterys 2021: 10–12). Donati, for example, taking cues from the philosophy of critical realism, distinguishes five meanings of the term “relation”, taking into account the ontological

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layers of reality and, in his own words, the types of reality. As regards the criterion of the ontological layer, the term “relation” may have a logical, empirical, contemporary sense, referring to a latent reality or meta-reality. Donati distinguishes four types of reality: natural, practical, social and transcendent reality. He limits the logical perception of relations to Aristotle’s classic concept: the category of relatives, which covers things that somehow relate to each other. He rejects such a definition of relations as wholly inadequate, and defines a relation as the emergent effect of the mutual action of two or more subjects. He associates the second meaning of the term “relations” with physical relations: the relations which subjects have with the natural world. Physical relations are subject-object relations rather than reciprocal relations, because the natural object is not an active subject. Relations with the natural world, as well as the relational gaze, are framed by the sociocultural context of meanings, which is a construct of this reality. Practical relations would be defined as subjects relating to the products of human action, where the latter are either a source of resources or of limitations that hinder human action. Relational understanding in this sense would mean imbuing those objects (artifacts) with meaning in the process of defining the situation of action. Relations with the social world are crucial, or rather—as we might say—relations in the social world they constitute. They are reciprocal relations between social subjects. The term “relation” in this context is a social relation in the strict sense: a reciprocal relation. It encompasses the dimension of subjective orientation of actions (refero) and an objective bond. The subjective-objective structure of relations deserves attention as a significant structure: in essence, a symbolic one. The relational gaze as a cognitive task means studying the emergent effect caused by subjects that enter a relation, says Donati. Symbolic-interactional processes, simultaneously communicational and performative, explain how the social world of relations is constituted. Reinterpreting Donati’s concept by including the process of symbolic construction, i.e. communicational construction (Knoblauch 2016) of the social world of relations, we can say that the refero dimension is the symbolic-interactive dimension of creating relations in the processes of adopting and creating social roles in their broad sense (Turner 1956), whereas the religo dimension refers to the symbolically objectivized relation structure, where its symbolic representation and symbolic expression of the created normative order of relations are important. The relational tie only exists as a symbolic tertium, which most clearly manifests itself in discursive and narrative structures (White 2008: 20–62).

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The hitherto discussed relational orders distinguished by Donati are social in the sense that social subjects refer to reality, and the meaning, categories, classifications, typifications of that reality form the sociocultural context of relations. Following this line of reasoning, Donati’s typology lacks a clear divide between the “theoretical” sphere (i.e. ideational products) and the sphere of practical reality. In other words, culture has no autonomy here. Relational sociology undoubtedly needs a more general theory of reality: an ontology where, from the humanistic point of view, i.e. from the viewpoint of a subject who builds relations with the world, an empirically available order of nature is apparent. This order exists regardless of human action, but is given through a network of meanings woven by people, a cultural reality which contains an embedded social reality: the world of social relations. Transcendent reality may be considered a part of symbolically presented cultural reality. Donati speaks here about a different order of reality and about latent relations with it. This is an ambiguous concept, since he is referring to a symbolic relation in regard to lay or religious ideals, and such a relation requires some form of expression, some vehicle of that relation’s meaning. Relational sociology should also be a relational sociology of the self. Thus, we should distinguish the subject’s relations with oneself: the self’s relationality as I, Me and You. In other words, relational understanding must also refer to internal conversation and the relational nature of personal identity (Wiley 2005). Donati also sketched out an understanding of the relational gaze that doesn’t include personal reflexivity based on internal conversation. He subsequently links relational reflexivity with reflexive references to relations (metareflexivity) and with systemic reflexivity: reflexive mechanisms within relation networks. Hence, relational understanding as a task of relational sociology is understanding based on reflexivity, and thus on referring to the observer’s relations with that which is being observed. This cannot be the viewpoint of an observer who constructs the object of observation. Recognizing subject reflexivity in the social world of relations, relational sociology requires metareflection, which makes it possible to reveal processes that constitute social worlds of relations, but are unrecognizable for their participants. Pierre Bourdieu emphasizes this especially strongly (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). The multitude of realities and worlds has been described in many ways. In my opinion, no ontology is finished and final. Analogously to virtue

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epistemology, one may speak about virtue ontology. Thus, various ontologies are not equal in value. There is seemingly no need to distinguish too many ontic orders. Two of them appear basic: the objective order and the intersubjective order, or the order of nature and the order of culture. Within the second one, we can distinguish layers of ideational culture and of societal culture, or perhaps of material culture; or, from another viewpoint, various cultural and social systems of actions and values (Znaniecki 1952). Striving for simplicity in the framing of the issue of relational understanding, I propose to understand understanding as relatively autonomous viewing of objective orders of meanings and intersubjective orders (pragmatic orders of meanings). Like Stephen Turner, who brings down the different varieties of Weber’s Verstehen to just two, and like Abel, who mentions Verstehen I and Verstehen II, I propose that relational understanding should be linked with two variants of the problem of relationality: reciprocal relations and objectified relations. Overcoming the opposition between the interpretative and normative paradigm does not come down to linking the normative definitions of situations and interpretative defining of situations; it involves combining and aligning methodological approaches. The reflexivity of relational understanding means a careful and skeptical approach to converting the postulate of understanding into an imperative of transforming the world.

4  Two Ways of Understanding Relational Understanding Understanding sociology, also known as humanistic sociology, was burdened with the consequences of Max Weber’s concept of Verstehen as subjective meaning: a subjective orientation of meaningful action. This approach to understanding was strengthened by the concept of action: Talcott Parsons’s “unit act”. In this way, the nominalist ontology giving priority to individual subjects of social life was consolidated. Relational sociology develops the tradition of an understanding, humanistic sociology. Of key importance here is a definition of understanding that isn’t limited to the subject’s intentionality, but has a relational nature. I argue that two kinds of understanding are significant at this point. Understanding in the first sense pertains to relations between the perspectives of participants in social relations. Understanding in the second sense gains a general epistemic significance, and is associated with explaining. It means

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analyzing the space of relations from the observer’s (researcher’s) viewpoint, and thus this kind of understanding may be termed relational analysis. I distinguish these two kinds of understanding analogously to Verstehen I and Verstehen II mentioned by Theodore Abel (Abel 1948, 1975). The analogy lies in the fact that understanding in the first sense is associated with the intentionality of the subjects of social life, who enter into interactions and reciprocal relations, whereas understanding in the second sense consists in analyzing the objectified results of those interactions and relations. In any case, these two kinds of understanding transcend the division between the interpretative and normative paradigms. Reflexivity bridges the gap. 4.1   Understanding I Because reciprocal relations can arise, persist and change only in the process of interaction as a communication process, everything that constitutes an achievement in understanding this process becomes a legitimate part of relational sociology. In relational sociology, the concepts of conversation and internal conversation are used as essentially relational concepts. Relational perception of subjects, roles and identities is associated with the interactional process wherein reciprocal interpretation takes place. This is relational understanding par excellence. Reflexivity is not only a property of the self, and thus of the relational subject, not just objectively, but also subjectively through internalized relations in the internal communication of I, Me and You. Human communication and semiosis are reflexive, as shown by Peirce and Mead (Wiley 2005: 81–87). Reflexivity is a property of thinking, and when it turns upon this thinking, it becomes metareflexivity. In other words, after Norbert Wiley, there is reflexivity of the first-level order and second-level order. Reflexivity includes the features of a relational subject (intrapersonal reflexivity) and interpersonal reflexivity in the process of interaction and communication (Wiley 2005: 87). Language is reflexive, as shown, e.g., by the metalinguistic function of communication turned toward the linguistic code in search of its meaning, presented by Roman Jakobson. Relational understanding in the interaction process and its reflexivity manifest themselves in the process described by George H. Mead as role-­ taking. The term refers not to roles in the conventional sociological sense, i.e. rights and responsibilities that guide reciprocally coordinated actions, but rather to seeking an overall pattern of meaning that can be ascribed to

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another person’s action in order to guide one’s own action in the interaction. In the field of symbolic interactionism, Ralph H. Turner discussed different varieties of this process of understanding in relational interaction and the associated different varieties of reflexivity. In other words, role-taking means adopting the perspective from which the meaning of one’s own action is constructed relatively to the meaning of the other interaction participant’s action. That perspective may be first-­ person and oriented toward the result of interaction, focusing on the intended goal. It may be a second-person perspective of identification with another interaction participant. It may also be a third-person perspective: looking in from outside the given configuration of interaction participants. Turner distinguished reflexive and non-reflexive role-taking. In reflexive role-taking, the role of the other interaction participant serves as a “mirror” that reflects the other’s expectations or judgments. Of particular importance are elements pertaining to self-image. When the role-taker’s attention is focused on how they are perceived by the partner, we are dealing with reflexive role-taking (Turner 1956: 322). Turner created a typology of the relational process by which interaction participants achieve reciprocal understanding of one another’s actions. Role-taking may be: • identifying and non-reflexive, when one adopts the viewpoint of the other interaction participant as one’s own; • identifying and reflexive, when one adopts the perspective of the other interaction participant, aiming to align one’s own perspective with it; • non-reflexive and adopting a third party’s perspective; • reflexive and adopting a third party’s perspective; • reflexive role-taking from the standpoint of an interactive effect: strategic communication of meanings (Turner 1956: 322). The concept of different varieties of role-taking4 presented above shows the complexity of relational understanding and its reflexivity in the first sense distinguished here.

4  In order to highlight relational understanding in the process of role-taking, I have refrained from a more literal explication of Ralph H. Turner’s concepts (Hałas 2006: 243).

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4.2   Understanding II Moving on to the second way of understanding relational understanding, we face the problems of relational analysis. The notion of analysis gained a prominent position thanks to twentieth-century analytical philosophy and scholars from the circle of Viennese neo-positivism; its co-founder Rudolf Carnap saw in analysis the way to understanding. It is not clear how the relational sociology movement came to conflate method with analysis. Both Pierre Bourdieu and Pierpaolo Donati utilize the notion of relational analysis, whereas Harrison C.  White speaks of network analysis (White 2008: 18). Relational analysis, as mentioned above, is the second kind of relational understanding. Donati outlined the methodological rules of relational analysis. Relational analysis is equivalent to the methodology of relational sociology, which should lead to the construction of interpretative theories enabling us to understand and explain social phenomena generated by social relations (Carrà 2016: 15). Donati’s analytical logic lies in the AGIL scheme, taken from Parsons and reformulated on the grounds of relational epistemology (Prandini 2016: 267). Reinterpretation consisted of rejecting the functions expressed in the AGIL acronym, upon which the equilibrium of a social system depends (functions based on the normativity of that system and rooted in a value system) in favor of social reality viewed as emergent and contingent. Thus, relational analysis is based on the AGIL scheme as a heuristic scheme in studying the morphostasis and morphogenesis of relational forms of social life. Social facts as relational facts are understood and explained from the perspective of subjects entering into relations, as well as from the perspectives of their observers. Relational analysis was developed in another direction by Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 224–235). Relational thinking typical for Bourdieu also consisted in rejecting Talcott Parsons’s theory and neofunctionalism. Relational analysis is based on the heuristic scheme of the field, which assumes that a space of relations exists as an emergent reality that results primarily from relations of power. Relational thinking means thinking in the categories of a field (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 96–97).

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“The relational (I prefer this term, rather than the more narrowly defined term ‘structuralist’) way of thinking is, as Cassirer showed in Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff (1910), a distinguishing feature of modern science.” Bourdieu says that only the relational is real. He contrasts the objective reality of relations with interaction and an intersubjective tie between subjects (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 97). The field is a basic category of relational analysis. It is defined in the categories of networks of positions determined by the distribution of power and capitals (ibid.), ultimately reducible to symbolic capital. Relational analysis is also semiotic analysis, since the problem of meaning is the central problem of Bourdieu’s sociological theory. His theory is a sociological semiology of sorts. In Bourdieu’s opinion, the social nature of language is one of its essential characteristics. Harrison C.  White developed relational network analysis in a similar manner, rejecting Parsons’s theory. White’s analysis is based on the heuristics of networks and domains, i.e. networks of relations and cultural domains of meanings. Here, too, the question of the sociological concept of meaning is of central importance, along with the pragmatics of semiosis, which defines emergent social formations. To sum up, relational analysis as the second modality of relational understanding may develop in various directions, depending on the manner in which the research subject is constructed on the basis of the premises of relational epistemology. As shown by the presented outline of approaches that form relational sociology, these approaches differ in regard to the importance they ascribe to understanding in the first sense mentioned here and understanding in the second sense, termed relational analysis. This distinction cannot be brought down to the subjective and objective meaning of social phenomena. In this sense, relational sociology as understanding sociology departs from the traditional Verstehen in the sense given to that concept by Max Weber. Culture is the basis of relational sociology. “One can view culture as the interpretive contexts for all social actions so that it can be computed as an envelope from them, as well as shaped by them. Effective practices to that end have evolved that precede, preface, and anticipate social sciences” (White 2008: 373). There is no divide between the interpretative paradigm and the normative paradigm. A relational paradigm exists.

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References Abel, Theodore. 1929. Systematic Sociology in Germany. Critical Analysis of Some Attempts to Establish Sociology as an Independent Science. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1948. The Operation Called Verstehen. American Journal of Sociology 54: 211–218. ———. 1975. Verstehen I and Verstehen II. Theory and Decision. An International Journal for Philosophy and Methodology of the Social Sciences 6: 99–102. Archer, Margaret S. 2012. The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1994. Raisons pratiques. Sur la théorie de l’action. Paris: Édutions du Seuil. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loïc J.  D. Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Carrà, Elisabetta. 2016. Analisi relazionale. In Lessico della sociologia relazionale, ed. Paolo Terenzi et al., 15–18. Bologna: Il Mulino. Dépelteau, François. 2018. The Promises of the Relational Turn in Sociology. In The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology, ed. François & Dépelteau, V–XIV. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Donati, Pierpaolo. 2011. Relational Sociology. A New Paradigm for the Social Sciences. London: Routledge. ———. 2019. The Sociological Gaze: When, How and Why Is It Relational? In The Relational Gaze on a Changing Society, ed. Elisabetta Carrà and Paolo Terenzi, 11–43. Berlin: Peter Lang. Douglas, Jack D. 1974. Understanding Everyday Life. Toward the Reconstruction of Sociological Knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Garfinkel, Harold. 1962. Common-Sense Knowledge of Social Structures: The Documentary Method of Interpretation. In Theories of the Mind, ed. Jordan M. Scher, 689–712. New York: Free Press. Giddens, Anthony. 1976. New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretative Sociologies. London: Hutchinson. Grimm, Stephen. 2021. Understanding. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edward N.  Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/understanding/. Accessed February 19, 2022. Hałas, Elżbieta. 2006. Interakcjonizm symboliczny. Społeczny kontekst znaczeń [Symbolic Interactionism. The Social Context of Meanings]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN. ———. 2016. Introduction. In Life-World, Intersubjectivity and Culture. Contemporary Dilemmas, ed. Elżbieta Hałas, 9–18. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

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———. 2019. Discovering the Relational Relevance of Reciprocity. In The Relational Gaze on a Changing Society, ed. Elisabetta Carrà and Paolo Terenzi, 89–105. Berlin: Peter Lang. Hałas, Elżbieta, and Aleksander Manterys. 2021. Introduction: Focusing on Relations, Reason and Morality. In Relational Reason, Morals and Sociality, ed. Elżbieta Hałas and Aleksander Manterys, 7–21. Berlin: Peter Lang. Joas, Hans. 1985. G.H. Mead. A Contemporary Re-examination of His Thought. Cambridge: Polity Press. Knoblauch, Hubert. 2016. Communicative Constructivism and the Communication Society. In Life-World, Intersubjectivity and Culture. Contemporary Dilemmas, ed. Elżbieta Hałas, 185–199. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Lincoln, Yvonna S., and Norman K. Denzin. 2000. The Seventh Moment. Out of the Past. In Handbook of Qualitative Research, ed. Norman  K.  Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, 1047–1065. Thousand Oaks: SAGE. Mützel, Sophie, and Lisa Kressin. 2021. From Simmel to Relational Sociology. In Handbook of Classical Sociological Theory, ed. Seth Abrutyn and Omar Lizardo, 217–238. Wiesbaden: Springer. Nozick, Robert. 1981. Philosophical Explanations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Parsons, Talcott. 1951. The Social System. New York: Free Press. Prandini, Ricardo. 2016. Schema AGIL. In Lessico della sociologia relazionale, ed. Paolo Terenzi et al., 267–271. Bologna: Il Mulino. Regt de, Henk W. 2017. Understanding Scientific Understanding. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Turner, Ralph H. 1956. Role-Taking, Role Standpoint, and Reference-Group Behavior. American Journal of Sociology 61 (3): 316–328. Trinkaus Zagzebski, Linda. 1996. Virtues of the Mind. An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turner, Stephen. 2019. Verstehen Naturalized. Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 49 (4): 1–22. White, Harrison C. 2008. Identity and Control. How Social Formations Emerge. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wiley, Norbert. 2005. The Semiotic Self. Cambridge: Polity Press. Wilson, Thomas P. 1970. Conceptions of Interaction and Forms of Sociological Explanation. American Sociological Review 35: 697–709. ———. 1974. Normative and Interpretive Paradigms in Sociology. In Understanding Everyday Life. Toward the Reconstruction of Sociological Knowledge, ed. Jack D. Douglas. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

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Zagzebski, Linda. 2019. Toward a Theory of Understanding. In Varieties of Understanding: New Perspectives from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology, ed. Stephen Grimm, 123–135. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Znaniecki, Florian. 1934. The Method of Sociology. New York: Farrar and Rinehart. ———. 1952. Cultural Sciences. Their Origin and Development. Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois Press.

CHAPTER 4

Realism Versus Relationism Sergio Belardinelli

1   Introduction Talking about relational sociology is like talking about a very multifaceted object. There are many relational sociologies nowadays and these are characterized by different philosophical and ontological presuppositions. It is a sort of inextricable mare magnum of various approaches, not all of them equally rigorous, most of the time in contrast to each other, and for this reason extremely interesting. A good picture of this plurality can be found in a powerful volume edited by François Dépelteau, where 33 essays by different authors are collected, each of which, it must be said, tries to make the point in its own way with relational sociology, linking it to the most diverse, and often extravagant, philosophical-cultural perspectives: The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology (Dépelteau 2018). For many of these approaches, epistemology is more important than ontology. In this chapter, I will try to show the advantages, including epistemological ones, of what I call the realistic relational approach, starting

S. Belardinelli (*) University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Hałas (ed.), Methodology of Relational Sociology, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41626-2_4

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from a brief comparison with two other approaches: the pragmatic-­ evolutionary one and the deconstructivist one, both strongly hostile to a realistic perspective.

2  Relational Evolutionism To give an idea of the characteristics of the pragmatic-evolutionary approach, I will refer mainly to an essay by Osmo Kivinen and Tero Piiroinen: Methodological Relationalism in Sociological Understanding of Evolving Human Culture. The main controversial target of the two authors is represented precisely by the so-called sociological realism, including the “critical” one, guilty, in their opinion, of considering social relations as real as other realities. According to these two authors, we need to look at epistemology, not ontology; and epistemology tells us that knowledge grows by virtue of “new connections”, “new combinations”, “new symbolic presentations”, certainly not “through revealing deeper and deeper truths”: “As pragmatists, we think that it is quite sufficient for a relationalist to try and provide a set of instrumentally useful conceptual tools for describing social action and operationalizing its pressing problems into specific research questions answerable through research actions. And for this, we need no metaphysical language game or ontology” (cf. Kivinen and Piiroinen 2018, 120). Both authors trace their predilection for pragmatism to the thought of J. Dewey, considered by them the “first philosopher of evolution” in the Darwinian sense. More precisely, the two authors would like to promote a “Deweyan methodological relationalism” on a Darwinist basis (see Kivinen and Piiroinen 2018, 121). As Dewey put it: “In science, since meanings are determined on the ground of their relations as meanings to one another, relations become the objects of inquiry”. Consequently social scientific research, too, according to the authors, “cannot be but relational—what we investigate and debate about is rooted in networks of meaning, in communities of practice, and as such is understandable only through their relations” (Kivinen and Piiroinen 2018, 131). As for ontology, the two authors believe that it is a useless, misleading occupation and that we must instead focus on epistemology, in order to clarify the meaning of scientific research in general and social research in particular. Yet to demonstrate that ontology matters, it seems to me that our authors do nothing but talk about ontology, about how things are.

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What I mean is that it is not enough to dismiss the “subject/object dualism” in the name of the Darwinian/Deweyan principle that wants subject and object to self-imply themselves in an anti-teleological and casual process, to sanction the validity of a pragmatic and constructivist epistemology. They say: “Scientific theories are tools of action, which people expect to be useful for solving some actual problems” (Kivinen and Piiroinen 2018, 133). And this is because “Like any organism transacting with its environment, a human being acts and is acted upon, adapts to the environment, copes with it and forms habits of action”. In other words: “The world does not divide itself into ‘facts’: it is only us, with our language, in our actions, who divide the world into facts. We will try and anchor the terminology in the world, to be sure, but as we are doing so we are thereby turning the world into an environment; and an environment—as our Deweyan, niche-constructionist take on evolutionary theory shows—is not something independent from us” (Kivinen and Piiroinen 2018, 132). I believe that here we have a wrong ontology, on which an equally wrong epistemology is based. And this is not because I contest the idea that “Human minds have changed with the changing human organism-­ environment transactions”, as Kivinen and Piiroinen literally claim (Kivinen and Piiroinen 2018, 135). I could very well accept the “notion of evolutionary niche”; however, I do not believe that the idea of a continuous interaction between the human mind and the socio-cultural environment can serve to explain “consciousness, like the rest of humanity” (Kivinen, Piiroinen 2018, 135). All the more so if, as both Dewey and our authors do, we consider human language as our highest evolutionary point, what “makes us a little bit special among other species” (Kivinen and Piiroinen 2018, 132). I cannot deepen this issue here, but as opportunely Chomsky and, more recently, Andrea Moro (Moro 2015, 2019) have shown, with very serious arguments, in my opinion hardly debatable, the development of language is not only an “outside-in” process, but also an “inside-out” process (Belardinelli 2018). Consequently, the relationship between mind/world, subject/object is a little more complicated than that taken for granted by the “methodologically relationalist line” (Kivinen and Piiroinen 2018, 135) of our authors, who base the validity of their approach on the simple consideration that the world “is not independent from us”, being the continuous resultant of our interaction with it. A form of constructivism, such that meanings simply accumulate on each other in an endless process. Each meaning involves “[…] the whole (socio-­ cultural, meanings-creating) organism-environment history of

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transactions” (Kivinen and Piiroinen 2018, 130). In other words, relations are reduced to pure processes. Even about their preference for a “flat” ontology I would have something to say, especially if I think of the evolutionary approach of both authors. In fact, if there is something that evolutionism shows, it is precisely a stratified idea of reality, certainly not a “flat” one. Not to mention the problems that arise when we also want to interpret the human consciousness as a simple stage of biological-evolutionary development of the human organism. We can certainly agree with their idea that human life must also be understood as an interface with an environment, rather than as entirely internal processes. As Marya Schechtman points out, “the role of such interactions in biological life is recognized by the fact that the biological sciences include not only biochemistry, neurobiology, anatomy and cell biology, but also evolutionary biology, ecology and zoology (including ethology)” (Schechtman 2017, 191). But if in organisms, according to their complexity, unity is also constituted by the continuous interaction with the environment, and in higher animals also by their intentional abilities, in beings like humans “a new kind of complexity is added to behavior and the interactions with the environment deriving from the co-evolution of reflective self-awareness, symbolic representations, cultural and social infrastructures and explicit normative judgments” (Schechtman 2017, 193). Organic identity would not be sufficient to explain a permanence also due to psychic and social performance. It is therefore difficult to avoid resorting to emerging phenomena and specificities, such as intentionality, irreducible to pure biological or physical mechanisms.

3  Relational Deconstructivism Emerging phenomena are considered important within the approach that I have defined as deconstructivist; even the context in which they are inserted tends to make them almost evanescent. In this regard, I find exemplary Peter Lenco’s essay on Deleuze and Relational Sociology. In this essay, too, the author mostly speaks of ontology, but, unlike the two authors previously engaged, he does so expressly. Deleuze is exalted as one of the leading philosophers of immanence, as the one who showed how all beings have “the same ontological importance”. God, men or fear are all alike, although obviously not the same. But, and this is Deleuze’s thesis adopted by Lenco, the differences are not ontologically inherent to objects

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as such; rather, they arise from a process guided by differences that make a difference, that is, differences that produce differentiations. “For Deleuze, what we generally call difference arises from processes, processes driven by differences differentiating” (Lenco 2018, 147). To explain this differentiation, Deleuze divides the world in two spheres: the virtual and the actual. Everything in the world that is real contains both of these two dimensions. The social world, to give an example, does not consist “of a bunch of stuff or things to which are variously attributed causes, patterns, structure and individual will”; rather, it is composed of only two poles or aspects: the virtual and the actual. As Lenco writes: “It is as if everything is a double, with one half in the virtual and the other in the actual” (Lenco 2018, 147); and it is precisely this “immanent difference” to everything that Deleuze calls “differentiation”. The substance becomes the flow of matter that receives its attributes from the “corresponding virtual intensities” (Lenco 2018, 148). We thus have, on the one hand, “all of the world”, and on the other, “the discrete, extensive, individual or One” (what we generally call subject) (see Lenco 2018, 150) which confirms its radical immanence. “Thus”—Lenco writes—“Deleuze never has to account for or explain an entity or individual. They are all emergent properties of a single substance” (Lenco 2018, 149). In Deleuze’s own words: “difference must be articulation and connection in itself; it must relate different to different without any mediation whatsoever by the identical, the similar, the analogous or the opposed” (Lenco 2018, 148). It is precisely this immanentist, truly “flat” ontology that, according to Lenco, would make Deleuze “a relational thinker par excellence” (Lenco 2018, 153) and therefore “central to sociology” (Lenco 2018, 152). Thanks to this ontology, it would be possible to overcome both methodological individualism and holism, “without succumbing to the bugbear of intentionality”. A relational sociology, for which individuals “are the product of interactions in the virtual” in the sense I mentioned above, and whose model is identified in a game called “Go”, which I do not know, but which has been described in a way that gives a very good idea. Unlike the pieces of the game of chess, the stones with which this game is played have no meaning in themselves, but only acquire it as the game develops. Well, Lenco-Deleuze’s relational approach moves more or less from the same premise: the social world is nothing more than an infinity of relations, without predefined characteristics: a chaos of relations with “fluid and purely relational characteristics”. This is the sense of their “origami-­ Sociology” (Lenco 2018, 153).

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Deleuze’s emphasis on “differing differences (differentiation)” makes the world appear as a “pure relation”. As Lenco writes: “The elegant notion that the more ‘fixed’ states of affairs that we observe and live are the result of intensive communications allows for both chaos and emergence, as well as stratification and capture, but again what we call units or individuals are always the results, not the causes. This implies a sociology of pure, mobile relation, a calculus of thought without foundation. It is a world of flux wherein mobile relations relate to mobile relations ad infinitum” (Lenco 2018, 153). The ontology of this essay has something that recalls the Spinozian substance: a radical emergentist immanentism, which considers every individuality, every being, the result of the differentiation of the virtuality (one might say, of the potentia) of a single, becoming substance. However, if, as Lenco-Deleuze affirm, all things are what they are, not by virtue of the specific difference inherent in their being, but by virtue of a constitutive “duplicity” between the virtual and the actual inherent in the whole reality and therefore to every individual or thing, it seems to me that we are facing a deconstruction of the reality that threatens to make any difference completely indifferent. We are in a world of “mobile relations” that “relate to mobile relation ad infinitum”, as our authors allege. But what is at stake in such a world? Above all, I would say that it is easy to understand why our authors speak of a “bugbear of intentionality”. I know that I am introducing a controversial topic, but when we talk about intentionality, in my opinion, we are not talking about a relation, but about the condition that makes it possible to talk about relations in a realistic way. I’ll try to explain this point briefly. Intentional experience does not consist in a relationship between mind and world; intentional acts are always characterized as a “reference to objective conditions” by mental contents—it is only within the intentional activity that the epistemic subject is aware of a dimension that exists regardless of its referring to it; it is within the intentional act that we encounter an objective world, even if the world does not assume the role of the external term of a mind-world relationship, where precisely this relationship would be intentional. A non-marginal corollary of all this is that our thoughts, our actions, our perceptions of the world take their form, whatever it may be, following one another over time. Briefly, intentionality has an intrinsically temporal character. And it is precisely this temporal character of our

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intentionality that allows us to have news of time without having to perceive its succession, indeed, precisely because its succession is not perceived. We do not perceive time, but the experience that has a temporal character. In other words, we perceive the existential becoming of an event, not the succession of moments that constitute it (see Cimmino 2020).

4  Realism Versus Relationism Both of the two essays I have briefly analyzed show theoretical perspectives that are often distant from each other. In conclusion, I would like to briefly consider what seems to me to be the common thread that unites them: hostility toward ontology in general, especially in its realistic variants, and, consequently, an idea of relational sociology more attentive to changes than to invariance, more to social flow than to structures. Since I am convinced that the strength or weakness of the relational approach also depends on the ontological presuppositions on which explicitly or implicitly this approach is based, it is almost spontaneous for me to reiterate that the bad epistemology that transpires from the essays I have examined largely depends precisely on the bad ontology with which their authors work. Ultimately it is a question of enhancing both variances and invariances, let’s say, both the social flow and the structures. A social relationship always has to do both with its own unfolding as a relationship (interaction, exchange, etc.) and with the emergent effect; that is, a structure endowed with permanence in the flow of social life. I would like to refer to the essay that Pierpaolo Donati recently wrote, entitled Fluxes and Structures: Which Relational Gaze? A Comparison Between Relational Sociologies (Donati 2020), in which he critically engages the sociology of Dépelteau, but I believe that his critical arguments may also apply to the authors of the essays I have examined here. Starting from the Heraclitean metaphor, according to which one cannot bathe twice in the same river, Donati also tries to assert the reasons for the invariance, let’s say of the structure, with respect to the continuous flow. He writes: “Dépelteau argued—as Heraclitus would say—that what we are seeing as the object of sociological work (i.e. ‘the river’) is nothing more than process and transaction flows (i.e. ‘water flowing past’). He believed relational sociology to be an invitation to see our so-called objects (societies, institutions, social patterns, conflicts, social movements, social classes, etc.) in a processual way, i.e. as being made of fluid, dynamic relations understood as processual transactions” (Donati 2020, 179).

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We all know which path Donati is following, as opposed to these positions which he defines as “relationist”, rather than “relational”; what he does not accept is precisely the absolute contingency of relationships, their indifferent presentation and modification. According to him, relationships must also be given a structure, otherwise we get lost in an indistinct and meaningless flow. This obviously does not mean that all the authors we have presented and Dépelteau himself are not right in arguing that social relations somehow “flow” and have a certain degree of contingency within them. If the relationships arise from the interaction of subjects, it is obvious that they have these characteristics. “However”—Donati says— “processes and transactions (the waters) flow within a context in which they themselves are conditioned by structures (the river), that they themselves forge in turn. The structure (river) is the result of the flows of interactions (flowing water), just as in general a social structure changes through a morphogenetic process that starts from an initial structure at time T1, and through an interactive phase occurring between time T2 and time T3, generates an elaborated structure at time T4” (Donati 2020, 180). Those who, like Dépelteau and others, insist on the flow of relationships, according to Donati, are not able to see “the emerging structure at the end of each cycle of change”. I would write “the emergent structure implicit in any change”, but it doesn’t matter here so much. It is a question of the ontology, and more precisely the ontology of time, that I cannot further explore here. However, Donati also tells us something more: Dépelteau as well as the authors I mentioned before fail to see this emerging structure for two reasons. The first is due to their “flat” ontology; the second is due to their inability to see how relationships are the object of sociology in two senses: both as an interaction/transaction (relationship as process), and as an emergent effect that possesses a structure (relationship as structure). “The structures (rivers) are emergent phenomena constituted by flows (relations in the temporal phase of interactions) through the cycles of morphogenetic and morphostatic processes. They regenerate continuously after the water (the flow of relations) has gone” (Donati 2020, 180). On this point, however, I would have a perplexity that I formulate in the form of a question: are we sure that the so-called relationalism does not recognize the emergent character of the structure? Rather I would say this: some relationists recognize the emergent character of the structure; however, what they deny is, so to speak, permanence, duration, since the

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structure is also completely immersed in the flow. Except, if the structure also flows, how do we perceive any change? Regarding the relationship that structures have with change, I would like to make a simple consideration. Whatever interpretation we offer, one point seems quite clear to me: we can say that a structure (like any other thing or relationship) changes only because something of it remains within the change. Without this permanence the change would be invisible; we would simply have structures, things or relationships that merely follow one another, not structures, things or relationships that change. Sociology insists a lot on processes, developments, changes, but perhaps neglects persistence. Rigorously, as Nisbet has shown, the most normal character of relationships and social structures is represented by their permanence over time, not by their change. The latter can be observed and studied only in the light of persistence, that is, of what remains. I witness the flow because I have a fixed pattern that allows me to see it. A pure becoming, as a simple succession of events, is something mystical, elusive. And this is what Dépelteau’s sentence appears to me, to which Donati critically refers, but which the authors to whom I previously engaged would enthusiastically share: “We never get involved twice in the same social process (in the same couple, family, classroom, etc.). Everything is changing all the time, including ourselves. This is hard to accept, since we are looking for some sort of stability often to reassure ourselves” (quoted in Donati 2020, 180). I don’t know how hard it is to accept that; however, the serious fact is that we cannot see any change without something that stays the same over time. It is a necessary condition for our capability of expressing and explaining reality.

References Belardinelli, S. 2018. L’ordine di Babele. Le culture tra pluralismo e identità. Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli. Cimmino, L. 2020. Intenzionalità ed esperienza del tempo. Perugia: Aguaplano. Dépelteau, F., ed. 2018. The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Donati, P. 2020. Fluxes and Structures: Which Relational Gaze? A Comparison Between Relational Sociologies. Polish Sociological Review 2 (210): 179–197. Kivinen, O., and T. Piiroinen. 2018. Pragmatist Methodological Relationalism in Sociological Understanding of Evolving Human Culture. In The Palgrave

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Handbook of Relational Sociology, ed. F. Dépelteau, 119–141. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Lenco, P. 2018. Deleuze and Relational Sociology. In The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology, ed. F. Dépelteau, 143–160. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Moro, A. 2015. I confini di Babele. Il cervello e il mistero delle lingue impossibili. Il Mulino, Bologna. ———. 2019. La razza e la lingua. Sei lezioni sul razzismo. Milano: La Nave di Teseo. Schechtman, M. 2017. Staying Alive. Personal Identity, Practical Concerns, and the Unity of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

PART II

Approaches for Relational Studies

CHAPTER 5

Fields, Markets, Institutions and Networks Gisèle Sapiro

1   Introduction: Three Paradigms of Relational Sociology Relational approaches in sociology are divided between three paradigms: functionalism, interactionism and genetic structuralism. Although they may share some assumptions, these three paradigms rely on premises that are not compatible. Interactionism, which underlies network theory, and genetic structuralism, which approaches the objective relations structuring the social space, both reject the functionalist paradigm, which tends to think of systems as integrated and achieving equilibrium. However, the relational approaches of interactionism and genetic structuralism are different. Network analysis has developed in sociology as an alternative to the Parsonian functionalist paradigm, which placed emphasis on institutions, organizations, norms and social roles (see for instance the seminal article by Granovetter 1973). It developed in economic sociology, in order to describe markets. It generally relies on an interactionist paradigm.

G. Sapiro (*) École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Hałas (ed.), Methodology of Relational Sociology, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41626-2_5

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Interactionism defines society as emerging from interactions. In this sense, it is opposed to holism, which considers, following Durkheim, that the social structure precedes the individual agents. Genetic structuralism was developed by Bourdieu. His theory of the social structure is more holistic than interactionist and shares this with functionalism. The social structure is more or less crystallized in institutions; it does not arise from individual action, but conditions and orients it. It thus cannot be reduced to a “context” of individual action, since individuals bear themselves the social structure in their bodies. But, by contrast with Parsons, Bourdieu’s functionalism draws from Marx and Weber, and from conflict theory, i.e. the competition for limited resources and uneven power relations. The social structure depends on the unequal distribution of social properties, considered as kinds of resources or of capital: individuals endowed with a high amount of economic capital contrast with those who are deprived of economic capital (Bourdieu 1979/1984a). The relations are dynamic and organized by struggles. Bourdieu added to Marx the cultural capital and the social capital, a concept that is widely used in network analysis (Bourdieu 1986, 1991). In genetic structuralism, social capital is only one type of resource, which does not act separately from the other types of (cultural and economic) capital. Although social capital is sometimes combined with “human capital” (Lin 2001), network theory often privileges it as an explanatory variable, rather than other ones such as reputation (or symbolic capital). Network theory emphasizes the conditions of access to information, opposing “cliques,” where density of relations between individuals creates redundancy, to “structural holes”: the individuals who bridge these holes hold a greater amount of social capital (Burt 1992, 1995). This approach does not say much, however, about the strategies of information retention that are widespread in competitive milieus. Moreover, network analysis does not distinguish different types of social capital according to its origin: inherited vs. acquired through education or professional training, or according to its location: within or outside a specific field, two distinctions that can be heuristically derived from Bourdieu’s theory. His field theory takes into account the relative autonomy of some activities, like literature, music, art, science, law, from the global social structure (on the scientific field, see Knoblauch in this volume). These activities have their own rules governing a specific competition around the issues at stake in the field, which cannot be reduced to economic constraints nor political ones. They have their own history to which they refer (as

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illustrated by the legal, scientific or art fields). Bourdieu first developed this concept of field to describe the literary world. It was in the 1960s, before his objectivist approach of society was stabilized, and his first approach was interactionist (Bourdieu 1966), but he soon rejected it to adopt a more objectivist theory of the field, based on the objective relations between the agents’ social properties (he used Max Weber’s analysis of religion, and especially the opposition between the priest and the prophet; Bourdieu 1971a). The field is described topographically as a space of positions related one to the other, and a space of position-taking which is homologous to the space of positions (Bourdieu 1984b/1993a). The literary field is structured around the opposition between writers endowed with a high amount of symbolic capital (the dominant), like literary prize winners, members of academies or famous writers (what is called today in the publishing world “brand names”), and newcomers or outsiders, who are deprived of symbolic capital (the dominated). And the second structuring opposition is between autonomy and heteronomy (Bourdieu 1983, 1992/1996, 1993b; Sapiro 2023a). The relational approach implied by field theory is thus irreducible to interactions. It comes from phonology (Saussure), which was interested in significant differences, and assumes that individuals define one another regardless of the effective interactions between them (which can of course exist or materialize at some point, but can also mask objective relations: for instance, high competition between agents often expresses the proximity of the positions they occupy in the social space or in the field). The literary field, and fields in general, should be understood as relational spaces endowed with a certain autonomy toward the market on one hand, and the state (or any other centralizing institution) on the other (Sapiro 2003a). The market is a space where the demand rules the supply and arbitrates the competition between producers. The idealistic classic representation of a totally free and auto-regulated market is of course a myth of liberal thought, widely used by economists, but we can use it as an ideal type of the possible range of social organizations of the production of goods and services, with at the other extreme another ideal type that can never be totally achieved in reality, that is to say the centralized regulation by a monopolistic institution (state, Church or any other institution in a specific domain): totalitarian states strove to reach this centralized control of the supply of products and services in all domains of social life, but as we know, this was never entirely achieved.

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Fields can be located in between these two extremes: while some fields are more centralized around a monopolistic institution such as the Roman Catholic Church or the legal field, others are much less regulated, like the modern literary field. The rise of a market of symbolic goods helped the literary field get autonomy from state control (Bourdieu, Pierre 1971b/1985). The notion of field is a conceptual tool to construct the object in a relational manner, by identifying the relatively autonomous structure of objective relations which organize the activity in question. Its relative autonomy is not given; the degree of autonomy has to be studied. For instance, the unions of writers in communist countries were centralized bodies aiming at controlling the literary activity, but despite the attempt to monopolize literary activity, opposition developed in the underground. Although the literary issues at stake were not autonomous from the political stake, a certain degree of retranslation of political stakes into literary stakes can be observed.

2  MCA and Network Analysis Bourdieu did not use network analysis, but I have argued elsewhere that, although field theory is theoretically incompatible with network theory, network analysis can be used as a descriptive method—rather than an explanatory tool—for analyzing fields or relations between fields (together with MCA, which is the most adequate tool for describing the objective structure of relations organizing a social space, a field or a subfield; for a comparison of the two methods with the same data, see Denord 2015) (Sapiro 2006). The network of interactions within the field or across fields can indeed be explained by objective properties: the avant-gardes, for instance, tend to gather in small circles, around a journal, and to function as a sect (the symbolists and the surrealists are an example). The structure of a sect is that of a “clique”: a close and dense network of relations, clustered around a prophetic figure (for a study of the French poetic school of the Parnasse as a sect, see Ponton 1973). This structure results from the social properties of its members: it is because they are deprived of symbolic capital that they gather in a group, which will help them to achieve recognition on the literary scene and accumulate some symbolic capital (Sapiro 2003b). Although this structure has an impact on their activity, its evolution depends also on the objective properties of the members: generally, the cohesion of the group begins to fall apart when some members

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accumulate enough symbolic capital to be recognized individually and are able to compete with the prophet; the group can then become an obstacle to an individual career, as it happened in the surrealist group. In my research on the French literary field under the German occupation, I used the notion of “networks” qualitatively to analyze how the literary Resistance emerged (Sapiro 1999: 484 sq./2014: 374 sq.). I demonstrated that recruitment of members into the first literary Resistance could be explained by literary rather than political networks, which were linked to literary journals. My analysis of these networks was based on qualitative sources. I used the concepts of literary affinity and of “structural complicity” to designate the relationships within these networks. Most of these writers had in common their dominated position in the literary field, since many of them were newcomers, but they also had accumulated some kind of specific capital. These informal networks opposed the institutional and worldly sociabilities at the very official Académie française. This emerged clearly from a prosopographical survey—or a collective biography—that I conducted on the social and literary properties of 185 writers. The data was processed with Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA), a method for geometric representation of data which brings together individuals sharing the highest number of properties and opposes those who have the least (Sapiro 2002, 1999: 87–88, 715–6/2014: 67–68, 565–6). Conversely, in the graphic of variables, the modalities that have the highest number of individuals in common are close (see the simplified representation in Graph 5.1). The MCA provided a representation of the structure of the literary field. Although this is not a network analysis, networks are in fact coded through journals, academies, organizations (such as the literary Resistance body, the Comité national des écrivains, or CNE). One can distinguish networks that are interconnected and networks that are not. However, this is of course not a specific method for network analysis. A network analysis would probably have revealed the centrality of some writers as intermediaries between networks (like Jean Paulhan, who connected different journals and thus occupied a strategic position in a structural hole). Network analysis proves useful for studying the inner structure of relationships between different groups, institutions or journals within a field. The questions it can answer pertain to segmentation, center-periphery and hierarchization. In the literary field (or other cultural fields), we can expect to find a segmentation along the structural opposition between autonomy

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Graph 5.1  The structure of the French literary field in the 1940s (simplified representation of MCA)

and heteronomy, or according to genres (poets might publish in separate journals and gather in separate circles, for instance); and a hierarchization based on symbolic capital (capital of recognition). But we also need to ask ourselves whether the clusters constitute open or close networks (for example, academies are close selective networks, while professional associations are more open, even though there are criteria for becoming a member); and whether they are durable (an institution that survives its members) or ephemeral (manifestos); stable or not (literary salons); institutionalized (academies, professional associations), semi-institutionalized (journals) or weakly institutionalized (literary groups); collective (a group) or interpersonal (the network of people with whom a writer corresponds). Network analysis can prove useful to analyze the relations between the cultural field and other fields: for instance between the literary field and the political field, the journalistic field or the fields of theater, art and music. The differentiation of these fields is a rather recent phenomenon. In the nineteenth century, the literary, political and journalistic fields intersected: many writers earned a living as journalists. And many journalists pretended to be writers, but did not gain recognition. Network analysis can help us explore the intersections of fields (Denord 2015).

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3  Translation Networks Across National Publishing Fields Network analysis can also be useful to study the relations between national fields. As an example, I shall now focus on the use of network analysis to explore intercultural transfers between national publishing fields through translation, based on my quantitative surveys on the international circulation of literary and scholarly books. This object of study requires combining the market, fields, networks and institutions. The nationalization of cultural and publishing fields traces back to the nineteenth century. It occurred in an international process, which fostered exchanges (Sapiro 2014/2018). These exchanges are unequal. Translation flows circulate mainly from the center to the periphery (Heilbron 1999). Dominant languages export a lot but do not import very much. The share of translations in the American and British book production is very low (around 3%); it stands between 15% and 18% in Germany and in France, 25% in Italy and Spain, 35% in Portugal and reaches 65% in peripheral countries such as Korea (Heilbron 1999; Heilbron and Sapiro 2015). The status of translated literature and scholarly books is different in these countries. It is prestigious in peripheral countries, while in central countries its position is marginal compared to the literary production in the national language. To exist, translation has to be promoted by networks of intermediaries and mediators. 3.1   Networks of Literary Translations Such networks enabled the importation of French literature in the United States to continue in the 1990s, after the American publishers started to be reluctant to publish translations for economic reasons, as the interviews I conducted with these intermediaries and mediators revealed. The quantitative part of the survey concerned literary works translated from French into English in the U.S. in the 1990s. The database of translated titles was extracted from the UNESCO Index Translationum and recoded (Sapiro 2015). New variables were inserted, among them the genre (novel, poetry, theatre etc.) and date of original publication, in order to distinguish three categories of books: classical, modern and contemporary. The network analysis focused on one category of intermediaries: publishers. The method of network analysis was used for two purposes. First, to explore the relationships between the American publishers who

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published at least five literary translations from French during the studied period (the link between them was sharing an author, which indicates similar interests). Second, to analyze the relationships between American and French publishers, which is an original use of network analysis developed by Mauricio Bustamante, who processed the data. In order to interpret the results, a specific research on American publishers was done. Data was collected for a couple of variables, inspired by Bourdieu’s survey on publishers (Bourdieu 1999/2008): the year the publishing house was established, its status, its (in)dependence with regard to conglomerates (the unit was imprints), its symbolic capital. The database of translated works served to code other modalities such as the number of works translated from French, and the relative share (more than 50%) of classical, modern or contemporary works. American publishers. The relations between American publishers and imprints are represented in Graph 5.2, based on their sharing a French author in their list: if they published works by the same author during the time period under consideration (1990–2003), they are connected. The thickness of the link indicates the intensity of links (the number of authors

Graph 5.2  The relationships between American publishers: shared French authors in translation. (Source: Sapiro 2015)

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they share): for instance, the thick link between Harcourt and Harvest is due to the fact that Harvest is a paperback imprint belonging to the same conglomerate as Harcourt. The network analysis reveals the centrality of the University of Nebraska Press, which shares authors with many other publishers, while for instance a publisher like Arcade is isolated. The structure of relationships also appears to be very dense on the left part of the graphic. To help interpret this structure, three variables (other than sharing an author) were projected on the graphic in order to characterize the publishers: • the number of translations, indicated by the size of the circles or squares; • the status of the publisher or imprint: university presses are designated by circles, independent publishers by squares, imprints in a large group by diamonds; • what category of work they publish in translation: those who publish a majority of contemporary works are in blue, a majority of modern works in green, a majority of classical works in red. These external variables enable us to interpret the structure of relationships. The network appears to be very dense among imprints publishing a majority of classical works, whereas the density is at its lowest among those publishing more contemporary work. The reason is that classical works are free from rights: some of them exist in different translations and editions from different publishers. They also share authors with the publishers publishing modern works, but much less with those publishing contemporary works. The latter are mostly small independent firms who usually follow one or a few single authors (like Jean Echenoz with the New Press or Annie Ernaux with Seven Stories). Arcade, which has published many works translated from French, is apart because it has its own contemporary authors. The central position of the University of Nebraska Press is due to the fact that it connects different parts of the publishing field. The MCA (Graph 5.3) of the 69 publishers who published at least 5 translations from French included variables pertaining to their status (independent vs. non-independent, profit vs. non-profit), symbolic capital, number of translations and so on. University presses (in the upper right quadrant) oppose the large trade houses (in the lower left quadrant). In the lower right quadrant are the small independent publishers. While

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Graph 5.3  MCA of American publishers having translated at least 5 French literary works (1990–2003). Thirteen variables and 45 modalities, of which 10 active variables and 31 active modalities (in red), and 3 illustrative variables and 9 illustrative modalities (in blue). The size of the square indicates the weight of the contribution to the axes

the large trade publishers tend to reprint classics in translation as said, university presses invest more in the translation of modern classics, and small independent publishers in contemporary authors. This is consistent with Bourdieu’s findings on the French publishing field, which showed that large established publishing houses tend to rely on assets, delegating the risk to introduce new authors to the small independent firms (Bourdieu 1999/2008). Relations between American and French publishers. The second network analysis displays the relationships between French (blue squares) and

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American (red circles) publishers (see Graph 5.4). This is an asymmetrical matrix. The link is the number of titles shared (meaning that the American publisher translated a book from the list of the French publisher). The size of the squares or circles now represents the degree of centrality. This network analysis appears to be much more centered than the previous one. The French most prestigious publisher, Gallimard, is at the center. This publisher shares the highest number of titles with the American publishers, since it published 29% of the works that were translated during the period. These works were published in translation by a variety of publishers, from trade to university presses, through small independent ones. Le Seuil, the second most important publisher in French in terms of symbolic capital, is at the center of another network. One can observe that it is not a “free” market, since the translation flows are not simply a function of the size of the publishers, but are related to their reputation or symbolic capital: Minuit and POL, two very small and prestigious independent publishers (Minuit published Beckett and the nouveau roman), export more than the larger Albin Michel or Fayard.

