As anyone who looks at my blog regularly might have noticed, I’ve been reading Nicos Mouzelis very closely recently (and also spelling his name wrong up until finally noticing my persistant mistake a moment ago). There are two things I enjoyed about his work. Firstly, there is a panoramic view of contemporary sociological theory, with his pragmatic focus on what theorists actually do with their tools rather than what they say they’ll do facilitating a discussion which resists getting dragged down into the terms of reference which are restricted to any theoretical approach. This allows some fascinating insights, such as the argument that Foucault often lapses in practice into something weirdly akin to Parsonian functionalism, albeit expressed with a profoundly different vocabulary. Secondly, the approach to sociological theory which goes hand-in-hand with this panoramic frame of reference is profoundly constructive, orientated towards ‘building bridges’ between opposing schools of thought and developed through close and sympathetic textual analysis. Considered in this way, his analysis can operate in an admirably even handed way, while still remaining critical of much of the contemporary landscape of sociological theorising:
In order to do this effectively, its postmodern wing should stop subjecting itself to the tyranny of intellectual fashions, to the obsessive need to ‘transcend’ at all costs whatever exists already, to its predilection for ignoring the old and to automatically opt for the new, irrespective of its truth value. Its more ‘modernist’ wing, on the other hand, should discard its fundamentalist luggage and shift its attention from universalist schemes and philosophical groundings to flexible, tentative conceptualizations, sensitive to the problems and dilemmas of empirical research, and ever willing to modify the conceptual tools on offer in the light of new theoretical insights or new empirical findings
However an obvious objection to his work is to attack the notion of ‘conceptual pragmatism’ underlying it. It could be argued that the intellectual self-presentation adopted by Mouzelis is rather disingenuous. It affects withdrawal from the field of theoretical contestation in order to offer ‘detached’ critique while nonetheless representing a move within the same game. This is a argument to be taken seriously and it’s one I’m as yet unsure about how to respond to. In a way I find it frustrating because it can’t be dismissed and yet I’m near entirely persuaded by the critique Mouzelis offers of contemporary sociological theory:
This, finally, has resulted in a situation where the inherent paradigmatic pluralism of sociology has degenerated into anarchy and cacophony, a total lack of communication between warring theoretical schools; it has also led to a postmodernist abolition of such fundamental distinctions as micro-macro, agency-system, representing-represented, etc. In combination with the abolition of boundaries between disciplines and subdisciplines, this has led to a free-for-all where anything goes, and where the analysis of societies by means of various reductive explanations (in terms of ‘texts’, the unconscious, chains of signifiers, desire, etc.) has regressed to pre-Durkheimian standards. We are faced, in other words, with a situation of theoretical dedifferentiation or theoretical primitivism which, instead of building on what has already been achieved by the classical sociologists and their followers, takes us back to extremely crude, facile and even grotesque forms of sociological analysis.
Though I worry the excoriating language into which he slips when offering views like this will diminish their plausibility to those who are quite far away from the position he is advocating. Perhaps the sort of ‘bridge building’ work Mouzelis advocates is one which needs to be detached from offering any positive account? Though I’m not sure this would even be possible and it would certainly be sterile. Perhaps entirely pointless. But it seems manifest to me that without shared terms of reference it will be impossible to ‘build bridges’. If the attempt to establish common starting points amidst an ocean of disagreement is seen as intrinsically suspect, representing an attempt to surreptitiously establish a new ‘paradigm’ then I don’t see how conversations across theoretical traditions will ever be fruitful. Furthermore what I think are the most important questions, concerning the broader practical goals of sociological theorising, will forever be squeezed out. Nonetheless, on the level of intellectual history I can’t really disagree with John Holmwood’s assessment:
Sociology seems to produce a number of co-existing and mutually exclusive (semi) paradigms which continually split and re-form in different combinations. Those who are committed to the idea of the necessity of a ‘theoretical core’ frequently argue that such a situation represents a moment of synthesis, a moment that requires the development of a unified frame of reference representing structure and agency as presuppositional categories (as argued, for example, by Parsons,Alexander, Habermas, Giddens,Archer, Scott, etc.). The fact that an accepted synthesis never comes and that each new attempt gives rise to further critique suggests that ‘synthesis’ is one of the moves that gives rise to new splits and forms and is not, therefore, a resolution (Holmwood 2010a)
But I think it glosses over important differences on the level of sociological theory. Mouzelis makes a convincing case about the inadequacy of attempts made by Bourdieu and Giddens to ‘transcend’ structure and agency, arguing that each theorists in different ways smuggles the suppressed distinction back into their resulting framework. Archer’s critique of Giddens makes a complementary point about the practical explanatory implications of what she terms the central conflationism of Giddens and how, in his concern to make temporality and integral aspect of his work, he forgot the much more important question of time as an actual variable. These theorists have not all advocated a moment of synthesis. In fact I’m pretty sure Archer wouldn’t for a second argue that the morphogenetic approach is the only approach to sociological explanation, though I can see how some people might get that impression (topic for another post perhaps).
Certainly there is a clustering around structure and agency as presuppositional categories here but those categories are contested. As perhaps there is increasingly around various forms of relational sociology. The question I’m currently preoccupied by is the nature of such clusters: why do they emerge and why do they dissipate? Certainly I think Holmwood is correct in his claim about a mechanism for the latter: the drive to synthesise fuels critique and erodes the agreement which encouraged thoughts of a future unity in the first place. But there are certainly other mechanisms in both cases. I guess I’m interested in the sociology of sociological theory. But not in as navel gazing a way as it this likely sounds. I think a better understanding of how theoretical concepts cluster, circulate and dissipate – as well as how these flows both shape and are shaped by relational networks and institutional structures – would have practical implications. It would also be rather interesting.
Mark Carrigan 