The Rescue Narrative in Social Theory

Abstract

The social sciences pride themselves on their reflexivity. Yet perhaps the impulse loses momentum a little prematurely. We can identify three stages to this reflexive action. The first is the academic activity through which we move beyond commonsense knowledge to critically assess and interpret the social world by carefully using the theories and methods of our profession. The vast majority of sociologists are engaged in this middle-range activity and go no further. The second level involves critical reflection on the discipline. In effect this is reflexivity about stage 1 activity considered in toto. This tends to be the work of academic opinion leaders. The texts to be reviewed here are all, to greater or lesser degree, engaged in this second-stage activity.This article takes things one step further and reviews these texts in turn, opening up a third level of reflexivity. It does so by pointing to the narrative frames that structure writing and legitimate such intellectual work. I suggest that each text can be read as an exemplar of the genre of academic

Focus

“…This can tend to degenerate into simple name-calling, or at best, the proliferation of misunderstandings. A simple check of any university's new book shelves, or where the new issues of journals are housed, will show the value of this argument: sociology is full of syntheses, re-evaluations, critiques, and what Smith (2002) has aptly called 'rescue narratives' (i.e. attempts to rescue the discipline from incipient crisis).…”