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Abstract
This essay provides an in-depth discussion of Patrick Baert and Filipe Carreira da Silva's Social Theory in the Twentieth Century and Beyond.
Notes
An abridged version of this paper was presented on 10 September 2011 in Session 8 of the Meet-the-Author Events at the 10th Conference of the European Sociological Association (Geneva, Switzerland, 7–10 September 2011). I would like to thank Patrick Baert for his thoughtful, perceptive, and constructive response to the issues raised during our discussion. In addition, I am grateful to Sandro Cattacin (Université de Genève) for organizing this session. Last but not least, I am indebted to Richard Armstrong for his pertinent comments on a draft version of this article.
Patrick Baert and Filipe Carreira da Silva, Social Theory in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (2nd Edition, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010 [1998]) [ISBN: 9780745639802, ISBN 9780 745639819 (paperback); 319 pp.]. In this paper, all page references (both in the body of the text and in the notes) are to this edition.
Some skeptics may criticize Baert and Silva for failing to make a major contribution to the literature, but it seems to me that an objection of this kind misses the point for three main reasons: first, because we are dealing with a book that provides an introduction to twentieth-century social theory; second, because each chapter contains original evaluative reflections on the respective approaches under scrutiny; and, third, because in the final chapter (Chapter 9) the authors make a significant contribution to the literature by proposing an outline of a ‘hermeneutics-inspired pragmatism’.
The entire manuscript is extremely well written. I stumbled upon very few (minor) formal or grammatical issues that the authors may want to take into account if they ever intend to publish a third edition. An additional comment: ‘America’/‘Americans’/‘American’ should read ‘North America’/‘North Americans’/‘North American’ (or ‘US-American’ or ‘Anglo-American’). This is not a mere issue of political correctness. Given Baert and Silva’s emphasis on the importance of intercultural understanding, I think Latin-American scholars are right to point out that we should avoid reproducing the self-referential and hegemonic language of Anglocentric social science.
See pp. 24, 28, and 35–6.
See pp. 24, 28, and 35–6.
See pp. 196–7.
See pp. 216–22 and 229.
See p. 250.
To be fair, most publishers expect their authors to adhere to a particular word limit policy, and this may be one of the main reasons why Baert and Silva pay marginal attention to the impact of classical sociology on contemporary social theory.
On the limited scope of Baert and Silva's analysis, see p. 286: ‘[…] the golden generation of twentieth-century European social theory. We are referring to a generation of intellectuals and academics, born between the world wars, that includes, for instance, Pierre Bourdieu, Niklas Luhmann, Jürgen Habermas, Michel Foucault and Anthony Giddens.’ Again, to be fair, the word limit policy imposed upon the two authors by the publishers may have been a noteworthy obstacle.
In light of the above criticism, cynical commentators may suggest that a more appropriate title for this book would have been something along the lines of White, Western, Malestream Social Theory in the Twentieth Century and Beyond. It seems to me that this would be a somewhat unjustified criticism, because modern social theory is largely ‘white’, ‘Western’, and ‘malestream’. The more interesting question is to what extent twenty-first century social theory will be able to break out of the ethnocentric and androcentric straitjacket of modern intellectual thought.
The list reads as follows: Chapter 1: Émile Durkheim, Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Pierre Bourdieu, Luc Boltanski. Chapter 2: Talcott Parsons, Robert Merton, Niklas Luhmann, Jeffrey Alexander. Chapter 3: George Herbert Mead, Erving Goffman, Harold Garfinkel, Randall Collins, Russell Hardin. Chapter 4: Jon Elster, Martin Hollis, David M. Kreps, Gary S. Becker, Paul DiMaggio, Walter W. Powell. Chapter 5: Anthony Giddens, Charles Tilly, Theda Skocpol, Michael Mann, Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt. Chapter 6: Michel Foucault. Chapter 7: Jürgen Habermas, Claus Offe, Axel Honneth. Chapter 8: Manuel Castells, Ulrich Beck, Zygmunt Bauman, Saskia Sassen, Richard Sennett.
Jeffrey Alexander, Gary S. Becker, Randall Collins, Paul DiMaggio, Harold Garfinkel, Erving Goffman, Russell Hardin, David M. Kreps, George Herbert Mead, Robert Merton, Talcott Parsons, Walter W. Powell, Richard Sennett, Theda Skocpol, Charles Tilly.
Ulrich Beck, Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, Niklas Luhmann, Claus Offe.
Luc Boltanski, Pierre Bourdieu, Émile Durkheim, Michel Foucault, Claude Lévi-Strauss.
Anthony Giddens, Martin Hollis, Michael Mann.
Ferdinand de Saussure.
Manuel Castells.
Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt.
Zygmunt Bauman.
Saskia Sassen.
Jon Elster.
Jeffrey Alexander, Zygmunt Bauman, Gary S. Becker, Manuel Castells, Randall Collins, Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt, Jon Elster, Harold Garfinkel, Anthony Giddens, Erving Goffman, Russell Hardin, Martin Hollis, David M. Kreps, Paul DiMaggio, Michael Mann, George Herbert Mead, Robert Merton, Talcott Parsons, Walter W. Powell, Saskia Sassen, Richard Sennett, Theda Skocpol, Charles Tilly.
