The Essential Ambiguity of the Social

Bibliographic Data

ID7215282
AuthorsBryan Green (0000-0002-2352-9041, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume49
Issue2
Pages108-136
Publication date2019-01-24
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhilosophy of the Social Sciences (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0048-3931 • E-ISSN: 1552-7441
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0048393118821185
OpenAlexW2913809085
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited47

Methodological divisions in sociology, the study of the social, are not just deep and persistent but patterned—most obviously in the separate development of qualitative methods in ethnography and grounded theory, but also in subsidiary divisions within those separations, following the same pattern. The pattern being too deep-rooted to be explained as empirical happenstance, it will be explored here as the effect of an equally deep-rooted condition. More exactly, through postulating that sociology’s subject-matter, the social, is ontologically rooted in an essential ambiguity between abstraction and individuation. Four criteria are drawn from the idea of the dichotomy being constitutively essential, which this or any alternative candidates must meet. The article conducts the postulate through the criteria, and applies the criterion of separating better from worse sociological theory to the work of Pierre Bourdieu

Abstraction · Ambiguity · Epistemology · Individuation · Psychoanalysis · Social science · Sociological theory · Sociology · Subject (documents · Subject matter · Computer Science · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Philosophy · Psychology · Qualitative Research Methods and Applications · Social and Cultural Dynamics