Graph 5.4  The relationships between American and French publishers (1990–2003): shared titles. Asymmetrical matrix of American and French publishers according to the number of titles, e.i. titles translated from French into English

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3.2   Scholarly Translations The second survey concerns translations of scholarly books from English, German and Italian into French between 2003 and 2013 (Sapiro 2023b). Here I explore a subfield: the subfield of scholarly publishing, which is located at the intersection of the publishing field and the academic field. The concept of subfield is undertheorized in Bourdieu. However, in one of his 1984 lessons at the Collège de France, Bourdieu explained that “a subfield is not part of a field. There is, when one moves from field to sub-­ field, a leap, a qualitative change” (Bourdieu 2016: 24; my translation). He gives the subfield of criticism as an example. The change of perspective from the broader field to the subfield, which leads us to consider the part as a whole or the contrary, is justified by the fact that the whole exerts an action on the part (Sapiro 2020). However, subfields can also emerge at the intersection of fields, like the subfield of scholarly publishing (Sapiro 2023b). The first network displays an asymmetrical matrix between the translated authors and their French publishers (Graph 5.5). Publishers sharing

Graph 5.5  Network of most translated SSH authors from English, German, Italian into French and their publishers (2003–2013). French publishers having translated at least 3 titles and authors having at least 3 titles in translation. In blue the publishers; in red the authors. The size of the nod indicates the centrality according to the number of translated authors. (Source: Sapiro 2023b)

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the same author are competing here, rather than exchanging information. The network reflects the structure of the subfield: you can see the centrality of general trade publishers such as Gallimard, Flammarion and Seuil, along with scholarly publishers like PUF or Vrin, in importing foreign authors. A qualitative reading of the graphic shows that these publishers translate canonical authors such as Heidegger or Max Weber, whereas on the left you find more politicized and subversive authors, such as Butler and Spivak, introduced by small independent radical publishers. The network of French and Anglo-American publishers reveals the structural difference between the two subfields of SSH publishing. While in France the market is dominated by general trade publishers like Le Seuil and Gallimard, among the Anglo-American publishers, it is the older university presses that are leader (Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Princeton). Again, the translation flows reflect the reputation or symbolic capital of the intermediaries. This is confirmed by the network of German and French publishers, which is very different from the former: Suhrkamp appears to play a central role in exporting German scholarship to France. A major academic publisher such as De Gruyter plays a very marginal role (see Graph 5.6). The last network analysis focuses on French publishers, distinguishing them according to the language from which they translate the most, and the period of the authors, distinguishing once again classical, modern (twentieth century) and contemporary authors (Graph 5.7). The hegemony of the American social sciences is here made visible. Very few publishers translated more from German, and these are small scholarly publishers, e.g. Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme and even fewer and smaller independent ones translate mainly from Italian.

4  Conclusion We have seen that network analysis can be combined with field analysis. It can be a heuristic tool for exploring the relations between fields, literary transfers between national (publishing) fields, and the international circulation of works, under the condition that one does not stay at the level of interactions to interpret the results. As shown, the projection of other properties and the qualitative knowledge I have about the publishers is what enabled me to interpret the network analysis. However useful for certain purposes, network analysis is not the only tool of analysis and not

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Graph 5.6  Network of German and French publishers (2003–2013). French publishers having translated at least 2 titles and German publishers having translated at least 2 titles. The size of the nod indicates the number of translated titles. (Source: Sapiro 2023b)

always the most relevant. Charts, maps and graphs can be more relevant in certain cases: for instance, maps help objectify spatial relations (Moretti 2005), and especially, in the case of the market for symbolic goods, spatial concentration or dispersion (Sapiro 2015: 346). Network analysis cannot replace prosopography nor Multiple Correspondence Analysis, but they can be complementary. The network analysis showed that the centrality of intermediaries in fields or subfields does not depend on their size and economic capital, as in a “free market,” nor can it be said to be regulated by a single institution, despite the role of state subventions (the university presses are, for instance, totally marginal in France in the subfield of scholarly publishing). The centrality of original publishers in the network analysis corresponds to the

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Graph 5.7  Network of French publishers having translated at least 2 titles from English, German and Italian, according to the most translated language (2003–2013). The ties are the number of shared authors. The dimension of the nod represents the number of titles translated. The color indicates the most translated language: blue for English, orange for German and red for Italian. In yellow publishers who translated the same amount of books from different languages. The form of the nod signals the author’s period: squares publish more classics; circles publish more twentieth-century authors; triangles more contemporary ones; diamond: same proportions (Source: Sapiro 2023b)

reputation or symbolic capital accumulated by the publishers, which underlie their capacity to introduce and impose books and authors on a foreign book market. Thanks to its relational approach, field theory also enables us to move from the macro-level of circulation flows, to the meso-­ level of institutional policies (for instance publishers or literary agents), and to the micro-level of individual strategies (of editors, agents, translators, authors, critics and so on) (Sapiro 2012).

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———. 1979. La Distinction. Critique sociale du jugement. Paris: Minuit. ———. 1983. The Field of Cultural Production, Or: The Economic World Reversed. Poetics 12 (4-5): 311–356. ———. 1984a. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 1984b. Quelques propriétés des champs. In Questions de sociologie, 113–120. Paris: Minuit. ———. 1985. The Market of Symbolic Goods. Poetics 14 (1–2): 13–44. ———. 1986. The Forms of Capital. In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. J. Richardson, 241–258. Westport, CT: Greenwood. ———. 1991. First Lecture. Social Space and Symbolic Space: Introduction to a Japanese Reading of Distinction, transl. Gisele Sapiro and Brian McHale. Poetics Today 12 (4): 627–638. ———. 1992. Les Règles de l’art. Genèse et structure du champ littéraire. Paris: Seuil. ———. 1993a. Sociology in Question. Translated by Richard Nice. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. ———. 1993b. The Field of Cultural Production, ed. Randal Johnson. Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 1996. The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Translated by Susan Emanuel. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. ———. 1999. Une révolution conservatrice dans l’édition. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 126–127: 3–28. ———. 2008. A Conservative Revolution in Publishing. Translation Studies 1 (2): 123–153. ———. 2016. Sociologie générale, vol. 2. Cours au Collège de France (1983–1986). Paris: Seuil/Raisons d’agir. Burt, Ronald. 1992. Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 1995. Le capital social, les trous structuraux et l’entrepreneur. Revue française de sociologie XXXVI: 599–628. Denord, F. 2015. Géométrie des réseaux sociaux. In La méthodologie de Pierre Bourdieu en action: Espace culturel, espace social et analyse des données, ed. Frédéric Lebaron, 59–78. Paris: Dunod. Granovetter, Mark. 1973. The Strength of Weak Ties. American Journal of Sociology 78 (6): 1360–1380. Heilbron, Johan. 1999. Towards a Sociology of Translation. Book Translations as a Cultural World System. European Journal of Social Theory 2 (4): 429–444. Heilbron, Johan, and Gisèle Sapiro. 2015. Translation: Economic and Sociological Perspectives. In Palgrave Handbook of Economics and Language, ed. Victor Ginsburgh and Shlomo Weber, 373–402. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Lin, Nan. 2001. Social Capital. A Theory of Social Structure and Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Moretti, Franco. 2005. Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Modes for Literary History. New York: Verso. Ponton, Remy. 1973. Programme esthétique et accumulation de capital symbolique. L’exemple du Parnasse. Revue française de sociologie 14 (2): 202–220. Sapiro, Gisèle. 1999. La Guerre des écrivains, 1940–1953. Paris: Fayard. ———. 2002. The Structure of the French Literary Field During the German Occupation (1940–1944): A Multiple Correspondence Analysis. Poetics 30 (5-6): 387–402. ———. 2003a. The Literary Field Between the State and the Market. Poetics 31 (5-6): 441–461. ———. 2003b. Forms of Politicization in the French Literary Field. Theory and Society 32: 633–652. ———. 2006. Réseaux, institutions et champ. In Les Réseaux littéraires, ed. Daphné Marneffe and Benoît Denis, 44–59. Bruxelles: Le Cri/CIEL-ULB-Ulg. ———. 2012. Comparaison et échanges culturels: le cas des traductions. In Faire des sciences sociales 2, Comparer, 193–221. Paris: Editions de l’EHESS. ———. 2014. Le champ est-il national: La théorie de la différenciation sociale au prisme de l’histoire globale. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 200: 70–85. ———. 2015. Translation and Symbolic Capital in the Era of Globalization: French Literature in the United States. Cultural Sociology 9 (3): 320–346. ———. 2018. Field Theory from a Transnational Perspective. In Oxford Handbook of Pierre Bourdieu, ed. Tom Medvetz and Jeffrey Sallaz, 161–182. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2020. Sous-champ. In Dictionnaire International Bourdieu, ed. Gisèle Sapiro, 806–807. Paris: CNRS Editions. ———. 2023a. The Sociology of Literature. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 2023b. L’américanisation des sciences humaines et sociales françaises? Une cartographie des traductions de l’anglais, de l’allemand et de l’italien en français (2003–2013), Biens symboliques 13 [on line].

CHAPTER 6

French Top Media Executives: The Sociology of a Segment of Elite Julie Sedel

Although they hold positions of power in a strategic sector, connected to the political field, there has so far been little scholarship on top media executives. In academic and activist discourse, the register of media self-­ celebration and its symmetrical opposite, denunciation, fuel the myth of the almighty media executive. This chapter intends to move beyond this commonplace perception by analyzing this professional group. Who are the media executives? What are the boundaries of the category? What does it reveal about national power fields? France is an interesting case as far as studying news media elite goes. First, the importance of politics and literature in French journalism has been noted by a number of scholars (Chalaby 1997; Benson 2002). As Paolo Mancini and David Hallin put it: “The media developed in Southern Europe as an institution of the political and

Translated from French by Jean-Yves Bart.

J. Sedel (*) University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Hałas (ed.), Methodology of Relational Sociology, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41626-2_6

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literary worlds more than of the market” (Hallin and Mancini 2004: 901). As a result, news media are perceived more as political platforms and tools of influence than as for profit businesses by stakeholders in France (Chalaby 1997). Another specificity of the French media field singularity lies in the centrality of the State. This centrality is visible not only through the concentration of political, cultural and media institutions in Paris and its surroundings but also through the fact that degrees and positions inside the State determine professional careers. This chapter aims at contributing to the sociology of elites by examining a specific type of elite. It shows that, being situated at the intersection of several social spaces, media executives exemplify the struggles between different fractions of the elite over the definition of the types of capital expected to prevail in the field of power.

1   Beyond the Polarized Debate Between Monists and Pluralists Studies on media elites are generally hindered by a sometimes caricatural debate between two approaches. The “monist” approach postulates that power is monopolized by a small number of individuals or by a solidary ruling class possessing all the resources needed for the exercise of political domination (Wright-Mills 1959; Davis 2005; Dahl 1958; Best and Higley 2018; Lichter et al. 1986; Suleiman 1974; Chauvin and Cousin 2014). In her paper “The structure of a national elite network”, Gwen Moore includes the media as one of ten sectors wielding power in the United States, along with Congress, the federal government, senior civil servants, the biggest commercial and industrial corporations, the super-rich, the presidents of large unions, political parties and NGOs (Moore 1979: 676). Aeron Davis is probably the author who takes the idea that the media are auxiliaries to power further (Davis 2005: 669), arguing that the elites are at once the main source, the main targets and those most sensitive to media influence among their audience: “Unequal power relations are thus generated less by mediated elite persuasion of the masses and more by 1  “[In] Southern Europe—and to a lesser degree France—liberal institutions, including both capital and political democracy, developed later. The forces of the ancien régime—the landholding aristocracy, the absolute state, and the Catholic or Orthodox church were stronger there, and liberalism triumphed only after a protracted political conflict that continued in many cases well into the twentieth century. One important legacy of this history is the fact that the political spectrum remained wider and political differences sharper in southern Europe than in Northern Europe or North America” (Hallin and Mancini 2004: 89).

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numerous micro-level decision-making processes within elite network” (Davis 2005: 684). The “pluralist” approach formulated by Robert Dahl (1958) emphasizes diversity and internal competition among elites. It encourages sociologists to look for the characteristics that distinguish subsets of the elite from others, as is done in the work of Monique Dagnaud and Dominique Melh. To the latter, TV channel executives in France “stand out from other decision-makers through their lack of attributes and symbolic titles that characterize membership in the milieu of power” (Dagnaud and Mehl 1990: 12–13). Along the same lines, Eva Mayerhöffer and Barbara Pfetsch note that: “Despite their resemblance with other business and organizational elites, executive media elites remain a distinct elite group due to the fact that their societal influence is essentially based on the control of symbolic resources that translate into economic and political power” (Mayerhoffer and Pfetsch 2010: 420). An alternative to this debate, adopted by Monika Djerf-Pierre in her analysis of media elites in Sweden (Djerf-Pierre 2007), consists in evidencing the capitals necessary to wield power in the media field. Pierre Bourdieu defines a field as a competitive system of social relationships that operates according to its own logics. It refers to objective relationships between individuals struggling over the same stakes. The objective of the game is to control the field and secure the most important institutional positions: “The most different social fields, court society, the field of political parties, the field of business firms or the academic field, can function only if there are agents who invest in them, in the different senses of this term, who commit their resources to them and pursue their objectives, thus helping, even when hostile, to maintain the structure of the field or, in certain conditions, to transform it” (Bourdieu 1990: 194). Such positions can be acquired by accumulating as much of the specific capitals that are valued in the field as possible. The objective of this chapter is to evidence the types of capital valued in the media field, in relation to those valued in other social spaces (economic, political, intellectual, cultural, etc.) How are media executives made? What process does this involve? What resources and capitals are most valued? What do these tell us about the power relations between elite groups? The first part of the chapter discusses the international literature on media elites and presents my approach and data. In the second part of the chapter, a variety of common traits is highlighted amongst both executive and journalist elites, with respect to sex, age, nationality, education and social background. Public media companies in particular have attempted to attenuate this homogeneity in their hiring policies. Emphasizing the

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risks of homogenizing and reifying the group, the chapter then shows the structure of this population, drawing on multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) and interviews. Media executives are distributed along two axes: one ranging from the journalistic to the administrative pole and the other measuring consecration and seniority in the field. Based on the above, five non-mutually exclusive paths of access to executive positions are identified: journalistic, intellectual, activist, economic, political/administrative. They show the role played by these media executives as relays of the elites. Trajectories are found to be increasingly narrowly managerial or administrative especially in big news companies.

2   Methods This analysis is based on the study of a sample of 93 top media executives working in 2016 and of 40 interviews conducted with former and current media executives, between 2011 and 2018. Following the positional approach which is commonly used in the field of elite study (see Best and Higley 2018), I checked the organizational charts of 60 prominent general and political news media companies (print, audiovisual and online— excluding press agencies, production companies, social networks, video platforms and blogs)2 and picked out the persons at the top levels, whether they had public exposure or not. Considering that executive staffs vary in size between media companies, I included anyone listed as directeur de la publication [a position that roughly translates as managing editor],3 chairman of the board, CEO, director, director of news, or director of the editorial board, which corresponds to three hierarchical levels, for the same year. My population includes both journalists and managers (some “managers” being journalists). This perspective is quite new in France, 2  The executives included in the sample work for daily national and so-called opinion [political] newspapers (Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libération, La Croix, L’Humanité, Le ParisienAujourd’hui, France Soir), online news outlets (Mediapart, Atlantico, Slate, Huffington Post, Arrêt sur Images, Reporterre, Causeur), news magazines (Le Nouvel Observateur, L’Express, Le Point, Marianne, Courrier International, Le Monde diplomatique, Politis, Valeurs actuelles, Télérama, Les Inrocks, Le 1, L’Opinion), free papers (20 minutes, Direct Matin), national TV channels (France 2, TF1, M6, Arte, Canal +, TV5 Monde, LCP, Public Sénat), 24-hour news channels (BFM TV, I-télé, D8, LCI) and general-interest radio stations (France Inter, Europe 1, RTL, France Info, RMC, France Culture, Radio Classique, etc.). 3  In France, the directeur de la publication, bearing legal responsibility for the publication under the Act of 29 July 1881, is often the person who holds the most power.

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where the quasi-absence of academic literature on the personnel in charge of administration and business (expect Dagnaud and Mehl 1990) contrasts with the USA. For instance, in his article “The management of Mass Media: an agenda for research”, Léo Bogart cites 8 PhDs in the U.S. dedicated to “managers” working for TV broadcasting companies between 1970 and 1972 (Bogart 1973–1974). This succession of micro operations gave birth to an original data basis including, at first, 187 individuals made up with biographic data such as age, place of birth and living, diploma, profession of father, mother, wife or husband (these variables ware rather lacking)—position, employer, journalistic or literary price, presence in the Who’ who, books, experience at a ministry, at the industry. Among that population, I retained those who were working in such a capacity in 2016, in order to have a snapshot of the field of media executives at a specific point in time. My final population comprehended 93 individuals. I then constructed a bivariate analysis and multiple correspondence analysis (MCA). MCA permits to shed light to the type of capitals that are efficient in the media field and more narrowly, in the space of top media executives that I made up. In parallel, I conducted interviews of one hour and more with 40 former and present top media executives. These interviews permitted to understand their visions of their role and position, the way they distinguished, competed and/or cooperated with other top media executives, as well as their relations to media owners and to journalists. Except for media groups, all media owners coming from the industry, which is the dominant ownership form in France with the State, refused to meet me. Some of big company managers, coming from the industry sector and from the State were reluctant to respond my questions. On the contrary, most of the editors in charge of the editorial staff, accepted to answer an interview. One can explain this attitude by the proximity with the intellectual sphere and the fact that faculty members can be both sources of information and news consumers. In addition, I analyzed different sources and materials such as press articles, biographies and autobiographies.

3   Morphology of the Group Studies on elites generally concur in describing media companies as places of power. However, few scholars have described this elite using socio-­ demographic variables. Additionally, when it comes to analyzing news media, most studies focus on journalists, as if media institutions were all about the journalists, as was the case sixty years ago (Rieffel 1984; Lichter

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et al. 1986; Ruostetsaari I Ruostetsaari 20154). An exception is Monika Djerf-Pierre’s examination of the Swedish media elite, with a sample comprising “all presidents/managing directors, general managers, programming directors, chief editors and managing editors” (Djerf-Pierre 2007: 282). Here, bringing together the managers coming from outside of journalism and journalists is intended to establish how the group as a whole resembles or stands out from other elite groups, using comparisons with other countries as a counterpoint.5 Approached in statistical terms, French media executives appear to be close to the political, economic, intellectual and cultural elites (Sedel 2021, 2022). As a whole, the 93 prominent media executives (CEOs, chairmen of the board, directors, directors of news, managing editors) working in 2016 form a population that is almost exclusively made up of men who graduated from the country’s top schools, with strong ties to Parisian political, economic and cultural circles. The low representation of women (15 women out of 93 executives), i.e., 16% of the population is consistent with what is found in other dominant worlds: where women make up 52% of the French population, they accounted for only 16% of the biographical entries in the 2012 Who’s Who and 13% of the power elite (in 2009, see Denord et al. 2011), held 38.8% of parliamentary seats and 29% of senate seats in 2017;6 there were no women among the heads of CAC 40-listed companies in 2010 (Chikh 2013). The exclusion of women from the political elites is not a specifically French phenomenon. As Ilkka Ruostetsaari notes: “Even though the proportion of female MPs in Nordic Parliaments is amongst the highest in the world, their share of elite positions is still quite low, from 12% to 26%” (Ruostetsaari 2007: 158).7 In Nordic countries, as in France, the lowest female representation is found in the business elite: 5% in Finland, 4% in Norway, 0 to 5% in Denmark (ibidem), 5% in Sweden (Djerf-Pierre 2007). While 26% of elite positions in the Swedish media were held by women in 2001, this proportion 4  This is shown in the recent synthesis of international literature on media elites by Eva Mayerhöffer et Barbara Pfetsch (Mayerhoffer and Pfetsch 2010). 5  International comparison requires an attention to the categories employed, as those are not always transposable from one context to another, to the differences between the education systems that determine the value of degrees, curricula, networks and more broadly to forms of social reproduction and mobility (on the latter, see Naudet J. Naudet 2018). 6  Sources: French National Assembly and Senate. 7  Because most elite studies are country-specific and use different kind of approaches as well as strictly comparative elite studies are missing, a rough comparison is the only option.

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reached 44% in the political field, 33% in the cultural field, 29% in science and 30% in government agencies (Djerf-Pierre 2007: 282). In addition to this vertical segregation, there is a horizontal segregation at work: female executives are mostly entrusted with managerial, administrative duties (50% of female media executives are not journalists, vs. 24% of their male counterparts)8 and the majority work for TV (50%, vs. 30% in the print press), particularly in the public sector. This highly relative feminization of the executive personnel can be interpreted as a collateral effect of parity policies.9 Indeed, half of the women in our sample worked in the public audiovisual sector: The absence of women among print media executives and managing editors reflects the highly gendered character of this strategic sub-field of national news production (Sedel 2018). Another specificity of this media elite lies in the fact that the executives in this population are French nationals and only a tiny minority among them were born abroad. By way of comparison, 17.3% of executives of CAC 40-listed corporations were foreign nationals in 2010, which reflects the internationalization strategies of these companies (Chikh 2013) but only 7% of deputies in the French National Assembly were visible minorities as of 2020.10 The advanced age of this population—with only 7% of executives under 40 compared to 39% of the French population aged 15 and over (by the time of the 2011 census)—indicates that these media executive positions are accessed at the end of a fairly long “career”.11 Again, this is not specific to France: the average age of Swedish media executives was 48.5 in 2001 (Djerf-Pierre 2007: 284). In this respect, media executives resemble politicians—in 2017, the average age was 49.1  years for parliamentarians (Boelaert et  al. 2018)—and executives of CAC 40-listed corporations, 95% of whom were aged 50 or above in 2015.12 8  In the audiovisual sector, in 1988, women were more represented in production, human resources and advertising that in general policy positions (Dagnaud and Mehl 1990: 132). 9  In France, the issue of parity in the political representation field appears in 1995 with the creation of an Observatory of the parity. Since then, several laws have been voted to encourage the feminization of the French political institutions (inside political parties, amongst candidates for elections). 10  Source: website of the French National Assembly, last accessed on 19 February 2020. Author’s count based on phenotypes and African or Asian sounding surnames. On the place of “racial” minorities in UK and US elites, see Shamus Rahman Khan (Khan 2011). 11  Christine Leteinturier found that two thirds of top executive journalists (66.5%) had over 20 years of seniority (Leteinturier 2000). 12  “L’âge des patrons du CAC 40”, Les Echos, 27 February 2015.

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Media executives are also well born: among the 59 executives for whom information was available (37% of non-responses), 70% had fathers who were executives or worked in higher intellectual occupations. By way of comparison, 58% of members of the Swedish media elite come from an upper-middle class family (Djerf-Pierre 2007: 282); among the French population at large, in 2014, 47% of sons of senior executives were themselves senior executives.13 In this respect, the media executives’ backgrounds resemble those of French elites in general (Denord et al. 2011) and political elites in particular (Behr and Michon 2013: 337). The proportion of members of working-class families (12% vs. 40% for the Parisian population as a whole), which is identical to that observed in the Swedish media (Djerf-Pierre 2007: 282) remains very slightly lower than among government ministers.14 The weak social mobility that more broadly characterizes the field of power in France (11.27% of members of that field had a blue-collar worker or employee father according to Denord et al. (2011: 38)), contrasts with Scandinavian elites: in Norway, 22% of the elites are recruited from the working class, whereas 58% of the population belong to the working class (Ruostetsaari 2007: 164). These children of working-­ class families are better represented among top media executives than among managers in general. The media sector’s propensity to attract children of the bourgeoisie initially destined to pursue more established careers (in teaching, diplomacy, senior civil service, finance, etc.) is the result of its development in the 1980s and 1990s. Media executives also form a highly educated population: 93.5% of individuals in my sample received higher education and over 80% are over bachelor’s level. By way of comparison, in Sweden, about 70% of the media elite have attended a college or university and 50% are over bachelor’s level (Djerf-Pierre 2007: 273). In this respect, the media elite differs little from French elites as a whole (90% a Denord et  al. 2011: 31) or European political elites 90% of French government ministers, 95% of Belgian ministers (in 2014), 93–95% of Dutch ministers and nearly all German ministers are higher education graduates (Bovens and Anchrit 13  Centre d’observation de la société, “Tel père, tel fils ? L’inégalité des chances reste élevée”, posted on 14 August 2017. 14  By adding the children of blue-collar workers and employees among members of ministers’ cabinets between 1986 and 2012 and dividing the resulting number by the total population of individuals for whom this information is available, a rate of 19% is obtained (Behr V. and Michon S. Behr and Michon 2013: 337).

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2017:120). In France, top schools15 play a prominent role in the reproduction of elites. Most of these schools are accessible by competitive examination. At the top of the academic hierarchy, we find the engineering public schools (École Polytechnique, Mines, Centrale), the École normale supérieure (one of the most selective and prestigious school), the National school of Administration (ENA), business schools (HEC, ESSEC) and another elite institution created in 1945, Sciences Po. These schools form the grande porte or “front door” leading to the top schools, jobs etc., pointed out by Pierre Bourdieu and Monique de Saint-Martin (Bourdieu 1996: 414), contrasting with the “back door” leading to less prestigious schools, careers, etc. (university, private business schools, short trainings, etc.). Students in these schools tend to come from the higher strata of the bourgeoisie. In contrast, the UK does not have an equivalent to the National school of Administration, but has its own elite curricula in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In the US, members of the elite almost inevitably attend private schools or Ivy League universities such as Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard or Princeton (Khan 2016). In Germany, studying law and getting a PhD is the best way to pass the two state exams for access to senior civil service, whereas a three- or four-year university degree in economics or management is sufficient to access the economic elite (Joly 2005; Massol et al. 2010). While some of these top schools specialize in training a particular elite group (i.e., business schools for economic elites or the National school of Administration for administrative and political elites), others (Polytechnique, Mines, Sciences Po) are more generalist. Generically, top media executives differ from corporate CEOs and ministers through the significant proportion of Paris Institute of Political Studies (colloquially known as Sciences Po), alumni of leading journalism schools (CFJ, ESJ Lille, CUEJ, IFP), 21.5%, of holders of bachelor’s degrees and of self-­ taught individuals among them (21.5%). The Paris Institute of Political Studies (colloquially known as Sciences Po) plays a preponderant role in the trajectories of top media executives: 40% of executives in the sample graduated from there (compared to 26% of economic elites and 18% of political elites). The proportion of Sciences Po graduates has increased over time: they made up 23% of the journalistic 15  These top schools can be accessed by passing competitions for applicants with two years of higher education, who have often studied in a prestigious, selective preparatory class.

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elite studied by Rémy Rieffel in the early 1980s (Rieffel 1984: 43) and 27% of the channel bosses studied by Monique Dagnaud and Dominique Mehl (Dagnaud and Mehl 1990). This increase concerns mainly the management-­trained executives; proportions remain stagnant for journalist executives. It can be explained by the attractiveness of the grandes écoles for the children of the economic bourgeoisie. In the 1970s and 1980s, Sciences Po’s attractiveness owed much to the presence in the teaching body of outside personalities from the administrative, state, political and economic elites (Boltanski 1973: 9–10) and in the student body of individuals who would pursue administrative or political careers, allowing those destined for executive functions to forge useful ties for their careers, as explained by the director of Libération: At Sciences Po, I was with the socialist students […] and there, I saw … Hollande wasn’t with the socialist students, but we were almost there at the same time, one year apart. Ségolène Royal was in my student society. So I was in a very political environment, which comes in very handy when you work in papers.16

While Sciences Po Paris constitutes a venue for accruing social capital, for a third of top executives, combining a Sciences Po degree and another from a prominent institution—a journalism or business school, the ENS, an MBA or the National school of Administration—is a way to develop and specialize this relational capital. Compared to the political and economic elites, top media executives form a small “academic nobility” (Bourdieu 1989: 103). They differ sharply from corporate CEOs (in 2010) or ministers through their very small proportion of graduates of the prestigious National School of Administration (3%, compared to 26% of corporate CEOs and 16% of ministers in the Valls 2 and Philippe cabinets17). The near-absence of graduates from engineering schools is similar 16  This interview was conducted in 2012, when the director was chairman of the board at Le Nouvel Observateur. Since then, he has been the publishing and managing editor of Libération. 17  I gathered these data from the biographies of ministers in the Manuel Valls 2 and Edouard Philippe cabinets. The second Valls government (2014–2016) was the fourth government appointed by the French socialist president, François Hollande. It was composed of 16 ministers and 17 secretaries of state. Edouard Philippe’s government (2017) has been appointed by the centrist president Emmanuel Macron. It included 19 ministers and 10 secretaries of State as of 17 May 2017.

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to that found among the political elites, unlike in the economic elites, for whom these schools are, conversely, a “great door”. Likewise, the share of business school graduates (9%), while slightly higher than for political elites (4%), remains three times lower than for economic elites. High proportions of holders of multiple degrees,18 which are specific to politics (especially for prime ministers and ministers), are not observed to the same extent in top media executives. Lastly, half of the executives in our corpus were born in the Paris area (compared to 41% of the journalistic elite in the early 1980s [Rieffel 1984: 42]). Another fraction moved to the capital during their higher education, a morphological phenomenon explained by the history of the French educational system (Charle and Verger 2012: 88–89). This spatial concentration19 is conducive to the development of relational networks, as is illustrated by the example of this informal club set up by the managing editor of a large national TV channel, with an essentially male membership: I, for one, have put together something very simple, it’s a club. […] There are journalists, CEOs, lots of communications officers, people who are in fashion—but they’re not people who … they’re people who work in fashion, but you know, regular people, right. […] So that in itself allows everyone to work on their network, it does—clearly, it really does—and then it allows you to have interesting conversations. […] It’s often in the 8th [district], because it’s centrally located, everyone can meet there after work. […] So generally, we do it near the Arc de Triomphe. We have a friend who has a restaurant, we do it there, we don’t get bothered. So it’s a real network.20

These dinners, where numerous economic, political and editorial decisions are made, are central to an economy in which “gifts and counter-­ gifts” (Mauss 1990) are exchanged.21 These face-to-face encounters are complemented by the political labor of “elite-manufacturing entrepreneurs” assumed by the Who’s Who in France and the organizers of social 18  For instance, in the second Valls government, Laurent Fabius had degrees from the ENS, Sciences Po and the ENA; Fleur Pellerin, from Sciences Po, the ENA and the ESSEC; in the Macron government, Bruno Le Maire held an agrégation and degrees from the ENS, Sciences Po and the ENA. 19  By 1988, Monique Dagnaud and Dominique Mehl noted that “nearly all top managers in television [lived] in Paris’s residential neighborhoods or in the chic Western suburbs, [locations indicating] a firm social and financial base” (Dagnaud and Mehl 1990: 33). 20  Interview with the director of news at TF1, 2011. 21  On the concentration of society clubs in Paris, see Chauvin and Cousin (2014).

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clubs like Le Siècle. Founded in 1944, the latter institution has become a symbol of the “elite in power” (Denord et al. 2011: 54). Among the top media executives working in 2016, 48% had an entry in the Who’s Who and 11% attended the Siècle’s dinners.

4  The Space of Media Executives The large-scale study of the group of media executives gives us too broad a snapshot of that population. Multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) is useful to refine these distinctions by evidencing the overlapping of various worlds with the media world. The multiple correspondence analysis displays the agents’ positions (individual and institutions) in a space. It is based on original variables, used to objectivize differences and represent oppositions or proximities. In this chapter, my analysis focuses on the first two axes; the third axis, which has under 10% of inertia, is not taken into account. I selected eleven active variables and two supplementary variables to construct this space that the reader will find in the Annex. A first principle of differentiation opposes journalists to other professions with administrative skills. Executives are distributed along the first axis from job-specific capital to administrative capital (8 modalities account for 76% of this axis) (Table 6.1).22 On the right side of the axis, we find CEOs who have worked in a minister’s office, have received decorations (Legion of Honor, National Order Table 6.1  Contribution of active modalities to axis 1 Variable

Modality

Coordinate

Contribution

Cos2

ministry decorations degree6mod siecle CEO/pubdir whoswho whoswho CEO/pubdir

ministry decorations ENS,ENA,PhD,eng. siecle pubdir nowhoswho whoswho CEO

1.916 1.443 1.937 1.687 −0.600 −0.585 0.549 0.516

14.723 14.188 12.034 11.413 6.204 6.179 5.793 5.335

0.442 0.466 0.353 0.343 0.309 0.321 0.321 0.309

 See the appendix for a list of the modalities contributing to the construction of these axes.

22

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of Merit), are in the Who’s Who, are members of le Siècle and graduated from a grande école (National school of Administration, ENS, engineering schools). On the left side of the axis, we find those who have accumulated job-specific capital: publishing executives, graduates of journalism schools, political journalists, who have done much of their career in the print press, and are not in the Who’s Who. The second principle of differentiation and of organization of this space opposes people with notoriety to people without it. The second axis of the MCA measures seniority in the field and the amount of consecration (10 modalities account for 78% of this axis). Forms of recognition by peers (awards), the wider audience (books) and temporal power matter here: the modalities that contribute most to the construction of the axis are membership in Le Siècle, having received the Legion of Honor or an equivalent decoration and seniority within the media field (Fig. 6.1 and Table 6.2).

Fig. 6.1  Graphic representation of the MCA. Treatment performed by the author

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Table 6.2  Contribution of active modalities to axis 2 Variable

Modality

Coordinate

Contribution

Cos2

prize Degree6mod fieldentrydate fieldentrydate books ministry mediatype books decoration degree6mod

prize SciencesPo post2000fieldentry pre2000fieldentry books ministry audio nobooks decoration businessschool

1.713 0.963 −0.602 0.589 0.585 −1.039 −0.496 −0.370 0.644 −0.823

14.441 10.837 10.247 10.029 7.579 6.633 5.454 4.787 4.342 3.752

0.276 0.238 0.355 0.355 0.216 0.130 0.156 0.216 0.093 0.073

The lower part of the space shows a concentration of newcomers, business school graduates working in audiovisual media, who have not received any particular token of recognition. They contrast with the older executives, Sciences Po graduates, who have gained recognition from their peers and colleagues (in the case of journalists) and by temporal authorities (decorations, membership in Le Siècle, Who’s who entry), in the case of managers. This axis measuring seniority yields data that is highly valuable to understand transformations in the field. It shows, indeed, that the “administrative” capital possessed by the new generations of executives tends to prevail in the news field, to the detriment of the literary and intellectual capital embodied by the older generations that they are slated to succeed. When focusing on the population of CEOs (48 individuals), the field appears dualized: on the one hand, we find the audiovisual sector and the large groups with connections to temporal power, and on the other, the newspapers and small structures (online and paper) with connections to the job-specific pole. Ultimately, the professional experience embodied by small press companies and the economic and political power embodied by large media groups appear to be opposed. 4.1   Five Paths of Access to Executive Functions in the Media Five paths of access to executive functions in the media can be identified based on the MCA and the interviews. Some executives went through several of these paths, which reflect their permeability and their overlap.

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The journalistic path is massively represented (73%); then come the intellectual path (25%), the activist path (12%), the economic path (10%) and the political and administrative path (10%). These significant differences in proportions are explained by the presence of managing editors in our population. They show that the careers of media executives are determined by experiences in intersecting social worlds—the political, intellectual and cultural, journalistic and economic worlds. In the following, I present each path and its specificities, and conclude by noting the recent rise of the economic path.  he Journalistic Path T This path, which is the best represented among the executives (73%), characterizes all journalists holding a professional press card.23 Two-thirds of these journalists are editorial directors (63%); one-third are CEOs or have administrative, managerial positions. These journalists’ trajectories vary depending on generations, configurations, types of media (national daily press, audiovisual, etc.), areas of specialty (economic, political, cultural journalism, etc.). For instance, the proportion of journalism school graduates doubled between the 1950s to the 1970s and the 1980s and following, whereas the share of self-taught individuals and bachelor’s degree holders was reduced by half. Two cases exemplify this generational divide in terms of education and social background. The former CEO of Radio France (2009–2015) was born in 1951 and belongs to the older generation. His father was an “illiterate” house painter and his four sisters worked in a factory. He did not have higher education and describes his trajectory as a “lucky break”. Since the age of 16, he had wanted to be a journalist, with what he calls a “kind of fundamentalist”, “priest-like” vision of the job.24 After graduating from high school, he worked as a mailman for three months, and then was hired by the Normandy edition of the Parisien libéré, and then by Le Maine Libre. He was contacted by journalists to join the radio station FIP (at the time of its creation), where he was hired after a voice test. He then joined France Inter, where he spent the bulk of his career, with the exception of a stint at Radio Classique, 23  The French press card was introduced in 1935. It is issued to anyone who provides evidence that they draw the bulk of their income from journalism (not from teaching, publishing, etc.). Every year, a joint committee composed of 50% journalists and 50% employers examines applications and decides whether or not to grant a card in each case. 24  Interview with the CEO of Radio France, 2012.

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where he worked on “cultural subjects”, until he was appointed as president of Radio France by President of the Republic Nicolas Sarkozy in 2009. The 46-year-old managing editor at Le Monde embodies the “new generation”. The son of two doctors, he was schooled in the small town of Gap, and then enrolled in Sciences Po Grenoble and then at the higher school of journalism in Lille. He got in the regional section of Le Monde as an intern and later joined the paper’s Education supplement, a springboard for working in the main newsroom. In 2005, he was a reporter in charge of covering the banlieues; in 2017, he was awarded the prestigious Albert-Londres prize. Having led the paper’s France section (a result of the merger of the former Politics and Society sections) in 2012, he was appointed as managing editor in 2015.  he Intellectual Path T This path amounts for a quarter of the sample. It characterizes an ENS graduate who did not follow the state or economic path, those who attended a second-year classe préparatoire in literature, philosophy (four executives), agrégation holders (two, including an ENS graduate), PhD holders (three), those involved in the publishing sector (two, including an ENS graduate) and the editorial writers and commentators (17). It also includes heads of cultural institutions (CNC, Forum des images) (two people). The “intellectual” label elicited different reactions among the executives I interviewed. Those situated at the economic pole reject it (for instance, the former CEO of TF1, who sees it as a “stigma”) or distance themselves from it (as is the case of an ENS graduate managing a large audiovisual group). Others, conversely, embrace the term, like the director of France Culture, who presents herself as an “intellectual and a historian”. A shifting term, “intellectual” more broadly refers to a set of dispositions to intervene in public debate to defend causes, denounce injustice and question public authorities, which explains the high numbers of editorial writers and commentators in that path. This specific form of authority in expressing a point of view rests on forms of know-how such as the ability to universalize, which rests on the possession of literary capital, of a “writing style” (Boltanski et al. 1984), as expressed by the managing editor at L’Express (between 2006 and 2016), an ENS graduate: I wish I wrote like Claude Imbert. Each time I read an editorial by Claude Imbert it’s like when I read Julien Green, it confronts me with the ­mediocrity

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of my own prose. I will never write as well as Claude Imbert, who wrote in perfect French. He was my model in terms of style.25

A similar emphasis on the value of literary capital can be observed in the speech given by the former director of the Nouvel Observateur (himself the holder of an agrégation in modern literature and an ENS graduate) on the occasion of the appointment of the Nouvel Observateur’s managing editor: “[he] studied Latin epigraphy—it’s a rare thing, nowadays, and a precious thing to have completed ‘one’s humanities’, as we used to call it”.26 Likewise, the former director of Le Monde,27 a journalist and a writer (who authored 29 books and received several literary prizes) wrote of his colleague at Le Monde, Edwy Plenel, that he had “a certain writerly temperament, [a] love of words, of the sentence, of the idea that rolls off the pen like quicksilver” (Fottorino 2012: 281). In general, the amount of publications (ten executives have published over 7 books), major experience of the publishing sector (two executives) and proximity with academia are all assets in the eyes of these “intellectual” executives. Media bosses are not only familiar with intellectual circles and political debates, they also cultivate proximity to cultural circles owing to their professional trajectories (with stints as head of the CNC or the Forum des images, for instance) and their seats in the boards of cultural institutions, including museums (Orsay, Louvre, Picasso, Rodin, Orangerie, Centre 104), theaters (Châtelet, Odéon), art schools (Fémis, Arles national school of 25  Interview with the managing editor at L’Express, 2017. Born in the Alps (in HauteSavoie), he grew up in an environment that he describes as non-politicized. His father, who worked as town clerk in a mid-size municipality, made a point not to discuss his personal opinions, as he had to work with mayors from different political sides. Spending time with him during election nights socialized his son in politics. As a teenager, he developed passions for political journalism and contemporary history. After graduating from school, he enrolled in a literary classe préparatoire and then joined the ENS in Paris. During his second year, as he did not intend to take the agrégation competition, he enrolled in the master’s program on news and media offered by the ESC business school, in which several media personalities gave lectures, thus providing access to internships. There he met the director of news weekly Le Point, who became his “mentor” and gave him a job at the magazine, in the “Investigation” section. He then joined the Politics section and followed him at Europe 1 and then L’Express, where he led the Politics section and subsequently the magazine, from 2006 to 2016. 26  Stratégies, 20 October 2011. 27  The son of a physical therapist and a Sciences Po graduate, Eric Fottorino directed Le Monde between 2007 and 2010. He is currently the managing editor of 1, a weekly magazine he launched in 2014.

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photography) and as directors of film festivals (Cannes), music festivals (Musica, Eurockéennes) or photography festivals.  he Activist Path T This path characterizes 12% of the population of executives. It includes heads of so-called political or confessional papers (L’Humanité, La Croix) and former activists who have temporarily or permanently stopped devoting their time to activism. The director of L’Humanité (who studied history at the University of Besançon) is a rare case of an activist who did not turn his back on activism later on: a member of the Communist student group UEC, and subsequently editor-in-chief of Clarté in 1979 and of Radio Soleil 94, a local radio station of the Parisian suburbs in 1982, he joined L’Humanité in 1983 and spent the remainder of his career there. The former director of Le Monde, then CEO of Mediapart defines his activism as a “debt to pay to a father and a mother who, […] paid the price of their convictions in a deep, long solitude” (Plenel 2001: 19).28 In Algeria, he founded his high school’s paper, and when he moved to Paris, he joined the Communist Revolutionary League, where he worked as a full-time salaried staffer (1974–1978), national coordinator of the high school sector and as a journalist with Rouge (the organ of the Communist Revolutionary League). He turned to journalism by doing piecework for Le Matin de Paris and most crucially by joining Le Monde, in 1980. He was successively in charge of the “Education” and “Police” pages, and then moved up the hierarchical ranks.29 The director of Libération from 1974 to 2006, whose father had graduated from Polytechnique, and who was raised by his mother, an art history graduate and employee in a high fashion house, launched a paper at a Parisian high school and took over the paper of the national union of French students (UNEF), of which he was the vice-president, in 1965. In 1969, he participated in the creation of 28  The father of Mediapart’s CEO, a school authority inspector, was terminated for political reasons and then reinstated thanks to the intercession of writer and diplomat Stéphane Hessel. 29  As the paper’s correspondent at the Ministry of the Interior, he built a network of informers and promoted investigative journalism, encouraged by Le Monde director André Fontaine, by uncovering state secrets and forging a reputation as a journalist who remained independent from the authorities. He was appointed as managing editor in 1996, a position from which he resigned in 2004. With some former colleagues, he launched the online, subscription-only investigative news website Mediapart, which he calls the “Robin Hood of news” (2017 interview).

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the Gauche Prolétarienne [Proletarian Left] party alongside Pierre Victor and Bennie Levy. The idea of creating a daily newspaper called Libération emerged within a small group that included both “leftists” and a small fringe of Gaullists in the press agency created by the Proletarian Left. The interest shown in the press by Jean-Paul Sartre, “who dreamed of editorializing” since the end of the war, led the organization to actually go through with the project, a task entrusted to Serge July in 1972. Jean-Paul Sartre stepped down, and he became the director of Libération. Unlike his colleagues, he claims, he “wasn’t looking to have papers published everywhere”, but to write articles “that related to political, activist news”: I didn’t do a career to become a journalist. Politics played a role for a very long time. In the early 60s, during the Algerian War, I had engagements: with the Communist students, with the UNEF, and then I’d deal with Latin American things, when I was a teacher, in 1968, I did an agency newsletter, Interlude, which was kind of the ancestor of the Libération agency. So, there you go, but at the same time, I was quite comfortable with that stuff. […] I was issued a press card at Libération in 1973.30

Most of these activists turned the page of activism when they began their journalistic career and now make a point to note how distant that past is, like the director of Politis, a political magazine: “I have a past as a student unionist, I was president of the UNEF [1975–1978], I used to be quite a bit into politics before, I’m kind of a 1968 guy, right. […] I was a Trotskyist like many people in that generation but there’s a statute of limitations on that now.”31 This distancing from past activism is a notable transformation in the practice of the job (Kaciaf 2014). Laurent Joffrin, Edwy Plenel, Etienne Mougeotte, Joseph Macé Scaron all embody this shift that has seen the activist path become gradually sidelined for the benefit of the “journalistic” path (Saitta 2006; Kaciaf 2014). The final two paths—economic and state—combined one-fifth of the sample. Both are dominant among the executives of large media groups,32

 Interview with the former director of Libération, 2012.  Interview with the director of Politis, 2016. 32  More precisely, executives coming from the industrial sector lead France Télévisions, TF1, the Les Echos Le Parisien group, the Le Figaro group, the Le Monde group, SFR Medias; others coming from the political sector lead Radio France, RTL, Canal +, France 3, Arte and Lagardère Active. 30 31

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evidencing the embedding of these media corporations within the economic and senior public administration fields.  he Economic Path T The economic path characterizes 10% of the sample.33 With the exception of one individual, these executives hold the highest positions in large groups: the TF1 group, the Les Echos group, Lagardère’s media branch, SFR Média, the France Télévisions group, the Le Figaro group and the Le Monde group. They have accumulated international resources (in the form of degrees, MBAs or experiences abroad, especially in the United States). The chairman of the board of Le Monde is a representative example of this sub-population. After studying at HEC, he received a degree from the London School of Economics, began his career in the press in the United States, acting as international controller for the Hachette group and working as a correspondent for the Première magazine for six years. He then moved on to the French regional press, in Marseille, when Le Méridional and La Provence merged. He joined Libération as financial director and became the paper’s deputy CEO then CEO; subsequently, he was the CEO of Le Nouvel Observateur and Les Inrocks. He supervised the recapitalization and takeover of Le Monde, of which he became CEO in 2010. The transition from heading a financial department to leading a media outlet or group (also observed in the case of Figaro CEO) constituted a relatively novel phenomenon and his appointment as the head of the Le Monde group sparked intense debates among the editors. However, he had a career spent entirely in the media sector going for him, unlike executives who came from other sectors. Both graduates from HEC, two former CEOs of Canal + in succession, worked as consultants with McKinsey, a management strategy consulting firm specialized in the corporate CEO market. Their stint in that prestigious firm coincided with the beginning of the international boom of the consultancy industry in the 1980s (Djelic 2004: 11), as a result of which engineering school graduates became scarcer among media executives. Although they pursue profit, 33  In this path, I have included six individuals coming from the business and consulting sectors (five holders of a MBA from HEC—including one ESSEC graduate, three from Sciences Po, a graduate from the Ecole Centrale, a holder of a master’s degree in management control and a business school graduate), as well as three individuals who were hired by a media company after graduating from a business school. These professional schools share high yearly registration fees, as of 2016 ranging from 9500 euros (European Business School) or 13,500 euros (HEC, ESSEC) to 66,000 euros (Insead).

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these executives distinguish themselves in terms of habitus and of the types of institution in which they work. The former president of France Télévisions, the great-nephew of the namesake prime minister of 1958, stressed the distinction between the media and other industry sectors and emphasized the role of social cohesion he believed public media should play. He initially did much of his career in the press, after graduating from HEC, first in regional media (as CEO of L’Alsace, and vice-president of the regional press union from 1997 to 1999), and then as the CEO of France 3 in 1999. He then became CEO of the national media distribution corporation Presstalis (of which Hachette owns 51%). In 2010, President of the Republic Nicolas Sarkozy appointed him as President of France Télévisions. The group’s role in fostering social cohesion was reasserted by his successor, who came from the private sector, reflecting the power of institutional discourse on executives.34 Conversely, the CEO of TF 1 from 1987 to 2007 (whose father was a math teacher and a graduate from the Ecole Supérieure de Travaux Publics, a civil engineering school) is quite comfortable with his image as an unabashedly corporate CEO.  He says his first obligation, when he began, was to “make the company make money”: “I had shareholders to pay, I had employees to push forward”, in contrast to his colleagues in the public audiovisual sector: “You’d see the president of the public [broadcasting company] and see that you lived in different worlds, if you will, you didn’t have the same problems”. He presents himself as the head of an “entertainment”35 company and compares his executive post to the job of a CAC-40 listed corporation CEO: I was accountable to the stock exchange! It means I had general shareholders’ meetings, like L’Oréal does. … I was listed on the stock exchange and I’m still listed on the stock exchange. I was on the CAC-40 index. I had the analysts’ meetings, I had general shareholders’ meetings, they’re the ones who judge me! Never forget that in a company. … What is a private company? It’s shareholders having meetings, putting money into the company. They appoint board members who have a board meeting and elect a president. So your legitimacy comes from your shareholders.36

 Interview with the President of France Télévisions, 2017.  Interview with the former CEO of TF1, 2012. 36  Interview with the former CEO of TF1, 2012. 34 35

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He emphasizes his determination to make decisions for the company, his ability to act in a “rational manner”, without resorting to ideological or emotional considerations, which constitutes the directorial ethos of this subset of the economic pole37: “When I came in, I had a meeting with the thirty senior managers, and I fired 28 of them!”.38 The Political-Administrative Path39 While the political-administrative path only characterizes 10% of the media executives, these individuals have central positions in the field in terms of distribution and exposure: Canal +, Radio France, RTL, M6, Arte, Radio France, France 3, Lagardère Active, Le Monde. This group includes National school of Administration graduates (three executives), former senior civil servants and members of minister’s offices. These individuals have received more tokens of consecration from political and state authorities: two thirds have been awarded the Legion of Honor or the Order National of Merit (compared to one third of the economic path group). The former senior civil servants, in particular, are more educated than the general population in our sample, in the sense that they have been trained in the most selective schools, and sometimes have multiple degrees (Suleiman 1974, 197840). The former CEO of Lagardère Active (Europe 1, Paris-Match, JDD) holds an agrégation in modern literature and is a graduate of the ENS and National school of Administration; the president 37  The brutal dismissal of the executives of the Canal + group by new majority stakeholder Vincent Bolloré, in 2015, is another illustration of this. 38  Interview with the former CEO of TF1, 2012. 39  In French, the word “administration” refers to the public services that allow the State to function, unlike in American English, where it designates the executive apparatus. For historical reasons, the USA does not have a body of senior civil servants that compares to those found in centralized European states. As King Desmond and Robert Lieberman write: “To Weber, the ‘bureaucratic’ state was best embodied by the Prussian and French forms of his day. Yet, unlike the  elite of  civil servants that made the  wheels of  centralized power turn in both examples, the national US civil servants form a notoriously weak bureaucracy, one that is fragmented and half-paralyzed by its ambiguous position in the structure of power. It does not have the  coercive authority of  its European counterparts” (Desmond and Lieberman 2011). 40  This contrasts with the following observation made in the 1980s about television executives: “They are not members of the inner circles of the great state institutions. Few of them have experienced the thrill of working in a minister’s office. They have not graduated from the grandes écoles. Thus, they can be distinguished from the other decision-makers by their deficit in attributes and symbolic titles indicating membership in the milieu of power” (Dagnaud and Mehl 1990).

