This paper situates metatheorizing in a postpositivist approach to social science. Postpositivism contends that social science is organized around competing traditions, which are comprised of generalized discourse and research programs. Following an examination of the relations between discourse and programs, the dynamics fueling social scientific competition are outlined. Because that competition is subject to recurrent distortions and therefore cannot insure that the best arguments win, it is proposed that metatheorizing assume an adjudicative posture and evaluate the conflicting claims of rival schools. This suggestion is elaborated in the context of Ritzer's pioneering work on metatheorizing.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. American Sociological Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Sociological Theory. Eisenstadt and Curelaru (1976:180) begin their masterful analysis of the structural-functional school of sociological theory with the following admonition: "Despite many claims to the contrary, especially by opponents, the structural-functional school was neither uniform nor unchanging." Indeed, they warn that there emerged "within this school, many internal controversies, disputes, and 'openings.'" These words should introduce every discussion of structural-functional theory. They are an acknowledgment, by one of the most distinguished "functionalists" of our time, of the need for revision which is experienced by even the most representative and able members of every great theoretical tradition (see Alexander 1981). As such, they provide the key for evaluating Eisenstadt's contributions to functionalism and for evaluating the functionalist tradition more generally. They are also vital to a proper understanding of the relationship between this tradition and others. In this paper we propose, first, to identify the kinds of "openings" that Eisenstadt created within the functionalist school. After doing so, we will trace how his revision of social differentiation theory, in particular, creates an opening toward developments within a tradition often considered to be antagonistic to functionalism-symbolic interactionism. This opening, we believe, allows critical elements of Eisenstadt's revisionist theorizing to be expanded significantly. This expansion, we will argue, marks the beginning of "neo-functionalism," the emergence of a self-critical strand of functional theory that seeks to broaden functionalism's intellectual scope while retaining its theoretical core.Every great social theory is ambiguous on certain critical points, and Talcott Parsons' was not less so than others. On the most general and presuppositional level, Parsons' theory at its best was motivated by a genuinely ecumenical ambition, articulating a frame of reference that synthesized idealist and materialist modes of analysis, allowing each independent but only partial determination of action and order. Using a sophisticated functionalist model and a complex yet precise conceptual scheme, Parsons defined culture, society, and personality as analytically differentiated systems, a notion that mandated interpenetration but which also legitimated conflicting aims. He also applied these general theoretical orientations to the social system itself, arguing that it, too, is composed of internally differentiated systems which, while analytically interchanging with one another, can be powerfully at od...
This article examines a community's reaction to the poaching of a large elk. Extending the Durkheimian approach to nature, crime, law, and social control, this study discusses the anguish and anger provoked by the infraction, tributes to the fallen animal, calls for more severe and certain sanctions for poaching, and the boundaries affirmed in the incident's aftermath. The implications of this communal response to a wildlife offense for criminalization and conceptions of community are considered.
Goffman's analysis of the interaction order and his investigation of deference and demeanor are used to extend and revise the macrosociological theory of citizenship. Goffman's theorizing intimates that individuals claim and are typically accorded a complex of interactional rights and are simultaneously obliged to honor a complementary set of obligations. Taken together, these rights and obligations comprise what we call interactional citizenship. In principle alterations in the interaction order over time can be described and explained, and in this vein we propose that there has been a general, albeit incomplete and unevenly realized, expansion of interactional citizenship to virtually every category of social actor. There are limits to this expansion, however, and little reason to believe that interactional citizenship can ever be fully realized.
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