Power and Relational Sociology

The Performative Power of Frictions and New Possibilities: Studying power, performativity and process with Follett’s pragmatism

“…A useful starting point to understand process as ontology is offered by Dewey and Bentley’s framework and vocabulary of ‘self-action’, ‘inter-action’ and ‘trans-action’ (1949) to indicate modes of action and analyse conceptual distinctions between entitative and processual ontologies (Ansell, 2011; Selg, 2018; Simpson, 2009, 2016). 1 Selg and Ventsel (2020, pp.…”

“… 2. Mutual constitution as form of causality has been discussed by Selg (2020), and in relation to power by Reed (2013) and Selg (2018). …”

“… 4. In social sciences what is meant by ‘relational’ and ‘processual’ varies. I follow scholars in relational sociology that use ‘processual’ to acknowledge the primacy of process and ‘relational’ to acknowledge the primacy of relations in different approaches, with overlap in the case of ‘relational all the way down’ approaches (see Emirbayer & Mische, 1998 and Selg, 2018, 2020 for further discussion). Follett’s ontology is both processual and relational, hence I use ‘relational process ontology’ to make this ontological distinction. …”

A sociological imagination for a clumsy world: François Dépelteau’s relational sociology

“…Both Emirbayer's Manifesto and his paper where provocative: not only did they try to articulate what relational thinking is, but also to dismiss as forms of substantialism various perspectives that more or less explicitly seem to be about studying social relations. As the title of François's paper indicates, not only does he propose a groundwork for relational thinking, but also a critique of what is sometimes referred to as co-determinism, variable-centered analysis or interactionalism in theoretical-methodological reflections over the "relational turn" in the social sciences (see also Dépelteau 2013a;2015;2018a;2018b;Emirbayer 1997;Selg 2016a;2016b;2018;Selg and Ventsel 2020). In this paper the above-mentioned Mills is used as an example of co-determinism along with many other eminent social theorists including Pierre Bourdieu, Roy Bhaskar, Digithum,No.…”

“…The inconsistency in this usage leads back toDewey and Bentley (1949) who use both forms. In various writings(Selg 2016a;2016b;2018;Selg and Ventsel 2020) I have insisted on using the hyphenated form only in order to highlight the telling prefixes of the neologisms (self-, inter-and trans-action), especially given that transaction is widely used in economic literature where it actually refers to what can be conceptualized as self-action in Dewey and Bentley's sense.…”