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of RTL group, whose father was an executive, went to high school in the small town of Sarreguemines and is an ENS alumnus and a Sciences Po graduate. The presence of such selective institutions in their training confirms the weight of academic capital and its role as a “meta-capital” (Bourdieu 1994) within the field of power. In the process of elaborating his sociology of the state, Pierre Bourdieu noted that “concentration of the different species of capital (which proceeds hand in hand with the construction of the corresponding fields) leads indeed to the emergence of a specific, properly statist capital which enables the state to exercise power over the different fields and over the particular species of capital, and especially over the rates of conversion between them (and thereby, over the relations of force between their holders). It follows that the construction of the state proceeds apace with the construction of the field of power, defined as the space of play within which the holders of capital (of different species) struggle in particular for power over the state, that is, over the statist capital granting power over the different species of capital and over their reproduction (particularly through the school system)” (Bourdieu 1994: 4–5). Control over this capital allows the state nobility, which managed to enter the highest state institutions thanks to academic credentials, to convert its political and administrative capital in other fields, particularly in the economic field (Dudouet and Grémont 2007: 110–111). This meta-capital is arguably not so much about the ability to control rates of conversion between the different fields as about the possibility for its holders to enter different fields and occupy dominant positions in them. This is illustrated by the crisscrossing trajectories of two former senior civil servants, both men who successively held executive positions at Canal + (one as chief of staff for CEO and head of the sports division and the other as CEO), Europe 1 (Lagardère) and FNAC (a branch of the Kering group, previously PPR). Two (out of 93) executives cut their teeth in minister’s offices, which are “choice stop-off places—if not obligatory—for holding strategic positions in top civil service, and to a lesser extent, in public institutions” (Mathiot and Sawicki 1999). The choice of ministry determines the orientation of future careers: the Ministry of Culture (and Francophony) is a springboard for heading public media companies; a stint at the Ministry of Economy and Finance or at the Court of Auditors is likely to speed up a career as private-sector media executive.

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5  Conclusion The paths I have presented here are “ideal-typical” pathways of access to executive functions in the media and as such they tend to overlap. For instance, the former CEO of Lagardère Active went through the intellectual path (considering his academic training), the state path (as a former senior civil servant) and the economic path (with his experience as CEO). He was however unable to enter the journalistic path: the committee which rules over the attribution of press cards denied his request during his short time as CEO of Le Nouvel Observateur. The trajectory of the CEO of Mediapart is at the crossroads of the activist, journalistic and intellectual paths, but does not qualify for the economic or political and administrative path. The existence of these multi-positioned agents reflects the embedding of the media in the economic, activist, political and intellectual paths. The study of these paths confirms the fragmented character of the executive population. When we look at these paths of access to top new media executive positions, both changes and continuities in the French political/literary model (Benson 2005) are visible. Today, the news is part of a broader offer of programs, services and departments. As a result, in France, media executives are no longer predominantly journalists. The latter face increasing competition, at least in large corporations, from “support personnel” (Becker 1982), coming from other sectors of activity and occupations. The exclusion of political journalists and executives with ties to intellectual and cultural elites from decision-making spheres in the 2000s shows, indeed, that their capitals have become less effective in this new state of the field (see Appendix). The previous generation of media CEOs were political journalists who drew their authority from their ability to represent their media outside of the organization and at dinner parties, in a configuration where political elites prevailed over economic elites. Nowadays, the “support personnel” (Becker 1982)— managers, administrators—compete with journalists for leadership in media companies, a phenomenon that has also been observed in the sectors of culture (Dubois 2016) and health care (Pierru 2012). This renewal of the management personnel in media corporations also reflects the shift from charismatic domination41 to legal-rational domination, spurred on 41  “Pure charisma is specifically foreign to economic considerations. Whenever it appears, it constitutes a ‘call’ in the most emphatic sense of the word, a ‘mission’ or a ‘spiritual duty’. […] What is despised, so as long as the genuinely charismatic type is adhered to, is traditional or rational everyday economizing, the attainment of a regular income by continuous economic activity devoted to this end” (Weber 1947: 362).

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by the rise of indicators and scorecards that are increasingly easy to use in the digital world. The rise of “managers” and sidelining of charismatic bosses tends, as elsewhere, to confirm the dominant of the economic order as an institutional order (Denord et al. 2011). The increasing dominance of the administrative path shows that a double shift is underway: first, economic and organizational capital is increasingly valued in large groups and their branches; second, a job-specific capital, operating on the margins of the field, is being reasserted (through the creation of media outlets such as mediapart.fr). The decreasing value of the intellectual and activist paths especially in the big companies questions the role of media executives as relays of the elites. As fields and field configurations can differ across countries (Bourdieu 1998; Benson 2005), it is my hope that further research and collaboration between international, interdisciplinary teams will help in developing comparisons with other countries and contexts. Among the questions worth exploring: how are media executives made in different periods and configurations? What social properties and capitals are required to occupy these positions and retain them? How does these characteristics differ according to the type of media? Which forms of proximity or distance with other kinds of elites do they manifest? What do these elements tell us about the structure of the field of power and its relationships with the news media? Several avenues could thus be pursued, including studying internationalized media groups and analyzing how they work to develop ties with national elites. Paying attention to what happens when elites are renewed (for instance at times of regime or government change) would probably shed new light on these processes.

Appendix The Multiple Correspondence Analysis and the Construction of the Variables Active Variables • The sex variable includes two modalities: woman (woman)/ man (man).

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• The CEO/pubdir variable includes two modalities: CEO (CEO) and publishing director (pubdir). CEO refers to the person in charge of the media’s administration, management, recruitment and organizational aspects. The publishing director (pubdir) is the head of news, who may be either managing editor (directeur de la rédaction) himself or be above the managing editor. A publishing director can also be CEO, as in the cases of Laurent Joffrin and Edwy Plenel. • The mediatype variable refers to the type of media outlet in which the executive has spent their career and includes three modalities: print (print media), audio (audiovisual media) and mixed (with experiences in both types of media). • The degree6mod variable refers to the latest degree awarded and includes 6 modalities: The “bachelor’s or below” (Bachorbelow) modality includes those who finished their studies before or after high school graduation, those who did two years of higher education (DEUG, DUT) and those who finished at bachelor’s level, with or without their degree. The “master’s or above” (Mastersorabove) modality includes executives who continued up to a first-year master’s program or beyond (DEA, DESS) and those who attended a regional branch of Sciences Po. The “ENS, ENA, PhD, engineering school” (ENS, ENA, PhD, eng) includes executives who graduated from the ENS (4), the ENA (4), the Centrale school (1) and PhD holders (3). The “business school” (businesschool) modality includes executives who graduated from one of the following business schools: HEC (4), ESSEC (1), Sup de Co. (1), ESP (1). The “journalism school” (journalismschool) modality includes executives who attended the leading journalism schools: CFJ, ESJ, IPJ, CUEJ, IFP. The “Sciences Po” (SciencesPo) modality includes executives who attended Sciences Po Paris. • The fieldentrydate variable refers to the date of entry into the press field and includes two modalities “pre-2000 field entry” (pre2000fieldentry) and “post-2000 field entry” (post2000fieldentry). • The books variable indicates whether the individual has published books or not. It includes two modalities: books/nobooks.

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• The Whoswho variable indicates inclusion or non-inclusion in the elite biographical dictionary and includes two modalities: Whoswho/ noWhoswho. • The ministry variable includes two modalities: experience in a ministry (ministry), no experience in a ministry (noministry). • The Siècle variable indicates participation in the club Le Siècle and includes two modalities: siecle/nosiecle (based on publicly disclosed names of individuals in attendance at in the club’s dinner parties).42 • The decoration variable indicates whether the executive has been decorated (Legion of Honor, National Order of Merit) by a member of government. It includes two modalities: decoration, no decoration (decoration/nodecoration). • The prize variable refers to journalistic and/or literary prizes. It includes two modalities: prize/noprize. Supplementary Variables • The age variable includes three modalities: under 49 years old (under 49), 50 to 59  years old (50to59) and 60  years old and above (60andabove). • The fathersSPC variable refers to the father’s socio-professional category. It includes 4 modalities: father who worked in administrative, managerial or executive capacities (Fathadmin, manag, exec.); working-­ class and lower-middle-class father (Fathworkmidclass); independent professionals (Fathindeppro); and father working in an intellectual occupation (Fathintellocc).

References Becker, Howard S. 1982. Art Worlds, Berkeley, Los Angeles. London: University of California Press. Behr, Valentin, and Sébastien Michon. 2013. The Representativeness of French Cabinet Members in the fifth Republic: A Smokescreen? French Politics 11 (4): 332–355.

42  I found these names on the “list of participants in the 720th Siècle dinner party of Wednesday 20 January 2010, which was published on an American website and on press articles on the club.

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Benson, Rodney. 2002. The Political/Literary Model of French Journalism: Change and Continuity in Immigration News Coverage, 1973–1991. Journal of European Are a Studies 10 (1): 49–70. ———. 2005. Mapping Field Variation: Journalism in France and the United States. In Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field, ed. Benson Rodney and Neveu Erik, 85–112. Cambridge: University Press. Best, Heinrich, and John Higley. 2018. The Palgrave Handbook of Political Elites. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Boelaert, Julien, Michon Sébastien, and Ollion Etienne. 2018. Le temps des élites. Ouverture politique et fermeture sociale à l’Assemblée nationale en 2017. Revue française de science politique 68 (5): 777–802. Bogart, Léo. 1973–1974. The Management of Mass Media: An Agenda for Research. The Public Opinion Quarterly 37(4): 580–589. Boltanski, Luc. 1973. L’espace positionnel: multiplicité des positions institutionnelles et habitus de classe. Revue française de sociologie 14 (1): 3–26. Boltanski, Luc, Yann Darré, and Marie-Ange Schiltz. 1984. La dénonciation. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 51: 3–40. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1989. State Nobility. Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 1990. In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. ———. 1994. Rethinking The State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field. Sociological Theory 12 (1): 1–18. ———. 1998. Practical Reason. Polity: Cambridge and Stanford University Press. Bovens, March, and Wille Anchrit. 2017. Diploma Democracy, The Rise of Political Meritocracy. New York: Oxford Press. Chalaby, Jean K. 1997. No Ordinary Press Owners: Press Barons as a Weberian Ideal Type. Media Culture Society 19 (4): 621–641. Charle, Christophe, and Jacques Verger. 2012. Histoire des universités, XIIe-XXIe siècle. Paris: PUF. Chauvin, Sébastien, and Bruno Cousin. 2014. Globalizing Forms of Elite Sociability: Variety of Cosmopolitanism in Paris Social Clubs. Ethnic and Racial Studies 37 (12): 2209–2225. Chikh, Sabrina. 2013. Physionomie des patrons du CAC 40: la persistance des élites françaises. Gestion 2000 (2-30): 79–91. Dagnaud, Monique, and Dominique Mehl. 1990. Patrons de chaînes, Réseaux. Paris: CNET. Dahl Robert, A. 1958. A Critique of the Ruling Elite Model. American Political Science Review 52 (2): 463–469. Davis Aeron. 2005. Whither Mass Media and Power? Evidence for a Critical Elite Theory Alternative. Media, Culture & Society 25 (5): 669–690. Denord, François, Paul Lagneau-Ymonet, and Sylvain Thine. 2011. Le champ du pouvoir en France. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 5 (190): 24–57.

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Desmond, King, and Robert C.  Lieberman. 2011. L’État aux États-Unis: nouvelles perspectives de politique comparée Pour en finir avec le mythe de l’État ‘faible’. Revue française de sociologie 3 (52): 481–507. Djelic, Marie-Laure. 2004. L’arbre banian de la mondialisation. McKinsey et l’ascension de l’industrie du conseil. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 1 (151–152): 107–113. Djerf-Pierre, Monika 2007. The Gender of Journalism. The Structure and Logic of the Field in the Twentieth Century. Nordicom Review 28: 81–104. Dubois, Vincent. 2016. Culture as a Vocation: Sociology of Career Choices in Cultural Management. London and New York: Routledge. Dudouet, François-Xavier, and Eric Grémont. 2007. Les grands patrons et l’Etat en France, 1981–2007. Sociétés Contemporaines 4 (68): 105–131. Fottorino, Eric. 2012. Mon tour du Monde. Paris: Gallimard. Hallin, David, and Paolo Mancini. 2004. Comparing Media Systems. Three Models of Media and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Joly, Hervé. 2005. Concours des grandes écoles versus diplômes universitaires. Sélectivité comparée des élites économiques françaises et  allemandes. In Formation des élites en France et en Allemagne, ed. Joly Hervé. Coll. Travaux et documents du CIRAC. CIRAC: Cergy-Pontoise. Kaciaf, Nicolas. 2014. Les pages politiques. Histoire du journalisme politique dans la presse française (1945–2006). Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, coll. “Res Publica”. Khan, Shamus. 2011. Privilege. The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press. ———. 2016. The Education of Elites in the United States. L’Année sociologique 1 (66): 171–192. Leteinturier, Christine. 2000. Devenir cadre dirigeant journaliste dans les médias français. Une analyse des biographies publiées par La Correspondance de la Presse. 2e séminaire franco-québécois. Lichter S. Robert, Rothman Stanley, & Lichter S. Linda. 1986. The Media Elite. New York: Adler & Adler Publischers Inc. Massol, Joël, Thomas Vallée, and Koch Thomas. 2010. Les élites économiques sont-elles encore si différentes en France et en Allemagne? Regards sur l’économie allemande 97: 5–14. Mathiot, Pierre, and Sawicki, Frédéric. 1999. Les membres des cabinets ministériels socialistes (1981–1993): recrutement et conversion. 1), Caractéristiques sociales et filières de recrutement, Revue française de science politique, 49e year, 1: 3–30. Mauss, Marcel. 1990. The Gift. London and New York: Routledge. Mayerhoffer, Eva, and Barbara Pfetsch. 2010. Media Elites. In The Palgrave Handbook of Political Elites, ed. Heinrich Best and Higley John, 417–437. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Moore, Gwen. 1979. The Structure of a National Elite Network. American Sociological Review 44 (5): 673–692. Naudet, Jules. 2018. Stepping to the Elite, Trajectories of Social Achievement in India, France, and the United States. New York: Oxford Press University Press. Pierru, Frédéric. 2012. Le mandarin, le gestionnaire et le consultant. Le tournant néolibéral de la politique hospitalière. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 4 (194): 32–51. Plenel, Edwy. 2001. Secrets de jeunesse. Paris: Stock. Rieffel, Rémy. 1984. L’élite des journalistes: les hérauts de l’information. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. Ruostetsaari, Ilkka. 2007. Nordic elite in comparative perspective. Comparative Sociology 6: 158–189. ———. 2015. Elite Recruitment and Coherence of the Inner Core of Power in Finland: Changing Patterns During the Economic Crises of 1991–2001. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Saitta, Eugenie. 2006. Les transformations du journalisme politique depuis les années 1980: une comparaison France / Italie; Thèse de science politique: Université de Rennes 1. Sedel, Julie. 2018. Le genre du pouvoir médiatique. Savoir-Agir 46 (4): 43–50. ———. 2021. Dirigeants de médias. Sociologie d’un groupe patronal. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes. ———. 2022. Sociologie des dirigeants de presse. Paris: La Découverte. Suleiman, Ezra N. 1974. Politics, Power and Bureaucracy in France: The Administrative Elite. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 1978. Elites in French Society: The Politics of Survival. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Weber, Max. 1947. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. New York: Free Press. Wright-Mills. C. 1959. The Power Elite. London, Oxford, New  York:  Oxford University Press

CHAPTER 7

The Methodological Rules of the Critical Realist Relational Sociology: Some Examples Ivo Colozzi

Donati has devoted some works to the definition of a methodology suitable to make operational his paradigm, a term that he redefines, by distancing himself from Khun (1970), as an “open and dynamic point of view” and which consists in reading society and social facts from the “relational point of view”, that is, as a relationship (Donati 2018: 440). The methodology he proposes is based on five basic rules that I will try to present, explain and exemplify below, also referring to empirical research that Donati with his group has carried out.

1   First Rule The first rule states that one must start from the observation of a social fact distinguishing between the descriptive observation and the problematizing observation.

I. Colozzi (*) University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Hałas (ed.), Methodology of Relational Sociology, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41626-2_7

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It may seem like a trivial distinction, but in fact most of our research work consists in describing the phenomena that we choose to observe or that we wish to investigate. For example, faced with the news of the Eurobarometer that unemployment in Europe is growing, we are interested in knowing if it rises in the same way in all countries or not and, within the various countries, if it grows in certain regions or territories more than in others; whether it particularly concerns young people or mature adults, women or men; whether self-employed or dependent work is more affected. Another example could concern the purchase and consumption of organic food, or weddings. This information is very important because it allows us to deepen the phenomena and to characterize them. By describing emigration in two different time periods or in two different countries we can for example realize that we are facing two different types of migration and to arrive at producing a typology of migration (e.g. push/pull models). Or, analyzing the phenomenon of the constant decrease in marriages, we can denote the birth of a new social category: singles, that is, people who choose not to marry and not to live with a partner, despite having a normal social life. “Descriptive observation requires investigation, methodologies and techniques which, although complex, are nevertheless of the first order, that is, they collect data and process them to try to adapt the observation to reality. The techniques are now consolidated” (Donati 2010: 199): frequencies and statistical indices if the research is quantitative, life stories, in-depth interviews, focus groups, if qualitative.

The observation becomes problematic when I ask myself: why has unemployment increased right now and why does it affect these categories and not others? Why do more and more young people decide not to marry and to live together or to remain singles? In this case, the researcher “translates an empirical fact into a problem of understanding and explaining the reasons why the phenomenon occurs” (ibid.: 200). For Donati it is only at this point that the actual sociological analysis begins, “in the sense of an analysis of a higher order than the merely descriptive or morphological one” (ibid.).

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2  Second Rule The second rule says: “the observed fact (which creates a problem) must be defined as a social relationship” (ibid.: 196). The relational approach treats/considers the phenomena it observes not as things or objects but as social relations, that is, as emergencies. “Relational observation begins by defining its object of knowledge as a social relation among actors (A and B) belonging to diverse socio-­ economic-­cultural structures, and continuing with the observation of phenomena from the perspective of an outside observer (O) who examines the behavior of actor A in relation to actor B, and vice versa, in order to explain why their interactions produced the effect Y (emergent relation) under certain conditions” (Donati 2018: 440). Unemployment, family, migration, to take up the examples we have mentioned above, are simultaneously social relations and emergent effects of an intertwining of relationships that must be observed as such. To be able to do this Donati proposes an instrument, which he himself defined as “a compass”, whose technical name, taken from T. Parsons, is “AGIL scheme”. Using this scheme we can realize that in order to understand all social relations, from the simplest to the most complex, from the micro to the macro level, we must analyze the dimensions of which it is composed, that is: the means (A), the situated goals/purposes (G), the norms (I), the values ​​(L). Let’s take the example of two couples, one with children, the other without. Why this difference? To explain it, the relational approach tells us that we must verify whether or not the two couples have adequate economic means (A), but that this factor alone is not enough. Despite having the means, they may have decided not to have children for the values ​​they believe in (L). For example, they are radical ecologists and believe that the human population should be drastically reduced to save the planet’s natural resources. But family law and the legislation governing the welfare system, which could favor or penalize the birth of a child (I), may also have affected the choice and also the choice/decision to live the first years of marriage while safeguarding the freedom to travel or, on the contrary, to have married because they immediately wanted children (G). Each of these factors interacts with the others, so under the same objective conditions (presence/absence of children) we can observe very different types of families that we would not be able to see without the use of this tool. Another example can be provided by the welfare systems of different

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countries. To understand the differences that we find in these systems, we cannot stop and consider with what percentage of GDP a country finances its system (A), but also what are the values ​​that underpin its institution (L), if the implementing rules ​​(I) are or less consistent with the reference values and what are the purposes that in the historical moment in which we carry out the analysis are considered priority over others (G). The more or less coherent combination of all these factors will produce as an emerging effect a certain type of welfare that we can not only label, but whose strengths or limits we will be able to explain the reasons for. The social relationship, which is an emergent effect, is seen as the result of processes that combine two axes: the means-norms axis (AI), which, in Donati’s language is “the religo of relationship” (Donati 2010: 204) that is the set of external conditioning factors of action, and the value-purpose axis (LG), “which is the refero of the relationship” (ibid.), that is, the set of internal factors that refer to the internalization of cultural system or parts of it (L), in the case of a pluralistic or multicultural society, but also to the relative autonomy of the actor who, thanks to the reflexivity that to some extent always characterizes him, can make choices (G) that do not conform to the external conditioning both of a structural and a cultural nature. These choices, in turn, have an effect on structural and cultural conditioning with the possibility of initiating processes of morphogenesis. “Relational analysis, precisely because it highlights purposes and values ​​(in the structure of the relationship), highlights what is specifically human in the social, while—at the same time—it combines it with the factors and processes that may have automatisms not dependent on intentional subjective motivations and/or on cognitive-symbolic-expressive abilities. In this way, relational analysis combines the voluntary and conscientious qualities of human action with social automatisms, without detracting from the reality of each relational element and level” (ibid., p. 207).

3  Third Rule The third rule of the relational method says: phenomenon Y (already interpreted and read as a relation) must be reconstructed as the effect of a set of factors and processes which, combining in certain ways within a “black box” become the “causes” of Y, that is, they make it emerge as a phenomenon (ibid.: 211). Let’s take an example. Let’s say the research question is: why is youth unemployment growing? To answer this question we must first identify

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the factors that hypothetically explain the phenomenon using the AGIL scheme. In this perspective we can proceed in the following way. A (means). Both the skills that young people have acquired through their school training and the informations on the jobs available or the services that, using this information, can connect job supply and demand are to be considered as means. Regarding this dimension, we could hypothesize that youth unemployment depends on the fact that the skills offered by many school paths are now obsolete compared to the needs of the labor market (cause 1) or that the skills are there but the informations and/or services to match supply and demand are lacking or insufficient (cause 2). Of course, it can also be assumed that both causes are present. G (situated goals/purposes). In this case, the situated purpose of young people may not be generically work, but a type of work that corresponds to the skills acquired during the training period and to a set of expectations such as: the salary must be good; the timetable must not be too heavy; the work environment must be pleasant or comfortable. We can hypothesize that unemployment derives from the fact that young people are not willing to accept jobs other than those for which they have the skills (cause 3) or that available jobs do not meet their expectations (cause 4). I (norms/rules). Each society has a set of laws governing work and specifically the labor market. It can be assumed that the rules in force penalize the entry of young people into the labor market because they were designed to protect already active workers rather than to promote new jobs (cause 5) or that there are social norms, for example citizenship income, which, without having this intention, actually discourages the entry of young people into the labor market (cause 6). L (values). The sphere of values ​​has to do with the meaning attributed to an experience such as work. We can hypothesize that among young people the ethical value of work has faded or even lost, so it is much easier for them to surrender to the first difficulties and give up looking for it (cause 7). At this point, it is a question of operationalizing the hypotheses developed, that is, of choosing the indicators with which to measure them and the research tools to be used (questionnaire, in-depth interview, text analysis, etc.), to carry out the field survey, to analyze the data and first of all verify if the hypotheses or part of them are confirmed (corroborated) and,

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if so, in what form or forms the means, the goals, the norms and the values​​ are empirically combined generating, that is, bringing out the phenomenon: increase in youth unemployment. With this rule, Donati illustrates what the design of the research must be, that is, the way in which this must be concretely set up. The starting point is, of course, the problem we want to try to answer. Why is unemployment growing? Why is welfare in crisis? Why are the values ​​of young people changing? Why, while declaring that we are all non-­ racist, do we end up living in neighborhoods with neighbors of the same ethnicity or culture, for which ghettos are created? To answer the problem, the relational sociologist uses AGIL to identify the factors that hypothetically could explain the phenomenon and the way in which they hypothetically interact. This is the construction of the black box. Translates the factors into indicators; collects all the information it needs using the most suitable techniques, which can be, depending on the case or the various factors, quantitative or qualitative or mixed; in conclusion, he reconstructs the black box to show how Y is actually generated. “To recap up to this point. We start from the observation that there is a social fact Y. It is thematized as a problem (why does it exist? How is it possible?). It is defined as a relationship (AGIL). One wonders why it emerges. A research design is constructed by identifying the relevant subjective (value orientations and attitudes) and objective (adaptive conditions, i.e. means and norms, independent of subjective will) factors that may have generated the observed fact and then placing them in a system of relationships (AGIL) which is the black box that must offer a comprehensive explanation of how the phenomenon Y is generated”. (Ibid.: 220)

4   Fourth Rule The fourth rule has to do with the explanation of processes, that is, why in a given period of time a given social fact has remained the same (reproduced) or, on the contrary, has changed. If this is the problem we want to answer we have to match the AGIL scheme (the black box) to the M/M scheme (morphostasis/morphogenesis) created by M. Archer (Archer 1995). To give an example, we could think of what happened to the school due to COVID-19 and the more or less partial lockdown measures taken by governments to contain it.

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The first step is to reconstruct the means, situated goals, norms and values ​​of the school system, that is, the black box of the school system, at the time T1, which coincides with the onset of the pandemic. In this case we are faced with a factor external to the school system (the pandemic) which in T2 forces the government to change the rules (I). The most important change concerns the fact that the physical presence of students in the classroom is not only no longer mandatory but is even prohibited, at least for certain periods. The change in I imposes a consequent change in A. To continue studying, in addition to traditional means (face-to-face lessons, textbooks, notes, etc.), children must learn to use new means that coincide with ICT (Information Communication Technologies). In the time between T2 and T3 these changes will somehow affect the values ​​(L) and the situated goals (G) in ways that must first be hypothesized and then empirically verified. We can hypothesize, e.g. that the continuous reference to the importance of scientific research and the centrality assigned to scientists by the government (with the creation of the scientific committee supporting the Ministry of Health) and by the media (with the continued presence of the same in all the TV talk shows) has affected the value system by increasing the weight assigned to the value of education or culture or knowledge, with the effect of motivating many previously listless students to commit themselves more. On the contrary, we could hypothesize that the rediscovery of the precariousness of life and the inevitability of death is a demotivating factor capable of regressing the importance assigned by the dominant culture to performance and economic success, with the effect of favoring a loss of commitment by increasing withdrawals from school. Also in this case we will have to analyze the complex relationships and interdependence effects that will be created between the four dimensions of the black box. For example we can hypothesize that the demotivation effect will be higher where it will be even more difficult to make the best use of new technologies because of structural deficiencies (weakness/ absence of the Wi-Fi network) or because of the limited financial means of poor families. At the end of the analysis, a new black box will emerge which will be the emerging effect in T4 of the changes that have occurred in the different dimensions. If this overall effect shows to have the same characteristics of the system described in T1, the process will have been morphostatic, that is, the measures and choices adopted to respond to the pandemic did not change the structural and cultural elements of the system. If, on the other hand, the structural and cultural elements will be different, the process will have been morphogenetic, so the school that

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will restart after the end of the pandemic will be a different school than before with different dynamics and problems that will have to be studied, understood and possibly solved. Thanks to this method it is possible to highlight the sui generis character of the emerging phenomenon. Technically it is a question of constructing, using the AGIL black box, the initial structure, at time T1, of the phenomenon I intend to explain. Then, in the T2–T3 time interval, see if, how and which factors and which interactions between factors have changed. Finally, build, again using AGIL, the final structure of the phenomenon (at time T4). In any case, this structure, whether it is morphostasis or morphogenesis, is an emerging phenomenon “as a relational form that is actually implemented by individuals, but goes well beyond their individual contributions (and qualities), because it is ontologically independent of they” (ibid.: 223).

5   Fifth Rule The fifth rule applies above all to those of us who deal with social policies and social service, issues that in the Italian university system fall within the scope of general sociology. The rule states that “sociological analysis can offer indications for social intervention, where by social intervention we mean an action aimed at modifying a state of affairs (e.g. poverty, unemployment, drug addiction, etc.) understood as a relationship in a relational context” (ibid.: 227). To apply this rule, it is necessary to set up a specific way of observation that Donati calls the ODG system and which involves the sequencing of three operations: (a) the relational observation; (b) the relational diagnosis; (c) the relational guide. The relational observation represents the cognitive moment of the analysis; the diagnosis represents the evaluation moment, the one in which the observed relationship is judged as unsatisfactory or deviant or pathological, as it tends to systematically produce negative effects on all or some of the actors/agents; finally, the relational guide represents the choice of the type of intervention which, by modifying the system of relationships in a certain way (morphogenesis), aims to eliminate negative effects and produce positive effects. AGIL is still needed to configure the intervention, in the sense that the intervention must modify the four components and their relationships so that they produce the desired effect.

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This rule has been particularly applied and developed by the group of the Catholic University of Milan that deals with social service and which refers to Prof. Fabio Folgheraiter  (2012, 2017). This group created Relational Social Work that is an international peer reviewed journal that analyzes and promotes the relational approach in social work and in related areas of social policy, social welfare, social development and human services.1

6  The Revision of the Concept of Ethical Neutrality Elaborating on the methodological aspects of his relational approach, Donati also addressed the issue of “value-free”, i.e. the widespread conception according to which the sociologist should only provide data and knowledge, refraining from any reference to values ​​or ethical criteria. According to him this position, which contains elements of truth, must, however, be questioned because it can lead to errors and misunderstandings that risk bringing sociology to a condition of sterility. After recalling that for Weber value-free sociology means that the sociologist must not make his own judgments or introduce his own values ​​(Wert) into the analysis, but also that he cannot forget that the matter he deals with, i.e. social relations, contain within always a “relationship to value” (Wertbeziehung) (Ringer 1997), Donati proposes to use the AGIL scheme also in this case referring to sociology as a cognitive system (see Fig. 7.1). “For relational sociology, in AGIL terms, ethical neutrality is a problem of A, but it is also a way of operating the research methodology which is aware of not being exempt from cultural references, i.e. of having a relationship (unavoidable, albeit contingent) with the latent dimension (the L) of the cognitive relationship. Well aware that these cultural references are in society, but live on the border between the vision of reality (L) and its metaphysical environment (see Fig. 7.1). It is at this last level that the choice between positivistic and non-positivistic sociologies arises: positivist sociologies deny that the social relationship (in the AGIL structure)— and sociological knowledge itself—has a boundary with social ontology and ‘ultimate realities’, while the non-positivistic ones affirm that this border exists (it is the border with the transcendence of the social) and conditions the social phenomenon, as well as the sociological observer. In 1

 You can find other references in Bibliography.

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G Single theory (empirically based generalization in response to the initial problem “why does Y happen?”) A

I

Methodology

Paradigm

(methods and techniques of social research)

(logical rules and language)

L Approach (more general view of the whole society, for example constructionist or of critical realism, which always implies the reference to a social ontology)

Legenda: Axis L-G= axis of relevance to value (based on: L= attribution of meaning to the starting sociological problem, and G= understanding-explanation of the social fact which constituted the initial problem of the cognitive investigation and represents the value of the knowledge to be produced) A-I axis = axis of nomothetic explanation based on: I) investigation logics that are causal or functional and A) methods and techniques that ascertain social facts and their dynamics, in order to evaluate causal/functional regularities and possible variations)

Fig. 7.1  The components of the sociological discipline as a cognitive system (aimed at formulating a theory). (Source: Donati (ed.) 2010: XIV)

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other words, the sociological observer cannot reduce the sociological approach and theory to method: whoever carries out this operation (as most of the old and new functionalists do) passes off as ethical neutrality what is instead a precise choice of values (of latent values ​​or even of denial of the moral character of reality and of the ethical character of knowledge). Relational sociology is therefore a positive science, but not a positivistic one. This means that (the social scientist) shall refrain from introducing value judgments when carrying out the analysis, but he does not ignore that the material he is dealing with is strongly ‘value based’” (Donati 2010: 233–234). Referring to Wright Mills (1959), with these words Donati intends to criticize the sociology of abstract empiricism, i.e. that sociology which limits itself to collecting data and information on facts and social relations, treating them as abstract things, that is detached from the values which, ​​ instead, they inevitably imply. One cannot speak of poverty, for example, without considering the interest of sociology in the fight against poverty and the reference to the value of social justice. But how is it possible that the explanation is neutral, not conditioned by the values ​​of the observer and, therefore, scientific and that at the same time it is not neutral or indifferent to values? Donati’s answer is the following: “Sociological work, far from rejecting its relationship to ethics, must make it explicit in the crucial moments of its work: that is, in the hermeneutical aspects of the analysis and in the operational aspects of application of the ODG systems” (Donati 2010: 235). To understand the logic of this position, a paradoxical example may perhaps be useful. The sociologist can certainly point out that there is a positive correlation between criminal behavior and upward social mobility. He cannot, however, treat this fact as if it were ethically indifferent. If he does so, he surreptitiously introduces a value judgment, that is, he comes to claim that criminal behavior (e.g. theft) is “normal”.

7  An Example of the Relational Methodology: The Social Capital (SC) The examples I have done so far are partly derived from references by Donati, partly created by me but, in both cases, they do not have real empirical research behind them. In contrast, the examples I intend to

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present now on the topic of social capital, can refer to an extensive research literature, in the sense that it is one of the topics Donati and his research group has returned to several times. 7.1   The Relational Definition of SC We start from the definition of the topic/problem which, as the second rule says, must be defined as a social relationship. The authors who have dealt with social capital are many and it is not necessary to retrace here the way in which each has understood and used it. In synthetic terms we can say that among the most recent authors it has been understood in a holistic perspective as a particular type of culture, which can also be defined as a civic sense, which favors participation and commitment to common problems (Putnam 1993, 2000) or as a set of values ​​or norms shared by members of a society or group that allows them to help each other (Fukuyama 1997). From an individualistic perspective, however, it has been defined as the set of current or potential resources that an individual can mobilize thanks to his belonging to a certain network of relationships (Pierre 1980, 1986; Coleman 1988). Finally, there is a third approach, typical of network analysis, whereby social capital is a characteristic not of individuals but of the configuration (morphology) of certain networks (Burt 2005). In order to study the topic of social capital in a relational key, it must first be redefined as the emerging effect of relationships of help/support for something (G) which are based on the value of trust (L), on the norm of reciprocity or mutual help (I) and that use relations as a means (A). “From the point of view of relational sociology, the SC is neither a characteristic of the individual as such, nor of the socio-cultural structures taken by itself, but it is a characteristic of social relations. Not of all social relations, but—specifically—of those that enhance relational goods (primary and secondary). With the term ‘relational good’ we mean goods that consist in (or can only be generated by) social relations produced and enjoyed together by the participants in a given social context” (Donati 2007: 30). Starting from this definition it is possible first of all to identify two different types of SC: primary and secondary. SC can be defined as primary when trust concerns primary intersubjective relationships, that is face-to-face relationships, and reciprocity concerns aids relating to daily life and its needs.

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SC can be defined as secondary when trust concerns extended social relations or the generalized other (in the terms of G.H. Mead 1934) and reciprocity extends to enlarged social cooperation. We can further divide each of the two types of SC into two subtypes: the primary SC can be distinguished into family-parental SC and enlarged community SC, that is, referring to informal friends and neighborhood networks; the secondary SC can be distinguished in associative SC, referring to associations, that is, to organized forms of civil society, whatever the legal form they choose to establish themselves, and generalized SC, which refers to institutions and to generalized other. Once the SC has been defined and typified in this way, we can first propose to describe it, that is, to know if it exists in its various forms and to what extent; whether a type is more common in the north or south of the country; if, e.g. generalized SC is more present among young people or the elderly and which type of association, with which cultural and organizational characteristics, generates more SC. In the research on “The SC of Italian people”2 (Donati and Tronca3 2008) the basic purpose was not only this, but also that of “trying to understand the relevance of social networks (primary-informal and secondary-­organized) in their own contribution to civic commitment” (ibid.: 35). That is, the research design hypothesized “that the SC of relational networks is an intervening variable necessary to explain and understand the relationship between the individual-and-contextual factors that characterize the vital worlds of individuals and their civicism measured as civic commitment” (ibid.: 34). In other words, the research has an explanandum (civic commitment) that can be explained by the involvement of the actors in certain relationships (families and third-sector associations) that produce SC (explanans) as an emergency. In order to carry out the empirical survey of the phenomenon, it is necessary to operationalize the concept and build the indicators that measure it. Donati Tronca’s research did it in the following way. 2  The book uses data from the national research funded by the Ministry of University and Research entitled Third Sector, Lifeworlds and Social Capital in Italy and coordinated by P. Donati. The results were also presented in the book Donati and Colozzi (eds.) (2007). 3  Luigi Tronca curated the technical-methodological aspects and the data processing of the two researches to which I refer here. I would also remember an interesting monograph by the same on relational sociology and network analysis (2013).

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Family SC indicators: (1) Trust in family members living together; (2) Help received from cohabiting family members; (3) Trust in friends and acquaintances of family members; (4) Mutual help with friends and acquaintances of family members. SC indicators of kinship: (1) Trust in relatives; (2) Help received from relatives who are not living together. Extended community SC indicators: (1) Help received from friends; (2) Help received from neighbors; (3) Help received from work colleagues; (4) Help received from people referred to by friends, colleagues, neighbors. Associative SC indicators: (1) Trust in the members of the most popular association; (2) Help received from the members of the most popular association; (3) Trust in friends and acquaintances of the members of the most popular association; (4) Mutual help with friends and acquaintances of the members of the most popular association. Generalized SC indicators: (1) Generalized interpersonal trust; (2) Help of institutions in having generalized interpersonal trust. Civic engagement was measured with 4 indicators: (1) vote for the European elections; (2) join a public petition or a gathering of signatures; (3) attend a meeting to discuss issues in your community, neighborhood or area of ​​residence; (4) contribute to a fundraising for charitable and social solidarity purposes. In this regard Donati writes: “Although these are individual behaviors, they refer to the fact that we share relationships with” generalized “others” (ibid.: 34). To this extent, they are relational indicators. The indicators were transformed into questions using the questionnaire technique. The survey was conducted on a probabilistic sample of the population residing in Italy aged between 18 and 65 which was proportionally stratified with respect to gender, age, macro-region (North-West, North-East, Center, South, Islands) and the size of the municipality of residence of the population. Data were collected through telephone interviews (CATI—Computer-­ Assisted Telephone Interviewing system) in October 2006. Data analysis was conducted at a univariate, bivariate and multivariate level. With respect to the level of multidimensional analysis, we highlight in particular the use of multiple linear regression and factor analysis models, as well as the use of the two-step cluster aggregation technique (Di Franco 1997).

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Through the use of some strategies that have allowed to combine several variables, to calculate the average score and to transform the variables containing the average scores into ordinal variables, the following synthetic indices have also been constructed: • index of socio-economic status • index of religiosity • index of family social capital • kinship social capital index • extended community social capital index • associative social capital index • generalized social capital index • associative commitment index • index of civic commitment The main results of the research are the following: • The most common SC among Italians is the family one. The family emerges as the place where individuals learn to trust and support each other. We have defined this process as family SC and not familism because in much of the mainstream culture familism is synonymous with particularism and closure toward the outside. The data that emerges from the survey does not confirm this stereotype at all, on the contrary it suggests the opposite because in our sample the families with the greatest family SC are also those that tend to have a greater generalized SC and a greater civic commitment, even if the positive correlation is weak, while singles, who have little family SC are also last in the classification of generalized SC and civic commitment. • The kinship and associative SC are also quite widespread. • Not all associative networks generate SC and not all forms of SC generate civic engagement. There are associative networks that increase mistrust rather than trust, or discourage cooperation, instead of promoting it, or even reduce reciprocity, instead of nurturing it. • Associative networks that produce a SC relevant to civic engagement are characterized by specific relationships, marked out by the ability to balance autonomy and openness to the outside.

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• The generalized SC is generally not very widespread, above all because trust in political institutions remains low, and is distributed in a way that is not sensitive to geographical differences. These results radically questioned the current ideas on the SC in Italy which tended to identify the family SC with amoral familism and which tended to localize civic sense and civic engagement only or mainly in northern Italy. Concluding the presentation of the research results, P. Donati wrote: “To those who ask if the SC concept is really necessary, and in particular if it tells us something more than what Tocqueville has observed and theorized, we have tried to answer positively, showing that … the novelty of the SC concept, and what it can shed light on associative dynamics, is effective. It consists in the elaboration of a concept which makes the CS an intervening variable which explains civic engagement in a more complex and in-­ depth way than has been understood in the past. So it would be wrong to say that today’s concept of CS dusts off only the old things. But, to see them, it is necessary to elaborate a relational concept of CS”. (Donati 2007: 147–8)

Another research that can be referred to is the one directed by myself on School and SC (2011). The premise from which this research started is that many surveys have shown how the Italian school is able to produce effective social mobility to a very limited extent and, in any case, much lower than expectations. In indicating the reasons that may explain this result, Italian sociologists of education have almost never considered SC as an explanatory variable. This is what this research intended to do. To achieve this objective, first of all, school performance was identified as a proxy for mobility, in the sense that poor academic performance in high schools tends to result in many cases in the choice of not attending university or enrolling in relatively easy courses of study that allow access to lower-paid jobs/professions. Having identified academic performance as the explanandum, we wanted to verify whether and to what extent the factors that explain it (explanans) are of a relational type. The relationship networks taken into consideration were: (a) the school’s relations with the territory and with the students’ families (SC of the schools); (b) the networks of

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relationships of the pupils’ families (SC of the families); (c) the relationships of students with classmates within school contexts (school SC); (d) the relationships of students with their peers outside the school context (sociality out of school). The sample consisted of students enrolled in the fourth class of the upper secondary schools of the autonomous province of Trento. For the extraction of a probabilistic sample, a procedure was adopted that combines stratified sampling and cluster sampling, aimed at identifying students and, at the same time, complete fourth grades. Two questionnaires were used to collect data, the first administered to school managers, the second to the students included in the sample. The marks obtained by the students at the end of the first quarter were also collected. The questionnaire administered directly to the students included a part aimed at collecting information on the students and their families and an articulated sociometric test that made it possible to collect structural data on sixteen different types of links between the members of the school classes included in the sample. These links have been measured with the tools of social network analysis (density, effective size, efficiency, aggregate constraint, hierarchy, etc.) For the data analysis, the following synthetic indexes were constructed: • Overall index of instability of school classes • Index relating to the types of networks to which the schools belong • Indices of connection of schools with institutional, private and other subjects • Indices of cultural capital, prestige of professions and socio-economic family status of students • Family SC index of students • Index of external relationship of the student family • Student association index Summarizing some of the research results we can say the following: 1. The willingness of schools to act to increase the SC of families, in particular the most disadvantaged or isolated ones, involving them in relationships of knowledge, collaboration and trust with the other

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families of the students, is very differentiated and does not constitute a priority objective. 2. Being classmates creates forms of SC, that is, networks of trusting and supportive relationships that on average involve half of the classmates. The size and shape of these networks (bonding vs. bridging) depend on factors external to the school, in particular on gender and family factors, but also on internal factors, in particular on the turnover of teachers (the more it is stronger, the more the size and the closure of the networks increase) and from the SC of the school, that is, from their external relations with other institutions, organizations and associations. In other words, by guaranteeing the permanent presence of teachers, a rich series of meetings, activities or initiatives carried out in collaboration with other subjects in the area and by consistently involving families in training activities, the school is able to affect the way children relate, which becomes more selective and purpose-oriented, with the effect that groups shrink in size and multiply, but the links between them increase. 3. Not all forms of relationships create SC and are positively correlated with academic achievement. The school rewards young people able of building selective and functional relationships and in particular those who know how to take on the role of broker between groups, while hinders students who close themselves in bonding type groups. 7.2   Interethnic Classes, Social Capital and Learning Outcomes The object of the research was to propose a methodology for studying the ability of schools to “integrate” the children of migrants, i.e. primary school students who do not possess Italian citizenship. The reference population for the survey is that made up of students attending the fifth grade of state primary schools in the autonomous province of Trento during the 2012/2013 school year, in school classes made up of no less than 25% pupils from non-Italian citizenship. The data available for the survey are: (1) those collected ad hoc through a questionnaire administered to students during school hours, with the co-presence of a teacher, containing questions relating to the links between classmates; (2) those on the academic performance of the pupils involved in the survey, made available by school directors; (3) those obtained from parents or foster relatives of minors, relating to the relationships of families with the child’s classmates, with their families and with school bodies.

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Through the questionnaire administered to the students, an attempt was made to reconstruct, within each school class, the networks between classmates relating to the following links, which can be divided into: • school instrumental ties; • expressive scholastic ties; • extracurricular instrumental ties; • extracurricular expressive ties. In the questionnaire delivered to the families, the parents (or foster relatives) were asked first of all to provide general information about them and the family unit they belong to (education qualification, condition with respect to the job and profession carried out, number of people of which it is composed the family, etc.) and then on the family social capital of the nucleus, i.e. on the relationships of the nucleus itself with relatives and family members and with friends; on the nationality of friends; the number of times they attend meetings or organized meetings; on the amount of hours devoted to helping the child with homework and studying. A further section of the questionnaire made it possible to collect data on the ties with the parents of the child’s classmates, distinguishing between ties of knowledge only and ties of support. The main results that emerged from the research from a relational point of view can be summarized in the following points. As for the children: 1. The level of integration of non-Italian children with their classmates is on average slightly lower than that of Italians, both at school and in extracurricular activities. Furthermore, the correlation analysis showed that children who remain more isolated in the classroom maintain this condition even outside of school. 2. In addition to size, the networks of non-Italian children have a different form from that of Italians (bonding vs. bridging) as non-Italians tend to place themselves more within networks where the bonds between members are stronger and more cohesive, but where closure toward non-members and conformity toward the group also prevails.

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3. As regards the composition, the networks are mainly mixed, i.e. made up of both Italians and non-Italians. The most interesting trait that emerges on this point is that while Italians on average choose other Italians more, non-Italians do the opposite. As far as our sample is concerned, therefore, it can be argued that on average the desire to integrate on the part of non-Italians is greater than the willingness of Italian children to open up to the different. 4. By introducing the variable “geographical areas of origin”, significant differences emerged between the different ethnic groups. These differences are to be attributed not so much to the individual character of the children as to the influence that the culture of origin transmitted by the families has on them. Children whose families come from Latin America, for example, have networks whose size is equivalent to and, in some cases, even greater than that of Italian children, while children of Asian origin have particularly “narrow” networks. The result is similar in relation to the shape of the networks, which in the case of Latin American children is bridging, while it is bonding in the case of Asian and African children. As for families: 5. The lesser integration of non-Italian children corresponds to a similar situation of their families, confirmed by the analysis of the parents’ answers to the questionnaire that concerned them. 6. As far as relational aspects are concerned, both Italian and non-Italian families have a large majority of rather frequent relationships with their respective parental networks. Even with regard to friendships there are no substantial differences, except for the nationality of the friends. The absolute majority of non-Italians, in fact, has friendly relations with people of other nationalities, while a statistically significant minority shows strong difficulties in opening up to people who do not belong to their own culture. The absolute majority of the Italians interviewed (62.6%), on the other hand, does not seem willing to have friendships outside the national circle. We are not able to know precisely how much this unavailability depends on laziness, i.e. on the fact that it is easier and more pleasant to be with people who speak the same language and have the same cultural references, or if it depends on attitudes of hostility or, at least, of extraneousness toward migrant people.

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7. The data on associative commitment have highlighted a lower participation of non-Italians in the various types of associations/movements and in meetings. In summary, we could say that the absolute majority of non-Italian families limit their relationships to the primary networks (relatives and friends) while remaining substantially extraneous to the secondary ones (associative ones). This is very significant information because the lack of active participation in social life is one of the impediments to complete social and economic integration.4 8. As regards the relationships between families and the school attended by their children, very significant differences emerge between the two groups. Non-Italian families participate little in school life (meetings, interviews with teachers, etc.) but dedicate many hours a day to helping their children study. Italian families, on the other hand, help their children little with homework, but participate much more in meetings and interviews with teachers. We could therefore speak of two models of study aid: the first, typical of non-Italians, which relies only on the family and its resources; the second, typical of the Italians, who relies on the relationships between the parents and who entrusts their children with help in studying together with the best or most knowledgeable classmates in the various subjects. 9. The research used a different methodological tool from the questionnaire to verify the correlations between the relational variables and the school performance of the children. Specifically, we used the results of the INVALSI test and the grades in Italian and mathematics assigned by the teachers at the end of the first quarter. The following points emerged from this work: a. In general, the academic performance of Italian children is better than that of non-Italians for all indicators. b. As regards the links activated in the school environment, being central in the school class is positively linked to the school result, with respect to all the indicators used. This applies to both Italians and non-Italians. c. There are positive and statistically significant relationships between academic performance and reciprocity, i.e. in the cases of relation4  See Statement of the European Ministerial Conference on Integration, Zaragoza, 15 and 16 April 2010, approved by the Justice and Home Affairs Council on 3–4 June 2010 (Zaragoza Declaration).

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ship in which A’s preference for B is reciprocated by B for A.5 In these cases the relationships tend to take the form of a relational good, i.e. as a social capital generated and enjoyed jointly by the students. d. If the morphology of the networks is taken into consideration, the bridging type structures have a positive relationship with school performance, while the relationship with the bonding ones, which mainly characterize non-Italians, is negative. e. Considering the data relating to households, it was found that: • on average, the marks of those who have parents with higher educational qualifications and who carry out middle-class jobs are higher; • that the correlation between hours dedicated to helping children study and school performance is negative; • that the percentage of schoolmates of the child whose parents are known is positively correlated with all indicators of academic performance and that the non-Italian children who perform better in Italian are those whose families have more network connections.