Luc Boltanski, Pierre Bourdieu, Émile Durkheim, Michel Foucault, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Ferdinand de Saussure.
Ulrich Beck, Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, Niklas Luhmann, Claus Offe.
In defense of the authors, one may legitimately argue that this task goes beyond the scope of this book and would, therefore, require embarking upon a different kind of journey, primarily and explicitly aimed at breaking out of the various (above-mentioned) ‘-istic’ straitjackets. One may add a few more minor criticisms to the list, but, to my mind, they are less significant. An additional point worth considering is the following issue: in various contexts, the authors make reference to ‘classical’ sociological variables such as ‘class’, ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’, and ‘gender’. It would have been useful to consider sociological questions arising from ‘sexual orientation’, ‘age’, and ‘ability’, since they are immensely important in the daily reproduction and transformation of power relations.
In all fairness, the authors do examine some of these commonalities, for instance, in their pertinent, and elegantly written, comparison of Bauman and Beck on pp. 262–3.
To give only one example, when assessing Beck's work on p. 261, Baert and Silva maintain that ‘empirical research does not back this up’, but they fail to provide us with any (substantive) counter-evidence in support of their claim. In a possible third edition of the volume, it would be useful if the authors could provide examples to substantiate assertions such as the following: (a) ‘It is a common mistake amongst social researchers to consider or debate methodological issues without specifying what they want to achieve’ (p. 297). Is this really a common mistake amongst social researchers? If so, Baert and Silva need to provide examples to demonstrate that this is actually the case. (b) ‘[…] the orthodox view that modernity and the Holocaust are antithetical’ (p. 303). I do not think that, amongst contemporary historians and social scientists, modernity and the Holocaust tend to be regarded as antithetical. On the contrary, most historians and historical sociologists who specialize in the analysis of the multiple factors that led to the rise of fascism in Germany are willing to accept (or indeed insist upon) the fact that the Holocaust was possible only within modern society, that is, within the parameters imposed by its instrumental forces, notably functionalist rationality, capitalism, and large-scale bureaucracies.
See p. 248: ‘A Brave New World? The Empirical Turn in Social Theory’.
Moreover, if the authors, in their discussion of Castells, are right to state that ‘[t]he “old” urban sociology was […] narrowly empiricist and lacked a proper “theoretical object”’ (p. 249), then it may be more appropriate to associate Castells's work with the ‘conceptual turn’, rather than with the ‘empirical turn’, in social theory.
In addition, the authors Baert and Silva are willing to concede that ‘[s]ometimes […] developments in social theory are sparked by empirical research’ (p. 286).
Furthermore, it should be noted that, on various occasions, the authors criticize some of the social theorists whose work they examine for failing to ‘flesh out the causal mechanisms behind the plethora of phenomena’ (p. 253; in this case, they refer to the work of Manuel Castells). As hermeneutics-inspired pragmatists, Baert and Silva are, at the same time, deeply critical of clear-cut separations between scientific knowledge and common sense (see, for example, pp. 295–6). Hence, it appears to be the case that we are confronted with a contradiction, which lies at the heart of Baert and Silva's analysis: on the one hand, they insist upon the notion that one of the main tasks of critical social scientists is to shed light on hidden structural forces and underlying causal mechanisms that shape both the nature and the development of the social world; on the other hand, they are distrustful of the view that social science has an ‘uncovering mission’ and that social scientists should be inspired by what Ricœur famously called the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’. We cannot have it both ways.
See p. 296: ‘it assumes an opposition between theory and knowledge, on the one hand, and practice and action on the other’.
An anecdotal remark: One thing I have noticed is that the vast majority of native Anglophone colleagues with whom I have had the pleasure to work over the years, and who embrace the discourse of multiculturalism, are monocultural and monolingual. With all respect, this makes me question their ability to appreciate the full complexity involved in the construction of multicultural realities, particularly on the personal level, that is, in terms of internally divided forms of selfhood. The idea of a multicultural, multiperspectival, and cosmopolitan social scientist sounds nice in theory, but it seems ironic that numerous social researchers generate academic discourses of multiculturalism from the hegemonic perspective of Anglocentrism. Pragmatist and post-colonial discourses may permit us to become aware, but not necessarily to break out, of the Eurocentric straitjacket of Anglophone social science.
In this respect, it is ironic that Baert and Silva criticize other social theorists (such as Beck, see especially p. 261) for underestimating the continuing importance of class and the numerous ways in which it converts ‘reflexivity’, ‘individualization’, and ‘dialogic existence’ (p. 261) into late-modern privileges of the middle and upper classes of society. One may wonder to what extent access to the empowering nature of the key ingredients of their own program – that is, conceptualization, critique, edification, and imagination – also remains a privilege of the well-off and well-educated members of society.