Foucault, sociology, and the problem of human agency

Smart, Barry

doi:10.1007/bf00158737

Cited by 51 publications

(21 citation statements)

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“…The broader location of the human sciences on the ‘modern episteme ’ is the result of the implosion of classical thought with the appearance of the figure of humankind as both the foundation of all positive knowledge and an object of knowledge among others. The human sciences occupy a fuzzy space in a volume defined by three axes: one of philosophical reflection; a second of the mathematical and physical sciences; and finally, of the sciences of language, life and labour, that is, linguistics, biology and economics (Smart 1982: 141, n.12). While they draw from each of these three axes, the human sciences are closer to the positive disciplines of the third.…”

Section: Episteme and Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For Smart (1982: 127), this configuration accounts for the remorseless demystification, critical self‐examination and reflexivity of the human sciences, to which sociology is especially prone. It also manifests itself in the promiscuity by which ‘frontiers become blurred, intermediary and composite disciplines multiply endlessly, and in the end their proper object may disappear altogether’ (Foucault 1970: 58).…”

Section: Episteme and Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

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What is society? Social thought and the arts of government

Dean

2010

British Journal of Sociology

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Following conservative politicians, neoliberal philosophers and radical critics, different strands of social science, including those using Foucault's governmentality approach, joined the questioning of the salience of 'society' and ideas of 'the social' over the last decades. When the social reappeared, it was often in the moral domains of community and civil society. This argument re-evaluates the contribution of Foucauldian histories, or 'genealogies', of the social to these fundamental questions. Drawing upon them, it attends to their arguments concerning the place of social thought on the modern episteme in relation to economics, the emergence of the idea of 'society' with the modern arts of government of the state, and the formation of the 'social question'. The argument here allows that preconditions of formation of 'society' lie in the legal and political techniques of the territorial sovereign state. However, the literature under investigation indicates the implicit normativity of an idea of 'society' as a 'problematic unity' and the enduring necessity of a social domain in a law-governed state with a relatively independent economic sphere. This discussion thus seeks to contribute to the wider revaluation and redeployment of these terms in today's context.

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Section: Episteme and Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Episteme and Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

What is society? Social thought and the arts of government

Dean

2010

British Journal of Sociology

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“…Agency also seems to vary according to species because entities have different capacities in the realm of action. In the case of humans, agency is usually associated with the capacity to make the world meaningful (Casper, 1994), to constitute representations (Smart, 1982), or to shape the world according to one's intentions (Bruum & Langlais, 2003). More fundamentally, human agency is distinguished by the capacity to choose between different courses of action.…”

Section: The Resistance and Representation Of Artifactsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Translations: Artifacts from an Actor-Network Perspective

Candidate

2007

Artifact

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40iPods, MP3s and file-sharing networks perform a series of actions that are often reserved for human agents, such as the intellectual and taste-driven labor involved in selecting, sequencing, and rediscovering forgotten sound recordings. At the same time, the familiar understanding of artifacts as stable, material, objective things "out there" is also being eroded by the infinite replicability, malleability, and ephemeral flickering of things online. These trends lead to questions regarding the ontological status of artifacts and reopen the question of how to distinguish technical and material artifacts from human and social relations. In this article, the author explores actor-network theory's (ANT) concept of translation, which advances an alternative framework for understanding the role of artifacts in everyday life.

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“…The very basis of modem social theory, its 'problems, dilemmas, and differences are in fact a necessary feature of its conditions of possibility', and so it is with Giddens's problem in the way that structure is 'invoked' t o account for the subject. Smart seems to suggest that Foucault resolves the issue in the formula that 'we live in a world of programmes, but the world does not follow a programme' (Smart, 1982 : 1 2 1 4 1 ) , but this appears t o be precisely what Giddens is arguing. 3.…”

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confidence: 90%

Anthony Giddens and the crisis of social theory¹

Gane

1983

Economy and Society

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Foucault, sociology, and the problem of human agency

Cited by 51 publications

References 1 publication

What is society? Social thought and the arts of government

What is society? Social thought and the arts of government

Translations: Artifacts from an Actor-Network Perspective

Anthony Giddens and the crisis of social theory¹

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Foucault, sociology, and the problem of human agency

Cited by 51 publications

References 1 publication

What is society? Social thought and the arts of government

What is society? Social thought and the arts of government

Translations: Artifacts from an Actor-Network Perspective

Anthony Giddens and the crisis of social theory1

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Anthony Giddens and the crisis of social theory¹