References Archer, Margareth S. 1995. Realist Social Theory: the Morphogenetic Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burt, Ronald S. 2005. Brokerage and Closure: An Introduction to Social Capital. New York: Oxford University Press. Borgatti Stephen P., G. Everett Martin, and C. Freeman Linton. 2002. Ucinet for Windows: Software for Social Network Analysis, Analytic Technologies. Harvard, MA. Coleman, James S. 1988. Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital. The American Journal of Sociology 94 (Supplement): S95–S120. Colozzi, Ivo (a cura di). 2011. Scuola e capitale sociale. Trento: Erickson. Di Franco Giovanni. 1997. Tecniche e modelli di analisi multivariata dei dati. Introduzione all'applicazione per la ricerca sociale, Seam Roma 1997. Donati, Pierpaolo. 2007. L’approccio relazionale al capitale sociale. Sociologia e Politiche Sociali 10 (1): 9–39.

5   The reciprocity measures were determined starting from the dyad-based method (Borgatti, Everett, Freeman 2002).

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———. 2010. L’analisi relazionale: regole, quadro metodologico, esempi. In Sociologia. Una introduzione allo studio della società, ed. Pierpaolo Donati, 195–252. Padova: CEDAM. ———. 2018. An Original Relational Sociology Grounded in Critical Realism. In The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology, ed. F.  Dépelteau, 431–456. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Donati, Pierpaolo, and Ivo Colozzi (a cura di). 2007. Terzo settore, mondi vitali e capitale sociale. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Donati, Pierpaolo, and Luigi Tronca. 2008. Il capitale sociale degli italiani. Le radici familiari, comunitarie e associative del civismo. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Folgheraiter, Fabio. 2012. The Mystery of Social Work: A Critical Analysis of the Global Definition and New Suggestions According to the Relational Theory. Trento: Erikson. ———. 2017. Manifesto del metodo Relational Social Work. Trento: Erikson. Fukuyama, Francis. 1997. Social Capital. Tanner Lecture on Human Values, Brasenose College: Oxford University. Khun, Thomas S. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wright Mills, Charles 1959. The Sociological Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1959. Mead, George H. 1934. Mind, Self and Society. From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pierre, Bourdieu. 1980. Le capital social: notes provisoires. Actes de la Recherche en Sciences sociales 31 (3): 2–3. ———. 1986. The Forms of Capital. In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. J.G.  Richardson, 241–258. New  York: Greenwood Press. Pierre, Bourdieu, and Passeron Jean-Claude. 1970. La reproduction: Elements pour une theorie du système d’enseignement. Paris: Edition de Minuit. Putnam, Robert D. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (with R. Leonardi, R.Y. Nanetti), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 2000. Bowling Alone. The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York and London: Simon & Schuster. Ringer, Fritz. 1997. Max Weber’s Methodology. The Unification of the Cultural and Social Sciences. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tronca, Luigi. 2013. Sociologia relazionale e social network analysis. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Weber, Max. 1949. The Methodology of the Social Sciences. Translated by E. A. Shils and H. A. Finch). New York: Free Press.

CHAPTER 8

Florian Znaniecki’s Methodology for the Relational Paradigm: The Application of Analytic Induction to Nationalism Studies Michał Łuczewski

Florian Znaniecki was a key figure in both the development of the relational paradigm (Łuczewski 2021) and the advancement of methodological inquiry in twentieth-century sociology (Bertilson 1986, Hałas 2008, 2010a, 2020, Lüschen and Tibbetts 1986, Lüschen 2007, Tacq 2007).1 His international career began with the co-authorship of the historic “Methodological Note” to The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, a seminal work that introduced qualitative methods and brought about a paradigmatic shift in American sociology, moving it away from armchair considerations and toward full-scale empirical research (Thomas, Znaniecki 1  My work was supported by the Research Network Project “Social Space, Fields and Relationality (SSFR) in Contemporary and Historical Social Analysis” funded by the National Academic Exchange Agency, which sponsored my visiting fellowship at the Bologna University. I want to thank Filip Dankiewicz for his assistance.

M. Łuczewski (*) University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Hałas (ed.), Methodology of Relational Sociology, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41626-2_8

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1918–1920, Kaczmarczyk 2018a, 2018b, Lopata 1976). His methodological insights are scattered from the “Methodological Note” and early philosophical works in Polish and English (Cultural Reality; Znaniecki 1919) through “Wstęp do socjologii” (Introduction to Sociology) to Cultural Sciences and “numerous articles on the methodological status of sociology published during his last years” (Hałas 2010a: 179; see Znaniecki 1943, 1945, 1954a, 1954b, 1955). However, his most comprehensive vision of methodology is to be found in The Method of Sociology (1934a), which is also the most thorough and cohesive exposition of his sociological theory (comp.: Hałas 2008: 18). Despite its relevance in the pre-war sociology, Znaniecki’s role as a methodologist has faded gradually into oblivion (Hałas 2010a: 182). Consequently, his relational methodology could not become the point of reference for emerging contemporary relational paradigms. Although Znaniecki primarily focused on developing his theory, he did not typically apply his methodological insights to empirical research. However, his final work, Modern Nationalities (1952a), is a remarkable example of how his methodology can be applied to comparative empirical research that examines the emergence of modern nations and nationalisms. This work represents a masterful use of his methodology, including triangulation of methods for data collection and analytic induction for data analysis. Modern Nationalities, along with Cultural Sciences, can be considered the crowning achievements of Znaniecki’s sociological project. Despite this, the essential link between his relational methodology and Modern Nationalities has been largely overlooked in sociological literature (see Bertilson 1986, Hałas 2008, 2010a, 2010b, 2020, Lüschen and Tibbetts 1986, Lüschen 2007, Tacq 2007).

1   Znaniecki’s Anti-dualism As a thorough anti-dualist, Florian Znaniecki’s unique contribution lay in his ability to bridge sociological divides by constructing relationships amid “controversies in doctrine and method” (Znaniecki 1945) between philosophical and sociological factions (see Hałas 2010b: 130–141). He served as the master mediator between twentieth-century sociologies, embodying the relational approach in the way he constructed his own paradigm, which aimed to creatively integrate competing principles and trends. Instead of rejecting one perspective and thus reinforcing polarizations and

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ruptures in the body of sociology, he sought to identify polarizations and turn them into polarities to be leveraged (Johnson 1992, 2020). Importantly, he included the very principle of appreciating two opposing poles in his master concepts of “social relation,” which denotes “a system of functionally interdependent actions performed by two cooperating individuals who evaluate each other positively and assume definite duties toward each other” (Znaniecki 1954a: 299) and “creative reorganization”: Another way of counteracting the disorganization of a cultural system is to expand its positive functions, to make it increasingly valuable to participants, and to introduce positive bonds between its participants and participants in other systems, thus substituting cooperation for conflict. This means that new common values, new cultural patterns of action, new relationships of functional interdependence are introduced. As a result, a new, more dynamic organization is developed. We use the term “creative reorganization” to denote this development. (emphasis—MŁ; Znaniecki 1963: 359)

Znaniecki embodied the logic of “creative reorganization” in his role as a “man of knowledge.” For instance, he successfully merged Anglo-Saxon pragmatism (relativism; James and Dewey) and German neo-Kantianism (realism; Lotze and Rickert) in his philosophical project (see Wiley 2007, Wocial 1987). Similarly, Znaniecki combined philosophy of values and active, optimistic philosophy of history (Znaniecki 1952a: 174–184, Znaniecki 1963), as well as philosophy and sociology in general (Znaniecki 1952b, Szacki 1985, 1986). It is not surprising, therefore, that he employed the same strategy in dealing with questions of sociology. More than a decade after the publication of The Method of Sociology, he summoned sociologists to think in terms of integration: Sociology has lately become a battlefield of irreconcilable philosophic doctrines and seems to be heading toward total disintegration. Controversial issues endanger its objectivity; opposite epistemologies of radical empiricism and mathematical dogmatism prevent cooperative usage of qualitative and quantitative methods; idealistic and materialistic metaphysics interfere with a methodical division of functions between the natural and the cultural approach to social phenomena. Although in actual sociological research and systematization these struggles are less marked than in abstract discussions, the endless task of integration will be difficult. (Znaniecki 1945: 514)

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In this critical and succinct summary of his position, Znaniecki strove not to treat different poles of sociological struggles as problems to get rid of. For him, the only challenge was the growing polarization between them. His way was not to choose one pole to the neglect of the other pole but to build bridges between them, thus leveraging polarities in a positive feedback loop.

2  Methodology as Space of Mediation Between Theory and Facts For Znaniecki’s readers, the construction of The Method of Sociology is striking, even surprising (Hałas 2008, Sorokin 1936: 817–819). Instead of dutifully describing sociological methods, as we are accustomed to in modern methodological manuals, the author devoted the first half of the book to sociological theory, that is, the theory that aims to demarcate the field of sociology (Chapter I: “The Selection and Determination of Scientific Data”; Chapter II: “The Principles of Selection of Cultural Data”; Chapter III: “The Data of Sociology”). It is only in the second half of the book that we move toward sociological methods per se (Chapter IV: “The Sources of Sociological Material”; Chapter V: “Criticism of Some Methodological Tendencies”; Chapter VI: “Analytic Induction”). If we complement this treatise with its empirical application in Modern Nationalities, we see the strikingly dialectical structure of Znaniecki’s project with methodology at its center, taking the role of a mediator amid sociological polarizations. Let us distinguish two types of polarities that Znaniecki sets out to leverage: horizontal and vertical. The vertical one refers to hierarchical visions of science, reminiscent of Lakatos’s vision of the development of scientific programs, with a theoretical hard core as the guiding principle of empirical research (Elman and Elman 2002), or Larry Laudan’s (1984) distinction between three levels at which scientific paradigms operate: axiological (theoretical), methodological, and factual. The scholar argues that challenges met at one level cannot be resolved at the same level but must be moved to a higher level and so on, i.e., conflicts over facts are resolved through methodology, while conflicts over methodology are resolved at the level of axiology/theory. As a consequence, the level of methodology becomes a space of mediation between the levels of theory

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and facts, as on the one hand it operationalizes theoretical insights in the form of research designs, research methods, and research tools to be applied in empirical analyses, while on the other, it allows the translation of the language of facts into testable hypotheses. This is exactly where Znaniecki placed his own methodological program (see also Znaniecki 1943: 227–232, 1954a: 519). Barry Johnson (1992: XI) opined that many current trends “are often described as movements from one way of thinking or acting to another,” i.e., as overcoming some “problems” from the past with novel solutions. However, the past “problem” and the future solution should be considered rather as opposites that cannot function well independently (Johnson 1992: XII). In similar terms, Znaniecki described the fundamental challenge of sociology as the clash between generalists/theorists of the past and analysts/factualists of the new era, which brings about fundamental disorganization of the discipline (Znaniecki 1934a: 28). To reconcile the hierarchical, vertical struggle between theory and facts, Florian Znaniecki suggested the work of mediation at the level of methodology: In this crisis it [sociology] needs all the light which methodological studies and discussions can throw on its present and future. […] The essential principles of investigation and systematization which were universally recognized during a certain period seize to be regarded as valid and other principles must be elaborated. At such times, methodological reflection assumes a leading role in formulating new ideals of scientific achievement. (Znaniecki 1934a: V–VI)

3   Znaniecki’s Relational Ontology The second type of polarity that Znaniecki addressed was horizontal, occurring within one level of scientific investigation. In social sciences, the level of theory defines both epistemology (what can we know?) and ontology (what exists?). On the plane of ontology, Znaniecki’s culturalist perspective challenged sociological individualism (represented by Weber and Tarde) and holism (represented by Durkheim and Spencer). Rather than putting an individual or group at the center, Znaniecki would have echoed Pierpaolo Donati’s dictum that “in the beginning (of any social fact) is relation” (Donati 2017: 15). According to Znaniecki, social facts were not just psychological phenomena or external things, but rather networks of

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relations between cultural values enacted by individuals and groups. In other words, Znaniecki sought to overcome the negative polarization between holism and individualism by emphasizing the importance of understanding social facts as relational and cultural phenomena (Znaniecki 1963: 385). Unlike its two rival paradigms, which dominated sociology, Znaniecki’s relational sociology posited that social reality is primarily constituted by social relations. However, rather than approaching individualism or holism as “problems” to be solved, he wanted to leverage them in the form of relational sociology, which acknowledges the existence of both individuals and groups. In his theoretical system, he distinguished analytically five elements of all social systems: (a) social actions and interactions (micro level; Znaniecki 1936); (b) social relations (micro level), (c) social persons and social roles (micro level; Znaniecki 1965), (d) social groups (meso level), and (e) societies (macro level; Znaniecki 1952a). He agreed with the principles of individualism and holism, demonstrating that both individuals and groups are emergent properties of social interactions and social relations. In his view, both schools clashed at the level of description, as they misrecognized the deeper, hidden, causative power of relations at the level of explanation. Having demonstrated this fundamental polarity or, indeed, polarization of contemporary sociology, in The Method of Sociology, Znaniecki set out to define the ontology of social sciences: There is only one course open for sociology, if it wishes definitely to avoid both the Charybdis of theorizing with no firmer ground than the hypotheses of the other sciences accepted as dogmas, and the Scylla of an irrational mass of motley information, however interesting in itself. This course is to determine exactly the general type (or types, if there he several) of those closed systems which it is the special right and duty of the sociologist to study, and to concentrate primarily on these, as consistently as physics, chemistry, biology, philology concentrate on their respective object-­ matters. (Znaniecki 1934a: 28–29)

Rather than choosing theory versus facts, Znaniecki’s solution was to leverage this polarity by summoning sociologists to combine theories and facts. To do this, Znaniecki began his analyses by defining the ontology of relational sociology as “closed systems” or relatively closed systems.

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Systems thus became the cornerstones of social reality to be researched by relational sociology.2

4   Znaniecki’s Relational Epistemology On the plane of epistemology, sociologists cannot analyze all kinds of relations. Donati and his followers focus on a special kind of relations, that is, social relations, which are symbolic, structurally binding, normatively regulated, as well as emergent and causative (Łuczewski 2021: 215). By the same token, Znaniecki claimed that relations and systems did not belong to nature but to culture. What did it mean? They had to be addressed with a “humanistic coefficient”: Every cultural system is found by the investigator to exist for certain conscious and active historical subjects, i.e., within the sphere of experience and activity of some particular people, individuals, and collectivities, living in a certain part of the human world during a certain historical period. Consequently, for the scientist this cultural system is really and objectively as it was (or is) given to those historical subjects themselves when they were (or are) experiencing it and actively dealing with it. In a word, the data of the cultural student are always “somebody’s,” never “nobody’s” data. This essential character of cultural data we call the humanistic coefficient, because such data, as objects of the student’s theoretic reflection, already belong to somebody else’s active experience and are such as this active experience makes them. (Znaniecki 1934a: 36–37)

The closed systems experienced by individuals and groups consist not of “things” but of “cultural values,” which have both (material) content and (cultural) meaning, through which they are related to other values. Znaniecki provided an example of a religious cultural system, in which a given vessel becomes sacred or axiologically significant through its 2  Gunter Lüschen (2007: 210, 215) suggests that Florian Znaniecki’s theory of systems anticipated modern system theories developed by Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann. However, Lüschen argues that these later theorists did not acknowledge Znaniecki’s pioneering contribution. Comparing Znaniecki’s theory with Parsons and Luhmann’s will shed new light on Znaniecki’s relational sociology, particularly in relation to Pierpaolo Donati’s (2017) project of relational sociology, which draws on Parsons and Luhmann as main points of reference. This comparison will allow for a deeper understanding of the similarities and differences between system theories and highlight the important contributions of Znaniecki both to the development of relational sociology and system theory.

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relations to other cultural values of the religious system (Znaniecki 1934a: 41–42). To exist and reproduce, cultural closed systems cannot be just experienced but must be reenacted and performed (Znaniecki 1934a: 70). Eventually, Znaniecki could step down to the plane of methodology proper, where he pointed to yet another negative polarization between naturalism (positivism) and subjectivism (anti-positivism), which has been haunting social sciences till this very day. Appreciating claims of both schools, he offered a rare combination of humanistic, anti-positivistic sociology (with the guiding principle of the humanistic coefficient) with rigorous, positivistic methodology of analysis of empirical material (Szacki 1986). Similarly, he set out to bridge the gap between quantitative and qualitative approaches (Hałas 2008: 18). Znaniecki’s solution was here the concept of “analytic induction,” which should reconcile both positivistic/quantitative and anti-positivistic/qualitative approaches, explanation and humanistic coefficient (see Bertilson 1986: 42–47, Lüschen and Tibbetts 1986: 190, Tacq 2007: 193–197). This seminal notion was the centerpiece of The Method of Sociology, establishing the author of The Polish Peasant as an innovative and highly original methodologist of his time. Indeed, it is rightly considered to be a predecessor of popular Qualitative Comparative Analysis developed by Charles Ragin, though we can find some challenges to Znaniecki’s principles (Tacq 2007: 197–201). Liao and Hałas aptly summarized the essence of Znaniecki’s methodological approach: For Znaniecki, the best form of scientific induction combines deductive and inductive reasoning into a dynamic unity where both are required and they complement each other. Therefore, hypothesis testing is integrated with literary (deep and thick) description in Znaniecki’s methodology, offering a precursor to today’s mixed methodology where formal hypothesis testing can be combined with qualitative thick descriptions, with the two general approaches complementing each other’s strengths and weaknesses. (Liao and Hałas 2007: 131)

This is not to claim that one should automatically leverage all sociological polarities. Indeed, Znaniecki was criticized for “halfway position” (Sorokin 1936). For example, Pitirim Sorokin (1936: 817–819) praised The Method of Sociology as “a treatise on methodological principles of sociology and not a mere superficial discussion of so-called ,” but he also noted that “everywhere the author

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stops halfway in the between the of sociology as a and discipline, and the of sociology as a logico-philosophical discipline.” Znaniecki would have rejected these objections, but he sometimes acknowledged that his attempts to integrate certain strands were unsatisfactory. For instance, he found that his merger of the concept of “value” with Thomas’s concept of “attitude” was a dead end (Znaniecki 1948: 767). Thomas shared this skeptical view, as did Herbert Blumer ([1939] 1979) and Ellsworth Faris (1926: 532), who noted that both authors failed to effectively leverage the polarity between (subjective) attitude and (objective) value. To effectively leverage polarities, we must see a greater purpose in doing so, such as integrating the discipline or providing more rigorous descriptions and explanations of social reality (Lüschen and Tibbetts, 1986: 190–191; see also Znaniecki, 1927: 537).

5  Relational Methodology into Nationalism Studies The ultimate test of relational methodology is empirical analysis that applies novel methodology to case studies, shedding new light on them. In my perspective, the distinctive value of Modern Nationalities lies in its consistent application of methodological principles to the complex phenomenon of nation-building, one of the most intricate modern social processes. Znaniecki was not only a pioneer in nationalism studies (see notably Thomas and Znaniecki 1918) but also a sociologist who introduced methodological rigor to this elusive reality (Łuczewski 2009, 2021). His ultimate goal was to define his dependent variable, contemporary “modern nationalities” (and the emerging world-society), and explain it through independent variables responsible for the emergence of “modern nationalities” (see also Znaniecki 2007). In The Method of Sociology, Znaniecki identified five key sources of empirical material for sociological investigations: (a) the researcher’s personal experience, (b) direct and indirect observation, (c) the personal experience of other people, (d) observation by other people, and (e) existing generalizations (Znaniecki 1934a: 156). Accordingly, in Modern Nationalities, Znaniecki drew on all of these sources, including his own observations (Znaniecki 1952a: IX) and specifically his own experience as “a participant in social life” (Znaniecki 1952a: IX):

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I was born—he wrote—and brought up in Poland at a time when that country was divided into three territories. […] For more than a century there was no united Polish state and no common Polish government. Ye this division did not prevent Poles form maintaining and developing cooperatively a common Polish culture and an active solidarity which cut across the political boundaries. (Znaniecki 1952a: IX–X)

However suggestive the Polish case was, it had to be “tested by comparative study of other cases” (Znaniecki 1952a: X). To do this, Znaniecki drew on further sources: personal observations and experiences of other people, i.e., his students as well as assistants (Znaniecki 1952a: IX). Eventually, he made systematic use of “comparative analysis of numerous works of historians, biographers, ideologists and men of letters, sociologists, observers of social life in many countries” (Znaniecki 1952a: IX). This was one of the early examples of the triangulation of methods. Having amassed sociological data, Znaniecki employed the principle of analytic induction to analyze them. He defined the four consecutive steps in applying this principle to concrete cases as follows: 1. “Discover which characters in a given datum of a certain class are more, and which are less essential.” 2. “Abstract these characters, and assume hypothetically that the more essential are more general than the less essential, and must be found in a greater variety of classes.” 3. “Test this hypothesis by investigating classes in which the former and those in which the latter characters are found.” 4. “Establish a classification, i.e., organize all these classes into a scientific system based on the functions the respective characters play in determining them” (Znaniecki 1934a: 259–260). Drawing on the language of contemporary methodology, these steps could be reformulated into the following way (see Tacq 2007: 193–197): 5.1   Employing Archetypal Case Method Znaniecki underlined that enumerative induction abstracted by generalizing, whereas analytic induction generalized by abstracting (Znaniecki 1934a: 251). In The Method of Sociology, he described the procedure as starting with an “eidetic case” or an archetypical case that represented the

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eidos (i.e. essence) of the phenomenon being studied. This case was then employed to (a) comprehensively define the phenomenon and (b) abstract it to determine the category or class of phenomena it belongs to. Eventually, the phenomenon in question became the dependent variable of the study (Znaniecki 1934a: 251–252). In Modern Nationalities, Znaniecki started with the archetypal case of Polish “narod,” [sic] deliberately using the Polish term because it had no English equivalent (Znaniecki 1952a: X). In The Sociology of Struggle in Pomerania, he explained that the term “nationality” (narodowość) originally meant belonging to a certain nation but was transformed to indicate a collectivity of individuals with definite ethnic characteristics but no organization (Znaniecki 1934b: 15). For these reasons, Znaniecki used the term “naród,” which he initially tried to render as a neologism but eventually translated as “national culture society” or, for lack of a better term, “nationality” (Znaniecki 1952a: 21). Znaniecki used the archetypal case of Polish “naród” to define the essence of “national culture society” or “nationality” and to determine the class of “national culture societies” or “nationalities.” He then made titled modern nationalities his dependent variable, which he sought to explain. Already in The Polish Peasant (Thomas and Znaniecki 1918: 84–85, 203), Znaniecki emphasized the eidetic character of the Polish case for studies of nations and nationalism: “Probably in this respect, no study of any other society can give so many interesting sociological indications as the study of the Poles” (Thomas and Znaniecki 1918: 84). Supporting this claim, Znaniecki argued that, from a sociological point of view, during the partitions, without the independent state, Polish national cohesion substantially increased to include strata, such as the peasantry (Thomas and Znaniecki 1918: 50). Znaniecki continued to emphasize that the Polish national group “remained socially unified though belonging to three different states and actively struggling against all three” (Znaniecki 1934a: 126–127). 5.2   Defining Constitutive Elements To formulate hypotheses about which elements are constitutive of nationality, Znaniecki conducted an in-depth analysis of the Polish archetypal case. To do this, he employed his structural method of identifying functional interdependencies and correlations (Znaniecki 1934a: 262, 1963: 164–165). The procedure distinguished necessarily co-occurring elements of a given phenomenon. For Znaniecki, nationality was not merely a

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collectivity joined by a common name, as it consisted of three fundamental elements characteristic of every nationality: national culture, national organization, and national leadership. In other words, there are no nations without (some) common culture, (some) organization, and (some) leaders. This was congruent with his general hypothesis that “whenever a relatively large number of individual agents carry on some relatively lasting organized cooperation,” e.g., national organization and national leadership, “the conception of a superindividual collectivity to which all of them belong will be found to exist,” i.e., national culture (Znaniecki 1963: 151). 5.3   Process Tracing Znaniecki distinguished between two types of mechanisms of social becoming: genetic and causal. Genetic mechanisms pertain to the causes between systems in question, while causal mechanisms pertain to the causes within the system. Znaniecki explains that the difference between these two types of mechanisms is that a genetic sequence is a connection between two numerically distinct systems, while a causal process is a change within one system whose structure is modified as an effect of a modification of its composition. This means that a causal process preserves its numerical unity, while a genetic sequence involves the coexistence of two distinct systems (Znaniecki 1934a: 262, 293, 1963: 164–165). In explaining nation-building, Znaniecki identified the first genetic sequence in the preconditions (or the foundations) of the emergence of nationality in some other systems preceding it: state, church, and tribe. Here he was interested in the process taking place between proto-national and national systems. Second, he pointed to the causal process within the emerging national systems, specifically to active “social forces” that are necessary conditions of the emergence of the phenomenon. In consecutive steps, Znaniecki enumerated and described agents, such as groups of people (intellectuals and activists), associations, and institutions, which were necessary for the creation of modern nationalities with their specific cultures and organizations. When a modern nationality emerges, there is an undefined space between a genetic sequence and a causal sequence, as there are nationalizing groups who are both active in pre-national systems and at the same time are shaping national systems to come. This liminal process that falls between the two sequences can be called genetic-causal, while the variables operating at this level as intervening variables. Here Znaniecki

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pointed to the guiding, active principle of nationalities: national leadership (or nationalism). In short, while explaining nation-building, he distinguished two clusters of independent (dominant) variables: social preconditions (genetic sequence) and “social forces” (causal sequence), with some elements falling between those two categories. 5.4   Comparing Cases Based on in-depth analysis of the Polish case, he formulated analytic generalizations, which allowed him to make comparisons both within and across cases. Specifically, he tested his hypotheses with regard to the essence of nationality (national culture, national organization, national leadership) drawn from the Polish case against more than thirty other cases, including Italy, Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia, Belgium, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Serbia, Spain, the USA, Canada, China, Japan, India, Indonesia, and Nigeria. He also considered ancient nationalities such as Jews, Greeks, and Romans. Znaniecki found that the basic elements of nationalities discerned in the Polish case were also present in other cases, which reinforced the validity of his generalizations (Znaniecki 1952a: X–XI, 23, 76, 77, 100, 122, 169). 5.5   Analyzing Deviant Case Since Znaniecki intended his theory to be a general theory of all national culture societies, rather than a specific theory about Poland, he used abstract typologies to classify the essential elements of nationalities. His method of analytic induction involved combining the analysis of an archetypal case with a comparative method to determine whether the abstracted constitutive elements are found in a greater variety of classes. In the course of constant comparisons, Znaniecki enumerated a number of deviant cases. In the context of modern nations, such seemingly “contradictory instances,” as Znaniecki (1934a: 281, see also Znaniecki 1934a: 126–127) called them, were especially French, English, and—to a lesser extent— German. The problem was that they became paradigmatic cases for the mainstream theory of nations and nationalism. Based on such examples, theorists suggested “the doctrine that a common state is indispensable for social unity” (Znaniecki 1952a: X). Moreover, they did not even imagine that there might be any other view (Znaniecki 1934a: 126–127).

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As Znaniecki lamented in The Method of Sociology, “The French and English languages do not even have any terms to indicate this type of group, for the term is associated with the idea of the state” (Znaniecki 1934a: 126–127). He qualified this claim in Modern Nationalities, noting that while “nation” in English described “the totality of citizens of a sovereign state,” in French, the concept was more inclusive but still had “political connotation” (Znaniecki 1952a: XIII). In contrast, “The history of the Poles from the partition of Poland in 1795 up to 1919” seemed to disprove it (Znaniecki 1952a: X), though it did not make its way beyond Polish and German sociology (Znaniecki 1934a: 126–127). 5.6   Causal Typological Theory of Nation-Building These five steps of analytic induction served Znaniecki in constructing a causal typological theory of nation-building. The goal of deviant case analysis was not merely to point out contradictions between cases and refute theories built on them but also to construct “another general hypothesis” (Znaniecki 1934a: 281–282). In short, the sixth and last step was to organize typological variables into a “scientific system.” This system resembled the so-called typological theory combined with process tracing (George and Bennett 2005, Bennett and Checkel 2015, Collier 2011). The typological approach is based, firstly, on defining dependent, intervening, and independent variables by assigning them to appropriate types, i.e., by creating their typology (Collier et al. 2008, 2012). These typologies are generated based on existing theories, which are then related to empirical material, as well as on the analysis of empirical material, which is then related to theory. The second step is to explain the dependent variable by constructing a path that leads from independent variables (through intervening) to the dependent variable. Such a path creates a syndrome of independent, intervening, and dependent variables. George and Bennett (2005: 235) compare this procedure to the work of pathologists in medicine, who, instead of identifying a single cause and symptom of a disease, prefer to talk about syndromes of different causal pathways and different symptoms. It was in this spirit that Znaniecki strove to build a typological theory of nations and nationalism that would both define the essence of nationality (dependent variable) and explain its origins and emergence (independent variables). Let us visualize Znaniecki’s pioneering theory of nations and nationalisms (see Table 8.1).

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Table 8.1  Reconstruction of Znaniecki’s theory of nation and nationalism Preconditions

Ecclesiastical society

of nations

Tribe society

State

society

and nationalism (independent variables) Causal processes changing

Secularization

Literacy

Urbanization

extant systems (independent variables) Genetic sequence

Emergence of secular, nationalizing leaders who construct national

bringing

culture and build national organizations: men of letters, historians,

about new

ethnographers, artists, musicians, scientists, economic leaders etc.

system (independent variables) Causal processes

Emergence of nationalizing associations: social centers of cultural

changing

leaders, association of men of letters, associations for the

extant

promotion of knowledge etc.

system (independent variables)

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There is no need to reconstruct all the elements of this nation-building theory in detail, as this diagram is self-explanatory, while the theory itself is well-known (Szacki 2010, Poniedziałek 2022, Łuczewski 2021). What I want to demonstrate is that the principle of analytic induction allowed Znaniecki to build a relational theory of nations and nationalism, which at the level of definition and description related different constitutive elements of the nation (dependent variable), while at the level of explanation relates nation with pre-national and nationalizing factors (independent variables). In his definition of nation, Znaniecki combined the following three elements: (a) structure (1952a: 15–20), (b) culture (1952a: 2), and (c) agency. This combination served him to leverage dynamic and static description of nationalism. In this, he followed his principle of complementing social/cultural statics with social/cultural dynamics (Znaniecki 1963: 108, 279–280). The outcome of Znaniecki’s application of relational methodology to nationalism studies had far-reaching consequences for the mainstream sociological theory of his time. Znaniecki challenged dominant statist theories of the nation and nationalism that drew on French, English, and German cases to introduce the Polish case, which was thoroughly neglected until then. However, he did not confine himself to demonstrating that Poland was a deviant case to the mainstream statist theories. Quite the contrary, he showed that Western cases were specific cases of his own theory. In other words, he did not refute statist theories but included them as a special case of his own culturalist theory. “The idea advanced by those social philosophers who considered a common national culture to be a more lasting and influential bond of social solidarity than common government, might prove to be scientifically valid theory”—he argued (Znaniecki 1952a: X; see also Znaniecki 1934a: 126–127). We see that in his theory, Znaniecki explained the emergence not only of the nation but also of the state. 5.7   World-Society: Beyond Nations Znaniecki’s theory was one of the early sociological explorations of globalization (see Znaniecki 1954a: 519). He posited that it was important to analyze the sequences that could lead to a post-national or international order. Znaniecki believed that modern nationalities were intimately connected to the emergence of world culture and society and that the future world culture and society should be based on scientific knowledge,

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particularly sociological studies. However, he also recognized that it would take a long time for these studies to become broad and inclusive enough for efficient planning of a culturally harmonious world. Despite this, Znaniecki’s ideas have continued to influence scholars who study globalization and its impact on society (Znaniecki 1952a: 172). Let us reconstruct Znaniecki’s theory of national and post-national order (see Table  8.2). What is striking is that previous dependent variables—nation and state—become independent variables (foundations, preconditions) for the further development of social systems. On the one hand, the emergence of nation and states brings about the foundation of nation-states, which are reinforced by internal violence (coercion) as well as external wars. On the other hand, if the nation is not merged with the state, there is a possibility of the emergence of a global, peaceful, collaborative society. In the language of modern methodology, Znaniecki’s causal typological theory allowed to analyze such peculiar phenomena as equifinality (different independent variables bring about the same outcome: nation-state) and multifinality (the same independent variables bring about different outcomes, such as nation and state; George and Bennett 2005: 158). Znaniecki’s theory of world-society and world-culture was a projection of his theory of national culture societies into the future. “Whereas those older cultures were relatively static and hence became partly or entirely supplanted by national cultures as the latter developed and expanded, national cultures are dynamic, and it is their continual growth which makes the emergence and growth of a world culture possible” (Znaniecki 1952a: 176). In his work, however, Znaniecki, as a sociologist and philosopher of values, moved beyond factual analyses and delved into normative considerations. He believed that building a new world order cannot rely solely on past religious or philosophical traditions, but rather on a creative reorganization. Znaniecki argued that a world-­ culture, unlike sacred cultures as conceived by ecclesiastical thinkers, is not yet complete and will never be (Znaniecki 1952a: 176). This emerging order will be based on the polarity between the diversity of national cultures and the unity of world culture, as well as the appreciation of the cultural heritage and the ideals of further cultural progress, between politics and science (Znaniecki 1952a: 176–184). Znaniecki believed that powerful politicians and dogmatic doctrinaires in modern nationalities are ignorant of scientific principles and cannot recognize their ignorance. He thought that sociologists are better suited

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Table 8.2  The reconstruction of Znaniecki’s theory of nation-state and world-society Preconditions of nationstate and

State

Nation

world society

War

Cooperation between

between

nations

states

(independent variables) Genetic sequence

Nation-state

Emergence of

bringing

The synthesis of state society with

intellectuals cooperating

about new

national society in a national state based

with one another who

systems

on coercion and leadership

construct culture of cooperation and organization of cooperation

Causal processes

Emergence of social

changing

groups that import and

extant

export foreign cultures

system (independent variables) International meetings

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to overcome this ignorance and lead the way toward a better world order (Znaniecki 1952a: 176): As a sociologist and a philosophical optimist, I like to imagine that sooner or later the solution of all important human problems will be entrusted to cultural scientists, and that sociologists will assume the task of ascertaining how innovations of specialists in various realms of culture (including the realms of natural sciences and of techniques) can be cooperatively used by social groups of practical agents for the best advantage of humanity. This does not mean that the future of mankind would be planned and controlled by sociologists, as Comte imagined, or that the human world would become not only socially united, but culturally uniform. It means rather that sociologists would function as intellectual leaders in the ceaseless course of differentiation and integration of social roles and social groups throughout the world. By performing this function, they would indirectly contribute to the continuous creative growth of new varieties of cultural systems and the enrichment and diversification of individual lives. (Znaniecki 1963: 419)

Whether or not Znaniecki overfocused on the role of science to the neglect of politics in shaping the world-society to come is a question open to debate (Bertilson 1986: 39–47). What is more crucial, however, is that as a scientist he demonstrated that it is only by giving methodology its due, that is by relating methodology to theory and facts that sociologists can construct relational methodology that is truly relational.

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———. 2021. Nation as a Primordializing Subject: Florian Znaniecki and the Foundations of Relational Sociology. In Relational Reason, Morals and Sociality, ed. Elżbieta Hałas and Aleksander Manterys, 211–233. Berlin: Peter Lang. Lüschen, Gunter. 2007. Sociology as/of Culture. The Unfinished Methodology of Florian Znaniecki. Polish. Sociological Review 158 (2): 209–222. Lüschen, Gunter, and Paul Tibbetts. 1986. Florian Znaniecki’s Sociological Methodology. In A Commemorative Book in Honor of Florian Znaniecki on the Centenary of his Birth, ed. Zygmunt Dulczewski. Poznań: Wyd. Naukowe Uniwersytetu im. A. Mickiewicza. Poniedziałek, Jacek. 2022. Florian Znaniecki’s Culturalistic Sociology of Nation. Nationalities Papers: 1–19. Sorokin, Pitirim A. 1936. Review of The Method of Sociology. American Sociological Review 1: 817–819. Szacki, Jerzy. 1985. Florian Znaniecki: A Philosopher Turned Sociologist. The Polish Sociological Bulletin 69 (72): 5–18. ———. 1986. Znaniecki. Myśli i ludzie. ———. 2010. Teoria narodu Znanieckiego  – ponad pół wieku później. In Socjologia humanistyczna Floriana Znanieckiego. Przesłanie dla współczesnos ́ci, ed. Elżbieta Hałas and Andrzej Kojder, 33–58. Warszawa: WUW. Tacq, Jacques. 2007. Znaniecki’s Analytic Induction as a Method of Sociological Research. Polish Sociological Review 158 (2): 187–208. Thomas, William I., and Florian Znaniecki. 1918. The Polish Peasant in Europe and America; Monograph of an Immigrant Group. Boston: G. Badger. Wiley, Norbert. 2007. Znaniecki’s Key Insight: The Merger of Pragmatism and neo-Kantianism. Polish Sociological Review 158 (2): 133–143. Wocial, Jerzy. 1987. Wstęp. Znanieckiego filozofia wartości. In Florian Znaniecki, Mys ́l i rzeczywistosć́ i inne pisma filozoficzne, t. 1: VII-LXXIV. Warszawa: PWN. Znaniecki, Florian. 1919. Cultural Reality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1927. The Object Matter of Sociology. American Journal of Sociology 32 (4): 529–584. ———. 1934a. The Method of Sociology. New York: Rinehart & Company. ———. 1934b. The Sociology of the Struggle for Pomerania. Toruń: Baltic Institute. ———. 1936. Social Actions. Poznań: Polski Instytut Socjologiczny. ———. 1943. Sociometry and Sociology. Sociometry 6(3): 225–233. ———. 1945. Controversies in Doctrine and Method. American Journal of Sociology 50 (6): 514–521. ———. 1948. William I. Thomas as a Collaborator. Sociology and Social Research 32(4): 765–767. ———. 1952a. Modern Nationalities: A Sociological Study. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

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CHAPTER 9

The Scientific Community in the Perspective of Relational Sociology Jakub Bazyli Motrenko

The concept of the scientific community is as much in common use as it is little concerned with sociologists of science nowadays (Erickson 2005: 122). In fact, a similar fate has met the concept of community in sociology in general, which for Robert Nisbet (1966) belonged to one of the unit-­ ideas of sociology, and today is used more often in specialized contexts, accompanied by an adjective when referring to a national, local, or digital community. The scientific community inhabits common consciousness, and its vision legitimizes the social authority of science and regulates the expectations we have of the researchers who are part of it. The concept received attention in the classical sociology of science in the 1960s and 1970s, but with the constitution of a strong program in the study of science, the concept was deconstructed and disappeared from the sociological horizon. In addition to ideological changes, the historical evolution of the science system also undermined the meaning of the concept.

J. B. Motrenko (*) University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Hałas (ed.), Methodology of Relational Sociology, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41626-2_9

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The concept of the rationally oriented community (Warren O. Hagstrom) of the 1960s has been replaced since the late 1970s by the concepts of the laboratory (Bruno Latour, Karin Knorr Cetina), the academic tribe (Tony Becher & Paul Trowler), the place of practice of interaction rituals and concentration of emotional energy (Randall Collins), or the sacred project (Christian Smith). Each of these conceptualized the relationships of individual scholars and entire teams, their goals, norms and practices, but differently than was the case in classical sociology of science. Interest from the community of scientists as a collective constituted around a core of epistemic values grounded in processes of exchange shifted to the day-to-day practices of researchers, scientific methods different in different parts of science fragmented by academic disciplines and relatively autonomous teams, the significant influence of social and political values on the shape of scientific production, or the relationship between the type of social organization of science and the form and content of knowledge. While the classical sociology of science clearly separated reflection on the social structures of science from the content of knowledge, or showing at most the social genealogies of scientific concepts, the strong program of sociology of science is carried out in close connection with epistemological reflection. While the new representation of the scientific community was accepted as credible by many representatives of the humanities and social sciences, the classical concept of community survived in the eyes of representatives of the natural sciences and is the basis for the operation of scientific administration and, more broadly, the ideological environment of science. It is activated especially when the need to confirm the authority of science arises. Looking historically, the eighteenth-century Republic of Letters, a model for the organization of science, has disintegrated into disciplines, research fields, or theoretical approaches, and the positivist project of unifying science has finally been challenged. The general methodology of science is being replaced by local methodologies, doing justice to the different standards of scientific knowledge in different areas of research. Over the past fifty years, the place of science in the overall social system has also changed, especially vis-à-vis the political and economic subsystem, to which it is gradually losing its autonomy. From a system that provides legitimacy to the economic and political subsystems, it has become a system in need of material and political support from the economic market and political world.

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In this chapter, I argue that two perspectives on community—which I will call universalist and tribalist—demand to be complemented by an important relational tradition. The first two approaches are well recognized and associated with clearly distinguished paradigms in the study of science, to put it emblematically, Merton’s classical sociology of science and Edinburgh’s strong program in the sociology of science. I present them in the first two parts of the text. I go on to formulate expectations for the new approach, which I further outline, calling it “relational.”

1   Universal Community: The Republic of Letters The universalist vision has its historical justification. Science is the central institution of the modern world, demarcating its boundaries in a genetic and defining way. Modernity began with the formation of scientific institutions (scientific societies and journals), the emergence of a correspondence network of researchers (Republique des lettres), the legitimization of new methods of learning about the world (experiment and mathematization), and the production of new images of the world (Copernicus, Galileo, Newton). Admittedly, Weber’s notion of rationalization far exceeds the canons of scientific thinking in the strict sense of the word and goes back to its roots in ancient Israel and Greece, but it finds its fullest expression in economic Protestant culture and precisely in methodical world knowledge. Steven Shapin (2010) shows how the evolution of cognitive practices and ideas about the world is accompanied by the emergence of a new identity, first the precarious identity of “scholar and gentleman” and later “scientist.” They formed a special community—the “Republic of Letters”—of those who embraced the discipline of the scientific method and put it into practice. To become part of the territory-less republic, one had to share intellectual and moral virtues. The scientific societies that emerged in the seventeenth century emphasized the equal ability of each person to contribute to the stock of knowledge. As Shapin argues, the Republic of Letters became a model of a society that realized the ideals of equality and justice, transcending ethnic and religious boundaries, and scholars were citizens of the world. Universalism meant as much as freedom from superstition, from divisive parochialism, from customs and traditions, from arbitrariness and conventional authorities, from social distinctions. As he notes, this is the vision of the seventeenth-­ century Scientific Revolution, the eighteenth-century

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Enlightenment, the liberal and pluralistic tradition of nineteenth- and twentieth-century culture and social thought (Shapin 2010: 50). The practice of virtues is supposed to be a guarantee of achieving scientific truth, but also moral goodness. Such a vision of the eighteenth-century republic of scholars was framed in normative rules aimed at academics and a description of the actions of scholars, which is well reflected in the tradition of classical sociology of science, whose strong foundations were formulated by Robert Merton (1968). He famously defined the scientific ethos by four values: universalism, communalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism. The first book to be written on the subject of scientific communities and to make a career in American sociology was The Scientific Community, published by W.O. Hagstrom in 1965. It developed Merton’s reflections on the scientific ethos, based on interviews with representatives of the formal and natural sciences (scientists, employed doctoral students, research technicians and students) of leading American universities. He portrayed the scientific community as a system where social control is exercised through a system of exchange. Knowledge is exchanged for recognition in the eyes of fellow scientists. It tends to be deferred, uncertain, and awarded only for a single scientific achievement rather than to a person once and for all. Because scientists crave recognition, they conform to the goals, methods, and norms of science, which are captured in the workings of formal organizations and informal practices. Community members are socialized to be part of a community whose boundaries transcend any real collective: a team of researchers or a network. Hagstrom (1965) argues that the theory of internal exchange is more compelling than the theory that argues that rewards (material and positions) from outside the community of scholars are crucial to the choice of research methods and subjects. Adherence to the norms of science enables its autonomy and internal communication. Classical sociologists of science have also described a whole range of effects related to the fact of constant evaluation of the prestige of institutions, journals, and individuals, pointing out, among other things, the Matthew effect, pecking order, the formation of an elite, blocking access to resources for others, the role of gatekeepers, or being guided by scientific fashion rather than real problems. Theoretically, however, these are not insurmountable problems; they are rather side effects that the research community is fighting against, through social control and institutional solutions.

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The vision of Hagstrom and other sociologists of science who share it is essentialist. This means that the scientific community, by definition, has a set of goals and norms that the practices of real communities realize better or worse (some communities may be far corrupt), but set the guidelines for the exercise of social control. A scientific community so conceived constitutes not only an ideal type but also a normative model. Looking at the research sample of an American sociologist, it can be said that prestigious universities in the United States in the 1960s set the pattern for the operation of scientific institutions. Further, this model is ahistorical—it leaves no space for describing the historical evolution of the scientific community, variability, and evolving standards of operation. At most, one can speak of an all-embracing progress with a clearly defined goal, which we are approaching with the realization of modernity. Finally, the American sociologist creates a picture of an abstract community encompassing all scientists participating in a system of exchange supporting a normative pattern, which of course is realized in smaller communities but applies to all those engaged in science. In the 1960s, Derek de Solla Price (1963) argued in his sociometric study of the exponential growth of science, the transition from “little science” to “big science.” In the course of the 70  years that have passed between the publication of the book and today, it can be assumed that the growth of scientific production, data, the number of research institutes, journals, networks of scholars, etc. is unimaginably large. In such a perspective, the Republic of Scientists is becoming a global empire—local communities are being replaced by global networks (Wagner 2018). There is also a process of scientific knowledge and experts gaining more and more importance, described as early as the 1970s by Daniel Bell (1976) with the term “knowledge society,” which was to replace industrial society. Such a vision of a growing scientific community, however, has found its counterbalance in the new currents of science research, in which it has become fragmented, devoid of common goals and norms, based on local practices, and finally resembling in meaning more than it seems at first glance an emotional primary community than a rational association. The universalist vision raises questions about how to explain that scientific institutions very often operate according to mechanisms other than the system of exchanging prestige for knowledge, and that side effects become dominant effects. How do scientific communities realistically work? Looking geographically and historically and reviewing disciplines more broadly, the universalist model is not common. The current of the

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new sociology of science responded to this challenge by constructing a non-essentialist description (there is no definitive definition of science, but each is provisional, specific to place, time, and epistemic culture), rejecting apriori principles of science (science is what scientists do, not what they should do), taking an interest in the historical evolution of the scientific community, and studying real communities, not a community abstracted from a broader social context and including all scholars.

2  Scientific Tribes: The Community in Pieces Since the 1970s, however, the unprecedented growth of knowledge, financial resources allocated to research by state and commercial institutions, organizational infrastructure, and a global network of scholars has not been accompanied solely by optimism and a belief in perpetual progress with tangible effects on individual lives and societies. The vision of great progress has been undermined in both the descriptive and normative order. This manifests itself in, among other things, criticism of technoscience, a sense of uncertainty about ethical boundaries (especially in the field of bioethics), and a belief that scientists are implicitly linked to political and worldview visions (Cold War science, ideologization of the social sciences, lack of diversity in the currents of the humanities, political correctness). Finally, the undermining of the centrality of science in the social system, the subordination of higher education to the logic of the economic market, the powerful differentiation of institutions due to their location in the center or periphery of the world system (the hegemony of the global north), the control of project funding by state and supranational entities in line with partisan political goals, etc. Positivism in the philosophy of science was treated as an ideological veil. All this undermined the belief in the community of science as a truly universal institution. The process of scientization of politics (reliance on expert knowledge in political decisions) was accompanied by the process of politicization of science (Eyal 2019). This historical, social consciousness was also accompanied by an evolution in the science and of science, which have their own independent dynamics: new currents in thinking about science have emerged. The description of the scientific community associated with a strong sociology of science program is the reverse of the Republic of Letters description. According to the perspective that began to dominate in the late 1970s (an important caesura was the publication of Laboratory life by

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Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar in 1979), the research unit became the laboratory. The researcher records the work going on in it like an anthropologist observing an alien tribe, suspending his previous ideas about what is science and what is not. In fact, abandoning the division between what is usual, technical, social, and scientific in the laboratory—all together are subjects of observation and reflection. It is also about suspending the categories that researchers themselves use to describe their activities—the goal, instead, is to clarify the genesis of these categories. The authors emphasize that the point is to study the life of science, not the scientists themselves. A holistic view of the laboratory overrides the monitoring of individuals, so better objects of observation are work procedures, networks of claims, or argumentation techniques than individuals. This is not to say, however, that Latour and Woolgar (1979) completely abandon the perspective of individuals, especially evident in their examination of the cycle of recognition. Arguing with Hagstrom, they claim that the gift exchange system (knowledge for recognition, which, however, is not spoken aloud during the exchange games), archaic in its essence, which is supposed to lead to the maintenance of a central system of norms, is not consistent with the observations made in the laboratory they studied. Rather, one should speak of a whole cycle of recognition, at various stages of which recognition, funds, or reliable data are sought, and the stakes of the participants are to accelerate this cycle so that the scientist has the ability to produce information in the future. Thus, the community does not have a normative core, adherence to which determines membership in the scientific world. Rather, different logics of action prevail at different points in the individual and collective trajectory of its existence, and the core is the continuous maintenance of the possibility of action: once it depends on recognition, another time on equipping the laboratory, another on producing reliable data or receiving a research grant. A mature product of the strong program in sociology of science is Karin Knorr Cetina’s 1999 book Epistemic Cultures. The author examines the production of science through everyday practices, practical know-how, interpretive means, and the competence of social actors. She conceptualizes science as naturally fragmented by specializations. Boundaries that manifest themselves at every stage of education, in research organizations, career choices, and classification systems. Scientific disciplines or laboratories are not just structures that organize work, but spaces of practice that produce their epistemic cultures. The author shows the diversity of the so-called machineries of knowledge, behind which lie different

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architectures of empirical approaches, constructions of the object of study, ontologies of research instruments. The subjects of Knorr Cetina’s empirical research were research groups involved in high energy physics and molecular biology, which she describes with the theoretical concept of the laboratory. The notion of the laboratory brings together the social and epistemic order, in a way different from the classical sociology of science, which studied the social world separately from scientific knowledge, its standards, and methodology. In the perspective of the new sociology of knowledge, the social world becomes an epistemic tool—it is an instrument of scientific work. Not only the ontology of the objects under study or the methodology is different in each laboratory, but also the social order. The author cites the historical example of the change that took place in medicine—from individual medical practice at the bedside to collective practice in medical clinics. It has far-reaching consequences for the position of the doctor, his audience, the degree of control over the patient, methods of confirming hypotheses, etc. Following the pattern set by Latour and Woolgar, but also by other researchers who were particularly interested in the interests and link between science and economics and politics, communities of scientists have the same characteristics as all other social groups. They act for the sake of interests, tend to isolate themselves, develop their own practices and norms within the group, engage in battles for symbolic dominance in the scientific field, and the project carried out by researchers—especially in the social sciences and humanities—is religious in nature. Communities, as Randall Collins (1998) would say, are places in the network where face-to-­ face interaction rituals are practiced, group symbols are constructed, and emotional energy is generated. Michèle Lamont (2009) highlights the lack of common standards in the review process. She shows how emotions, personal beliefs, and self-image influence decisions. Christian Smith (2014), on the other hand, diagnoses modern sociology as the sacred project: a utopian anthropological and political program that seeks to realize the emancipation, equality, and moral affirmation of all individuals as autonomous, self-determining, individuals who construct their own identities independently of ascribed identities, entering only those relationships they choose for themselves. He warns against sectarian narrowing, exclusion, homogenization, self-censorship, lack of debate, punishment of nonconformists, etc. Finally, the concept of academic tribe was used by Tony Becher (1989; the second edition of 2001 with Paul Trowler) in

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Academic Tribes and Territories, emphasizing that the science community is divided among different tribes. The scientific disciples have their own ideologies, shared values, quality criteria, awareness of belonging to a unique tradition, and beliefs about what belongs to it and what does not. A tribal community—unlike a universal community—develops its own catalog of values, criteria for good science, and norms of conduct each time. Sociologists and anthropologists focus their research on concrete communities, which carry out their studies in historically defined places and times. The ties they form are in the nature of communities constituted around shared symbols, daily practices and rituals, and produce emotional energy in their bosom. The starting point is not the foundational ideal of science, because this is reconstructed on the basis of practices.

3  Exceeding the Deficits: Toward a Third Model of Scientific Community The two models described—universalist and tribalist—are two basic descriptions of the scientific community. The first is unrealistic, depicting a universal mechanism for the exchange of knowledge for recognition, which is supposed to enshrine a catalog of scientific values (itself unproblematized), while the second fragments science, showing it as a space of separated fields—disciplines, laboratories, and sacred projects. The two models have the aftertaste of paradigmatic incommensurability, even a binary division that mandates a decision: either the scientific communities are this or that. Where one model is universal, abstract, and apriori, the other is historical, concrete, and aposteriori. One can, of course, be treated as ideal types, which are realized to a greater or lesser extent, and real systems are located on this continuum somewhere in between. The new paradigm should not however situate itself “somewhere in the middle,” be a hybrid of existing approaches. The tribal model and the universal model are indeed not binary concepts, constructed by contradiction, but typological ones, so the necessity to choose between these positions is porous, and a third vision of the scientific community should go across the existing divide. We also know that the choice between different concepts is not a matter of simple empirical verification, since both Hagstrom and Latour and Woolgar (and those who followed in their footsteps) conducted empirical research. The third model should become a third pole, which will not be on the existing axis of the universal-tribal dispute, but will

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propose a new point of gravity, transcending existing tensions. Let a few postulates to the new paradigm be the starting point. First, the defining feature of a good scientific community should be thought innovation (that may be accompanied by methodological, technological, competence, computational, etc. innovations but I focus on theoretical concepts). What distinguishes a scientific system is the notion of progress—a system reproduces and develops when it produces new results. These can take the form of scientific discoveries, as in the sciences, or reinterpretations of classical texts, as often happens in the humanities and some social sciences. The question of the persistence, proliferation, or, on the contrary, retraction of scientific communities is a question of the ability to define scientific problems, develop theoretical approaches, formulate unexpected issues, and resolve “unsolvable” paradoxes. The notion of novelty of ideas is situated at the epistemological level, but the theory of scientific communities should give clues as to how excellence in science—understood as the ability to produce new and important results—is related to the excellence of the scientific community. Second, it is important to distinguish between scientific progress and development on other levels. While real communities can achieve various successes in fields other than scientific (act as a social or psychological support circle, guarantee access to resources like positions or income, organize didactics, etc.), it is a thought  collective when it contributes to progress. The notion of progress need not be absolute, because, as proponents of historical theories of rationality (Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, Larry Laudan) have convincingly shown, progress takes place within research programs. A good scientific community is one that has the characteristics of self-growth, independent of external factors that may stimulate this growth, such as the organization of the community within a formal institution. Categories of social success, therefore, should be distinguished from scientific success when evaluating innovations. Naturally, social success can be a subsoil (sometimes, on the contrary, an obstacle that will become clear further on) to scientific success, and this is also what the theory of scientific communities should grasp. A special function of modern science, meaning creation of new knowledge, was pointed out by Florian Znaniecki (1965). He portrayed the social type of explorer scientist, who discovers facts and theoretical problems out of sheer love for them, as opposed to scholars, sages, and technologist-leaders, which in turn requires a certain social organization.

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Third, in order to use the concept of progress, it is necessary not only to analyze in strictly social terms but also to analyze the ideas themselves. For social theory, this is troublesome, because it requires criteria of progressiveness stronger than high social recognition, rapid diffusion of thought, or visibility—which can be studied without knowledge and evaluation of the thought itself. It is only with hindsight that such criteria can become more important, following the logic that there are no thoughts that are wrongly remembered, but there are those that are wrongly forgotten. The success of some communities may be social rather than scientific. Due to the multi-paradigmatic nature of the social sciences, such resolutions are even more difficult. Something that is a success within one tradition gets away with replicating a fundamentally flawed paradigm within another. However, it can be assumed that despite the existence of different sociological paradigms, there is nevertheless a body of knowledge that is commonality, which does not mean that it is equally shared by all. Fourth, Weber (1958) instructs that science is not a calculating task; it has nothing to do with cold calculation, because new ideas are a manifestation of the creative spirit. The statement of the German classic undermines the meaning of the question about the source of new ideas: these are the result of chance and genius. True, Weber stipulates that they are also the result of hard work, but this does not open up space for sociological inquiries into the scientific community. I would like to retain from Weber’s intuition the conviction that the individual with his creative forces counts and cannot be abstracted from this, and that the theory of scientific community is not a socio-technical theory, suggesting how to create a perfect scientific community in terms of social control, network construction, or resource distribution, but rather how a creative environment develops.

4  Relational Theory of Scientific Communities Central to the relational theory of the scientific community I am formulating is the division between the abstract community of mainstream and a concrete community of challengers. I seek justification for this positioning at the level of Andrew Abbott’s fractal theory. 4.1   Fractal Theory My starting point for the relational approach will be the fractal theory formulated by Andrew Abbott (2001). The American sociologist

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formulated an internalist theory of scientific progress. The theory is exhaustive and does not look for the logic of the development of ideas in external factors of a social nature. At the same time, it leaves room for a parallel theory of the differentiation of ideas through a social mechanism, which I will outline below. Abbott’s theory differs from the classical history of ideas because it is structural in nature. It requires, of course, tracing the genealogy of concepts, showing problem shifts, reconstructing arguments, etc., but understanding the logic of thought development is based on reconstructing the stacked structure of dichotomies. First, I briefly introduce Abbott’s reasoning, so as to take it as the starting point of my own theory. Its natural place of application is the social sciences and humanities, so the description of scientific communities that I now begin to present should be referred to these fields of knowledge. Fractal theory describes the differentiation of ideas, approaches, schools, and paradigms. The basic idea is that theories differentiate but follow the same pattern all the time. New ideas are born within a certain line of development, but they repeat the same pattern all the time—within one division the same higher-order division is repeated once again. Subdivisions of a certain field division are a repetition—on a lower scale— of the same relationship. This is the idea of a microcosm built according to the same structure as the macrocosm. The starting point is a dichotomous set of ideas, e.g. realism versus anti-realism, quantitative versus qualitative methods, narrative versus causation, understanding versus explaining, individual versus collective, and structure versus agency. One may feel that these are opposites that oversimplify reality, but, first of all, therein lies their strength (“it’s good to think with them”), and, second, a simple dichotomy can conceal a very complex structure spread over generations. One can speak of infinite sameness of structure, but also of huge complexity. The theory of fractals explains at the same time constancy (the repetition of dichotomies) and variability (a motif is repeated, but in a different composition, in a different context). We rediscover important tensions difficult to overcome in human thought, but we return to these opposites on a different level, with the baggage of previous experience and knowledge. Contained in this, then, is the ideal of progress, even if it follows a spiral rather than a straight line. Understanding of the significance of a thought is not, of course, based simply on pointing out that it arose as a negation of another trend, e.g. phenomenology as a negation of psychologism. It does, however, give an idea of where a researcher or current

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stands in relation to its contemporaries and its predecessors and those who will follow. Its logic allows questions to be raised about the relational nature of the development of scientific knowledge. Wanting to incorporate a social factor into this internalist theory, it is necessary to ask about the social conditions that favor fractalization. How does it happen that change occurs, and when does this change have a progressive character? In other words, how do dichotomies of ideas work at the social level. I argue that the starting point is the mainstream ideas articulated by the mainstream community, against which alternative ideas are formulated by communities of challengers. 4.2   Defining the Mainstream Randall Collins (1998: 81–82) formulated the “law of Small Numbers,” according to which the number of active schools of thought that reproduce themselves for more than one or two generations within an argumentative community is between three and six. The relational theory I propose, however, is based on a dichotomy between mainstream and challengers. The notion of mainstream extends beyond the argumentative community—the mainstream is in some way concerned with the entire abstract scientific community within a discipline or research field. Sometimes, its boundaries need to be drawn even wider, as it naturally intersects with the current spirit of the times. The limits of the reach of the dominant paradigm are the limits of the reach of the scientific community. What disagrees with the mainstream risks being pushed outside the boundaries of science as unserious, strange, or false. Ludwik Fleck’s (1979) abstract notion of a thought collective gives a good account of how a paradigm works. First of all, the Polish scientist defines the thought collective through a thought  style. Thus, thought collectives can be distinguished from institutions or groups that take shape within the scientific field but do not necessarily share a single paradigm. A single scientific institution (e.g. discipline) or organization (e.g. university department) may consist of multiple, usually intertwining, collectives. Their goals may also be different from scientific production. Secondly, he shows that within an abstract collective there are “esoteric circles” where a thought style crystallizes: it is particularly elaborated and its principles are best known. In other words, thought style is a graded matter, with different intensities depending on one’s proximity to the esoteric circles. Paradoxically, the closer we are to the core of the thinking

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style, i.e. the place of its production, the less certain the knowledge we use, because it is more complex. Dominant paradigms are formed both within specific research groups (Kuhn’s disciplinary matrixes), subdisciplines, whole disciplines, and sometimes have the character of competing methodologies of science, meta-paradigms. The broader their scope, the more the scientific community becomes abstract; the paradigm takes the shape of Durkheimian social facts, existing objectively beyond individual manifestations. Mainstream sometimes dominates without question, and sometimes it is the product of a certain narrative, when in fact the field is relatively evenly divided between different paradigms. The situation is different with new ideas, which are born in specific communities of challengers, and then—according to different patterns (gaining footholds and gradually expanding the reach of thought or explosively, in a short period of time)—are subject to diffusion. Collins reconstructs the networks of scholars on the one hand, and on the other shows the places where chains of interaction rituals are practiced, i.e. nodes in the network of scholars, where they meet face to face, focusing attention on a common object, adjusting the way they behave and speak, establishing symbols, and sharing the emotional energy that determines the sense of belonging and sets the boundaries of the community. Following this line of thought, one can say that while the mainstream is the property of a network, i.e. a loose and abstract community with real connections (exchange of knowledge, recognition, contact), sharing, as a consequence, a relatively simple stock of ideas, argumentative communities either elaborate the ideas of the mainstream in a sophisticated way or challenge them. The former practice what Kuhn calls puzzle-solving, while the latter defy them. A system that relies on the recognition that is especially given to explorers and creators of conceptual innovations can easily degenerate, triggering a logic of differentiation. Differentiation is a condition of visibility, without necessarily leading to lasting and noteworthy results. Therefore, it is necessary to ask about the conditions for successful fractalization. The first condition is to accurately define the mainstream. The challenge is that ideas coming from the mainstream are like air—invisible and natural. They get away with self-understanding, are subject to the process of obliteration, i.e. forgetting their roots, and are taken for granted. The dominant paradigm of thinking has the ability to explain ad hoc the anomalies it encounters when new phenomena are revealed, and to translate

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competing paradigms into its own conceptual grid, adapting or rejecting them as unworthy of attention. Criticism of mainstream theory requires meta-reflection, resulting in the partisanship of the hitherto obvious point of view, showing its limitations or outright rejection. The condition, in turn, to accurately define the mainstream is to be fluent in it. A caricatured, anachronistic representation does not allow for accurate criticism. Therefore, it seems that the condition for successful fractalization is the presence in the network of scholars who constitute a thought collective that is a carrier of the thought style under attack. The matter may be more complicated, however. If the humanities and social sciences develop within competing traditions, often existing in parallel, criticism of another tradition can come either from outside the thought collective (be external in nature) or from within it. External criticism often lacks effects on another thought style: it is both formulated in a way that is too divergent from the shared way of thinking, and is made outside the networks of communication. External criticism, on the other hand, can have internal significance: when it constitutes or reproduces an existing, competing research paradigm. External relevance of criticism may gain in the longer term, when hitherto existing separate communities merge, or at least points of commonality emerge. At such moments, external criticism may gain the character of internal criticism. This tension may find expression in two basic strategies: either building an alternative community, but without the hope of quickly changing the dominant paradigm, or challenging the mainstream itself. In the latter case, significant social conditions must be met. Successfully challenging the mainstream depends on participating in a well-localized scientific community, relatively close to the esoteric circle of the mainstream. Michael Farrell (2001: 267), writing about the broader sphere of creativity beyond science (the artists, writers, intellectuals, political activists), formulates the thesis that new ideas arise in a “magnet place,” gathering past masters, where there is a “concentration of expertise, resources, and fame,” but at the same time, the authors of breakthroughs are those who are “within the valleys on the periphery of that network.” The center attracts capable, ambitious individuals, but at the same time has high entry thresholds. Only those who pass the sophisticated tests of orthodoxy can enter the elite. The prerequisite for successful fractalization is therefore proximity and distance. Proximity to ensure a good knowledge of the mainstream and distance to describe it.

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The mere need to define the mainstream does not determine that a community is necessary to do so. After all, the challenge can be thrown by a single researcher. However, the nature of the reign of the mainstream well demonstrates that breaking the dominance is a task beyond the capabilities of the most brilliant scholars. The concept of the mainstream, however, speaks not only of the existence of an important intellectual advantage but also of a dominance that has sources external to the content of the theory. It is quantitative (the mainstream is the majority, which obviously promotes reproduction); it is the result of the interest flowing from the public or the authorities (around the scientific communities there is an extensive sphere of expert centers, foundations, journals, publishing houses, channels of access to the infosphere, etc.), unequal distribution of resources (positions, functions, financial resources, etc.), etc. Breaking this domination requires personal qualities, but also social means. The scientific community can become such a means. It becomes the first audience within which there is a division of roles, and provides a place for psychological support and sympathetic criticism. Finally, Fleck’s argument should not be forgotten: knowledge is always born from interaction. Individuals would never have come up with certain ideas if they had not met the right people, which history later forgets. 4.3   Proximity and Distance The structure of the development of ideas, Abbott points out, is binary in nature. Consequently, there seems to be no room in it for a third position, tertium non datur. Logically, the field of science is divided into two camps, which we can easily imagine as groups of relatively equal strength of potential. However, following the remarks in the previous section on the mainstream, it is clear that we are rather dealing with an imbalance: the dominance of proponents of a theory or model of science and others who either have fallen out of or are challenging the existing mainstream. In practice, those aspiring to become mainstream may be many, and these groups position themselves both against the dominant discourse and against each other. The challenge to the mainstream can be thrown simultaneously from different directions. Supreme success, that is, not only the formulation of a competitive theory but also its wide dissemination and replacement of the existing mainstream, depends not only on cognitive qualities but also on collective resources.

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Polarization is a strategy of gaining advantage by the mainstream, which sees new currents as a threat to its dominance. On the periphery, among networks outside the mainstream, there is more space to formulate visions that break out of polarization. The condition is not to lose sight of the scientific stakes and to be able to meta-reflect. At times, the scientific field actually becomes polarized; it is then possible to distinguish two main camps, and it is difficult to point out which one is dominant, as it develops different networks and institutions (this is the genesis of academic “pillarization”, parallel to politico-religious pillarization). The development strategy then is to formulate a theoretical proposal on the margins of one of the camps that will break the existing conflict. Becoming mainstream can be tracked by the rapid growth of an issue in research, the proliferation of networks, the formation of clusters and the building of institutions, the hatching of subdisciplines (Mullins 1973: 17–25). There are currents and theories that achieve great success but have limits to their growth: they form concrete, lively argumentative communities, but their ideas are slow to penetrate the broader cognitive environment. A related phenomenon is the creation of scientific schools formed around a master, which, after the master’s departure from the scene, lose their importance or evolve into self-celebrating communities, but which lack the characteristics of progress. The prerequisite for the success of subsequent generations of scholars is to “leave the school,” stop being a pupil, and formulate their own research program. Znaniecki (1965) distinguishes the role of the scholar from that of the explorer—the former will systematize solutions to problems, while the latter formulates the theoretical problems themselves. Although the strong scholarly pattern forced explorers to systematize their findings, the latter is characterized by looking to the future and being motivated to constantly make new discoveries. Actually, the mark of the greatest success of a master of the school is the dissemination of his ideas and forgetting their author and not creating a generation that cultivates only the thoughts of their master. The starting point of a new project is to negate the existing dominant paradigm, and this can be convincingly done when one knows it well. Moreover, ideas are recognized as new by reference to what is already known. Since novelty formulated within one tradition will not be novel on the grounds of another—it will not be recognized as such or it will be meaningless—the condition for progress is relative proximity to the dominant model of doing science. Therefore, ideas coming from outside the dominant camp either may go unrecognized as relevant, or may function

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in narrow networks outside the mainstream, or may find intermediaries who will adopt the new ideas into the mainstream, creating a space of meta-reflection within which they will challenge the dominant paradigm. In addition to proximity, however, distance is necessary, which allows one to look at the mainstream critically, which sharpens differences, which prevents one from being co-opted into the mainstream. Fractalization actually occurs within the dominant camp, but on its periphery, among those marginalized in the mainstream or close outside it. This dialectic of proximity and distance is often expressed in the social or institutional location of dissidents and dissident groups, but distance can also take on a generational character or arise through the admission of distant viewpoints from other traditions into scholarly discourse. Hence, generational differences are conducive to change, but so is the serious integration of distant research programs into the discourse—this will be the focus of the next two points. 4.4   Generational Change Kuhn (1970) pointed out that the old paradigm disappears only when its representatives die out. While scientific conversions are possible, innovation is the domain of the young, especially when their paths of scientific advancement are structurally blocked. It is then easy to have an additional motive to trigger the logic of ideological differentiation. Prominent representatives of the mainstream tend to adapt to the large changes in the cognitive field that are taking place, rather than become leaders of change. In doing so, they usually do not possess the same “freedom of movement” that characterizes innovators coming from the fringes of the mainstream. In turn, staying within the current paradigm can come at a significant cost to them—sometimes marginalization. If a representative of the to-be mainstream abandons the defense of their paradigm, they either retreat to eclectic positions, or build lower-order theory, or find themselves in the empirical terrain without a strongly articulated theoretical program. There is a natural attachment to the paradigm they are developing. Sticking to Kuhn’s metaphor, one can say that there comes a point when revolutionaries are tired and preoccupied with petrifying the achievements of their revolution, and are necessarily reluctant to embrace new currents. Therefore, the distance needed for revolution may not be so much institutional (rebellion arises outside the mainstream institutions) as generational. Especially when the generations are distinct, different formations

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are shaped by different experiences. Generationality and place in the system of institutions tend to overlap, of course, but if one can speak of fractalization within a mainstream institution, it probably happens at the hands of another generation. Generational change in the social sciences and humanities is linked to experiences. As the social world evolves, social experiences change, legitimizing some theoretical approaches and undermining others. This is clearly true of historical theories, which seek to capture the nature of a specific moment, but also of universal theories, which speak to the nature of the social world in general. Scientific theories are rooted in the horizon of the everyday world. A change in life practice can become the subsoil for theoretical change. In each era, new cognitive problems are singled out, and theories that best report on this practice sometimes make it possible to see something at all as a pressing theoretical question. Generationality also has its social aspect. Recruitment into existing structures or replacing them with new ones is generational. If the authors of thought are collectives, they include people of similar age, people with relatively equal symbolic capital and social position. While hierarchicality is important for preserving the core of tradition and the accumulation of knowledge, equality fosters the creative exchange of ideas. Real communities try to reconcile the demand for continuity and change. Existing actual hierarchies are treated as non-existent in the context of academic discussions—what matters is the argument, not the position of the speaker. Of course, this is only a postulate realized better or worse. After the institutionalization of the spontaneous community, there is a stage of closure, when access to the group is made through co-optation and only at the moment of spectacular successes and rapid growth of the group allows larger generational groups to enter. These, in turn, can become the cause of theoretical change within mainstream institutions. More often, rather, the institution persists, but the mainstream network begins to create new institutions or populate those where there is a natural large generational shift. The generational nature of communities has as its consequence the fact that change also takes on the character of a generational tsunami. As a generation of creators leaves institutions, a new generation enters in their place filling them with new content. Alternative strategies are to replace the staff of existing institutions (which always generates costs and undermines the legitimacy of the new paradigm, since it has the character of

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mechanical change) or to build new institutions (which, however, need some spectacular cognitive successes or favorable circumstances for the dominant spirit of the times to move there). 4.5   Relative Openness Abbott’s model emphasizes the continuity of traditions. Fractalization is not about simply replacing one epistemic culture with another, but about such a change that is simultaneously a continuation. In essence, the change is about transforming the mainstream, rather than building enclaves of “new thinking” that significantly enrich the cognitive landscape and perhaps in the future replace the existing model, breaking with tradition. As Alasdair MacIntyre (1990) points out, the condition for the development of tradition is to diagnose epistemological crises, explain their causes, formulate ways out, and rewrite the history of tradition. Diagnosis is possible, however, when the existing way of conceptualizing phenomena and explaining them becomes the subject of meta-reflection. This one can have different internal or external origins. The former can consist in discovering the genesis of thought, pointing out its authors and the biographical, social, political, religious, epistemic circumstances that gave rise to them. Exposure of the cause (e.g. origin from the center of the world system of knowledge) or the rationale behind it, so that at a certain point it began to prevail (e.g. a social situation that was accurately captured by a particular theory, but was unified as appropriate to all situations), allows one to ask whether the causes are insurmountable and the rationale still valid. The latter, external genesis of meta-reflection on the hitherto dominant program, in turn, may be based on allowing the voice from outside, representatives of other currents, and starting the process of negotiation of concepts. The possibility of questioning the existing tradition, pointing out its weaknesses, and overcoming them require the relative openness of a particular scientific community, acquiescence in taking other currents seriously. Of course, there are limits to mutual understanding, and a momentous role is played by intermediaries who, on the one hand, participate in a community and, on the other, have contacts elsewhere as well. 4.6   Epistemic Virtues As virtue theorists teach us, we acquire virtues by participating in a certain collective practice. This includes the epistemic virtues, which determine how we participate in science and thus define what it is, and how it differs

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from practice in other areas of life. Also, a very difficult to codify body of tacit scientific knowledge is acquired within the scientific community: standards of good knowledge, methods of reasoning and criticism, exemplary examples, accepted aesthetic criteria, and so on. This involves not only participation in the abstract practice of science, but concrete communities based on direct interactions are crucial: conversations, ventures, co-authorship. Although thought is ultimately the work of a person, the communities in which we participate are our resource. In turn, sometimes they can become a hindrance. A good scientific community creates relational goods (equality, respect, friendship, etc.) that become a means for creative community. Relationships not only materialize through contacts and flows of ideas, but also through experiencing the community itself. Concrete communities are necessary for participating in the social game with the stakes of changing mainstream ideas. The condition, however, is the existence of a common vision, a goal that is external to the community itself. Thus, it is not a matter of creating just a community of mutual support, where being with each other and fighting for the group’s position becomes an end in itself, independent of external good, but one that builds a vision of good science, which different communities may define differently.

5   Conclusions The purpose of this chapter was to diagnose the visions of the scientific community that emerge from the two main science research programs of the second half of the twentieth century: the classical sociology of science and the strong sociology of knowledge program. Although both have contributed an important element to the understanding of what a scientific community is, they also have important limitations. For this reason, it seems important to show the relational vision that exists in the study of science but has not yet been articulated as a separate project, lifting the limitations of the first two concepts. I argue that relational sociology (a) captures the differences between abstract communities (mainstream) and concrete communities (communities of challengers); (b) takes as its starting point not the social structure but the structure of scientific production and the process of differentiation of ideas (fractalization), looking for equivalents between the process of differentiation of ideas and the social environment; (c) sees science simultaneously in the aspect of conflict and cooperation and the necessity of relational goods; and (d) takes into

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account the world of ideas but only in its formal aspect—so that sociology is not replaced by the history of ideas, which studies their content. The moment of change in sociology favors individualistic culture, when cumulative science is based on collective undertakings. The condition for the success of ideas as ultimately the product of the individual, however, is a good community that can challenge a large network representing the mainstream.

References Abbott, Andrew. 2001. Chaos of Disciplines. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Becher, Tony, and Paul Trowler. 2001. Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Culture of Disciplines. Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press. Bell, Daniel. 1976. The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. New York: Basic Books. Collins, Randall. 1998. The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Erickson, Mark. 2005. Science, Culture and Society: Understanding Science in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity. Eyal, Gil. 2019. The Crisis of Expertise. Cambridge, UK; Medford, MA: Polity. Farrell, Michael P. 2001. Collaborative Circles. Frindship Dynamics and Creative Work. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Fleck, Ludwik. 1979. Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Translated by Fred Bradley and Thaddeus J. Trenn. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hagstrom, Warren O. 1965. The Scientific Community. New York: Basic Books. Knorr Cetina, Karin. 1999. Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kuhn, Thomas S. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lamont, Michèle. 2009. How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar. 1979. Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Fact. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications. MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1990. Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Merton, Robert. 1968. Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Free Press. Mullins, Nicholas C. 1973. Theories and Theory Groups in Contemporary American Sociology. New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London: Harper & Row. Nisbet, Robert. 1966. The Sociological Tradition. New York: Basic Books.

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Price, Derek J. de Solla. 1963. Little Science. Big Science: New  York, Columbia University Press. Shapin, Steven. 2010. Never Pure: Historical Studies of Science as If It Was Produced by People with Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Smith, Christian. 2014. The Sacred Project of American Sociology. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Wagner, Caroline S. 2018. The Collaborative Era in Science: Governing the Network. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Weber, Max. 1958. Science as a Vocation. In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H.H. Gerth and C.W. Mills, 129–156. New York: Oxford University Press. Znaniecki, Florian. 1965. The Social Role of the Man of Knowledge. New  York: Octagon Books.

PART III

Advances in Relational Analyses

CHAPTER 10

Finger Pointing in Early Childhood: Interaction Analysis and the Communicative Construction of Social Relations Hubert Knoblauch

1   Introduction1 Although relationality has been relevant to sociology since its classic formulation (e.g. by Simmel), the recent relational turn has had serious effects on social theory as well as on methodologies. It has triggered a range of theoretical innovations of which the relational reformulation of Social Constructivism as Communicative Constructivism will be most The theoretical parts of this text are based on earlier publications, particularly on Knoblauch (2020) and (2022). I am grateful for comments to Frederike Brandt, Willi Pröbröck, Lynn Siebert, Rene Tuma and Rene Wilke.  I am  grateful to  Frederike Brand, Barbara Goll and  Lynn Siebert for  comments and support. 1

H. Knoblauch (*) Technical University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Hałas (ed.), Methodology of Relational Sociology, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41626-2_10

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relevant here. In addition, relationality also affects empirical methodologies which are based on this approach, particularly the qualitative analysis of in situ interactions by means of audio or video recordings. I want to illustrate this change with particular focus on finger pointing. Instead of being considered a gesture performed by an individual actor, we can see the fruitfulness of a relational approach as pointing can be conceived of as an action related to other actors. We illustrate the fruitfulness of this perspective on the basis of empirical data in naturally occurring situations of pointing. As finger pointing is quite indicative in early childhood, the chapter will draw on exemplary data from infants. As a form of communicative action, the analysis of finger pointing also allows to identify two blind spots of relational sociology: (1) the question as to what are the processes which constitute social relations and (2) the role of objects, objectivations and materialities in social relations. As a result, we suggest to conceive relationality as a triadic relation between actions by subjects which are processed by embodied and objectifying, that is, communicative actions, reproduced in practices. The chapter starts with a short overview on the methodology of qualitative interaction analysis, particularly in the context of videography. It then turns to suggest a link between social constructivist approaches dominant in interaction analysis and relational sociology by communicative constructivism. The triadic concept of relationality provided by communicative constructivism allows to understand the processes of communicative action on which social relations are based and thus provides a link to the analysis of interaction. Instead of elaborating the concept of communicative action theoretically in much detail (see e.g. Knoblauch 2020), I will try to exemplify it in an empirical analysis of finger pointing in interaction. On the basis of natural recordings of children interacting, the analysis demonstrates how relationality is processed in communicative actions. By considering the specific relationality implied in the methodology of interaction analysis, in the conclusion I want to at least indicate how this kind of “micro” analysis of communicative actions is connected to “meso” and “macro” aspects of social relations, institutions and figurations.

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2   Videography and the Analysis of Interaction Over the past decades, video analysis has emerged as a powerful new tool for the analysis of interaction. It has been productive in generating detailed insight for inquiry in areas including workplace studies, science and technology studies, or education—to name but a few. One of its most outstanding properties consists in the unprecedented access it provides to the minutiae of social interactions in real time. Video, in short, offers a “microscope” for an in-depth study of the ongoing production of situated social order. The analysis of social interaction with audio-visual data in natural settings has a substantial tradition. Although much of the history of “visual sociology” focuses on photography, film was used very early on for the analysis of human conduct. Since the turn to the twentieth century film is used to analyze human conduct. Visual anthropology produced an unprecedented collection of film data, although it was mainly employed to document particular social worlds, rather than analyze them. In the 1930s the first attempts have been undertaken in German-speaking psychology to study behavior of humans in frame-by-frame analysis. Some years later, the so-called Palo Alto group used film to study interaction between family members. The team also initiated the famous project on the “History of the Interview”, in which various modes of interaction were captured for the very first time. Footage was used to focus on nonverbal behavior, resulting in a series of studies conducted by films that tried to capture behavior in a more encompassing and meaningful way. Within the frame of context analysis, kinesics and similar approaches, the interplay between nonverbal and verbal behavior was studied by means of films in minute detail (cf. Knoblauch et al. 2014). While these analyses were performed on the basis of film the situation changed substantially with the introduction, miniaturization and digitalization of video recording technology. Already in the late 1970s multimodal annotation systems for interactions have been developed. Particularly linguistics has currently specialized on the analysis of different modalities of interaction (words, prosody, gesture, body posture). In the social sciences, video analysis came to be used by approaches of Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis since about the 1970. As Conversation Analysis had been supported by the invention of the portable audio recorder, the introduction of the camcorder helped to extend the analysis to a wide range of “natural” social settings of interaction. That

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is to say that interactions, instead of being simulated according to the experimenters’ designs in natural settings, in the frame of this research video data was collected in the most divers social settings, such as school counseling, medical encounters and other collaborative work processes (or, as subject matter of analysis, experiments). Methodological reflection on qualitative video analysis of interactions in the English-speaking countries was mostly based on Sequential Analysis as proposed by ethnomethodological conversation analysis. Because of the role of natural social settings, these methods were linked with ethnography (cf. Heath et al. 2010; Knoblauch et al. 2014). As the methodology of interaction analysis by video analysis has been strongly influenced by what Goffman (1983) has called “interaction order” as well as by the ethnomethodological tradition of conversation analysis, social (or communicative) actions and interactions constitute the major methodological focus of interest in this type of video analysis. It consists, very roughly, in the analytical exercise of rigorously reconstructing the exact sequential organization of a more or less complex stretch of interaction between various actors in ways which match with the ethnomethodological premise of social order as being locally produced, “moment-by-moment”, on the basis of video recording in natural settings. Interaction research of this kind typically focuses on two and more actors in a social setting, yet it focuses on the temporal unfolding of their actions, while it does hardly ever address the role of social relations and networks (as an exception cf. Bencherki 2021). On these grounds we may ask ourselves if and how the methodology of interaction analysis may contribute to relational sociology and vice versa.

3  Relational Sociology and the Communicative Construction of Reality As the theoretical orientation of most qualitative interaction analysis is in a general way social constructivist, the attempt to link it with relational sociology also poses the question as to the compatibility of both, social constructivist and relational social theories. In order to tackle this question, we shall primarily draw on a quite recent social constructivist approach which has taken up the relational turn and which forms the frame for quite a range of empirical analysis of interaction (cf. Knoblauch and Pfadenhauer 2018). Therefore, in the next part, I want to shortly

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sketch the basic assumptions of relational sociology, ask for the problems of this approach from a social constructivist point of view and then indicate how they are solved by communicative constructivism. When talking about relational sociology, one of the most fundamental theoretical concepts has been developed by Donati (2013). He sets relation as the “basic unit” of the social. He even compares the status of relationship with Luhmann’s concept of communication, since, for Luhmann (2012/2013), communication is the basic process of the social. According to Donati, it is only within the relation that the specific emergence of sociality can be understood as something that is clearly distinguished from the individual or the subject. In contrast to Weber, who regarded the social relationship as merely an element constituted by social action, Donati regards relation as the basic element of sociality. Relational sociology, therefore, is understood as an independent sociological paradigm, which he places alongside the theory of action or the theory of communication.2 Its advantage lies, in his eyes, in the fact that it replaces the other paradigms. It includes the “it” of functionalism, the “me” of action theory and interactionism, as well as the “you” of structuralism and the “we” of Marxism.3 In a similar vein, Bourdieu also follows this perspective. According to Bourdieu (1980), social reality is fundamentally relational or, as he says, “the real is relational”—an idea which has been taken up, e.g., by field analysis on various levels ranging from social fields in national society to even the global field of power (e.g. Schmitz and Witte 2020). And, in a more formalized manner, the method of network analysis also conceives of society in terms of a network of interrelated positions. It focuses on relations and patterns of relations, such as networks and fields or, in an approach not so often received in relational sociology, figurations (Mohr 2013). Like system theory, relationalism refuses to attribute relationships to actors. In contrast to structuralist concepts, however, relations are not conceived of as static structures, but as processes. It is at this point where we set in, for we must ask: what are the processes constituting relations? 2  This is not identical with the claims made in the ‘manifest for relational sociology’ (Emirbayer 1997), which assigns Donati to action theories. 3  For the sake of clarity, we would like to call those approaches that consider relations to be basic elements relationistic; we would like to call our approach, which identifies the processes constituting social relations, relational.

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As far as I can see, this question is not answered satisfactorily. While Donati does not deal with this question, Gergen, who represents a social constructionist relationalism, only refers to language as the essential medium generating relations. The problems of considering language or, to be more exact, language use or discourse, as the starting point of sociality, have been already discussed above. White (2008) indicates an alternative answer when he claims that relations are based on a “peculiar effect of mutuality”. What this “mutuality” consists of, however, is not addressed by White. He only points to the concept of “control”, because relationships and entire networks must be secured in order to be able to survive at all. Control, in fact, stabilizes existing relations, yet it does not explain how relations come about. Thus, even the advocates of relational sociology conclude that this question is still open, clearly showing that a theoretical foundation of relationality has not yet been achieved. In the search for a suitable candidate to clarify this “mutuality”, one may look for “practices” Bourdieu considers to be the basic processes of his structuralist constructivism. The very notion of practices indeed implies the mutuality; it does, however, not show how mutuality is achieved, constituted or, as we prefer to say, constructed. This issue will become quite crucial, as the mutuality of the target of pointing is one of the issues we shall address below with reference to the notion of “shared intentionality”. In order to be able to theoretically address the question how actors accomplish (or, as we shall see, fail to accomplish) mutuality, we suggest to start with a notion of communicative action. Communicative action does not only allow to grasp the problem of how something is “shared” within a relation (or “mutual”) or, as we prefer, reciprocal. It also allows to address what it is, that is shared, i.e. the “object”, and finally, it considers the materiality, sensuality and bodily aspects necessarily implied when objects are shared in relations. In order to account for these various aspects, the idea of relation needs to be extended. For this reason, we suggest a triadic notion of relation which is processed in communicative action. This triadic relation can be sketched as follows (Diagram 10.1): This transition to a triadic relation deviates not only from relationism but also from the various paradigms of conventional “one-sided” theories of action (as will be exemplified with respect to pointing below). In this sense we also deviate from the theory of social action implied in Social Constructivism as coined by Berger and Luckmann (1966). Instead of their methodological individualism, communicative constructivism is

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Diagram 10.1  Triadic relation of communicative action

characterized by the assumption of the basic triadic relationality of action, its embodiment and, consequently, the inclusion of materiality and mediality (Knoblauch 2020). Communicative action is the process which is constructing reality and by which reality has been constructed. Communicative action is basically relational as it realizes a reciprocal relation (which does not necessarily mean equal or symmetrical, as e.g. the relation between infant and parent in pointing demonstrates), that is a relation between subject and subject (both in a nonessential understanding as being generated by the very act of communicative action). The decisive difference of communicative constructivism to the conventional forms of relational sociology is that the relation it establishes is conceived not only between subject and subject but between subject, subject and objectivation. Objectivation enters the scene by the very fact that actions (and consequently subjects) are embodied. Objectivation therefore means anything that bodies do which via reciprocity becomes meaningful. Meaning is not restricted to signs but includes anything sensually accessible and, at that, material. This may be the finger pointing, the voice sounding, but it may also be the first hitting. Objectivations may be reified to objectifications, e.g. the arrow pointing, to technologies, e.g. the laser pointer, and, of course to signs.

4  Relational Understanding of Finger Pointing The difference between one-sided (relational) approaches and our triadic version becomes very clear in the social theoretical discussion of pointing. Pointing has been considered a crucial gesture also in linguistics as one of the gestures constituting human language. In fact, pointing is a quite significant gesture in the (to use a biologistic term) “ontogeny” of human children because they usually learn it quite some time before they can use language. There are also quite good reasons to believe that pointing is a decisive step in the (“phylogenetical”) history of human kind which was

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rendered possible by the erection of the human body and the ensuing setting free of the hands (Leroi-Gourhan 1964). Within the debate on pointing, a classical “one-sided” position has been formulated by the linguist and psychologist Bühler already decades ago. In his classical theory of language, Bühler (2011) assumes that pointing is defined by “haecceitas”, i.e. by the standpoint of the subject he called “origo”. For him, “origo” is also the reference point of deixis in general (Diagram 10.2). Pointing, as symbolized in the diagram, is based in an “origo”, that is the subject’s body, and it is oriented toward a target in space by means of an “anchor point” which, in finger pointing, would be the finger, the hand or the arm or what we would rather call objectivation. In this model, the extension from the body via the anchor point constitutes a “vector” which is oriented toward the “target”, i.e. what is shown at. In order to understand our notion of relationality, we should be very clear about the deficit of this model. It lies particularly in the one-sided conception of pointing (as to one-sided actions cf. Schutz and Luckmann 1989). This conception is shared by contemporary research in the frame of gesture studies. Thus Enfield (2007: 1724) define pointing “as a communicative bodily movement which projects a vector whose direction is determined, in the context, by the conceived spatial location, relative to the person performing the gesture, of a place and thing relevant to the current utterance”. Note that in this basic definition there is only one person involved who seems to be the only one oriented to the target. The fact that other persons may be involved is only indirectly indicated by the fact that speech is involved (“utterance”) which, we can only assume, may be oriented to someone else. This one-sided understanding of pointing is reproduced in Diagram 10.2  Bühler’s model of pointing

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most research which seems to share the rather philosophical understanding of relation between an individual subject and the world. Thus, in his study on pointing in interactions, Le Guen (2011) distinguishes between “egocentric” pointing where a speaker points from their standpoint, and geocentric pointing where they would point in relation to external cues (“north”, “south”). It is most striking that the very pragmatic reasons for pointing are ignored in these approaches: the fact that we usually point to something is related to someone for whom we point. Finger pointing is mostly an action within a social relation. (Individualized pointing seems rather derivative from this form.) In this sense, we propose a relational notion of pointing, and, as pointing will turn out to be a gesture highly indicative for human communicative action in general, we shall try to exemplify how we can understand relationality on the basis of finger pointing. The relationality of finger pointing had been suggested already by Hanks (1996) on the basis of Mayan interactions. It has been particularly highlighted by the substantial contributions of Tomasello (2008). On the basis of experimental settings, Tomasello had studied gestures and communicative actions of children in early childhood and compared them to chimpanzees. As mentioned, the comparison is based on a quite well-supported assumption that finger pointing is a characteristic gesture for the conditio humana: although animals can learn to point, it is habitually performed and transmitted only among humans. The competence to point by the finger does not seem to be “inborn”, but is acquired in early childhood at the age of about nine months. Tomasello shares the view with many researchers that the acquisition of this competence is part of the “nine month” revolution: it is not only that children learn pointing, but by doing so they enter a new level of social interaction. While before they orient their actions with others egoistically, pointing and similar forms of action demonstrate a form of “shared intentionality”. Thus, in his comparisons of chimpanzees (without human contacts) and human infants older than nine months, Tomasello has argued for two different kinds of coordination. Whereas in the former case two actors pursue their egoistic goals when acting together, in the second case they establish what he calls “shared intentionality”; we see “humans’ cooperative motives for communicating turn into mutual assumptions and even norms of cooperation” (Tomasello 2008: 355).

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A similar distinction between two types of reciprocity in the sequentiality of interaction has been suggested by neuroscientific research. Thus Creem-Regehr and others (2013) distinguish between an “egocentric frame when it comes to spatial perspective taking and an allocentric frame. In the former frame, an observer determines what another can or cannot see from their standpoint.” In the latter, however, “the mere presence of another person may prompt humans to share (implicitly or explicitly) spatial and proprioceptive information with one another” (Creem-Regehr et al. 2013: 8). With respect to space, this sharing takes quite a spectacular form, as it allows to identify “where in space a target object is located relative to a viewpoint that is different from the observer’s current viewpoint” (ibid 5), or, to say it in other words, where in space a target object is located relative to a viewpoint that is different from the observers’ viewpoint.

5  The Process of Finger Pointing—An Exemplary Analysis As the assumption of mirror neurons has received a lot of criticism4 and as much of research is either experimental or analyzing pointing only as part of spoken interactions, we suggest to describe pointing in more detail in its “naturally” situated bodily performance as a communicative action. In order to account for its basic role for communication and in order to be able to highlight its elementary aspects, we shall consider an empirical case of pointing in early childhood. The empirical case here is taken from a small corpus of video data on the interaction between adults and two children who are 9 months and 33 months old.5 The interaction has been analyzed following the methodology described in Knoblauch et al. (2014). The goal of this analysis is to highlight certain qualitative features of pointing which are relevant to an understanding of pointing. In doing so, we shall highlight those features which have been hardly or only marginally reflected in research. As the corpus does not allow for a systematic sampling yet, we must admit that the features are hypothetical in the sense of 4  The fact that humans can make judgments from a perspective outside their own body may be explained by mirror neurons (Fu and Franz 2014). 5  For ethical reasons and because of the inaccessibility of data for secondary analysis data right reasons the paper draws on data from my own children which have been recorded in 2003.

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qualitative methodology (Timmermans and Tavory 2012). Yet, they empirically indicate that the notion of pointing needs to be reconsidered in ways which, of course, will need more substantive corroboration or refutal by future research. In this sense, we would consider the analysis as exemplifying a theoretical case. The case of pointing under consideration is part of an episode of 2 minutes which occurs in the interaction between two siblings, a four-year-old girl (Daisy) and her brother (Udo) who is one year old at the time of the recording. Pointing occurs in the episode in which both playfully interact with a cardboard box. As in most research on gestures and interaction, we can represent pointing with a finger as a static gesture as in the first still (1).

Still 1 Daisy, lying on the bed, points to the box, saying   (1)  D: “Mami, da:s brau::ch i:::ch.” (“Mom, I need this[that need I].”) The still presents a very clear case of pointing. It has a clear target, which is the cardboard box Udo holds with his hand, and Daisy uses explicitly a deictic article (“this”/“das”) addressed to her mother (“mom”) who is holding the video camera. The finger pointing supports strongly the argument that pointing is not just a one-sided action but makes sense as part of an interaction as addressing someone else. We may call this “other”, who is lacking in the model of pointing above, the addressee of pointing. As the example shows, the addressee must not be one person. In this case Daisy, while pointing, is addressing (her) mother and the camera the mother is holding. Pointing may have even more addressees. In fact,

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pointing can also address a whole group of people, as e.g. when talking to an audience in a PowerPoint presentation (Knoblauch 2008). Next to the addressee, we should highlight another feature often ignored in the analysis of pointing. While in Gesture Studies pointing is often only analyzed as a static gesture (as we have done so far), (however/ yet) in this case (and, assumedly, in any other case), pointing as a gesture is a process in time which is divided up into various sequences of action. It does hardly suffice to stretch the finger; most often it includes the movement of the arm, of the body and of other body parts, such as the eye, and, if part of a spoken interaction, of the mouth, the voice. One could separate these various movement according to the different modalities, as some researchers suggest (e.g./c.f. Mondada 2016). In this chapter, however, we prefer to focus on the sequence of action, interaction and the objectivations by which they are coordinated. That is not to say that we shall grasp the temporality of embodied action by sequences which allow the actors to coordinate their actions. Moreover, the representation of the sequence of action will also allow us to reconstruct and understand this act of pointing.6 The fact that pointing is a sequential activity means that we have to unpack, so to say, what is represented in the first still into various “moves” which occur during the turn of talk Daisy is uttering.7 These moves constitute the interaction episode which lasts for three seconds. Before these three seconds, Daisy had been holding the box in front of her body and withdrawing it when Udo tried to grasp it several times. She then moved it closer to him, so that he in fact got a hold of the box with his fingers. And it is then when the sequence starts, as he seems now to draw the box in his direction. It is at this point, when she still holds the box with her left hand, that Udo, who is kneeling on the ground, holds it too with both his hands and turns his head to her (Still 1.1). As with all sequential meaning, the reason for her utterance can be found temporally, 6   For a theoretical elaboration of sequentiality and its methodological use, cf. Knoblauch (2022). 7  The notion of “move” refers to bodily movements which are sequentially relevant (cf. Knoblauch et al. 2014). In this sense, they are similar to “turns at talk” or, better, turns are acoustic “moves”. As interactions are constituted by moves, they are the empirical reference for the notion of communicative action. “Moves” should not be mistaken for behavioral elements identified by “naturalistic” observers, such as ethologists, as their identification does depend on the interactional and social relevance in (among other) the relations in which they occur.

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here in the prior move. Before she had held the box on her own on the bed and then moved it over to the reach of Udo. It is after he grasps the box with his hands that she starts to utter the word “Ma:mi”. To be more exact, the word “Mami” starts being uttered paralleling a move in which she is loosening her hold of the box:

Still 2: Daisy loosening her hands On the still you can see that her index finger is already lifting and her thumb loosens, as she says “Mami” (still 2). It is only in the next move, then, that finger pointing occurs. She extends her arm, stretches her index finger and continues with the word “da:s” (“that”). While she is gazing at the direction of her hands, Udo at this point is orienting his head and his face toward her. It is here that the finger starts pointing in a way which, almost in a nutshell, exemplifies how signification of pointing is produced: in loosing hold of the object, it can turn into the “target” she can point at as soon as the object is removed. It is this role of the object in pointing why we suggest to use the notion of objectivation over the idea of “shared intentionality” as suggested by Tomasello (2008). For one, the intentionality of pointing is not just “meaning”; it is visibly embodied, as there is a finger involved. Aside from the embodied nature of pointing, objectivation also covers the possibility that the finger is substituted by things, as the cardboard box in the exemplary case here, or by other pointing devices, such as a pointing stick or a laser pointer (in PowerPoint presentations) or a mouse sign on computer screens. And finally, objectivation allows to consider the materiality of the target and its spatial relation to the finger pointing (and the person pointing is addressing).

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We need to come back to the spatiality which is made relevant by pointing and its various dimension. Before we suggest to distinguish between embodied objectivations and thing-like objectifications (such as arrow shaped traffic signs), we should stress that this distinction is not ontological: a pointing finger can well be treated like an object (as we shall see later), while a stick can be treated like an extended part of the body (e.g. the famous example of the blind man’s stick which has been analyzed, among others, by Merleau-Ponty, 1980). Also words have been understood as substitute for pointing, and, in fact, Daisy is using the deictic “das” (“that”). So why does Daisy point with her finger at all? The answer is provided again, by the sequence of actions. Although the object referred to is quite clearly the focus of the interaction (and of the recording), “das” only means a reference, but it does only hint at the direction. This spatial reference, which would be quite complex linguistically, is simply accomplished by the finger which not only adds a spatial dimension to the deictic “das”, but it is also closely linked to the target by the movement of the thing pointed which slowly gains distance from Daisy’s hand (by Udo). Still 3: (1) “das” (that)

The spatial meaning of pointing is certainly related to the target—to be more exact, to the location of the target. To the interactants, the reference to the target adds something quite novel. While the finger and the arm have been just a part of the body that has been linked to the object by an embodied act (holding and tearing the box), the finger pointing to the box establishes a non-embodied and in a way “invisible” relation to the

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box—that is: its meaning.8 The invisible link is, of course, strongly “indicated” by the “gestalt” of the finger, as the box is “in the line” of the finger (and the arm), but then again, the line is not embodied but must be “imagined” in order to be understood (at least by Daisy—the role of Udo will be addressed below). It is immateriality and disembodiment which are crucial for the kind of “meaning” Mead (1964) has been underlining as the particular result of social communication.9 The meaning of pointing is, of course, spatial; it consists in its spatial reference. This reference can be, however, quite diverse, and it is for this reason that the abstract notion of space is quite useful. The target can be as concrete as the cardboard box they hold in their hands; it can be also a picture (as pointing is a major gesture when reading picture books with children); then again, the target can be hidden or it must not have a specific location in the immediate environment of the actors. In fact, in many everyday situations we can quite abstractly point into the direction of something which must not be seen, e.g. when a traveler asks for a direction. It is surely a question at what age children may start to grasp the reference of pointing, but on a theoretical level one should be aware that pointing at something absent is tantamount to what Schutz and Luckmann (1989) have called “the small transcendencies of the life world”: they refer to objects, actors and spaces which are not accessible, the immediate environment or the local social situation.10 Note that not only in this example this spatial reference of meaning is linked to the embodied gesture. The reference is embodied by the direction of the finger (represented as “arrow” in the diagram), by the hand, the arm, most likely also by gaze and gaze direction. Having established the spatial aspect of the objectivation in pointing and its meaning, we also have to look at the interactants’ space and the

8  Merleau-Ponty (1980) underlines the relation between “meaning” and “sense” with particular reference to the German word “Sinn”. 9  This triadic extension of relationality can build on Mead’s theory of symbolic interaction, which takes the constitution of meaning to be basically sequential. It “arises and lies within the field of the relation between the gesture of a given organism and the subsequent behaviour of this organism as indicated to another human organism by that gesture. If that gesture does so indicate to another organism the subsequent (or resultant) behaviour of the given organism, then it has meaning” (Mead 1964: 163). 10  Thus transcendence of pointing opens the space of the situation to something that is not part of the situation, such as a spatially absent or the infinite.

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relation of their bodies to one another.11 As we said before, pointing is not just a static gesture, but an interactive performance. In the case of Daisy’s pointing gesture above, we can in fact see that it consists itself of a temporal course. After pointing to the box (still 3).

Still 4 Daisy shortly raises her finger and her hand (slide 1.3). At this point she obviously gets the attention of Udo, who now directly gazes at the finger, and as she has the attention, she moves her finger again downward to the box which is itself (re-) moved by Udo. Pointing here is, as ethnomethodologists would say, an interactive accomplishment of both actors. Keeping in mind that the box (material things) and the finger (the body) play also a decisive role (which is not accounted for by ethnomethodology analytically), Daisy and Udo are, of course, representing the two subjects who cooperate in “doing pointing”. In fact, it is not only Daisy who points with her finger, but it is Udo who turns (1.4) to her (as a first part of this sequence), and then (1.5) turns to her finger pointing into the direction of the box, while Daisy is saying (20) “brau:ch” (need)

11  We have suggested to use the notion of body formation for this relation (Knoblauch 2008), while it seems to us quite useful to use the notion of arrangement for the spatial relation of bodies and objectivations, as Löw (2016) suggests in her relational theory of space.

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Still 5a           Still 5b This move is quite important. It demonstrates that Udo is orienting toward her pointing, as he directly gazes at her (extended/pointing/ index) finger, being, so to say, “invited” by Daisy’s prior moving her finger into his “field of view”. At this point the finger is the anchor which forms something like a common object, as the finger is also in the direct field of view of Daisy. True, the anchor, i.e. the finger, is not the target, i.e. the cardboard box. Nevertheless, in both looking at the finger and seeing (or, as far as Udo is concerned, recalling from a tenth of a second before) that the other is looking at the finger, both share an object in common. This seems to be what Tomasello (2008) has called “shared intentionality”. However, while Tomasello, drawing with this notion on the intentionalist theory of mind by Searle, only focuses on the “meaning”, we note here the relevance of the finger as an embodiment and a materialized “gestalt”. Moreover, we can also see from the sequence that the idea of “sharedness” underplays the basic role of spatiality for pointing. Actors do not just “share”, but they orient themselves to the finger and what is pointed to

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from their different bodily—and that is with respect to the spatiality of pointing—spatially different standpoints with respect to what is pointed at in space. As the stills demonstrate, these standpoints can differ quite significantly even if the actors are very close: Daisy looks and points into a very different direction than Udo looks. By “standpoints” we refer to the very spatial positions of the actor’s bodies. Yet, particularly with pointing, this does not mean an absolute standpoint in space; instead pointing establishes a spatial relation with respect to the other and to what is pointed at. And this relation has consequences: if pointing succeeds, the next step would consist in Udo looking into the direction, so that he would see where she points at. It is this sequence Schutz would take as an example for what he calls the interchangeability of standpoints, “that I and my fellow man would have typically the same experiences of the common world if we changed places, thus transforming my Here into his, and his—now to me a ‘There—into mine’” (Schutz 1962: 316). Interchangeability of standpoints explicitly refers to the spatial aspects implied in the sequential process of finger pointing. As Schutz stresses, it is also one of the “idealizations” implied in the principle of reciprocity of perspectives by which we establish intersubjectivity. Pointing is basically spatial in that it refers to something in space, i.e. a spatial deixis. In addition, it implies the ability of human actors to point in such a way which, so to say, “spatially anticipates” the standpoint of the other subject(s) as if they were able to make perceptions from another person’s perspective without changing their position in space. There are, I suggest, two alternative ways to explain how the interchangeability of standpoints is achieved. As these alternatives also imply different concepts of intersubjectivity, it might be worth to shortly mention them. (a) One perspective resembles the one-sided notion of action in that it would assume that Udo needs to “guess” from his perspective where Daisy shows. In this view, his gesture would have his body as “origo”. It differs from the conventional one-sided view on pointing sketched above by its relationality; the pointing act is assumed to be perceived by the other who is assumed to be able to tell from the pointing gesture where it hints at. Although this kind of pointing is not one-sided but relational, he would “understand” pointing from his perspective, “somehow” assessing the other’s position and “calculating” it, in a way,

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Diagram 10.3  Vector sum

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C

A

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mentally.12 There is a second possibility (b) which means that Daisy in her pointing accounts for the position of Udo. This version of “interchangeability of standpoints” would mean that pointing takes a position in which both positions are, so to say, fused. Daisy’s movements suggest this position in the sense that she “picks up” Udo’s view with her finger and then enters a middle position (before the movement finally follows the cardboard box being removed by Udo). If one would dare to translate this fusion into geometrical terms, one might compare it to and illustrate it by the vector sum (Diagram 10.3): As far as I can see, research has not yet tackled this issue, although it seems decisive for an understanding of “reciprocity” implied in pointing, and, hence, for intersubjectivity. In both cases, pointing does require what Mead (1964) calls “taking the role (or ‘attitude’) of the other”. The core role of assumption is that we anticipate the action that the other individual will perform in response to our action—and that we design our action already in the anticipation phase in such a way that we receive a corresponding, expected reaction. Both ways, the exchangeability of standpoints can be understood as a spatial “anticipation” of the other’s standpoint, while the sequentiality refers to the temporal anticipation. Mead’s use of “role” however hints at an additional aspect which is inherent in both forms of reciprocity. In addition to pointing being a sequence of moves, it is characterized by a dramatic asymmetry in the kind of activities involved: Daisy is pointing to the thing, while Udo is seeing her pointing. This asymmetry is much more than the “perception of perception” (Luhmann 2012/2013); it implies different roles which remind of classical distinctions between action (pointing) and perception (“seeing”), in working and sensing, in activity and passivity or in doing and suffering. These distinctions however are rather misleading as Udo is also “doing something” and Daisy is, as she 12  This kind of assumption is characteristic for approaches to theories of mind which assume that minds are separate units to start with.

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even indicates in her utterance, also “suffering” (and she will indeed “loose” the box). The asymmetry is probably better grasped by another aspect of reciprocity identified by Schutz13: the reciprocity of motives, e.g. of “in-order-to” and “because-motives”. That is to say that pointing as a first move is initiated “in order” to point to something by the first actor. The second actor then looks “because” S1 has been pointing. The essential idea of Schutz is that the reversal of the motives is not a matter of individual intentionality. Even if someone has to start, the reversal of motives is a result from the different temporal perspectives (first or second) on social relational actions. The asymmetry highlighted by the reciprocity of motives in pointing is relevant if we compare it to very common assumptions about intersubjectivity, theories of the mind or children’s learning. According to these assumptions, concepts such as mimicry or imitation are utterly misleading as they assume a similarity of the actors. Actors do not only have different positions in space (standpoints), also temporality provides for a distinction between them. They are not only acting “after” one another, but the fact that they have different temporal positions to the sequence of action generates different positions toward the actions, i.e. motives.14 Therefore, we cannot only conclude that reciprocity does not mean equality (Schutz 1976). Moreover, we can also assume that the motives are not produced by the single mind but are the result of the act of pointing itself. To put it more generally: that meaning is not generated in the single mind but by communicative actions. This thesis, which lies at the basis of communicative constructivism, is quite difficult to prove, but there are empirical evidences for it. As we indicated in the previous part, pointing is, indeed, an example which shows how a form of “significative” meaning can be produced without 13  For Schutz, these motives are clearly sequentially related: I ask you a question. The inorder-to motive of my act is not only the expectation that you will understand my question, but also to get your answer; or more precisely, I reckon that you will answer, leaving undecided what the content of your answer may be. (….) The question, so we can say, is the because-motive of the answer, as the answer is the in-order-to motive of the question. (…) I myself had felt on innumerable occasions induced to react to another’s act, which I had interpreted as a question addressed to me, with a kind of behavior of which the in-order-to motive was my expectation that the Other, the questioner, might interpret my behavior as an answer (Schutz 1964: 14). 14  It is interesting in this respect to compare temporal sequences of action, such as pointing, to simultaneous action and co-produced objectivations, such as clapping or singing together (cf. Knoblauch et al. 2019).

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and “before” the knowledge about sign systems by children so as to be sedimented as knowledge in the individual. And it seems that exactly this knowledge makes the difference in the case which we study, for the most striking part of the case is still to come: it is a failed act of pointing. By failed pointing we do not primarily refer to the words she says (which do not have any effect either); they refer to her attempt of getting Udo’s attention when pointing with her finger. Let us see what is happening after that:

Still 6: Udo turns right with his face (1.6), but he does not follow her finger. Instead he turns right, stands up and walks off—with the box in his hands (1.7)

Still 7 This move we are seeing is quite consequential. For one, it is quite clear that the pointing gesture of Daisy to Udo was not successful. Although she “invites” him with her index finger, which he quite openly focuses to look where she points, he does not move his head in order to look at the object.

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6   Why? Relationality, Relations and Figurations The analysis exemplifies that and how the sequence of communicative actions is the process of which relations exist, such as the one analyzed here between Daisy and Udo. This case exhibits some basic features of finger pointing. These features include the role of objectivations (as “anchor and target”), the temporality and sequentiality of action and the bodily performance. Moreover, the various features highlighted demonstrate the kind of relationality built into these interactions: exchangeability of standpoints, the exchangeability of motives and reciprocity in general. As reciprocity corresponds to the kind of mutuality looked for in relational sociology, we have a strong argument to take communicative action as the process of which social relations do consist. If this argument is accepted, we however need to include the objectivations, as the finger pointing gesture in our case has shown. On this basis, we can now address the problems left in the interpretation above: Why does the (finger) pointing fail? Is it because Udo is too young and has not yet passed the “ninth month revolution”? Is he not (yet) able to “understand” pointing and its reference? Obviously, this question relates to ontological and phylogenetical knowledge about pointing, which may also lead us to a first answer. In terms of psychology (Piaget and Inhelder 1966) it is important to know that, at the time of the recording, he only uses phonemes he imitates. It is uncertain if he “knows” pointing, but even if he understood the gesture, one may ask if he (had) needed to follow the pointing finger and look at the box which he holds in his own hands. It is quite certain that, at this stage, he has a notion of the permanence of objects. Therefore, we may assume that he has a sense of the box Daisy is pointing at, although he does not see the box at this very moment and does not look at it. (This kind of knowledge is usually linked with the development of a body scheme.15)

15  That is to say that he does not only need to synthesize different senses but also dispose of a body scheme which allows him to sense aspects of the things without perceiving it at the moment.

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We cannot decide if he is able to understand the gesture. If not, we can assume that he most certainly will understand the gesture and can reproduce it. This assumption implies that the way how pointing and particularly its meaning is acquired is not just a “cognitive” process. Instead the meaning of pointing may be very much “learned” by its very performance—on either side of the asymmetry. This implies one of the most radical theses of communicative constructivism: that meaning, knowledge and subjective agency are constituted in the very performance of communicative action. This thesis resembles Donati’s proposal of a “relational subject”, a “soggetto relationale” (Donati 2012), by adding processuality to it. It is also shared by recent attempts of “subjectivation research” (Bosančić et  al. 2022) which tries how the constitution of subjectivity comes about in communicative actions without denying some formal features of subjectivity (as the standpoint). In fact, in this context, the kind of interaction analysis in natural settings could contribute to our knowledge about how this constitution occurs in interaction and communication (which are mostly bracketed by psychological studies).16 It would, however, be necessary to consider that “interaction” also includes the objectivations and materialities so strongly underlined by the notion of communicative action. The notion of communicative action is, in addition, helpful for an alternative understanding of the “failed pointing”. As Udo is already more than 9 months old, it is quite likely that he has a sufficient understanding of the finger pointing gesture. In this case, his move would mean that he does not want to continue the “game” Daisy has tried to play. In fact, by not looking at the box but taking it away he helps to support this interpretation. This way he ends the interaction (and the game), but he still does act (as she does). It is this very fact, that actors act even if they are not involved in interaction, why we prefer the notion of communicative action over interaction. Communicative action, thus, allows to analyze also solitary actions (such as lying on a bed, meditating). It allows to grasp subjectivized acts (if e.g. one would try to point to oneself—a case which may occur in situations of utter bodily irritation). And finally and most importantly, it does allow to grasp single moves, such as Udo turning off and taking away the cardboard box.

16  For a similar perspective on children’s use of language in conversational action, cf. Wootton (2006).

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It is exactly this move which leads us to consider the notion of relation. While communicative action must not be in relations, it was Weber who so clearly underlined that social relations depend on (communicative) action as “the chance that someone will be expected in a certain way” (Weber 1980/1921). In this understanding we could take Udo to break off the relation established with Daisy during the interaction: he does not finish the pointing sequence and, this way, he also ends the short episode of “playing” with the cardboard box Daisy began by teasingly “offering” the box to him. That a brother would break off his relation with his sister may sound inadequate at first, but it allows us to see, first, that both shared some basic form of role in the teasing game. Secondly, it shows ex negativo, that the interactive relation is embedded in an institutional relation. Udo does not run off, he only moves away in the bedroom, as both are (of course) localized in a controlled space: the bedroom as part of a flat (or house), and this again as the materialized space for the institution “family”. This context is not external to the interaction; in fact, it is in its core since Daisy is addressing her mother as an instance of control directly with her request to get the box back (which is however not pronounced with emphasis). The interaction, therefore, is not only dyadic, but it includes the mother. By explicitly using the membership categorization device “mom”, the social relation is specified as a family which includes also the (older) sister and the (younger) brother. In fact, the interaction even exhibits a gender aspect, as the older daughter “leaves” the box to her younger brother, who, thereby, asserts himself, while she (though stronger) turns for help to her mother. The family is also part of an extended figuration which includes cameras and technologies which allow for the use of the data and which include the potential of analysis. We suggest here the notion of figuration, as introduced by Elias (2012), because it does account not only for the various social relations mentioned but also for the institutional settings and the material and spatial order (the court, the small family)—not to forget, the forms of subjectivation resulting from it and subject forged by it. The notion of figuration, finally, also hints at the most obvious and simultaneously most hidden element of this analysis: it is the very fact that we have video footing which can be reproduced here in the shape of stills. The fact that the videos (recorded in 2002 analogically) are accessible is due to what Couldry and Hepp (2017) call a communicative figuration. In our case, it includes the technological equipment of digitalization, the

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digital software for analysis and the digital (technical, economical, political etc.) infrastructure in which they are provided. As much as the figurations, social field and possibly networks need to be considered in more detail, the analysis above demonstrates that and how they are connected to and built on the ongoing process of interaction. The theory of communicative constructivism indicates how this process can be understood in terms of a relational approach which also allows to account for the material, embodied and technological aspects of relations so basic for an understanding of our contemporary society.

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Applying Relational Sociology, ed. F.  Dépelteau and C.  Powell, 101–135. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Mondada, Lorenza. 2016. Challenges of Multimodality: Language and the Body in Social Interaction. Journal of Sociolinguistics 20 (3): 336–366. Piaget, Jean, and Bärbel Inhelder. 1966. La psychologie de l’enfant. Paris: PUF. Schmitz, Andreas, and Daniel Witte. 2020. National, International, Transnational and Global Fields – Theoretical Clarifications and Methodological Implications. In Charting Transnational Fields. Methodology for a Political Sociology, ed. Christian Schmidt-Wellenburg and Stefan Bernhard, 79–97. Binghamton, NY: Routledge. Schutz, Alfred. 1962. Symbol, Reality and Society. In Collected Papers I  – The Problem of Social Reality, ed. A. Schutz, 287–356. The Hague: Nijhoff. ———. 1964. The Social World and the Theory of Action. In Collected Papers II, ed. A. Schutz, 3–19. The Hague: Nijhoff. ———. 1976. Equality and the Meaning Structure of the Social World. In Collected Papers II.  Phaenomenologica, vol 15, ed. A.  Brodersen. Dordrecht: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­94-­010-­1340-­6_11. Schutz, Alfred, and Thomas Luckmann. 1989. The Structures of the Lifeworld II. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Timmermans, Stefan, and Iddo Tavory. 2012. Theory Construction in Qualitative Research: From Grounded Theory to Abductive Analysis. Sociological Theory 30 (3): 167–186. https://doi.org/10.1177/0735275112457914. Tomasello, Michael. 2008. Origins of human communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Weber, Max. 1978/1921. Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Los Angeles: University of California Press. White, Harrison. 2008. Identity and Control: How Social Formations Emerge. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wootton, Anthony. 2006. Children’s Practices and Their Connections with ‘mind’. Discourse Studies 8 (1): 191–198.

CHAPTER 11

Toward a Relational Pragmatics as a Bridge Between Sociology and Linguistics Tomasz Zarycki

1   Linguistic Pragmatics Versus Sociology Pragmatics is usually defined as the study of language use in a (social) context (Yule 1996). In this text, I will argue that pragmatics, in order to develop fruitfully, should become much more deeply integrated within sociology, in particular, critical sociology, as it has been defined by Michael Burawoy (2005). Burawoy defines critical sociology as the study of relations of power as foundations of social order and knowledge production in particular. With this understanding, critical sociology is meant to be the most reflexive branch of the field, aimed primarily at an internal scholarly audience rather than a broader public. As I will argue, it is precisely such internal critical theoretical reflection that pragmatics, in particular, is currently lacking. And this is because mainstream linguistic pragmatics continues to ignore key issues related to the ways power relations and social

T. Zarycki (*) University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Hałas (ed.), Methodology of Relational Sociology, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41626-2_11

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structures impact the functioning of language and their role as a context for language theory itself. This critique could include the achievements in both the philosophy of knowledge (e.g., the work of Michel Foucault) and the sociology of knowledge (e.g., the work of Pierre Bourdieu, which I will be particularly interested in here). Both authors pointed out many important mechanisms of language functioning, which explain the less obvious aspects and paradoxes of language use in situations of its “real” use. These paradoxes, which can be explained by the relationship between language and the context of its use, are precisely what pragmatics is interested in. I am referring in particular to such phenomena as the performative functions of language, which are dealt with by the speech act theory, or the concept of so-called conversational implicature, i.e., the model of effects related to the contextual change of meanings of linguistic utterances. As I will argue here, relying largely on works by Bourdieu and Foucault, a full reconstruction of similar and other less obvious ways in which language functions is not possible without taking into account the relational mechanisms of power, entangling not only all participants in the so-called communicative situations but also language theory itself with its theorists. Meanwhile, more general theses can be made about linguistic pragmatics as a scientific subdiscipline. First, its development has turned out to be rather multi-sectoral and fragmented, which has resulted in a relatively low coherence of its ever-forming paradigm. In fact, it consists of several mid-­ range theories whose interconnectedness is only partial. These include relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986) and linguistic politeness theory (Brown and Levinson 1978). Second, researchers working within the framework of linguistic pragmatics have turned to psychological approaches. They are inspired by cognitive science and focus their attention on the subjective dimension of the process of language use, such as issues of speakers’ intentions and the processes of understanding utterances by individual recipients, i.e., mental mechanisms. Pierre Bourdieu provides a particularly penetrating critique of the narrow nature of linguistic pragmatics. In particular, he referred critically to the classic theorists of linguistic pragmatics, such as John Langshaw Austin, pointing out that they overlook issues of power relations in their analysis of the effectiveness of linguistic actions, ignoring the fact that linguistic relations are always relations of symbolic power (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 142). Bourdieu has also pointed out that the efficacy of ritual speech acts cannot be separated from the existence of institutions conferring a legitimate

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authority upon utterances. As Bourdieu convincingly argued, Austin and his followers mistakenly locate the power of words, in particular a speech act’s illocutionary force, in the symbols used rather than in the  social power of language users conferring this authority on words. This line of critique has been further developed by Michiel Leezenberg (1999). In addition to psychologizing linguists, philosophers are still active in this discipline that they founded. Sociologists, if they appear in the field of pragmatics, act rather as representatives of sociolinguistics. Meanwhile, there are very few sociologists who try to explain the key mechanisms of interest in pragmatics with theories from their discipline. Perhaps, then, we should consider the establishment of a new discipline, or a sub-field— namely, a sociologically oriented branch of pragmatics. In this chapter, I want to point out possible ways to develop such a research area in the spirit of a relational sociology of language. However, such a discipline would not be defined as another branch of sociology, as can be said of traditional sociology of language or, to a large extent, sociolinguistics. Thus, it would be an attempt to outline an interdisciplinary area of research, which would have to remain very much a part of both linguistics and sociology and perhaps also philosophy or other fields of social sciences and humanities. The ideas for the further development of pragmatics that I present here could arguably be described as visions for the development of radically relational or fully sociological pragmatics. On the other hand, the traditional visions of the development of pragmatics, which are based on a psychological framework that employs concepts such as “attitudes,” “intentions,” or “beliefs,” could be labeled as subjective or psychological pragmatics. Relational aspects of communication in the traditional pragmatics are usually restricted to the narrowly defined framework of a communicative situation. The classic social relationship in such a paradigm is that between the sender and receiver of a message. In the simple version, it is one-sided; in the complex version, it is a two-sided relationship, while the fully pragmatic variant also includes a relationship with the context, part of which may be the medium as well as the “communication code.” Thus, traditional pragmatics (in opposition to semantics and syntax) is defined in terms of rather narrowly contextualized social action with the use of language but still largely in terms of analysis of language rules which may be implicit (like Grice’s conversational rules). These rules, while they can, at times, be broken without negative consequences, are still normative. The process of their production and negotiation is usually not seen as

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part of any linguistic exchange. Moreover, key notions of traditional pragmatics like illocutionary force or speech acts point more toward intentions rather than power relations (cognitive psychology rather than sociology). The same could be said about a very narrow definition of social force in that approach. All in all, the “semiological vision of the world,” which Bourdieu opposed, still seems to dominate here (Bourdieu 2004). This general problem of pragmatics, with its inherently normative nature, is best reflected in its attempts to distinguish between effective and failed utterances. This seems to be the focus of Austin, Grice, and Searle, even if they recognize that some utterances may achieve their effects by breaking conventional rules of communication or they require some extra-­ linguistic, for example, legal circumstances to be in force to make the specific statements effective. Thus, pragmatics, even if it focuses on actual action with language, may still be seen as partly normative in its nature. This normative bias, best reflected in its tendency to classify utterances into “successful” and “unsuccessful,” has also been inherited by discourse analysis, which can be seen as a form of text pragmatics. In any case, both pragmatics and discourse analysis can be seen as tools for the assessment and hierarchization of texts and other utterances. A good example of this is the so-called criteria of textuality proposed by de Beaugrande and Dressler (1981), which include coherence, cohesion, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situational, and intertextuality. The social, contextual nature of these criteria, not to mention their embeddedness in power relations, is usually not taken into account. At the same time, some of these criteria clearly refer to internal states of mind (e.g., intentionality). This makes them part of the psychological analysis of language that ignores the dimension of power relations. In a way, a notion similar to the normative concept of “textuality” is the concept of “literariness,” introduced in formalist literary studies (Miall and Kuiken 1999). Unlike Roman Jakobson, who first coined this term in 1921, Miall and Kuiken suggest that literariness cannot be defined simply as a characteristic set of text properties, and it should be seen as the product of a distinctive mode of reading. This approach seems like a step forward, but the above-­mentioned assumptions remain a key limitation of linguistic analysis in general, as it remains confined to a narrowly defined context in which there is no systemic connection to the network of power relations that largely constitute it.

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2   Language Research and the Problem of Interdisciplinarity As we know from critical studies of the history of science, disciplinary divisions, particularly in the social sciences, are largely arbitrary in nature (Abbott 1988). Their shape derives from the long periods of power struggles, both over the developing disciplines of science and over power that is strictly political. Immanuel Wallerstein and many other scholars have called for crossing and even overturning these divisions (Wallerstein 2001). These calls should not be confused with the contemporary fashion for interdisciplinarity, which may sometimes be seen as an end in itself or a very general idea, referring to slogans of “crossing boundaries,” synergy, or complementarity intended to lead to efficiency in research. Critics like Wallerstein are concerned with overcoming disciplinary divisions, the functioning of which also has a certain functionality. Indeed, it can be argued that in addition to the inertial factor and a certain institutional randomness, disciplinary divisions also have an important function in providing individual sciences with their utility as indirect instruments of power. In particular, disciplines could be seen as modes of decontextualization, as decontextualization is a necessary condition for masking the arbitrariness of certain configurations of the social world and entangling them in power relations. From such a perspective, one inherent role of mainstream linguistics is the decontextualization of language, specifically, the decontextualization of specific utterances or language forms from wider social contexts. Without some degree of decontextualization of specific chunks of text or discourse, linguistics would be deprived of its main implicit political raison d’être, which seems to be based on two opposite assumptions. One is that language is a fully autonomous sphere of culture almost unrelated to all other realms (like politics, economy, or religion). The other opposite assumption, which can be seen as postmodern, is that language is at the core of most social and political problems, given that “there is nothing but text.” The latter radical assumption allows us to narrow down the proposals of social reforms to broadly defined language reforms, leaving out other spheres as subordinated or secondary. The former assumption allows the same political effect that the latter does, even though it is built on an opposing argument that there is a lack of any relation between the language and the social. In other words, both of the assumptions allow and legitimize decontextualization, which is enacted by both theory and practice of the mainstream language sciences. Thus, this

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chapter suggests that by problematizing the relations between language and the social in language theory, specifically in the political realm, we may be making linguistics less a useful social tool and exposing it as primarily a political tool. This concerns all those located outside the academy who need language expertise not only to solve their practical problems but also to legitimize their political decisions. However, critical social theorists will also benefit from such a reflexive take on the theory of language; I expect these theorists will be the primary readers of this text. Thus, in this text, I will present a number of postulates for what I see as a possible rapprochement between the science of language and sociology. As I have already suggested, I argue that mainstream linguistics, with pragmatics as its sector, has been historically shaped in such a way that it is unable to take into account the problem of power and the inherently political (in the deeper understanding of this notion) nature of culture as important aspects of linguistic communication. However, these aspects are central to understanding the mechanisms by which what has been considered the core of linguistic pragmatics is working. Of course, the potential for further contextualizing language within power relations may also still lie in the philosophy of language, which is the main theoretical inspiration of linguistic pragmatics. Its limitation, however, like most philosophy, is poor operationalization of the mechanisms of interest and limited interest in empirical research. In this regard, it is sociology that seems to be able to provide the tools needed to move from an abstract reflection on the entanglement of language in power relations to an analysis of their concrete mechanisms.

3  Toward Further Application of Bourdieusian Tools in the Analysis of Language One can admit that while Bourdieu widely critiqued largely understood pragmatics, he did not provide as many constructive suggestions regarding the development of a sociologically informed linguistic analysis. Thus, here I will try to propose some possible extensions of the pragmatic theory, mostly in the spirit of Bourdieu’s sociology. This is not to say, of course, that only his variant of critical sociology can be useful as an inspiration for the further development of linguistic pragmatics and related fields. In the format of a book chapter, however, it would be difficult to provide a complete overview of all sociological approaches potentially useful in the

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given context. In the present text, therefore, I will largely follow the path laid out by Bourdieu, first recapitulating his suggestions for possible ways to account for power relations in the analysis of language, that is, his vision of an integral view of linguistic action as social action. In addition to summarizing Bourdieu’s earlier proposals, I will also indicate how, by using his approach, one can go further on the path of integrating the two theoretical apparatuses. I will focus here on only one of them, namely Bourdieu’s fields theory. It seems particularly worthy of further integration with linguistic pragmatics because of its distinctively structural character and its very systematic consideration of the issue of power. The concept of field, as operationalized by Bourdieu, provides an extremely useful tool for reconstructing the mechanisms of language entanglement in power relations. In particular, it seems to be the most obvious way to operationalize the notion of the context of utterance, which is so crucial to linguistic pragmatics (Verschueren 1999). After all, pragmatics' theorists seem to agree that its key concept is precisely the notion of context and contextualization, from which notions of decontextualization and recontextualization, which also are extremely important for pragmatic analysis, are also derived (Bauman and Briggs 1990). In addition, the concept of context allows factors that can be associated with the social entanglement of linguistic actions to be taken into account in a given paradigm, in particular, issues of socially determined effectiveness of language use. The ways in which language researchers define context, however, leave much to be desired from the perspective of relational sociology. Context is defined in a number of diverse but usually arbitrary and narrow ways, while the contextual nature of language has only been gradually “discovered” by linguistics and language pragmatics. As I have argued in my previous paper (Zarycki 2017), the development of the sciences of language can be understood as a gradual process of its contextualization. Starting from the stage in which the word used to be the basic component of language analysis, through the stage of sentence analysis, followed by those of text and discourse analysis, pragmatics now includes gradually wider and broader definitions of context. Thus, there has been increasing recognition of the role of context or the widening definition of context in the historical progress of language sciences. The awareness of the social context of language interaction is usually considered to emerge in modern social sciences when Bronisław Malinowski famously noted “that the utterance itself becomes only intelligible when it is placed within its context of situation” (Malinowski 1923). This was

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followed by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s observation that “the meaning of a word is its use in the language” (Wittgenstein 1953). Another phase in that process was the notion of “indexical expressions” proposed by Yehoshua Bar-Hillel (Bar-Hillel 1954). More recently, Varol Akman provided the perspective of “social construction of context” (Akman 2000). The definition of context in pragmatics and related areas is, however, still very arbitrary. Most approaches consider the context to be what seems important to the language users themselves, which is an application of the psychological perspective. Even if the social or political nature of context formation is increasingly recognized by researchers, its broader, supra-­ local anchoring and its political nature as a regulator of power relations are rarely acknowledged.

4  The Structure of the Field: Combining Analysis at Different Levels I would therefore like to move on to show how the concept of field can be used to operationalize the notion of context in the sense in which it is used in pragmatics. As I will argue, this will also allow us to outline a broader formal framework for the proposed integration of linguistic pragmatics with Pierre Bourdieu’s critical sociology. Bourdieu suggested that all social activities occur within the framework of specific fields, the nature of which is par excellence social. This means that the fields themselves, including the rules of their functioning, their boundaries, and their mutual relations with other fields, are subject to constant struggle and dispute. Any social action reveals an aspect of negotiation in the very nature or definition of that field and perhaps other fields external to it. Crucially, in Bourdieu’s view, social fields are in mutual relationships that also have an aspect of hierarchy. Bourdieu suggests that each society can be considered as a macro-field composed of a multitude of fields of the lower range. They may differ from each other in various dimensions, including strength, importance, influence, and nature. Their overarching coordinator remains the field of power in which key negotiations take place as to the interrelationships between all the important fields in a given society (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1993). I have already suggested the idea of introducing Bourdieu’s field framework into the analysis of language in my earlier text (Zarycki 2007), but here I would like to extend this proposal by pointing out that the notion

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of field can be applied not only to the broader, socially constructed conditions of linguistic interaction but also to linguistic forms themselves. Such a move allows us to link two rich theoretical traditions, for it provides an opportunity to refer to the structural reading of language forms, as has been developed by several generations of linguists, in particular under the umbrellas of diverse schools of structuralism, formalism, or poetics (Tihanov 2019; Kola & Ulicka 2015). Thus, I argue that the structural properties of language that they have uncovered can also be related to the notion of field, as I will explain in more detail below. Such a move allows us to relate language forms and actions to social context using the very same structural frame. This allows us to relate possible developments of pragmatics to the established structuralist and formalist theories of language, maybe even revive them in some way through these new uses. In any case, this move allows language structures to be considered as social structures or as socially (not psychologically) produced structures, which in turn are part of wider social structures that both produce them and can be co-produced by the language structures. Let me note in particular that the information structure of sentences and texts, as Prague structuralists have laid it out, may be read in relational terms; that is, it can be related to field logic. The basic notions of that approach involve interpreting structures of sentences in terms of relational notions of “background” and “focus,” “topic” and “comment,” and “given” and “new” information (Sgall 1969). Strong elements of relational thinking are present already in foundational texts of linguistics and literary studies, including Saussure, who argued that “concepts are defined not positively, in terms of their content, but negatively by contrast with other items in the same system. What characterizes each most exactly is being whatever the others are not” (Saussure 1983: 115). Moreover, Saussure also noted that, in writing, “the values of the letter are purely negative and differential” and that we need only be able to distinguish one letter from another (Saussure, 1983: 118). Thus, what I propose is that both basic structures of words (in the world-formation aspect), of sentences (in particular in the aspects of their information structure), as well as of texts, and other larger or intermediate language structures, may be operationalized as micro-social fields. What I have in mind here is that a binary opposition can be seen as a one-­ dimensional field; however, the more complex language structures become, their models in the form of fields will have more dimensions. In simplest cases, one-dimensional language forms may be seen as vectors

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between basic elements such as phonemes or, at higher levels, words or sentence parts. These vectors can be seen not only as constituting but also as referring to or implying the existence of one-dimensional fields, usually with two opposite poles. Simple two-element sentences (those composed of two words) may be seen as defining two-dimensional fields built on the spectrums of possible synonyms of the words employed or related notions that could replace the words used. The spectrum of such possibilities can be seen as defined by possible contexts of the use of such a sentence. In fact, even rather simple language structures referring to specific social relations open the possibility of building wider spectrums of imaginable configurations, a set of which may be seen as constituting a small-scale field. Even a composite world or notion, built with some suffixes or prefixes, assumes the possibility of the use of other elements of the same type. The same is true about the structure of sentences, where the number of possible combinations with similar grammatical structures is usually endless, although it may be restricted by higher-order contexts that define what and how can be said in specific circumstances. In addition, larger texts may be based on structures open to many other alternative uses, which include genres or styles. Besides, as we know, text structure is not necessarily linear; thus, text structure can be considered to be potentially multidimensional. One of the approaches to text structure is Teun van Dijk’s concept of macro-structure (van Dijk 1980). Again, the macro-structure of a text can be interpreted in terms of a social field, one which is organized, among others, along the axis of old and new information or the axis of stylistic variation. Moreover, macro-rules, a notion introduced by van Dijk in his attempt to theorize the process of discourse comprehension, could also be seen as socially constructed rules of text use (including production and reading) rather than merely psychological mechanisms, as van Dijk and Walter Kintsch suggested (van Dijk and Kintsch 1983). As they have proposed, macro-rules include rules of construction, generalization, deletion, and integration. Through these rules, representations of texts are built, according to van Dijk and Walter Kintsch. The resulting representations take the form of summaries, abstracts, or simple statements, as van Dijk explains. These summaries, whenever “mental” or written, can only emerge in forms and ways that social contexts allow them to be built. After all, the notion of “thinkability,” which may be appropriate here, implies the social construction of what can be perceived as an individual mental process. What is of crucial importance in the context of my argument, however, is

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that the macro-rules may allow an individual to infer or construct crucial axes of organizing texts. In other words, they allow the building of textual interpretation in terms of what Sgall calls their “given-new” structures. Therefore, they may be seen as tools of mechanisms through which texts’ structure is simplified or inferred for specific uses. If we conceive a text structure as a field, then macro-rules can be seen as socially conditioned rules of reduction of their dimensionality.

5  Meaning Production and the Mechanism of Homology The crucial focus of this text considers effective meaning production as seen from the sociological perspective presented here, one which could greatly enhance the theory of pragmatics. As I have tentatively noted in my recent book (Zarycki 2022), this perspective shows that all language forms, both abstract as well as actual, are endowed with meaning by the mechanism of homology. In this chapter, I will develop this argument and demonstrate how it can be used for the aforementioned project of reinventing or developing a new variant of linguistic pragmatics. As a reminder, Bourdieu defined homology as the similarity of structures between fields. His classic case study was the field of cultural production and its relation to the field of cultural consumption. In that example, Bourdieu argued about the crucial role of intermediaries, who help match supply with demand, not only in purely quantitative terms but primarily in terms of the similarity of measures, or classification systems, used in both fields. The mechanism of homology, as it was seen by Bourdieu, may be related to Althusser’s notion of “interpellation” (Althusser 1971). Similar mechanisms of structural coupling are identified in other paradigms, including “resonance,” “isomorphism,” or “synchronization.” As Bourdieu has argued, homology is always partial, and for this reason, he also introduced the notion of “refraction” borrowed from optics. He understood refraction as a reflection or projection of one field’s structure on another one. Just like homology, refraction is, by definition, always partial. Full homology would imply a lack of autonomy in a specific field and would mean that two fields are structurally identical, which would make one of them redundant. This reasoning may also be related to a well-known argument by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in their work “Hegemony and socialist strategy.” As they posit, “Every social practice is therefore—in

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one of its dimensions—articulatory. As it is not the internal moment of a self-defined totality, it cannot simply be the expression of something already acquired; it cannot be wholly subsumed under the principle of repetition; rather, it always consists in the construction of new differences” (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 113–114). The mechanism under discussion may also be modeled in terms of relations between networks, which are often considered as a notion interchangeable with the concept of fields (de Nooy 2003). In such a paradigm, for example, Frédéric Godart and Harrison White argue that meanings may be seen as “generated through switchings among netdoms triggered by events [….] so the contrast between netdoms creates perception and sustains meaning” (Godart & White 2010: 571–572). In the same way, on the level of symbolic behavior, or communication, homology between an utterance and its context should never be full. If it is full, the message becomes redundant. In any case, I suggest the idea of relating language structures or structures of specific statements (from sentences to discourses), which can be modeled as micro-fields (the fields of established potentialities), to structures of social fields in which they are used. That relationship may be seen as the basic mechanism of communication as well as of meaning-making and could potentially become the central process to be studied by the radically defined pragmatics proposed in this chapter. The idea here is to see meaning as arising from the juxtaposition of at least two fields. They can be of any scale, but there must exist minimal and socially imaginable comparability of structures between them. Again, Bourdieu assumed some degree of autonomy in all fields, which also implies some degree of uniqueness in their structures. Thus, the autonomy of a given field, as related to other fields or fields of reference, can be equated with the general meaning that the given field produces. In this way, the meaning of words, sentences, or texts, if we model them as mini-fields, can be seen as a function of their autonomy, or uniqueness, in relation to fields of reference, which in turn are defined by the context of interaction or constituted by it. These contexts may range from strictly situational to well-established structural and cultural forms, which are at the same time all related. Of importance are binary oppositions of language (and more generally of culture), on which basic linguistic structures are based. They may be related to basic oppositions in social fields of higher order, which may be, in turn, related to country-level social and political cleavages. At the highest level, these binaries may be related to the axes of the field of power in a specific state or political community. This

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basic structural relation between fields of both small language forms and large social fields may be read in terms of homology. First, according to the structuralist understanding, homology is anchored by referring to “background,” “topic,” or “given.” Then, the scope of homology is established (or autonomy, that is, the meaning of the message) by adding the “focus,” “comment,” or “new” information. Such a structuralist model establishes a relationship between different types and levels of symbolic action, discursive in particular. Looking from the other end, it also allows us to theorize the developments at the level of the field of power in terms of meaning-making and pragmatics. What is very important in this model is that, in contrast to psychological approaches, it assumes that the frames of social relations exist independently of the participants in the interaction. These social relations can be called Durkheimian social facts, which mean they can be also negotiated or even co-constructed within certain limits. Boundaries of such actions depend on the autonomy of the communicative situation (micro-field) and the resources (power) of its participants. This does not mean, however, that the identification of these contexts will always be easy and unambiguous. Much depends on the degree of confrontational nature of the interaction in question. When it is large, any attempt to model it will be more strongly entangled in the struggle over its definition. Also contested may be at what level a given interaction should be interpreted. Some interactions and their context, as we know, may be seen as situational. In the same vein, fields may be reconstructed as situational (e.g., conversation during a casual meeting of friends). However, these situational fields are usually embedded in much wider and more stable social fields, which endow these specific micro-fields with routines, power relations, and, therefore, meanings. Thus, for example, the general social field of a given society predetermines possible social roles that are expected from actors with specific social status. In other words, the structure of social roles (e.g., family roles, occupational roles, or lifestyles) is homological to the space of social structure in a given society. Once a social actor takes on a role that is most likely “predicted” by his or her position in the social space, he or she may be seen as enacting full homology between the two fields. His or her social role, in effect, becomes fully naturalized. However, when he or she begins to deviate in some aspect from such a role prescribed by the social context, his or her behavior becomes a generator of new meanings. The stronger the departure, the more expressive and unique the meanings.

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However, this does not mean that the deviation will be effective because if a given social actor has limited resources, his significant departure from expected homologies will be classified as an individual deviation. In other words, this individual deviation would constitute a local violation of social expectations that would not carry broader social overtones or interference. If, however, he or she has a high social standing and significant resources, his or her unexpected behavior based on relatively low homologies between the micro-field of his occurrence and the fields of the social context could be read as a socially significant event. At its highest level of recognition and effectiveness, it would be considered a new pattern of social behavior, a new form, or even a new linguistic norm. At the level of sociological analysis, such a significant but recognized violation of behavioral norms predicted by homology with reference fields is considered an attempt to change the structures of the field, specifically by changing its major axes in relation to the structure of reference fields (e.g., fields of power). It can be noted that these observations are linked to the insights of the traditional linguistic pragmatics regarding the violation of so-called conversational maxims. The violation of certain limits creates new meanings based on the implicature effect. Thus, implicature would correspond to a relative violation of homology. However, an excessive or unfortunate violation of conversational maxims breaks the conversation and makes communication impossible. In the view proposed here, we would be talking about such a low level of homology that does not allow the creation of new meanings. Here, one can also apply Bourdieu’s notion of movement or trajectory in a field. Such movement is related to the process of capital conversion. According to this vision, every social action, including language use, is an act of capital conversion. For example, economic capital can be converted into cultural capital through the acquisition of competencies confirmed by the acquisition of a diploma or passing an exam. Such a conversion may reduce a person’s stock of economic capital and increase his stock of cultural capital. This demonstrates his or her move in the space of the field if its dimensions are defined by indicators of cultural capital and political capital. If we are dealing with large-scale operations in proportion to the resources of the entire field, that is, if they involve large groups of actors or actors with large resources, such conversions can also change the geometry of the entire field. Furthering the diploma example, one could talk about the massification of paid higher education in a given country, which results in the inflation of university degrees and the increase of substantial

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debt for a large part of the population, as we are currently observing in the US. Socially meaningful pragmatic acts can be theorized in this approach as acts of contravention of expected homologies. In most radical cases, they may constitute breaches of homology, which establish new autonomous fields. In most spectacular cases, such breaches can give birth to new states, new languages, or new religions. On a smaller scale, they can create new notions, new language forms, new political movements, or factions of the elite. Thus, what is conventionally meant by understanding an utterance involves reconstructing its embeddedness in a hierarchy of social fields and assessing the degree of homology with the most relevant of these structures. For example, in cases of casual, standardized communication such as at home or in workplace contexts, especially when they are homologous in cultural and political terms, these chains of hierarchies are taken for granted, while the degree of homologies remains very high, close to redundancy. In such cases, new meanings appear only at the lower levels of a particular configuration (situational context). This is in contrast to high-­ level political statements or artistic creations. Political statements made on a high level may constitute attempts at changing basic relations in the field of power. On the other hand, artistic creations may attempt to change basic stylistic norms dominant in a given culture. In any case, most art forms, in particular those which are considered creative, tend to mix styles and genres. The more unexpected these mixtures are, the more meaningful these creations are seen. Jan Mukařovský, a famous representative of the Prague School, argued, unlike the Marxist critics, for whom the value of a literary work lies in the ideological correctness of its representation of the social environment, that the value of a literary work lies in its innovativeness in departing from literary tradition and conventions and its ability to challenge the way society is perceived (Mukar ̌ovský 2014). This does not mean that most of both political discourse and art discourses are not full of highly standardized, predictable utterances (Neumann 2007). We often forget that specific political speeches or works of art that are considered creative or unique are produced against the background of a multitude of such works and texts, most of which appear unoriginal and highly predictable. Let us also notice that sometimes what appears as unexpected (that is not fully homological) is the entire stylistic form of a given speech, while sometimes it is only one sentence or word. It may even be a missing word (e.g., “In his speech, the president did not mention China even once”).

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6  The Role of the “field of power” In this context, the notion of the field of power seems particularly relevant for explaining the social nature of meaning. This is because the field of power was defined by Bourdieu as the central area of negotiation of main social divisions (including political cleavages, class hierarchies, and borders between classes), the struggle for the main resources, the courses of exchange between them, and therefore the meanings that are the reference point for any social communication. In such a perspective, meaning production relies on these divisions, which, as Bourdieu argued, are intertwined with social principles of classification. Bourdieu suggested that the field of power could be seen as a synonym or a technical label for what is commonly called “elites” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1993). He proposed this neologism, given that the notion of the elite is usually a very normative one. It is important to understand, first, the basic structural oppositions that Bourdieu identified in the field of power. One of the fundamental oppositions in the field of power is between dominant and dominated. In the symbolic dimension, it is reflected by the opposition between doxa and heresy. Doxa refers to the naturalized common sense shared by all the actors of the field of power as external points of reference. For instance, currently, in most Western societies, doxa includes such naturalized symbols of evil like Hitler or Nazis. Heresy, on the other hand, includes views and values of marginalized sectors of the field of power (or those outside of it, with overt anti-Semites an example for most Western countries). Between these two extremes, there are two milder positions. Closer to doxa, orthodoxy is a symbolic representation of the dominant field of power and heterodoxy. The other fundamental opposition which Bourdieu identified was between temporal and spiritual power, which may be related to the opposition between economic and cultural power or assets in many societies. There are debates in the current studies on the field of power as to what extent this opposition is still clear in the structures of the elites of modern Western nations (Lunding et  al. 2021). Still, as it seems, some forms of this tension, which may also have a form of opposition between economic and political capital, seem relevant in modern societies for at least one reason; symbolic power in modern societies remains a crucial aspect of social order, and it requires the existence of a symbolic sphere (or culture, science and so on) that can be perceived as autonomous from the real or “hard” power. What seems important is that such basic oppositions produced in the field of power are, in fact, political and, at the same time,

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ontological. After all, they define what good and evil are; they set the demarcation lines between life and death or virtue and sin. Following Bourdieu, two aspects of the field of power are elements of the meaning-creation process. First, the proximity to the field of power creates a basic division into heteronomous and autonomous parts of any social field (although this division may also be produced by other fields, in particular, those of economy, politics, or the media). The second aspect is that the field of power produces basic oppositions which are imposed on all other fields by the mechanism of homology. For example, the classic opposition between economic capital (usually dominant) and cultural capital (usually dominated) can act as an important divide in other dependent fields close to the field of power. Fields serving as propagators and amplifiers of core oppositions produced in the field of power include political fields, cultural fields, and media fields. At times, however, their structures may considerably diverge from the structures of the field of power. Either way, any action, such as linguistic exchange, should be read as well as performed in relation to contexts built either directly by the structural divisions projected by the field of power in a given society or indirectly with the mediation of cleavages or axes organizing lower-level social fields down to the micro-field of particular situations. This assumption implies that even the most local and cursory linguistic (and other symbolic) exchanges, at their core, refer to some of the basic oppositions defined in the field of power of a given society. On the highest level of global politics, specific texts should even be read against the background of transnational fields of power, assuming their existence, which is an object of analytical debate. An interesting example of such a reading of an entire volume is the article by Didier Georgakakis and Frederic Lebaron, dedicated to analyzing Yanis Varoufakis’ book describing his experience in the field of power of the European Union (Georgakakis and Lebaron 2018). The authors analyze the geometry of the field of power operating in Brussels and its associated capitals as they have reconstructed it, studying the careers of its main actors empirically and, at the same time, reconstructing the geometry of the image of this field as it is presented in the pages of the book. They interpret the large difference between the two structures as a possible explanation for Varoufakis’ political failure. However, it is also possible to use their analysis differently. The deviation from full homology between the real structure of the European field of power and the structure of its image in the book can be interpreted as the main meaning of the book in question, its subjective message resulting

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from the author’s position in the field in question. This way of interpreting texts can be extended to any other type of linguistic behavior. After all, in every utterance, one can find a basic structure, which can, in more complex language and artistic forms, be multidimensional in nature. In particular, this structure can be reconstructed in terms of the aforementioned macrostructures proposed by van Dijk. Thus, the structure can correspond to a model of a certain field or determine such a field itself. This structure always corresponds to some extent to the structures of the context, determined whether directly by the field of power, indirectly by the political field in the case of media statements, or by local or niche fields, in the case of lower-level interactions. The homology between the structure of the utterance field (e.g., the macro-structure of the text) and the structure of the context field will, of course, always be only partial, and the scale and nature of this deviation will determine, as already suggested, the message or meaning of the utterance in question. As it seems, such a view of the processes of comprehension (especially of text) can also be inspiring for specialists in other fields trying to reconstruct the mechanisms of linguistic communication, in particular psychologists or researchers of artificial intelligence. After all, as it seems, they often have problems taking into account the social aspect of meaning-making. Be that as it may, it can be pointed out that by Bourdieu’s inclusion of the field of power in his model as a key element in the coordination of social systems and therefore meaning-making systems, his account can be considered radically relational. This is because the key relations identified in the field of power underlie the relations in all other fields, including the smallest situational fields or micro-fields of meaning projected by individual sentences or texts. In this more holistic view using the mechanism of homology, even the least meaningful social interaction can be seen as having a meta-political aspect at the level of society as a whole in contrast to traditional pragmatics in which the frame of the context of the interaction is usually a clearly defined conversational situation that may have its own goals (Leech 1983). The radical approach presented here can also lead to a problematization, or contextualization, of the very boundary of the communicative situation (including conventional conversation). If we consider such a situation as marked by, and/or delimiting, a particular field, we can follow here the thought of Bourdieu, who points out that the boundaries of all social fields become objects of active battles waged between actors in a given field and often actors from other fields. In other words, any conservation also has the aspect of a dispute over the definition

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of a conversational situation and its boundaries. This question also relates to the problem of delimitation of boundaries of text units, like sentences, paragraphs, and statements of articles. Where a given unit of text analysis starts and where it ends may also be seen as a socially defined issue, one related to questions of its coherence and cohesion, which are of importance for some branches of pragmatics. Again, coherence from a sociological point of view, as suggested, for example, by Foucault and Laclau, and Mouffe, should be seen as socially established rather than intrinsic property, as seen by most of the pragmatic literature.

7  Geometric Dimension of Meaning-Making Processes The processes of social meaning-making can be analyzed relationally not only in the sense of a general or metaphorical approach but also at a more tangible level. In particular, the geometric dimension of these processes is important. Changes in the geometry of fields can be studied as shifts in their center of gravity or rotations of the individual axes, which can change the proportions of the potentials of their individual poles. For example, the proportions of forces between the poles of economic capital and cultural capital may change. With the occurrence of more radical changes in the structure of a field, such as a strong rotation of one of its axes, the very nature of the poles may change. If we have accurate data about a given field, such as information about the actors that make up the field, we can attempt to reconstruct the field with a high degree of accuracy using quantitative computational techniques. The best known of these is multiple correspondence analysis (Duval 2016; Le Roux and Rouanet 2010). Moreover, the intensity of homology can also be analyzed in geometric terms, as it is a matter of structural similarity between fields; in particular, it can come down to the angle of deviation between the axes of two fields with homologous structure (e.g., the axis of the text field and the axis of the context field). Higher-order social actions, in particular the complex high-order political statements, can thus be analyzed as attempts to change the geometry of the fields, which are also related to attempts to influence the extent of homology between them. This is because a strong homology with an important field (e.g., a field of power or a media field) can change the proportion of forces in dependent fields. In particular, a relatively weak

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sector of a dependent field can become significantly stronger by increasing the homology of that field with a dominant field in which the corresponding sector is much stronger. Thus, to increase the chance of homologies that give rise to such effects, coalitions are often built in individual fields. Their typical goal is to restructure a given field in such a way that its structure moves closer to the reference field, in which the pole with which the initiators of the coalition in the weaker field want to identify is stronger. It is worth noting, therefore, that political coalitions are also very often meaning coalitions, as they imply an agreement to establish shared meanings. At a more precise level, shared meanings involve agreeing on the dividing lines in the field of power, or other fields, that  allow to change the balance of forces between main oppositions of meanings in specific semantic fields. Very importantly, however, such operations do not happen only at the symbolic level but also at the material level. This is because those who possess various types of material and non-material resources are represented in the field of power. In such a context, issues of proportion and comparability (commensurability) of specific dimensions of different fields can become the immediate subject of political disputes. Such issues may appear to some as merely rhetorical disagreements. Examples of these issues are the idioms that prohibit the comparison of “apples and oranges.” However, issues of comparability are a key aspect of all communication as they touch upon the matter of the construction of semantic homologies, the problematics of which goes far beyond matters of appropriate or persuasive use of metaphors. In such a view, one can refer to the well-known work Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff and Johnson 1980), which emphasizes the central importance of metaphors in communication. As with van Dijk’s study of “macrostructures,” however, I would point out that metaphors, like macrostructures, should be seen not only from a psychological perspective but, above all, from a social, and therefore sociological, perspective. From such a perspective, metaphor can be seen as a tool for indicating a possible, desirable, or real homology, so its use has always been an aspect of operating in social space. It is also worth noting that the use of metaphors is often subject to various constraints. In language, references to such limitations can manifest themselves in the form of caveats like “toutes proportions gardées,” which can be interpreted as ways of indicating the limited scope of a given homology. In the geometric sense, in the case of disputes over the “comparability” of different measures or dimensions of fields, the issue of changing the

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center of gravity in a particular field may become central. An aspect of disputes of this type is the definition of what is the center or neutral sphere in any area (field). After all, in all spheres, it is possible to speak of “balanced” or “moderate” views (implicitly, not deviating too much from what is agreed upon as neutral or average views). This naturalized “average,” this common sense of the field, is established either in the field itself or in the strongly dominant overarching field. Following this logic, every linguistic utterance can also be considered in terms of how it relates to the geometry of the field, which is its key context. Here what becomes crucial is precisely how the center of the field is defined, as its positions are considered neutral. This is also what the use of metaphors, which allow making references between field geometries, primarily serves.

8   Linguistic Behavior as Capital Conversion Linguistic interaction can also be analyzed using Bourdieu’s theoretical framework relating to the concept of capital conversion. According to this framework, every social action contributes to this conversion. In other words, in order to achieve this conversion, certain resources are required; the skillful use of these may result in a multiplication of resources, and they can be exchanged for another type of capital at a favorable rate. As Bourdieu also suggested, each social action has declared goals or ambitions, which he calls “position-taking,” and he distinguishes them from the objectively defined positions of the actors in specific fields. Position-­ takings also create their own fields, which endow them with meaning. However, it is only by juxtaposing the field of position-taking with the field of objective positions that we can fully understand the meaning of a given statement. If the statement has high causal power, then it will lead to a real shift in the position of a given actor in a specific field, defining relatively permanent social positions. Such a shift can also take place by changing the geometry of a given field, for example, one that would change in its relations with the position-taking field or another important social field. Thus, it can be generalized that the power and unique meaning of a given utterance increase as the degree of homology between the field of a given utterance and the field of its context decreases. High homology means the typicality, predictability, or rituality of a given utterance, as well as its social acceptability in a given context. No great resources are needed for such an utterance, but its effects will not be significant either. Decreasing homology creates a difference that gives meaning and

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uniqueness to the utterance. But this dependence has a limit, a limit set by the complete rupture of homology, a scenario in which the utterance in question will lose its meaning altogether. In other words, the utterance would no longer effectively relate to its target field as intended by the author. Thus, what is referred to by linguistic pragmatics as the performative aspect of an utterance can be analyzed as the process I have outlined above. Illocutionary force in such perspective could be seen as an ability to optimize the effects of homology on which a given utterance (linguistic behavior) is based. High homology means the low meaning of an utterance and, therefore, its low effect in terms of favorable capital conversion for the speaker. Declining homology increases the meaning of an utterance, for example, as an attempt to change the geometry of the field; but if it exceeds its critical threshold, as mentioned, it can result in a rupture in the mechanism of meaning creation. The moment of this rupture is difficult to predict and will always depend not so much on the judgment of the speaker or language analysts but on the wider social assessment of the behavior in question. Thus, the researcher should focus not so much on looking for objective conditions for the optimal level of homology (or conditions for the happiness of the utterance, as the founders of pragmatics called it) but on empirically determining this efficiency in each case separately. At the same time, it is worth noting that the proposed method of analysis can refer to and combine different levels of social analysis. So, this method makes it possible to study anything from local conversations in mini-social fields, such as family or friendship circles, to large political debates and disputes. In the latter regard, a good example is the aforementioned disputes over the meaning of Nazism and the Holocaust as fundamental semantic reference points for Western liberal democracies (Alexander 2002). If we take a recent example from international media discourse, it is no coincidence that references precisely to Nazism are at the center of Russia’s attempts to legitimize its aggression against Ukraine. At the same time, it can be noted that, at least outside Russia, the effectiveness of this rhetoric is rather low, in particular in the broadly defined West. One aspect of this relatively low effectiveness may be that the level of homology between the dominant Western field of power and its symbolic dimension and the field assumed in the statements of Kremlin propagandists is too low. This is not to say that the homology is so low that it does not give these statements some broader visibility. At the same time, it can be noted that similar Russian discourses were more effective before

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the invasion of Ukraine when concerns about the influence of nationalist forces in the Ukrainian government were more widespread in the West. In any case, the structure of the field of visions of twentieth-century history in which Nazi Germany appears as the embodiment of evil and the structure of the field of interpretation of the various political forces in Ukraine are currently so little related in most of the Western world that attempts to tie them together appear unconvincing. In other words, the direct homology is so small that it is not socially recognized. However, as Marlene Laruelle points out, the use of direct comparison to Hitler is also becoming more frequent in the domestic politics of Western countries, and the subject of such comparisons includes Donald Trump, among others (Laruelle 2019). On the other hand, the use of the same analogy in discourses critical of political opponents is often used in the public space of many countries but at the level of homology highly mediated by other fields. By linking their vectors along a chain of homology, it is possible to refer opponents to the heirs of the Nazis without expressing it explicitly, which may increase the social acceptability and, therefore, the effectiveness of a given metaphor. This way of relating to the semantic oppositions based on the Nazi heritage and Holocaust may also be referred to as the mechanism of “euphemization,” which Bourdieu has discussed several times (Bourdieu 1998). One can also note that euphemization can also be seen in terms of refraction, which is a limited but still effective use of homology. By analogy, one can study how the semantic opposition of communism versus anti-communism, which was important in many former Soviet bloc countries, works. On the one hand, one can show the genesis of this semantic opposition and link it to political, geostrategic, and economic processes. On the other hand, it is possible to show how its contemporary interpretation is located in the meanings of various fields of power, and political and media fields. The change that took place in Poland around 2005–2015, i.e., the end of the so-called post-communist cleavage (Grabowska 2003) and the transfer of the concept of “post-communism” to the category of abstract evil with which any opponent can be associated, can also be interpreted in these terms. In particular, I described this in more detail in my study of electoral geography (Zarycki 2015), in which I reconstructed the changing geometry of the Polish political field. The point here is that the changes in the political scene during this period marked the merger of two previously independent axes of conflict on the Polish political scene (the post-communist division and the urban-rural

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division). The new dominant cleavage, which can, for example, be referred to as the liberal versus conservative cleavage, thus changed the earlier meanings of basic political concepts in Poland, including the meaning of “communism” and “post-communism,” “liberalism” or, finally, the Catholic religion. This change was, of course, strongly related to the change in the geometry of the Polish field of power after 2005. Another possible example is the emergence of the contemporary meaning of “populism,” which was not until recently what it is known as today in the Western world. As Koen Damhuis shows, for example, the rather sudden strengthening of the new right in France and the Netherlands, which he has studied, can be considered in terms of a geometric shift of cleavages in the political field, leading to the formation of new homologies producing entirely new oppositions and a change in the basic meaning of key political concepts (Damhuis 2020).

9  Conclusion What I postulate in particular in this text is a new version of linguistic pragmatics that would fully incorporate the political dimension of human communication. This, of course, refers to the notion of political understood at a deep meta-level, for example, as it is discussed by Chantal Mouffe (2005). At the disciplinary level, my text could be read as a call for sociological contextualization of linguistic pragmatics, which seems to be long overdue. It can be noted that, historically, attempts to move toward a rapprochement between the two disciplines have been made before. The Polish school of structuralism (which some refer to as Polish formalism) is a case in point (Karcz 2002). However, these attempts were abandoned, and the paths of linguistic pragmatics and sociology, despite their obvious proximity of interest, have not converged. Discourse analysis, particularly critical discourse analysis, can be considered an attempt at such a rapprochement. However, as it seems, it has been relatively more influenced by social psychology or political science than by structural sociology. On the other hand, pragmatics itself remains strongly influenced by philosophy and traditional linguistics. Intriguing in this context is the evolution of poetics, which, renewed in the postwar period, seemed a natural area for linguistic-sociological rapprochement. However, as the history of the flagship journal Poetics best demonstrates, the fate of this rapprochement proved to be unexpected, if somewhat disappointing. The journal came strongly close to structural and critical sociology but abandoned almost

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entirely its interest in analyzing actual linguistic forms. Thus, it has moved away from linguistics. Using the language proposed in this text, it can be said that the homology between Poetics and the field of linguistics began to diminish so much that, at some moment, its social relevance for linguistics was severed, which hindered effective interdisciplinary communication. Therefore, this chapter can be read as a call for further attempts at such a rapprochement. As I show here, a promising avenue for such an interaction runs through more systematic and reflective use of Pierre Bourdieu’s main tools. In addition, we can consider new works, developing them and pointing out possible ways to adapt the Bourdieu’s ideas within different cultural and political contexts. By doing so, we can better operationalize the key issue of context and facilitate the linking of its different levels. The proposed linkage may also help provide a better understanding of the dynamics taking place in different social fields, particularly the fields of power of different countries. In particular, the analysis of meaning-making as an aspect of coalition building in the field of power seems promising. This approach could be an important contribution of linguistics in the broad sense to the analysis of political processes. Be that as it may, the approach I propose here assumes that no analysis of language is possible without taking into account the configuration of the field of power. To recap, the article proposes a combination of linguistic analysis of language forms, which are usually lower-order forms on the scale of social organization (individual utterances, texts, specific discourses), with sociological analysis at higher levels of social organization, in particular, mezzo and macro-social structures, which, in Bourdieu’s terms, can be operationalized with the concept of field. This connection is based on the assumption of homology and therefore similarity of structures between these levels. Of course, this homology is always only partial. But relying on the same mechanism, it is hoped that this text also carries some new meaning, which is based on pointing out the incomplete but essential homology between the structures of two disciplines: linguistics and sociology, and more specifically, linguistic pragmatics and critical relational sociology. The proposed way of linking field analysis to structural analysis of text and discourse may, among other benefits, allow us to revive and employ in a new context largely forgotten structuralist and formalist approaches to the study of language—not only the Prague School, the Russian Formalist Circle, or the Tartu-Moscow School, but even more overlooked Polish formalists of the 1930s and structuralists of the 1960s.

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Acknowledgments  Research presented in the paper has been financed by the National Science Center of Poland (NCN) within the framework of research project 2015/17/B/HS6/04161.

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CHAPTER 12

Beyond Relationism? Different Relational Perspectives and George Herbert Mead Lorenza Gattamorta

In recent years, there has been renewed interest among contemporary social theorists in the work of George Herbert Mead, and more recent interpretations have on occasion diverged significantly from more traditional views of Mead’s work (see in particular Joas 1995, 2001; Joas and Huebner eds. 2016). The pages that follow will be reflecting on Mead’s work from the specific viewpoint of the relational theories of society that emerged in the period from the 1980s to the early 2020s. The reflections contained in this chapter essentially center around two questions: the first question is whether or not Mead can be considered as having offered added value to the formulation and development of contemporary relational sociologies; the second question is whether relational sociologies constitute a helpful, original interpretative key to certain controversial aspects of Mead’s work, with particular reference to the relationship between the Self, social relations, and the creativity of action.

L. Gattamorta (*) University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Hałas (ed.), Methodology of Relational Sociology, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41626-2_12

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1   G.H. Mead and the “relational turn” in Sociology Over the last thirty years or so, relational sociologies have developed significantly at the international level. The term “relational sociologies” is deliberately used in the plural form here, since “relational sociology” comprises a number of different research approaches, and these approaches are not always mutually compatible (Dépelteau 2018). Palgrave Macmillan’s publication of two collective volumes (Dépelteau and Powell eds. 2013a; 2013b), together with the Handbook of Relational Sociology (Dépelteau ed. 2018), brought to the fore of international sociology the presence of a wealth of studies on relational issues. For many years beforehand there had been networks of scholars studying such questions in many parts of the world. Regardless of the differences among relational sociology’s research programs, it cannot be denied that what was being witnessed here was a “relational turn” in the social sciences in general, and sociology in particular. Did the reinterpretation of Mead’s work play a specific role in the emergence and development of this “relational turn” in the social sciences? Was Mead an important source of inspiration for relational sociology scholars similarly to other classical thinkers, like, for example, Georg Simmel? Cantò Milá (2005) published a key study of the relational interpretation of Simmel’s work, and has continued to analyze this question further in more recent writings (Cantò Milá 2018, 2020); other sociologists writing after Milá have tried to reinterpret Simmel from a relational perspective and/or establish a relational sociology based on key categories to be found in Simmel’s thought: could a similar thing be deemed to have occurred in regard to Mead? The question of Mead’s role should be considered within the context of the broader debate on the originality of relational theories. Certain scholars operating in this field maintain that a relational theory originates from the hybridization and updating of approaches and models previously established by classical sociologists and re-elaborated by contemporary sociological theory. Other scholars, on the other hand, argue that a relational theory of society is innovative and relatively independent of classical theories. Generally speaking, any new field of study and research inevitably has to seek legitimation within the scientific community. On the one hand, its dialogue with the classics, even when of a critical nature, helps legitimize that field’s academic status: the sociological literature produced by the predecessors of relational theory may point to interrupted directions

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or contain food for thought, which may be further developed within a contemporary context; the link with the classics thus legitimizes the development of a relational theory capable of interpreting those processes ongoing within contemporary society. On the other hand, it is also possible to legitimize the new field of study by claiming its substantial discontinuity from previous literature: a relational theory is justified by the very fact that classical sociological models fail to suitably comprehend existing social relations. This chapter intends to examine whether, and in what way, these two different perceptions of the role of relational sociology also influence the manner in which Mead’s work may be reinterpreted. A reflection on Mead that takes account of relational sociology should begin from certain key aspects of Mead’s theory. When he investigates the process by which individual identity is established, he acknowledges the central role that social relations play in that process: a social relation exists when two or more individuals interact, and in that interaction each of them bears in mind the actions and behavior of the other(s). Mead points out that mutual interaction occurs through a process of symbolic mediation: individuals utilize symbols not only to interpret reality, but also to communicate with others, to share meanings, and to understand the meanings that others attribute to objects, actions, and social relations. It is through symbolic communication and mediation in social interactions that the “definition of the situation” is gradually achieved. Mead distinguishes three phases in the formation of personal identity. During the initial phase, an individual gets to grips with language and learns to utilize symbols and to communicate with others. During the second phase, the individual comes to terms with him/herself as seen through the eyes of others (at this point, Mead implicitly adopts the concept of the Looking-­ Glass Self as formulated by C.H. Cooley), and thus establishes an idea of him/herself, which Mead calls Me, through the expectations, judgments, and definitions of others; during this phase, social relations (offering both information and feedback) represent the principal means by which the individual develops his/her identity. The third phase sees the individual developing a sense of Self (which Mead calls I) as an active person capable also of modifying the Me together with the social environment. During this phase of the process, an individual can rely on the linguistic, communicative, and symbolic skills acquired during the preceding two phases, and may utilize such skills in a more reflexive, intentional manner in relations with others: “we then consider American pragmatism, specifically, what the work of George Herbert Mead might offer to thinking about the

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Self as inherently relational and with a capacity for agentic reflexivity” (Roseneil and Kekotiki 2016, 144). As previously mentioned, one of the key concepts of Mead’s theory is that of “symbolic mediation”. In order to interact with the social world around them, individuals create and employ symbols; it is in these processes of interaction that shared meanings are constructed, divulged, and negotiated. Such symbols may be of a material nature, such as written words or physical objects, or they may consist of gestures. In both cases, the symbols in questions are a mental representation of something, and they enable individuals to communicate and cooperate with others. Symbols have a conventional meaning that is established through their social use and interaction, and this means that they can be used in a flexible, and also partly creative, cooperative manner. Signs also refer to something else; however, in this case, unlike with symbols, their meaning is of an intrinsic nature. Symbolic mediation enables individuals to develop thoughts, to act in a coordinated way, and to make decisions. Symbols are therefore of fundamental importance for the construction of social reality: in Mead’s view, that reality cannot be interpreted as a given, but is something that is constructed through the symbolic interaction of individuals. The question is whether this interweaving of symbolic relations and constructions presupposes individuals trapped in a social setting or individuals capable of acting in a creative manner. This latter interpretation is the one proposed by Joas (1996), who, through the mediation of Dewey and Mead, revealed that it was possible to overcome the limitations of traditional social action theories. While, on the one hand, Mead’s work can be justifiably considered a source of inspiration for those studying the processes of the construction of personal identity through social relations, on the other hand, as has been observed, “we cannot be too gung-ho about taking Mead as being uncomplicatedly compatible with contemporary relational sociology, the standard line taken is that Mead’s work describes the interactional mechanisms through which seemingly individual capacities and dispositions are socially engendered” (Abbott 2019, 21). The following pages will be considering a number of relational sociology studies and analyzing whether Mead had a key role to play in the formulation thereof; they will also be reflecting on how the authors examined here interpret Mead in regard to the question of the independence and creativity of the Self in relation to the social environment.

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The starting point for such reflection is represented by two paradigmatic works: the Manifesto for a Relational Sociology (Emirbayer 1997), which proved of fundamental importance for the international development of the “relational turn” in sociology, and the chapter of the Handbook dedicated to Mead, written by Côté (2018). Emirbayer’s Manifesto continues to be frequently mentioned, and for several years the arguments set out in that essay were considered to be a paradigmatic exposition of relational sociology, despite the fact that various (not in English though) studies have already been published in the field (Donati 1983; Bajoit 1992). In his Manifesto Emirbayer argues that there are two alternative ways of perceiving social reality: the first (rather static) approach perceives that reality as composed of substances, while the second, more dynamic approach sees it as a series of processes. Emirbayer argues that the majority of sociological theories are premised on the first of these two hypotheses: this is true, albeit to different degrees, of the models centered around the rational actor, of those based on shared values and rules, of other forms of holism and structuralism, and even for statistical and quantitative approaches. Relational sociology, on the contrary, adopts the second of the two approaches, and tries to establish a vision of the relationship between individuals and social structures based on a transactional point of view. Emirbayer’s essay clearly reveals the influence of American pragmatism (and of Dewey in particular) at the philosophical level, and of Harrison White at the sociological level. As far as Mead is concerned, on the other hand, he is only ever mentioned in a few sections of Emirbayer’s work. Nevertheless, the latter points to Mead (together with Peirce) as among those who inspired transactional thinking in the field of sociology, which was also developed in Wiley’s reflections (1994) on the semiotic self: “Norbert Wiley argues against both old and new versions of faculty psychology, which posits pregiven, innate properties in human nature, in favor of a more ‘dialogic’ perspective influenced by C.  S. Peirce and George Herbert Mead. For him, the Self is a structure consisting of three elements, the I, you, and me, in continual interaction with each other and with other selves in an ongoing ‘semiotic flow’ of meaning. From Wiley’s (1994, 72) transactional perspective, the Self is ‘a kind of public square […] the members of which are in constant conversation” (Emirbayer 1997, 297). More generally speaking, transactional thought underlies the specific type of relational sociology formulated in Emirbayer’s Manifesto: this work points out that “transactional thinking, in a word, deconstructs a taken-for-granted moral universe” (1997, 300). Emirbayer’s thesis is in

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keeping with various different theoretical approaches to contemporary sociology developed over the years, including not only pragmatism, but also phenomenology and ethnomethodology. In Emirbayer’s Manifesto, Mead’s name is also associated to that of another important representative of American pragmatism, Dewey, who is mentioned much more frequently in the article in question. When Emirbayer reflects on the ethical aspects of action from the viewpoint of his own theory, which he calls “relational” and “transactional”, he looks specifically to Dewey for support (on pragmatism and relational methodology, see also Kivinen and Piiroinen 2018). Emirbayer believes that values ought not to be considered fixed, objective entities existing independently from social players; at the same time, he believes that values cannot be considered a mere subjective construct. This question calls to mind a long-standing debate among sociologists and philosophers (Scheler on the one hand, and Nietzsche on the other, to name just two). According to Emirbayer, “values are by-products of actors’ engagement with one another in ambiguous and challenging circumstances, which emerge when individuals experience a discordance between the claims of multiple normative commitments” (1997, 309). Emirbayer cites a passage taken from Mead’s work in which the latter discusses the reconstruction of the social world, of the relational fabric encompassing us all, through our interaction with others and through language. In this interaction, social actors transform not only the context but also their vision of the world and their fundamental values. Emirbayer’s references to Mead are related to transactional thought (a question that is central to the contemporary debate regarding relational sociology) and to social interaction’s capacity to change the values of society (a theme that is key to the debate on symbolic interactionism). However, Mead’s specific contribution is not examined in a detailed manner in the aforesaid essay. Mead cannot therefore be considered a scholar of key importance for the formulation of the Manifesto. Emirbayer’s sources are to be found elsewhere: it has been claimed that Dewey and Bourdieu could be considered Emirbayer’s principal sources of inspiration (Liang, Liu 2018). Emirbayer tends to fall within that category of scholars who attribute a certain creativity to Mead’s concept of Self when placed in the surrounding social context. This question is taken up again by Emirbayer (1998) in his essay What is Agency? published the year after the Manifesto. This essay sees the relational sociologist agreeing with the underlying idea formulated by Joas (1996), according to whom “pragmatist thinkers provide the first steps toward developing an adequate conception of the constitutive creativity of

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action” (Emirbayer 1998, 969). By interweaving the pragmatist worldview and Bergson’s theory of time, Mead lays the foundations for a theory of action that goes beyond both utilitarianism and the normative approach. Relational theory’s contributions relating to the work of Mead also include that of Côté (2018), contained in the aforementioned Handbook on relational sociology (in regard to this contribution, see Bella, Ferrucci 2022). The basic argument put forward in Côté’s essay is immediately and clearly announced, when the author declares that Mead’s viewpoint “can best be considered as a ‘relational set of relations’”, but this “does not connect Mead directly to relational sociology in itself and instead uses ‘relational’ and ‘relations’ in a broader (and perhaps looser) sense” (2018, 102). Côté’s thoughts set out in this essay relate more to the moral-­ political sphere than to strictly theoretical concerns. While on the one hand he argues that “the possibility of including Mead in the paradigm of relational sociology has to be considered with caution, at least with respect to the definition of his concepts” (2018, 113), on the other hand he sees Mead as having formulated an original theory not only of Self, but also of society; and it is this second aspect that could be of interest to relational sociology. Côté specifically argues that Mead’s outlook can today be of significant importance as a basis for social criticism. He refers to the neoliberal political-economic culture that first became rooted in Western nations in the early 1980s. This culture, historically based on the laissez-­ faire principle, encouraged and drove criticism of the legitimacy of the welfare state, while promoting free trade on a global scale. The neoliberal model places the emphasis on the individual and on individualism, and means that it becomes more difficult to see society as something made up of relations transcending individuals. In this context, Mead may be considered to be a progressive thinker who places the questions of equality and education at the center of his sociopolitical analysis, in an attempt to strengthen the foundations of democracy. In Mead, as in Côté, the relational dimension is connected to symbolic mediation and to the communicative side of social interaction. According to Côté, Mead’s ideas can help us perceive the term “relational” in a normative rather than a founding sense: relational is the opposite of solipsism, atomism, and egoism. The implications of relational theory in terms of morality and sociality are increasingly of interest to sociology scholars (see Hałas and Manterys eds. 2021), and it is interesting to see that they are discussed also in regard to Mead. Côté’s revival of the thought of George Herbert Mead is thus significantly different to the analyses of Mead offered by the other scholars

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considered so far. The latter all ask themselves whether Mead’s “relational” concept of Self is over-socialized, or whether on the contrary there is room within that concept for a certain creativity.

2  Relationism or Relational Agency? Other  two scholars that have made a contribution on the question of Mead’s concept of Self, structure, and agency in regard to relational sociologies are Pierpaolo Donati and Nick Crossley. While both of them have given a contribution to the question, they differ in their interpretations of Mead and of the latter’s importance for relational sociology. Compared to that of Emirbayer, Donati’s relational sociology has developed even more independently in relation to Mead. Donati believes that relational sociology does not represent the mediation of other theoretical proposals: it does not constitute either a synthesis or a supplementing of classical sociological models. More specifically, relational sociology is not a third way, that is, an alternative to paradigms of structure and paradigms of action, and does not represent a relational reinterpretation of these two approaches. In Donati’s view, relational sociology is characterized by an originality based on the fact that it focuses specifically on social relations as its chosen object of analysis and reflection. Within this general framework initially created by Donati (1983, 1991) and then further developed over the course of time (see, for example, Donati 2011, 2021), Mead’s interactional theory initially plays a marginal role. When formulating his relational theory in his early writings, Donati does not dedicate any significant space to Mead. More specifically, when he rereads the classical sociological models and is concerned with demonstrating the added value of his relational sociology, Donati makes a series of general remarks regarding Mead, the symbolic interactionist, and he does not consider Mead a benchmark for the development of the relational perspective. In fact, he gives greater importance to other authors, such as Max Weber and Simmel, who specifically focus on the concept of social relations. Donati, however, argues that the latter two scholars cannot be considered to be relational in the strict sense of the term. In particular, he believes that Weber always interprets social relations in the light of social action: a social relation is ultimately always a question of the individual and his/her preferences (in terms of rationality and values) and strategies. Weber’s concept of social action is undoubtedly characterized by certain aspects of creativity, but does not manage to transcend the individual sphere completely. On the other hand,

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in going beyond Weber’s individualistic premise, Durkheim considers society as a reality sui generis. This claim, as such, could be welcomed by the proponents of a relational approach; however, Durkheim’s epistemological holism ends up linking social relations to the power of social structures: the agency dimension vanishes (for a criticism of Durkheim’s epistemology in the light of relational sociological, also see Galán Castro 2019). Mutatis mutandis, Donati criticizes the hyper-socialized dimension of Mead’s thinking as well. In the 2000s, Donati proceeds to develop his “autonomous” relational sociology and continues to largely disregard Mead; there were however certain moments when Mead’s ideas were taken into consideration, as a result of, among other things, Donati’s collaboration with Margaret Archer. One important outcome of this collaboration was the publication of a volume on the concept of Relational Self in which the two sociologists (Archer and Donati 2015) offered a significant contribution to the study of the aforesaid question, taking as their points of departure relational theory on the one hand, and critical realism on the other. In the introduction to the Italian edition of Archer’s book Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation, Donati (2008) argues that within Mead’s framework insufficient space is afforded to the social actor’s individuality, that is, to the independence from society’s structure that enables a person to be creative. In Donati’s view, certain versions of contemporary relational sociology contain a form of relationism that he believes can be found also in Mead’s writings. Relationism is considered a new form of sociologism; a kind of hypertrophy of social relations. One of relational sociology’s initial aims was to criticize a theoretical approach that considered individuals detached from their social relations, with such relations being deemed to be essentially of secondary importance. Relationism tends toward the opposite extreme: in other words, individuals are almost lost sight of, with the main focus being placed on those very social relations. In Donati’s view, neither homo oeconomicus—conceived in the field of economics and having a certain influence also in sociology—nor homo sociologicus is compatible with a relational approach, and they do not appear capable of accounting for the social phenomena arising within the contemporary world. With regard to Mead, Donati shares Archer’s argument that Mead’s Self is ultimately conditioned and determined by the Me; Alter and Ego interact in a process which in the case of the Ego moves from the outside to the inside. Mead’s perspective is considered short-­ sighted by Donati because it is centered on a hyper-socialized idea of the individual (in regard to the concepts of the over-socialized and the

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under-socialized individual, see also Gronow 2008). According to Donati, the fact that Mead embraces the idea of the “looking-glass Self” means that “the person has little, if any, possibility of transcending the socio-­ cultural context in which he/she has lived and continues to live. Reflexivity is much more like a mirror reflection than the subject’s autonomous consciousness” (2022, 232). Donati thus reiterates his initial belief that Mead perceives individuals as the product of society; or rather, and in order to distinguish Mead’s theory from those of the classical holistic sociologists of the nineteenth century, he argues that Mead sees the individual as the product of social. Among the components of the Self, the Me is always given priority over the I: the Me comes first, both in time and in the causal chain (it is the social dimension of a person’s identity that generates the individual dimension of the same, and not the other way round). In the sphere of relational sociology, Mead is viewed differently by Roseneil and Ketoviki, who see the I that Mead speaks of as “the phase of the Self that enables a person to act beyond habits and social expectations, that enables novelty and creativity” (2016, 147). A specific reflection is offered by Donati (2022) on the question of the signifying gesture: he dialogues not only with Peirce in particular, but also inevitably with Mead, in regard to this question. The signifying gesture is a fundamental aspect of the ability to communicate; it is of an intentional nature and it presupposes the capacity to put oneself in the other person’s shoes and to interpret the meaning that the other attributes to the gesture in question. Mead distinguishes between gestures that are part of the stimulus-­response system, and those he calls signifying gestures. In the latter case, the reflexive, symbolic dimension of gestures is of key importance. For this very reason, it may also appear that signifying gestures underlie the relational dimension of society; but Donati claims that “the theory expounded in Mind, Self and Society is effectively a philosophy of the act—not of the relationship—from the point of view of how a social process involves the inter-action of many individuals […]. Social relationships play a secondary role and are not investigated as such” (2022, 232). Within the pragmatist school of thought, Donati (2022) believes that also Peirce, although tending toward a certain degree of realism, possesses an “insufficient conception of the relationship that mediates reality and knowledge”, and Peirce’s realism risks culminating in “nominalism and constructivism”: “the relationship between the gesture and its deep, full meaning remains hidden beyond the realm of public opinion and behavioural traits […], the relations of semiosis remain abstract (or virtual) and

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are constructivist in nature” (2022, 224). Emirbayer (1997, 300–301), on the other hand, thinks that Peircean semiotics theory is “congenial to transactional thinking” when Peirce “agrees on the relational embeddedness of symbols but diverges sharply from the Saussurean tradition in taking as his unit of analysis not dyadic structures but rather a triadic process of ‘sign’, ‘object’, and ‘interpretant’”. Basically then, Donati believes that the influence that behaviorism has had on Mead’s thought is also evident in his theory of the signifying gesture, whereby Mead wavers between the individual act and social interaction, without the question of social relations ever being explicitly mentioned in any detail. The objection concerning the secondary role of social relations can be found in many passages of Donati’s works, and concerns various different scholars and theories. In the specific case of Mead, this objection is important, also because it concerns the broader question of reflexivity and agency. As previously mentioned, Donati develops his viewpoint also through his interaction with Archer. Archer however interprets differently the contribution that Peirce might offer to critical realism. Archer (2003, 78–90), like Donati, criticizes that Mead’s inner world lacks, in the perspective of the external one, a real autonomy; however, she thinks that the contradictions present in Peirce’s initial theory of the Self are only apparent. In his first works, Peirce makes statements like “my language is the sum total of myself” (1931–58, vol. 5, § 314), or he declares that human consciousness “is more without us than within. It is we that are in it, rather than it in any of us” (1931–58, vol. 8, § 256); in these statements Peirce seems to deny any autonomy of the Self. In reality, Peirce does not reject human subjectivity but rather Cartesian subjectivism and James’s principle of “absolute insulation”. Archer thinks that the historical phase of the Self (or Me) in Mead could in some way be compared with the “critical Self” in Peirce: the former though, according to Archer, is a socialized deposit, a seat of the inner inclinations matured in the course of life and turned into habits, whereas the latter is a personalized sediment. The dialogue, and in some cases the diatribe, between the I and the critical Self of Peirce begins when the I seeks to convince the critical Self, inclined to routine action, that it is worth undertaking a new course of action different from the habitual one: “When one reasons, it is that critical Self that one is trying to persuade” (Peirce 1931-58, vol. 5, § 421). According to Colapietro’s interpretation of Peirce quoted by Archer, “language is not simply something to which I conform myself; it is something by which I transform myself” (Colapietro 1989: 110; see Peirce MS 290: 58–63; see also

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Colapietro 2009 and his critical engagement with Joas’s creative appropriation of the pragmatic approach). In this sense Peirce argues that the mind is a theater where “the deliberations that really and sincerely agitate our breasts always assume a dialogic form” (Peirce MS 318: 13d). On this topic, in Dépelteau’s Handbook of Relational Sociology, also Emily Erikson (2018), while focusing more on other authors and on social network analysis, briefly reflects on Peirce and Mead and their concept of consciousness. Erikson underlines how Peirce and Mead destabilize the notion of a pregiven and enduring monolithic entity that encounters the world: “Following Peirce, reason is produced through experience—which is a direct contradiction to Kant’s position that reason is prior to experience and is necessary as a foundation through which the experience of the world is possible. Mead further developed this line of opposition to Kant by arguing that consciousness, and particularly self-consciousness, is the product of experiencing a social environment” (Mead 1934, 186–191); Mead in particular “produced an image of the identity and self-­ consciousness as emergent properties that result from grappling with the complex dynamics of the lived world” (Erikson 2018, 272). Crossley’s reflections on relational sociology contain certain considerations regarding the role of Mead. More specifically, Crossley (2011) examines the central role played by Mead in resolving selected questions concerning the relationship between structure and agency; this theme is key not only to relational sociology, but also to contemporary social theory in general. Crossley’s underlying argument is that a relational approach is in fact necessary in order to deal with certain unanswered theoretical problems. On the one hand, a social structure may be seen as a network comprising social actors and the relationships connecting them together; on the other hand, individuals become social actors through their interactions. Crossley argues that structure and agency are emerging effects of social relations. In the above-mentioned work, he criticizes the prevailing understanding of social structure insofar as it affords insufficient importance to agency and social relations. The definition proposed by Crossley is that “social structure is an always-evolving network of interaction, interdependence and relations between reflexive social actors who are formed (from biological organisms in the human case) within those relations and interactions. It involves rules (conventions and norms), negotiated within the network, and resources unevenly distributed and exchanged across it” (2022, 167). Analyses of the concept of social structure are based on studies of the question published by the sociologist Anthony King during the

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first decade of the current millennium. It is important to observe, however, that Mead is another important point of reference for Crossley. In reflecting on the connection between structure and agency, Crossley states that his relational approach avoids the separation of structure from agent “chiefly through appropriation of the work of Mead” (2002, 170). Crossley then specifies why one should look to Mead in order to formulate a relational answer to the problem of the relationship between structure and agency: “His discussion of ‘mind’ and ‘Self’ affords a strong conceptions of agency and his observation that both are formed within social relations and interaction makes that conception relational, embedding actors, irreducibly, within structure” (Crossley 2022, 170). Mead can help scholars reflect not only (within the micro-sociological sphere) on the construction of personal identity and on the creativity of human agency in relation to social structures, but also (in the macro-­ sociological sphere) on collective actors. These actors (governments, companies, and trade unions, for example) have relationships with one another, and they are also interconnected with the agency of individuals: these relations, taken as a whole, represent a significant part of the social structure. Those relations involving collective actors may be considered second-­ order relations, and are part of what may be defined as a multilevel configuration. The network of relations linking individuals to one another is a kind of basic structure compared to the configuration of collective actors. Mead contributes fundamentally to an understanding of the role played by significant symbols in the reflexivity of social actors. Language is the most common example of the use of significant symbols, but many other such examples could be given: significant symbols guide many of the social relations we are party to through the operation of a kind of reflexive control. It should also be noted that “Mead makes a further important contribution when he argues that ‘mind’ and ‘Self’ are formed within networks of interaction and relations (i.e. social structure) which they sustain and have the capacity to transform” (Crossley 2022, 176). Social actors organize themselves within, and thanks to, those interactions that give rise to the social structure; however, they do so in a manner that retroactively effects the structure itself. In addition to language, a second key factor in the development of the Self is the assumption of a role. This process clearly regards institutionalized roles, but once again is related to language and to individuals’ inner conversations. In communicating with others, individuals encounter many different points of view, opinions, and visions of the world; these elements also become part of the way of seeing things and of

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relating to the world. There is no mechanical transition from the outside to the inside world; there is no social determinism that develops through language. What there is, though, is a form of interaction that triggers an inner dialogue. On the one hand it is clear that whatever comes from the world outside conditions the individual; it generates expectations, prejudices, expected recognition in that person. At the same time, however, Mead points out that the relational nature of the Self leads agency to shift to the center of the structure. With regard to this, Crossley also makes reference to Archer’s interpretation of Mead’s thought contained in various of her writings. Crossley’s and Archer’s points of view differ. Archer appears to underscore the fact that Mead sees the Self as a social construct; she criticizes the “over-­ socialization” of the internal conversation of the Self; she thinks that the pre-linguistic presence of the Self to his/her own body serves as the grounding of self-consciousness and that, as a consequence, there is something prior to language that remains unattainable by means other than what Archer calls the “sense of the Self” (2015: 95–06). Crossley, on the other hand, argues that while the mind and the Self are created through relations and interactions, they are nevertheless capable of transforming the structure from within. In his reflections on the Self, Crossley criticizes “Cartesian substantialism” according to which the mind and the body (the brain) are two substances: the first being active, the second being material and passive. These two substances are thus considered distinct and,  although they are interrelated, they can never be mixed up. It is undeniable that Cartesian theory has had a significant impact, more or less directly and explicitly, on modern philosophy and on contemporary human sciences. However, this influence has also made it difficult to gain an adequate understanding of inter-subjectivity. If Descartes’s theory is taken for granted, an individualistic, atomistic (and thus non-relational) conception of society emerges. Crossley criticizes the Cartesian point of view on various levels. The sociologist in him challenges the idea that the mind is a substance; he asserts that consciousness, insofar as it is intentional, is relational. He argues against the idea that individuals possess an immediate awareness of their minds (in regard to this latter question, Cooley’s idea of the “looking-glass Self”, if suitably interpreted and reviewed, could make a significant contribution to the debate). Mead’s overcoming of Cartesian dualism extensively discussed by Crossley is also discussed in a volume edited by Joas and Huebner in 2016 titled The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead. This work repeatedly mentions the fact

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that Mead challenged the Cartesian dualistic separation between mind and body, interiority and social relations, inner speech and external language: “for Mead […] the description of brain states alone is not a sufficient condition for the explanation of mental phenomena, for they come into existence as a relation and as a relation they need to be explained”; our primary relation to the world is not present to us only as a linguistically organized structure, the linguistic relation to the world is an important but a “second-­ order, derivative attitude, situated in the mediatory phase of the act” that can be called representation or symbolic mediation (Madzia 2016, 300). In Mead’s view, attitudes constitute what might be called “bodily intentionality” in the sense described also by Merleau-Ponty (see, in particular, Crossley 2013 and his discussion of Mead, Merleau-Ponty, and embodied communication). According to Crossley, also the ideas of Wittgenstein may be profitably employed for the purposes of a relational sociology: in particular, Wittgenstein’s argument against the existence of private language, a question that was also certainly dear to Mead, who insists above all on the internalization of public language while however leaving a margin of creativity to the I. Crossley thus believes it possible to formulate an alternative to the Cartesian substantialist model by placing inter-­subjectivity at the center of the study of interaction and the social actor. In attempting to do so, Crossley declares that his “main point of reference is the work of G.H. Mead” (2011, 79). Mead’s ideas lead Crossley to believe that a relational rethinking of gestural dialogue, significant symbols, and the meaning of conversation, thought as an inner conversation, and the relationship with the generalized other, is entirely possible. Of the relational thinkers taken into consideration, Crossley is the one who lends the greatest importance to Mead, and who acknowledges Mead’s significant contribution to, among other things, the development of relational sociologies based on the relationship between the Self and social structures.

3  Conclusions As this chapter has attempted to show, contemporary relational sociologies are beginning to reflect on the importance of a rereading of the work of George Herbert Mead. However, compared to other classical scholars (Simmel) or contemporary thinkers (Bourdieu), the attention paid to the work and thought of Mead appears rather limited and non-systematic. This chapter indicates that there are various reasons for this state of affairs: on the one hand, Mead’s perspective has been seen as more relationist

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than relational; on the other hand, the key role played by his transactional perspective has now been recognized, although in this latter case the attention seems to center more on other representatives of American pragmatism (in particular Dewey) than on Mead. The problem of the creativity of action within social relations is the central theme of the revived interest in Mead’s work, and of possible further developments within relational sociology. One future contribution that Mead could certainly make to relational sociology is that of his analysis of significant symbols, ranging from significant gestures to verbal symbols. The internal dialogue involves the internalization not only of external verbal language, but of a broader symbolic-cultural system that could be defined as multilingual. This multilingualism includes a multiplicity of intersubjective signs, both verbal and sensorial (visual or acoustic signs, for example). Mead was the first to utilize the “significant symbol” as a privileged conceptual instrument through which to explain the emergence of a reflexive and creative Self (cf. Hałas 2002; Helle 2005; Gattamorta 2010, Ch. 3). According to Mead, the very process of receiving and decoding symbolic systems cannot happen just in a mechanical and passive way but through an at least minimal reflexivity of the interpretant Self: “the symbol is thus more than a mere substitute stimulus − more than a mere stimulus for a conditioned response or reflex […] the response to a symbol does and must involve consciousness” (Mead 1934, 125). Considering that symbolically regulated behavior of which Mead speaks is an “intentional action”, “the use of symbols cannot be reduced to mere behavior” (Habermas 1967, trans. 1988, 65). As also Miller (1973, 148) observes, “Mead makes it abundantly clear that if men could live by habit alone there would be no occasion for thinking”. Though leaving to relational sociologies unresolved questions on how a dialogical Self preserves certain irreducible emergent properties, Mead repeatedly stresses the capacity of the I to develop creative solutions of problems of Self-realization: “Under the penalty of stagnation, society cannot but be grateful for the changes which the moral act of the creative ‘I’ introduces upon the social stage” (Mead 1934, p. xxvi). As shown, relational sociologies have adopted two divergent positions in regard to such aspects. These positions appear, at least for the time being, to be proceeding in two parallel directions. Perhaps a direct comparative analysis beginning with Mead, as certain relational sociologists have started to conduct, could prove beneficial not only for the development of relational sociology but also for a new, fresh interpretation of certain key aspects of Mead’s work.

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———. 1991. Teoria relazionale della società. Milano: FrancoAngeli. ———. 2008. La conversazione interiore: un nuovo paradigma (personalizzante) della socializzazione. In M.S.  Archer, La conversazione interiore. Come nasce l’agire sociale, 9–42. Trento: Erickson. ———. 2011. Relational Sociology. A New Paradigm for the Social Sciences. London: Routledge. ———. 2021. Transcending Modernity with Relational Thinking. London: Routledge. ———. 2022. A Critical Realist View of Gesture. International Review of Sociology 2: 217–237. Emirbayer, M. 1997. Manifesto for a Relational Sociology. American Journal of Sociology 2: 281–317. ———. 1998. What Is Agency? The American Journal of Sociology 4: 962–1023. Erikson, E. 2018. Relationalism and Social Networks. In The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology, ed. F.  Dépelteau, 271–287. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Galán Castro, E.A. 2019. La crítica de la ontología y epistemología durkheimianas desde la sociología relacional de habla inglesa. Sociológica 96 (2019): 9–38. Gattamorta, L. 2010. La società e i suoi simboli. Roma: Carocci. Gronow, A. 2008. The Over- or the Undersocialized Conception of Man? Practice Theory and the Problem of Intersubjectivity. Sociology 2: 243–259. Habermas, Jürgen 1967. Zur Logik sozialwissenschaften. Tübingen: Mohr; Engl. transl. On the Logic of the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988. Hałas, E. 2002. Symbolism and Social Phenomena. Toward the Integration of Past and Current Theoretical Approaches. European Journal of Social Theory 5 (3): 351–366. Hałas, E., and N. Manterys, eds. 2021. Relational Reason, Morals and Sociality. Bern: Peter Lang. Helle, H.J. 2005. Symbolic Interaction and “Verstehen”. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Joas, H. 1995. G.H.  Mead: A Contemporary Re-examination of his Thought. Cambridge: Polity. ———. 1996. The Creativity of Action. Cambridge: Polity. ———. 2001. The Emergence of the New: Mead’s Theory and Its Contemporary Potential. In Handbook of Social Theory, ed. George Ritzer and Barry Smart, 89–99. London: Sage. Joas, H., and D.R. Huebner, eds. 2016. The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Kivinen, O., and T. Piiroinen. 2018. Pragmatist Methodological Relationalism in Sociological Understanding of Evolving Human Culture. In The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology, ed. F.  Dépelteau, 119–141. New  York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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CHAPTER 13

Normative Reciprocity, Relational Sociology, and the Critique of Forms of Social Life Davide Ruggieri

1   Introduction I would address my chapter, clarifying the three main topics which are mentioned in the title: normative reciprocity; relational sociology; critique of forms of social life. Firstly, even if to all of us Relational Sociology is a very familiar formula, I guess that it is useful to clarify what particular idea of relation must be engaged in this frame. This clarification is due to the very articulated, fragmented, and pluralistic scenario of the last 30 years. Social relations may assume different meanings and this characterizes the different approaches and methodologies. Secondly, the critique of forms of social life is the idea I would like to stress, borrowing some arguments and concerns from the social philosophy, namely from the recent Critical Theory debate. The names of Rahel Jaeggi, Axel Honneth, and Hartmut Rosa have been relaunching some interesting investigations on the concept of the “good life” in a social

D. Ruggieri (*) University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Hałas (ed.), Methodology of Relational Sociology, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41626-2_13

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sense. I think that the convergence of this topic to the main subjects within relational sociology could be fostered and examined. Finally, the idea of normative reciprocity is more challenging and more difficult to treat, because, even if reciprocity is largely used among relational sociologists, it seems to be indeed a slippery concept. I would like to emphasize normative reciprocity as a central issue demonstrating the fundamental convergence mentioned above.

2  The Frame of the Analysis: The Relational Sociology Paradigm As once François Dépelteau explicitly sustained some years ago, relational sociology has become “[…] a sort of inclusive space of deliberation over fundamental issues in sociology; a space co-produced by competent colleagues sharing a general interest in the study of social relations, and bringing different theoretical and methodological orientations” (Dépelteau 2018: VII). It is quite fair to all of us that Relational Sociology has played a pivotal role on the international stage for more than thirty years (Donati 1983): relational sociology has been gradually pervading the different aspects of sociological studies and a vast range of fields (Fuhse and Mützel 2010; Powell and Dépelteau 2013a, 2013b; Dépelteau 2018; Carrà and Terenzi 2019), giving rise to a multitude of worthy contributions in the social sciences: as common aspect of the various approaches, the “social relation” is considered as a very key issue in order to comprehend and reshape the idea of a globalized society. Even if largely assumed as a methodological approach, relational sociology, in its several facets, shows its weakness in a “relativistic” sense, assuming social relations in a reductionist form. Conversely, I would like to emphasize the efforts of Pierpaolo Donati and some other scholars within the international scenario in defending the non-reductionist character of social relations as we will see afterward. What is basically shared among the relational scholars in this regard is recognizing the main contribution given by Georg Simmel in the foundation of sociology as independent social science among humanities (his efforts between the nineteenth and the twentieth century belong to those of some colleagues such as Ferdinand Tönnies, Max Weber, and Émile Durkheim, who were claiming the identity and independence for this new science of the social phenomena). Beyond this essential intellectual

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mobilization, Simmel’s work is sure remarkable also because he was the first sociologist giving a relational turn (Donati 2011a; Ruggieri 2017) to the ontological and epistemological interpretation of the social facts: Wechselwirkung and Vergesellscchaftung are the key concepts in Simmel’s work and they allow the interpretation of the modern character of social life as well as the intimate mechanism of the interaction among individuals. Robert Park attended Simmel’s courses in the Wintersemester 1899–1900, and he testified that Simmel once lectured that his idea of sociology was literally for him like a “new key for old smiths” as well as a “new hammer for old walnuts” (Simmel 2012: 282). This metaphor served to Simmel to express the conviction that sociology hadn’t discovered any new matter of scientific investigation, but only provided a new gaze in order to understand the social reality (as a social relation). Noting that relational gaze assumes a very wide set of meanings and addresses in a sociological sense, in this frame I find very challenging and stimulating the idea sustained in the recent volume edited by Halas and Manterys Relational Reason. Both editors remark that “relational” must be assumed beside “reason,” namely relational is a particular form of understanding social interaction that also includes morality and sociality: “[…] reason, morality, and sociality requires relational understanding, and all of them remain mutually related” (Hałas and Manterys 2021: 7). In this regard, Halas and Manterys hold that the relational approach aims to overwhelm and transcend classic dualistic pairs of opposing methodological concepts (individual/society, micro/macro, individualism/holism, facts/values, etc.). They aim at highlighting—I quote—“[…] the relational grounds of society and culture along with their normativity, and the dilemma of social control and attempts to break this control, typical for modernity and postmodernity” (Hałas and Manterys 2021: 13). As once Donati and Archer in The Relational Subject advocated, when we assume a relational perspective, we should take into account that not mere individuals interact, but we refer to Selves in interaction.1 Recently 1  As Margaret Archer and Pierpaolo Donati rightly put in the volume The Relational Subject (2015), relational sociology must observe the six conditions that we can sum up: (1) “robust singular selves—not individuals—are necessary preconditions for subjects to form relations”; (2) the idea of a Collective Reflexivity; (3) a stratified ontology of the “Relational Subject”; (4) an emergentist conception of relationality with regard to the Critical Realist paradigm; (5) this approach allows working at the micro, meso, and macro levels; (6) engaging critical aspects of modernity toward a relational interpretation of subjects (also under a socio-moral dimension) (Donati and Archer 2015: 13).

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Donati suggested an authentic relational “[…] requires a ‘relational reason’” (Donati 2019: 23). Rainer Forst in his Normativity and Power (2017) conceives reason as a justifiable faculty, determining human beings (which can literally be viewed as “justifying beings”). Reason has intrinsic normative properties; accordingly, I quote, “[…] reason is itself normative and helps us to distinguish the supposed good or right from the examined—that is, justified—good or right. Reason is the faculty of justification and the faculty of justification is what makes us normative beings” (Forst 2017: 22). In Stephen Turner’s book Explaining the Normative (2010), the author defines “normativists” as those who claim that social is basically reduced to “normative facts” which are considered the basic analytical stage. They involve such concepts as “transcendence,” “correctness,” or “validity,” which are conditions of possibility of social life: normativists tackle thus social facts, assuming (or postulating) special transcendental qualities or “validity” within social interactions. Turner denies the possibility to consider normativist theories as causal explanation models to describe social facts. Normative basically has to do with how something should be, in spite of what any empirical and descriptive science must do, that is, telling and reporting what the realm is. Moreover, as Andrew Abbott once suggested, we commonly divide social scientists under two main categories in order to explain social order, maintaining the centrality of “transition” and “contingency” concepts (Abbott 2016: 202): on the one hand, we have “normativists,” and on the other hand “empiricists.” Despite an irreducible dualism between normativists and empiricists, I put forward that social relation must to be regarded as a form of “transcendent” relation emerging from the interaction among individuals, and it must be assumed as a “normative” aspect, as I will put in the last part of my chapter. Unlike many “relationist” approaches which basically reduce relations to “processes” (Abbott, Dépelteau), “transactions” (Emirbayer), “networks” or “structures” (White, Tilly, Crossley), “flows,” “communicative events” (Fuhse), etc., Donati opportunely distinguishes between reductionist (that is relationist) and non-reductionist (that is relational) approaches to the investigation of social relations (Donati 2017): according to the “relational approaches,” social relation has its own ontological sui generis consistency and it is given by the causal power it shows, since it’s assumed as a “steering” into individual conduct. Additionally, I put that the social relations inherit to social life of individuals: social relations are the forms of a social life which has a proper sui generis ontology.

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Dépelteau and Vanderberghe have been recently examined in nuce this path. Within the frame of the recent debate on relational approaches in sociology, François Dépelteau sustained that “relational sociology offers at least three promises. The first is based on the hypothesis that we can improve our understanding of social life by studying relations between interactants” (Dépelteau 2018: 3). Furthermore, Vanderberghe claimed that “[…] at the ontological level, relational sociology assumes that relations essentially create social life” (Vanderberghe 2018: 39). On the side of the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory, Axel Honneth has been working on the contradictory (and paradoxical) character of the globalized society, particularly investigating on the pathologies of social life.2 He literally considers social life from the perspective of an “immanent transcendence” (Honneth 2009). For Honneth the universal emancipatory character (as a Kantian transcendent obligation) of the contemporary global scenario must be interpreted starting from the immanent “facticity” [Faktizität] of social relations as reproductive models of society. Honneth has in fact relaunched his Critical Theory not on the basis of the claims of validity of language (as Habermas put), but rather on the reciprocal expectations of individuals within the social relations (under an intrinsic reciprocity). Honneth views an immanent ethical claim of validity within the social relations: as he already sustained in Suffering from Indeterminacy (1999) we can encounter in the modern societies some spheres of social agencies in which emotions and moral norms, and interests and values are processually “overcomed” and embedded in forms of institutionalized interactions (Honneth 1999). Transcendent (universalistic) claims of validity could be detected within the immanent frame of social relations. This idea was indeed very familiar in Simmel’s jargon, even in an inverted direction. In his last writings he stated that our (social) life is shaped by the irreconcilable dialectics between life and forms, that is between life as immanent flow and its forms as a transcendent niveu of relations. If already sketched in Der Begriff und Tragödie der Kultur (1911), this conviction will be an essential perspective in his two last writings 2  In Honneth’s theoretical reconstruction, social pathologies are understood as a lack of rationality: they are dysfunctional aspects of social life that arise when individuals lose authentic contact with a socio-moral language that they intuitively consider as familiar. Social emotions such as despondency, disorientation, loneliness, emptiness, indifference, and anger are the main individual responses to these social pathologies (Honneth 2014).

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(Grundfragen der Soziologie and Lebensanschauung) under a metaphysical and a sociological regard. As he literally affirms in Lebensanschauung (The View of Life) (1918): “Transcendence is immanent in life. […] Life is at once fixed and variable; of finished shape, and developing further; formed, and ever breaking through its forms; persisting, yet rushing onward; bounded and free; circling around in subjectivity, yet standing objectively over things and over itself” (Simmel 2010: 10). This argument furnishes interesting elements toward the actual debate on the critique of forms of life.

3  Sociology, Critical Theory, and Social Philosophy: The Critique of Forms of Social Life Once Lucretius noted in De rerum natura through a very poetical and intuitive manner that we can grasp only forms, not the stream or flux of things (vv. 308–311): while the whole corpuscular nature is incessantly shifting and changing, it paradoxically appears to our eyes to be quiet and static (as a form). This idea (also mediated by the philosophy of Henri Bergson) was recently relaunched by the anthropologist Tim Ingold in a very inspiring volume, Correspondence (2021). Despite considering the modern idea of epistemological concerns which regard a subject in front of an object (the so-called between-ness), Ingold stresses the idea of investigating on the in-between-ness between entities and things (Ingold 2015). Ingold aims at overwhelming the difference among humanities, conceiving anthropology as a form of an in-discipline, that is removing barriers of the modern division of disciplines. This idea is really challenging and surely denotes the urgency of a methodological reformulation of the anthropological gaze as well as the sociological one. We only see forms, even if life is a process. This statement could be applied to the idea of social life itself. Ingold, mentioning Bergson, recalls that “form is the outline of a movement.”3 Even if our individual and common lives are basically immersed in the flux of time and change, we 3  As exactly mentioned by Ingold (Ingold 2021: 73–74), Bergson’s words in Creative Evolution literally sound: “Like eddies of dust raised by the wind as it passes, the living turn upon themselves, borne up by the great blast of life. They are therefore relatively stable, and counterfeit immobility so well that we treat each of them as a thing rather than as a progress, forgetting that the very permanence of their form is only the outline of a movement” (Bergson 1944: 141–142).

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recognize the very stuff of social relations as “forms of life.” The immanence of life (as a process) requires the transcendence of relations (as a form): we learned this double character of social life by Georg Simmel, namely from his ultimate studies on the metaphysics of life. It is not a case that the second sociological masterpiece of Simmel, Grundfragen der Soziologie, was nearly published in 1917 before his last writing, The View of Life (1918). Within the frame of the fourth generation of Critical Theorists in the Frankfurt School, many scholars have been working on the idea of a critique of modern forms of life: Rahel Jaeggi, Robin Celikates, Martin Saar, and Hartmut Rosa are the most representative. Axel Honneth was very inspiring for them and he represents the first addressing and arguing for a critical theory on the forms of life in the (late) capitalistic era (Honneth 2009). In his volume Pathologies of Reason (2009) he was already stressing the need for inquiring on the “good life” within the everyday Western societies, appealing to the words of Theodor Adorno in Minima Moralia. In an aphorismatic form, Adorno once put that good life is like the perception of secureness and “protectedness,”4 that is like to “feel secure at home.” This idea roots on the basic psycho-sociological conviction that human beings in social relations claim for three main forms of recognition: as Honneth clearly affirmed since the volume Kampf um Anerkennung (1992) these claims for recognition concretize in the forms of “love,” “rights,” and “self-esteem” (Honneth 1996). If Honneth and Jaeggi basically define good society and good social life in a “negative way” (coherent to the heritage of Adorno’s ideas), they concern bad forms of social life in such individual conducts which are rigid, hyper-normal, passive, reified, inauthentic, indifferent. In a single word: alienated (Jaeggi 2014). And going beyond the dichotomic logic between “fair” and “good” society, liberty and happiness, self-determination and self-realization, Jaeggi simply advocates that an immanent critique of the forms of life highlights all those forms of “relations without relation” (that is absence of conditions for determining, in a social dimension, elements such as appropriation, authenticity, and reflexivity—this latter as preserving a sense of continuity in our own life in its transformation). 4  “We can tell whether we are happy by the sound of the wind. It warns the unhappy man of the fragility of his house, hounding him from shallow sleep and violent dreams. To the happy man it is the song of his protectedness: its furious howling concedes that it has power over him no longer” (Adorno 2006: 47).

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According to Jaeggi, forms of life are neither “conducts of life” [Lebensführung], which are basically individual paths, nor “habits of life” [Lebensgewohnheit] even if the latter are very close to the concept of them. It is not also correct to use the expression “way of life” [Lebensweise] (Jaeggi 2018: 60–61). She also distinguishes “forms of life” from custom [Sitte], lifestyle [Lebensstyl], usage [Brauch], tradition [Tradition], institution [Institution], and finally culture. She basically has a fluid and relational concern of social subjectivities in a permanent process of self-appropriation, and forms of life should guarantee the achievement of this intrinsic scope. Forms of life, as Jaeggi literally maintains, “[…] include attitudes and habitualized modes of conduct with a normative character that concern the collective conduct of life, although they are neither strictly codified nor institutionally binding” (Jaeggi 2018: 65). She puts that they are clusters of practices and collective formations, and they have also habitual character and a certain normative pressure of expectation. More precisely Jaeggi defines forms of life as “[…] forms of ensembles of practices marked by a certain form of inertia” (Jaeggi 2018: 80; a “normatively structured inert bundles of social practices,” Jaeggi 2015: 15). In order to achieve what has to be meant for “critical” within the frame of the sociological theory, Hartmut Rosa furnishes an interesting hint in regard with the concept of the individual “good life.” Appealing to contemporary philosophers such as Alasdir MacIntyre and Charles Taylor, Rosa notes that a critical verification of the social practices must be observed under the light of the perception of the good life which is given by individuals, that is according to their own gaze (Rosa 2010). Forms of social life could not be indeed the sign of a good relational life due to the intrinsic character of modernity: the increasing social differentiation requires a disposal to render our social nature flexible, exchangeable, and transformable. This mechanism was already investigated by Simmel in his Philosophie des Geldes (1900), and afterwards in his work on the metropolitan social life of individuals. The social effect of this process is relativism, and it could be perceived also in our modern lives.  Simmel was certainly aware of the “tragic” character of the cultural path (die Tragödie der modernen Kultur)—that is, the tragic dialectics between subjective mind and objective culture due to the increasing differentiation principle at work within the modern societies and the impossibility to embrace again by subjects the social and the cultural forms they contributed to construct and enhance. This conviction was also developed

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in his last sociological writings. In Der Konflikt der modernen Kultur (1918) he sustained: Life must either produce forms or proceed through forms. But forms belong to a completely different order of being. They demand some content above and beyond life; they contradict the essence of life itself, with its weaving dynamics, its temporal fates, the unceasing differentiation of each of its parts. Life is inseparably charged with contradiction. It can enter reality only in the form of its antithesis, that is, only in the form of form. This contradiction becomes more urgent and appears more irreconcilable the more life makes itself felt. (Simmel 2015: 392)

Simmel recognized the intimate mechanism of modern societies which require that individuals conduct their life in accordance to particular forms (that is forms of relations, Formen der Vergesellschaftung), and the more differentiated is the scenario, the more is required to be willing to this mechanism. This idea was already put by Simmel in his early writing Uber sociale Differenzierung (1890), in whose first chapter the Berlin sociologist offers important hints on the epistemological conditions of the social science. A more detailed idea on what Simmel maintained for “form,” that is sure interesting for our purposes, was definitively given in Grundfragen der Soziologie (1917). I guess that it is really stimulating because it furnishes important hints toward the idea of human and intersubjective character of the forms of social life, because he literally sustains that “Any form (and a form always is a synthesis) is something added by a synthesizing subject” [“Die Form, die immer eine Verbindung ist, nur von einem verbindenden Subjekt hinzugefügt wird”] (Simmel 1999: 66). Georg Simmel is probably the first and the most meaningful sociologist to contribute to the foundation of sociology as a science of “reciprocal action” [Wechselwirkung]. Olli Pyyhtinen has recently highlighted how Simmel’s theory could be considered strictu senso as a “science of relations” (Pyyhtinen 2017). The Wechselwirkung category became formerly a very “metaphysical” principle, as Simmel explicitly affirmed in his Anfang einer unvollendeten Selbstdarstellung (1898): an exhaustive and wide meaning useful to engage new forms of sociality and cultural subjects into modernity, but also the key concept into epistemology, historical, socio-­ psychological, and moral sciences (Simmel 1958: 9). Moreover, in Rembrandtstudie (1914) Simmel sustained in a vitalistic-metaphysical frame that both life and form assume a reciprocal constitutive character in

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the social and cultural meaning. He literally stated that “[…] the form is timeless because it consists only in the movement and relation of the view contents; and it has no strength, because it cannot exert any effect inasmuch form; only within life, keeping on flowing underground, and its causal process, also this stage is prolonged in further effects” (Simmel 2000: 39). In the Excursus to the first chapter of Soziologie (1908), Simmel furnished fundamental addresses in regard to his concern of relational sociology: he distinguished ontological, epistemological, and methodological aspects of sociological investigations. Firstly, Simmel’s social ontology concerns relations as Wechselwirkungen, literally “effects-of-exchange,” “interaction,” or “reciprocal influence.”5 Secondly, social epistemology was already explored by Simmel in Ueber sociale Differenzierung (1890), but it finds a detailed explanation in the Excursus: it consists of three sociological apriori: (1) the generalization of the other due to the fragmentary character of modern society and culture (“Otherness”): “All of us are fragments, not only of general man, but also of ourselves” (Simmel 2015: 57); (2) “Außerdem” is the German formula used by Simmel to claim that “every element of a group is not only a societal part but, in addition, something else [Außerdem]”; that is the way in which individuals are associated [vergesellschaftet-sein] is determined or codetermined by the way in which they are not [nicht-vergesellschaftet-sein]6; (3) Simmel conceives society as an asymmetrical positioning of individuals and roles in which nevertheless anybody finds its own “position” like “its elements—claims Simmel—were predestined for its particular place in it.”7 And finally, under a methodological aspect social scientist must divide forms of social

5  Donald Levine remarks in the introductive pages of Simmel’s edited works: “Reciprocal influence is the reality to which the term society corresponds” (Simmel 2015: 26). Simmel explicitly affirms in the first line of Soziologie: “Society exists where a number of individuals enter into interaction” (Simmel 2015: 68). 6  Simmel sustains: “A society is, therefore, a structure which consists of beings who stand inside and outside of it at the same time” (Simmel 2015: 60). This idea will have practical explanation and “empirical” exemplification in the chapters on the poor or the stranger. 7  “The life of society (considered not psychologically but phenomenologically, that is, exclusively in regard to its social contents) takes its course as if each of its elements were predestined for its particular place in it. In spite of all discrepancies between it and ideal standards, social life exists as if all of its elements found themselves interrelated with one another in such a manner that each of them, because of its very individuality, depends on all others and all others depend on it” (Simmel 2015: 65).

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interactions from contents, and basically his investigation fits with detecting and isolating forms from contents.

4  Normative Reciprocity The formula normative reciprocity I address in these lines contains (and crosses) two different conceptual areas: normativity and reciprocity. Both these two nouns must be regarded under a relational sociological meaning. If normativity is commonly a concern of the ethical debate, reciprocity stands within the social sciences as the inner character of social relations under a social ontology. Crossing both these issues means that normativity must be assumed as the character of the intrinsic aim at achieving good relations, that is good social life. Donati rightly puts that, even if ethically neutral, relational sociology is—I quote—intimately “sensible to normativity.”8 Moreover, he has defined the science of sociology as the “(moral) consciousness of the modernity” (Donati 2011b: 12), noting that the reflection of social institutions, relations, and transformations draws a double spiral with the modernity (as also Giddens once alleged), highlighting at the same time the increased reflectivity character of modern societies.9 As Sergio Belardinelli recently put, we must regard the “normative” nature of the social relations, “[…] not to be confused with moral virtues or with moral principles, but rather sought within them, without determinisms and with respect for their autonomy” (Belardinelli 2021: 63). In his challenging essay The Norm of Reciprocity (1960) Alvin Gouldner once defined reciprocity as an “obscure concept”: he listed few names of contributors who were stressing this concept (Levi-Strauss, Raymond Firth, George Homans, and thus reconstructing the debate around “functionalist sociologists”), and he traced a short list of early authors such as Durkheim, Malinowski, Marx, Mauss, von Wiese, and Simmel who were preparing discussion on this topic (Gouldner 1960: 162). Gouldner viewed that this “obscure concept” would have been further explored for 8  “[Sociologie relationelle] est descriptive et explicative; bien que pratique, sensible à la normativité, elle ne vise ni les individus ni les structures sociales comme telles, elle s’intéresse plutôt aux relations sociales: elle les analyse, les interprète et leur attribue une valeur selon les problèmes engendrés et les solutions potentielles” (Donati 2017: 326). 9  Elżbieta Halas remarked the limits of a simple demarcation or juxtaposition of sociological and ethical fields (Hałas 2016): this question was opportunely relaunched in the volume Relational Reason, Morals, and Sociality, edited by Elżbieta Hałas and Aleksander Manterys.

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the sake of sociology, also because as he efficaciously stated: “reciprocity is the vital principle of society” (Gouldner 1960). In this regard, relational sociology paradigm offers a criterion for identifying the common good as relational good in the frame of the reciprocal relations; as Donati claims, “[…] based on the principle of positive reciprocity, and not on that of equality of individual opportunities (both at the starting point and as a result), which belongs to individualism” (Donati 2021b: 47).  Recently also Halas put the central issue of reciprocity within the discourse of relational sociology (Halas 2019). Social sciences have been developing during the twentieth century as a contended field between quantitative and qualitative approaches, holistic and individualistic methodologies (Zahle and Collin 2014), analytical and normative, biological and biographical (Fassin 2018), universalistic and particularistic methodologies. These paradigmatic dilemmas stand within the inner life of society. Georg Simmel’s words were really prophetic because he interpreted the modern age under the formula of the “ambivalence principle,” and it could be concerned as “interaction form” and “interaction norm,” as once Birgitta Nedelmann advocated (Nedelmann 1992). Recently Vaandering and Reimer have addressed a methodological challenge within the qualitative sociological research advancing a “relational critical discourse analysis” (Vaandering and Reimer 2021). They aim at going beyond not only the classical methodological oppositions in sociological research, but they focus on the level of “discourse” which could trigger and foster just and equitable cultures as well as restorative justice education.10 In The Metropolis and mental Life (1903) Simmel states that “[…] the deepest problems of modern life flow from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and particularity of his or her existence against the superior powers of society, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life” (Simmel 1997: 174–175). If both reciprocal action [Wechselwirkung] and association [Vergesellschaftung] are shibboleth for Simmel’s understating of sociology and modern society, due to the increasing differentiation mechanism into modern life, individuals feel more and more pulled by two impulses: the claim for identity (the law of distinction) and the claim for belonging to ever new social circles (the law 10  As both authors allege: “For us Relational Critical Discourse Analysis resulted in a greater ability to (a) listen deeply, and (b) be open to being personally impacted by what participant are saying” (Vaandering and Reimer 2021: 2).

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of imitation). On his intellectual path Simmel found a solution to this dilemma through the idea of the “law of individual” (Simmel 2015a; see Amat 2017). In this regard, Alessandro Ferrara very efficaciously states that Simmel’s law of individual could be concerned as a “[…] way to conceive the compatibility between normativity and pluralism” (Ferrara 2002: 60–69; 153). Simmel was a pioneer in viewing that social issues are woven with moral dimension, and the question of normativity is still at work in his theory. As he rightly highlighted in Soziologie, even if the sociologist as observer must assume a non-evaluative position (as also Weber remarked), we must admit the “objective ideality” and the “power of obligation” which are intrinsic in social relations (Simmel 2015: 150). In Simmel reciprocity does not have only a fundamental epistemological role, but it works also as an ontological feature toward the idea of a relativistic concern of the realm and the truth concepts, as he argued in Philosophy of Money.11 In my opinion, normative reciprocity, as internal character of social relation, must be considered in order to overwhelm any dualism (under a methodological regard), even the one between morals and society. The claims of validity within the forms of social life do not only concern the moral sphere, as Habermas once advocated (Habermas 1998: 79–80).12 He affirmed that moral disputes are at the basis of “[…] the underlying structure of a social life that is shot through with trivial validity claims.” Axel Honneth remarked the necessity to reconsider these validity claims under a pure social meaning, that is under socio-ontological conditions. As he explicitly claims: “[…] for only by participating in interactions whose normative preconditions include reciprocal orientation to specific principles of recognition can individuals experience the enduring value of their specific capacities for others” (Honneth 2003: 143). The great shift within the recent history of the Critical Theory was in fact given by this “return” to the social, partially deviating from the Habermas’ need of 11  “This reciprocity, in which the inner elements of cognition authenticate the meaning of truth for each other, appears to be upheld by another form of relativity, that between the theoretical and the practical interests of our life. We are convinced that all representations of what exists are functions of a specific physical and psychological organization which do not mirror the outside world in any mechanical way” (Simmel 2004: 14). 12  “That moral disputes persist says something about the underlying structure of a social life that is shot through with trivial validity claims. The social integration of everyday life depends largely on communicative practices oriented toward mutual understanding and based on the recognition of fallible claims to validity.”

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communicative mutual understanding. In Suffering from Indeterminacy (1999) and Das Recht der Anderen (2015) Honneth stressed the Hegel matrix of “social liberty” which is a great achievement of the modern ­societies and has acquired a “normatively constraining value” toward three main areas: interpersonal relations (such as friendship or love), capitalistic market, and democratic public sphere; where this liberty is impeded thus it produces social sufferings. In regard to the question of the flourishing of social relations as normative reciprocity within the frame of the relation to Other and to the fulfillment of the idea of social liberty and “eudaimonia,” a very challenging and inspiring idea crossed with the question on altruism is given by Elzbieta Halas, who literally sustains that “[…] Our aim is to discover the path leading to the articulation of altruism as a relational phenomenon: relational care” (Halas 2021: 78). Stressing the many hints coming from Harry Frankfurt, Alasdir MacIntyre, and Robert Bellah, as well as from the Relational Sociology paradigm of Donati, she sustains that “[…] care as a subject of investigation” for sociological purposes is inherent to social epistemology and ethics, moving beyond the “modification of the ancient triad: logos, ethos, and pathos” (Halas 2021: 85). Moreover, she opportunely claims that “while sociology is not yet openly transformed into a normative science, it is to regain its moral dimension through studies on good” (Halas 2021: 79). She points the finger to some unexplored issues into sociological studies due to a kind of veto or denial: such issues are—I quote—“[…]identification of a pathological state, i.e. what is harmful; exploring alternatives and studying the means by which change may take place. Good is identified with social and political justice, and therefore with conditions that permit human flourishing, which requires people to participate in decisions regarding their own lives” (ibidem). This concern is a good key feature to look at the scenario of the recent Critical Theory debate. In Dimensions of Personhood (2007) Arto Laitinen and Heikki Ikäheimo have been furnishing interesting hints within the frame of the Critical Theory, focusing on the central topics of humanness and personhood which basically characterize social relations. Under a methodological aspect, we can advance a good-life-centered approach nurturing a culturally and ethically sensitive social relation. On the first point (“culturally sensitive social relations”) we could look at the ideas fostered by Seyla Benhabib in The Claims of Cultures: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era (2002). She argued the question of pluralistic society and the claims of cultural identities within the frame of deliberative

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democracy given by Habermas. According to Benhabib, the cultural pluralism within the global era fulfills three conditions: (1) egalitarian reciprocity, (2) voluntary self-ascription, and (3) freedom of exit and association (Benhabib 2002). More precisely, in the first point (egalitarian reciprocity), she put accent on the necessary requirement of any social and cultural dialogue due to the disposition to reciprocity. It is meant as a form of intrinsic normativity for the sake of a good dialogue and reciprocal recognition among identities.13 On the second point (“ethically sensitive social relations”) Rahel Jaeggi offers interesting hints. In Kritik der Lebensformen (2004) she literally admits that “[…] the thesis that forms of life have a normative content seems banal, if not even tautological” (Jaeggi 2018: 122), but she means that we should start analyzing the existing individual and collective forms of being-together, up to the individual style of life: consequently, her theory aims at deeply exploring the normative characteristics of forms of social life. According to Jaeggi, norms in social life are as follows: 1. “Norms specify a standard that someone or something can meet or fail to meet”; it deals with the style of life (and this idea should conduct us very far, at least at the analytical part of Philosophie des Geldes by Simmel, who is unfortunately not mentioned by Jeaggi); 2. normative is commonly put in opposition with descriptive (and this basically deals with an epistemological issue since social sciences must observe a pure descriptive approach); 3. “According to a commonplace definition, norm-conforming behavior is rule-guided or rule-governed as opposed to merely regular”; 4. “Norms direct our behavior, and where we comply with them, they require us to do something. It is characteristic of norms in this respect that they are manmade formations, hence that they are (in principle) shaped and shapeable”; 5. The “space of norms” is thus a “space of reasons” (the question of justification and reasoning why adopting certain conducts).

13  In this regard, Malleson recently has been contesting the idea of “luck egalitarianism” (according to Dworkin’s ethical concerns), defending the idea of a “good life egalitarianism” which should foster and enhance “opportunities to self-determine and to enjoy non-­ dominating social relationships” (Malleson 2020).

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In the chapter “Forms of Life as Normative Belonging,” Jaeggi thus advocates that the forms of life have a normative connotation because they are based on the demand for normative expectations.14 Jaeggi suggested that the forms of life should be assumed as “the cultural and social reproduction of human life,” that is, as she alleged afterward, “forms of life in the plural, that is, the different cultural forms that human life can assume” (Jaeggi 2018: 20). Hartmut Rosa coined the sociological and philosophical category of Resonance [Resonanz] to address that it is a “good” way of encountering the world, that is, people, things, matter, history, nature, and life as such. The adjective “good” means that this resonance has positive social effects on the life of individuals involved in social relations. Rosa rightly puts that a sociology of the relationship to the world [eine Soziologie der Weltbeziehung] investigates different forms and dimensions we experience and get related to the world. It literally entails the analysis of bodily and psychic, existential and emotional, cognitive and evaluative aspects of social life (Rosa 2019: 54). According to Rosa, the quality of human (social) life cannot be simply measured through algorithmic options or resources, but it would necessarily be an investigation on related-to-world conditions [Weltverhältnisse] and on the relationships to world [Weltbeziehungen]. The Resonance concept is a metaphor to describe the relational qualities [Beziehungsqualitäten] to a great extent as well as representing a massive potential for the investigation on related-to-world conditions in almost any fields of human life. Good life corresponds to Rosa to good relations, because the question is never a matter of scope or instrumental calculation of goods; namely, good relations are “a particular way of relating to the world—to places and people, to ideas and bodies, to time and to nature, to self and others.”15 According to Rosa, the coordinates of modernity require (economic) growth, (technological) acceleration, and (sociocultural) innovation: but what about our conceptions of freedom and happiness? Resonance is thus a way of rehabilitating our 14  “Forms of life, therefore, are normative ensembles insofar as participating in them involves the expectation that one should participate in the constituent practices in appropriate ways and share the interpretive framework laid down with this expectation” (Jaeggi 2018: 125). 15  “[…] We have good reasons to assume that the good life in its essence is not a matter of scope (in money, wealth, options or capabilities), but a particular way of relating to the world—to places and people, to ideas and bodies, to time and to nature, to self and others” (Rosa 2018).

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social coexistence in order to preserve and to enhance it by four crucial elements: (1) “Being affected.” Resonating with another person, or even with a landscape, a melody, or an idea, means being «inwardly» reached, touched, or moved by them (af←fection); (2) “Emotive self-efficacy.” At the same time, we can speak of true resonance only when this call is ­followed by our own active response (e→motion); (3) “Adaptive transformation.” Whenever we resonate with another human being, a book, a song, a landscape, an idea, a piece of wood, we are transformed by the encounter, although of course in very different ways (transformative quality); (4) “Uncontrollability of resonance” […] which means, first, that there is no method no seven- or nine-step guide that can guarantee that we will be able to resonate with people or things” (elusiveness [Unverfügbarkeit], i.e. of non-controllability or non-disposability) (Rosa 2019: 31–35). In my opinion, this idea strongly converges with the paradigm advocated by Donati in his recent volume Transcending modernity with Relational Thinking, when he claims that “relationships decide the quality of our life and our destiny. They do it for better or for worse” (Donati 2021a: 8). In the 2015 volume The Relational Subject Donati and Archer already put that reciprocity “[…] creates (activates and reactivates, generates and regenerates) a social relationship as such, for the super-functional value that it has” (Donati and Archer  2015: 249), and moreover, “Reciprocity and free giving are two ways of acting united by the fact that they share a certain anti-individualism, a certain anti-utilitarianism, and a certain orientation to horizontality (that is, to a non-hierarchical reticular action)” (Donati and Archer 2015: 250). On the basis of these issues, relational sociology should regard relations as forms of “normative reciprocity,” including the investigation on the social conditions which characterize interactions among individuals who basically conduct their lives aiming at their own “good life,” and more precisely a critical investigation (and evaluation) on the conditions impeding and inhibiting to grasp their own “good life.” We must assume concepts such as liberty, autonomy, self-realization, and happiness as social issues, namely as relational issues, in the form of the normative reciprocity. This means that no abstract-universalistic normative frame must be regarded; on the contrary, normativity can arise only from relational frame which guarantee good life, that is, good relational life. Donati recently

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sustained, “This is a society in which the good life coincides with the creation and enjoyment of relational goods.”16 Good relations are like a black box, in regard to their uncontrollable, non-manipulable, and unpredictable character: they cannot be a priori defined, nor described from observers as a mere fixed subject. They have a narrative feature and an inner value for their referents/producers: one cannot have good relations; they simply are for their components. It is like Adorno’s idea of happiness, advocated in Minima Moralia:17 to be in a good relation means to “be encompassed” by it.

References Abbott, Andrew. 2016. The Future of the Social Sciences: Between Empiricism and Normativity. Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 71 (3): 343–360. https:// doi.org/10.1017/S2398568218000018 Adorno, Theodor W. 2006. Minima moralia. Reflections on a Damaged Life. London and New York: Verso. Amat, Mattheiu. 2017. Simmel’s Law of the Individual: A Relational Idea of Culture. Simmel Studies 21 (2): 41–72. Belardinelli, Sergio. 2021. The Social and Moral Dimension of the Relational Paradigm. In Relational Reason, Morals and Sociality, ed. Elżbieta Hałas and Aleksander Manterys, 59–67. Berlin: Peter Lang. Benhabib, Seyla. 2002. The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era. New York: Princeton University Press. Bergson, Henri. 1944. Creative Evolution. New York: The Modern Library. Carrà, Elisabetta and Paolo Terenzi, eds. 2019. The Relational Gaze on a Changing Society. Berlin-Bern-New York: Peter Lang.

16  “[…] In short, these goods are generated in social contexts that are capable of including new life opportunities within the social relations that orient our conducts of life toward an “agonistic sociability.” In the field of social services, this means developing new ways of doing relational social work. In short, I argue that a flourishing civil society, on which a civil democracy is grounded, can be fostered by those social networks that are able to generate competing relational goods” (Donati 2021b: 26). 17  “To happiness the same applies as to truth: one does not have it, but is in it. Indeed, happiness is nothing other than being encompassed, an after-image of the original shelter within the mother. But for this reason, no-one who is happy can know that he is so. To see happiness, he would have to pass out of it: to be as if already born. He who says he is happy lies, and in invoking happiness, sins against it. He alone keeps faith who says: I was happy. The only relation of consciousness to happiness is gratitude: in which lies its incomparable dignity” (Adorno 2006: 104).

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Index1

A Abbott, Andrew Delano, 38, 51, 203, 204, 208, 212, 251, 298 Abel, Theodore, 64, 78, 79 Adorno, Theodor W., 301, 301n4, 312, 312n17 Akman, Varol, 254 Alexander, Jeffrey C., 268 Althusser, Louis, 257 Amat, Mattheiu, 307 Anchrit, Wille, 124 Archer, Margaret S., 16, 72, 152, 283, 285, 288, 297, 297n1, 311 Archilochus, 67 Aristotle, 34, 76 Austin, John Langshaw, 248–250 B Bajoit, Guy, 279 Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua, 254

Bauman, Richard, 253 Baumgartner, Michael, 39, 50, 51 Becher, Tony, 194, 200 Bechtel, William, 39 Becker, Howard S., 140 Behr, Valentin, 124, 124n14 Belardinelli, Sergio, xi, 89, 305 Bell, Daniel, 197 Bella, Michela, 281 Bencherki, Nicoloas, 222 Benhabib, Seyla, 308, 309 Bennett, Andrew, 184, 187 Benson, Rodney, 117, 140, 141 Bentley, Arthur, 37 Berger, Peter L., 224 Bergson, Henri, 281, 300, 300n3 Bertilson, Margareta, 171, 172, 178, 189 Best, Heinrich, 120 Blumer, Herbert, vi, 63, 179 Boelaert, Julien, 123

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Hałas (ed.), Methodology of Relational Sociology, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41626-2

317

318 

INDEX

Bogart, Léo, 121 Bolloré, Vincent, 138n37 Boltanski, Luc, 126, 132 Bosančić, Sasa, 241 Bourdieu, Pierre, xii, 65, 71–73, 77, 81, 82, 100–102, 106, 108, 110, 119, 125, 126, 139, 141, 158, 223, 224, 248–250, 252–254, 257, 258, 260, 262–264, 267, 269, 271, 280 Bovens, March, 124 Brandt, Frederike, 219 Briggs, Charles L., 253 Brown, Penelope, 248 Bühler, Karl, 226 Burawoy, Michael, 29, 247 Burt, Ronald S., 100, 158 Butler, Judith, 111 C Cantò Milá, Natàlia, 276 Carrà Elisabetta, 81, 296 Casini, Lorenzo, 39, 50, 51 Cassirer, Ernst, 82 Chalaby, Jean K., 117, 118 Charle, Christophe, 127 Chauvin, Sébastien, 127n21 Checkel, Jeffrey, 184 Chikh, Sabrina, 122, 123 Cimmino, Luigi, 93 Colapietro, Vincent M., 285 Coleman, James S., 158 Collier, David, 184 Collins, Randall, 194, 200, 205, 206 Colozzi, Ivo, xi, 159n2 Côté, Jean-François, 279, 281 Cousin, Bruno, 127n21 Craver, Carl F., 39, 40 Creswell, David J., 35 Creswell, John W., 35 Crossley, Nick, 51, 282, 286–289, 298

D Dagnaud, Monique, 119, 121, 123n8, 126, 127n19, 138n40 Damhuis, Koen, 270 Dasgupta, Shamik, 38 De Beaugrande, Robert, 250 Denord, François, 102, 104, 122, 124, 128, 141 Denzin, Norman K., 75 Dépelteau, François, 35, 37, 44, 45, 65, 87, 93–95, 276, 286, 296, 298, 299 Dewey, John, 37, 88, 89, 173, 278–280, 290 Dijk, Teun A. van, 256, 264, 266 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 70 Djelic, Marie-Laure, 136 Djerf-Pierre, Monika, 119, 122–124 Donati, Pierpaolo, x, 4n1, 5, 6, 8, 11, 12n5, 14–17, 22, 25, 72–77, 81, 93–95, 147–150, 152, 154–160, 159n2, 162, 175, 177, 177n2, 223, 223n2, 224, 241, 279, 282–285, 296–298, 297n1, 305, 305n8, 306, 308, 311, 312n16 Douglas, Jack D., 60 Dressler, Wolfgang U., 250 Dubois, Vincent, 140 Dudouet, François-Xavier, 139 Durkheim, Émile, 100, 175, 283, 296, 305 Duval, Julien, 265 E Echenoz, Jean, 107 Elias, Norbert, vi, 42, 242 Elman, Colin, 174 Elman, Miriam, 174 Elster, Jon, 35, 39n1 Emirbayer, Mustafa, 8, 37, 38, 51, 52, 223n2, 279–282, 285, 298

 INDEX 

Enfield, Nick J., 226 Epstein, Brian, 41, 42 Erickson, Mark, 193 Erikson, Emily, 286 Ernaux, Annie, 107 Eyal, Gil, 198 F Faris, Ellsworth, 179 Farrell, Michael P., 207 Ferrara, Alessandro, 307 Ferrucci, Fabio, 281 Fine, Kit, 40 Fish, Kenneth, 52, 54 Fleck, Ludwik, 205, 208 Folghraiter, Fabio, 155 Fontaine, André, 134n29 Forst, Rainer, 298 Fottorino, Eric, 133, 133n27 Foucault, Michel, 248, 265 Friedman, Michael, 35 Fukuyama, Francis, 158 G Galán Castro, Erick Alfonso, 283 Garfinkel, Harold, 63, 72 Gattamorta, Lorenza, xii, 290 Georgakakis, Didier, 263 George, Alexander L., 184, 187 Gerring, John, 35 Giddens, Anthony, 68, 71, 72, 305 Glynos, Jason, 36, 49 Godart, Frédéric C., 258 Goffman, Erving, 74, 222 Goll, Barbara, 219n1 Gouldner Alvin W., 305, 306 Grabowska, Mirosława, 269 Granovetter, Mark, 99 Grémont, Eric, 139 Griffith, Aaron M., 41

319

Grimm, Stephen, 67–70 Gronow, Antti, 284 Guardini, Romano, 8 H Habermas, Jürgen, 290, 299, 307, 309 Hagstrom, Warren O., 194, 196, 197, 199, 201 Hałas, Elżbieta, x, 29, 60, 62n1, 70, 75, 80n4, 171, 172, 174, 178, 281, 297, 305n9 Hallin, David, 117, 118, 118n1 Hanks, William F., 227 Harvey, David, 54 Heath, Christian, 222 Heidegger, Martin, 111 Heilbron, Johan, 105 Helle, Horst J., 290 Hessel, Stéphane, 134n28 Higley, John, 120 Honneth, Axel, 295, 299, 299n2, 301, 307, 308 Howarth, David J., 36, 49 Huebner, Daniel R., 275, 288 I Ikäheimo, Heikki, 308 Imbert, Claude, 132, 133 Ingold, Tim, 300, 300n3 Ismael, Jennan, 34, 43, 44, 51 J Jaeggi, Rahel, 295, 301, 302, 309, 310, 310n14 Jakobson, Roman, 79, 250 Joas, Hans, 61, 275, 278, 280, 288 Joffrin, Laurent, 135, 142 Johnson, Barry, 173, 175

320 

INDEX

Johnson, Mark, 266 Joly, Hervé, 125 Jovita, Gloria, 16 K Kaciaf, Nicolas, 135 Kaczmarczyk, Michał, 172 Kaiser, Marie I., 39, 40 Karcz, Andrzej, 270 Keohane, Robert O., 38 Khan, Shamus, 123n10, 125 Khun, Thomas S., 147 Kim, Jaegwon, 36 King, Desmond, 138n39 King, Gary, 35, 38 Kintsch, Walter, 256 Kivinen, Osmo, 88–90, 280 Knoblauch, Hubert, xii, 76, 100, 220–222, 225, 228, 230, 230n6, 230n7, 234n11, 238n14 Knorr Cetina, Karin, 194, 199, 200 Kola, Adam F., 255 Kressin, Lisa, 64 Krickel, Beate, 39, 40 Kuhn, Thomas S., 202, 206, 210 Kuiken, Don, 250 L Laclau, Ernesto, 257, 258, 265 Laitinen, Arto, 308 Lakatos, Imre, 174, 202 Lakoff, George, 266 Lamont, Michèle, 200 Lange, Marc, 34, 38 Laruelle, Marlene, 269 Latour, Bruno, 194, 199–201 Laudan, Larry, 174, 202 Le Guen, Olivier, 227 Le Roux, Brigitte, 265 Lebaron, Frédéric, 263

Leech, Geoffrey N., 264 Leezenberg, Michiel, 249 Lenco, Peter, 90–92 Leroi-Gourhan, André, 226 Leteinturier, Christine, 123n11 Levine, Donald L., 304n5 Levinson, Stephen C., 248 Levy, Bennie, 135 Liang, Lu, 280 Liao, Tim F., 178 Lidz, Victor, 20, 30 Lieberman, Robert C., 138n39 Lin, Nan, 8, 100 Lincoln, Yvonna S., 75 Liu, Shuang, 280 Lopata, Helena, 172 Löw, Martina, 234n11 Luckmann, Thomas, 224, 226, 233 Luhmann, Niklas, 72, 177n2, 223, 237 Lunding, Jacob Aagaard, 262 Lüschen, Günter, 171, 172, 177n2, 178, 179 Łuczewski, Michał, 171, 177, 179, 186 M MacIntyre, Alasdair, 212, 302, 308 Madzia, Roman, 289 Malinowski, Bronisław, 253, 305 Malleson, Tom, 309n13 Mancini, Paolo, 117, 118, 118n1 Manterys, Aleksander, 11, 75, 281, 297, 305n9 Marsden, Peter, 8 Marx, Karl, 34, 52–55, 100, 305 Massol, Joël, 125 Mathiot, Pierre, 139 Mauss, Marcel, 127, 305 Mayerhoffer, Eva, 119, 122n4 Mead, George H., vi, xii, 61, 63, 79, 159, 233, 233n9, 237, 275–290

 INDEX 

Mehl, Dominique, 119, 121, 123n8, 126, 127n19, 138n40 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 232, 233n8, 289 Merton, Robert, 195, 196 Miall, David S., 250 Michon, Sébastien, 124, 124n14 Miller, David L., 290 Mohr, John W., 223 Mondada, Lorenza, 230 Moore, Gwen, 118 Moretti, Franco, 112 Moro, Andrea, 89 Motrenko, Jakub, xi Mouffe, Chantal, 257, 258, 265, 270 Mougeotte, Etienne, 135 Mukařovský, Jan, 261 Mullins, Nicholas C., 209 Mützel, Sophie, 64, 296 N Naudet, Jules, 122n5 Neumann, Iver B., 261 Nisbet, Robert, 95, 193 Nõgisto, Joonatan, x Nooy, Wouter de, 258 Nozick, Robert, 69 O Olsen, Wendy, 7n3 P Parsons, Talcott, 17, 61, 78, 81, 82, 100, 149, 177n2 Pascal, Blaise, 72 Paulhan, Jean, 103 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 7, 47, 47n5, 49, 50, 79, 279, 284–286 Pfadenhauer, Michaela, 222

321

Pfetsch, Barbara, 119, 122n4 Piaget, Jean, 240 Pierru, Frédéric, 140 Piiroinen, T., 88–90, 280 Plato, 41n3 Plenel, Edwy, 133–135, 142 Poniedziałek, Jacek, 186 Ponton, Remy, 102 Powell, Christopher, 35, 276, 296 Prandini, Ricardo, 81 Price, Derek J. de Solla, 197 Putnam, Robert D., 158 Pyyhtinen, Olli, 303 R Ragin, Charles, 178 Raineri, Maria Luisa, 7n2 Regt de Henk, W., 68, 69 Reichenbach, Hans, 43 Reimer, Kristian, 306, 306n10 Ricoeur, Paul, 75 Rieffel, Rémy, 121, 126, 127 Ringer, Fritz, 155 Ritz, Bridget, 7 Rosa, Hartmut, 295, 301, 302, 310, 310n15, 311 Rosen, Gideon, 40 Roseneil, Sasha, 278, 284 Roski, Stefan, 36, 40 Rouanet, Henry, 265 Ruben, David-Hillel, 36 Rubin, Isaak Illich, 54 Ruggieri, Davide, xii, 297 Ruostetsaari, Ilkka, 122, 124 S Saint-Martin, Monique de, 125 Saitta, Eugenie, 135 Salmon, Wesley C., 40 Sánchez, Guadarrama, 16

322 

INDEX

Sapiro, Gisèle, xi, 101–103, 105, 106, 110, 112, 113 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 132, 137 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 135 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 101, 255 Sawicki, Frédéric, 139 Scaron, Joseph Macé, 135 Schaffer, Jonathan, 34, 40–44, 51 Schechtman, Marya, 90 Schmitz, Andreas, 223 Schutz (Schütz), Alfred, 65, 226, 233, 236, 238, 238n13 Searle, John, 41, 235, 250 Sedel, Julie, xi, 122, 123 Selg, Peeter, x, 7, 34, 35, 41, 41n4, 42, 44, 49, 50 Sgall, Petr, 255, 257 Shaikh, Anwar, 8 Shapin, Steven, 195, 196 Siebert, Lynn, 219n1 Simmel, Georg, vi, 64, 65, 219, 276, 282, 289, 296, 297, 299–307, 304n5, 304n6, 304n7, 307n11, 309 Smith, Christian, 194, 200 Sorokin, Pitirim A., 174, 178 Sperber, Dan, 248 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 111 Stein, Edith, 65n2 Suleiman, Ezra N., 138 Szacki, Jerzy, 173, 178, 186 T Tacq, Jacques, 171, 172, 178, 180 Tavory, Iddo, 47, 229 Terenzi Paolo, 296 Thomas, William I., 171, 179, 181 Tibbetts, Paul, 171, 172, 178, 179 Tihanov, Galin, 255 Tilly, Charles, 35, 298 Timmermans, Stefan, 47, 229

Titmuss, Richard, 18 Tocqueville Alexis de, 162 Tronca, Luigi, 159, 159n3 Trowler, Paul, 194, 200 Tuma, Rene, 219 Turner, Ralph H., 63, 76, 80, 80n4 Turner, Stephen, 65n2, 78, 298 U Ulicka, Danuta, 255 V Vaandering, Dorothy, 306, 306n10 Vanderberghe, Frédéric, 299 Ventsel, Anreas, 34, 44, 49, 50 Verba, Sidney, 38 Verger, Jacques, 127 Verschueren, Jef, 253 Vico, Giambattista, 70 Victor, Pierre, 135 W Wacquant, Loïc, 77, 81, 82, 248, 254 Wagner, Antonine, 15, 16 Wagner, Caroline S., 197 Wallerstein, Immanuel Maurice, 251 Weber, Max, vi, 29, 30, 64, 65n2, 69, 75, 78, 82, 100, 101, 111, 138n39, 140n41, 155, 175, 195, 203, 223, 242, 282, 283, 296, 307 Wendt, Alexander, 39n2 White, Harrison C., 65, 73, 76, 81, 82, 224, 258, 279, 298 Wilke, Rene, 219 Wiley, Norbert, 77, 79, 173, 279 Wilson, Deirdre, 248 Wilson, Thomas P., 59, 60, 62–64 Witte, Daniel, 223 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 254, 289

 INDEX 

Wocial, Jerzy, 173 Woolgar, Steve, 199–201 Wootton, Anthony, 241n16 Y Ylikoski, Petri, 39, 42 Yule, George, 247

Z Zagzebski, Trinkhaus Linda, 67, 68 Zarycki, Tomasz, xii, 253, 254, 257, 269 Znaniecki, Florian, vi, xi, 70–74, 78, 171–189, 202, 209

323