Developing a sociological theory for the empirical understanding of terrorism

This article represents an attempt to construct a sociological theory of terrorism by means of six theoretical propositions. Taken together these six propositions attempt to explain counterhegemonic terrorism and the dynamics of organizations that participate in such political violence. The terrorism literature shows three emerging trends: spectacularization, criminalization, and fragmentation as explanations for terrorism. In contrast to these atheoretical trends, the theoretical propositions are offered around the themes of counterhegemony, resource mobilization, counter-institutionalization, power-prestige dynamics, ritualization, and social solidarity. The conclusion suggests that any predictions of terrorism are problematic but that these six theoretical principles outlined herein could offer deeper insight into the sociological phenomena of terrorism.     

Comparative studies and sociological theory: Autobiographical notes

The following article presents a brief survey on the development of the author's sociological studies and research, especially on the ways in which he has explored in these studies the relations between comparative studies and major problems and developments in sociological theory. The article analyzes how the central focus of his interest has been the problem of human creativity and its limitations, especially as it related to the social arena, the construction of different social formations—ranging from the so-called microsituations to the more formalized institutional and macroinstitutional formations—the problem of charisma and its routinization.     

Cultural studies, a sociological poetics: institutions of the Canadian imaginary

La poétique sociologique est définie comme problématique pour la sociologie critique de la culture afin de considérer l'avenir du rapport du dédoublement entre les cultures vécue et officielle à travers les institutions de l'imaginaire canadien anglais. On propose des critiques de la CBC, du développement de la politique culturelle, et des Études canadiennes comme école de pensée. A critique of the official definition of Canadian culture is presented. Given the distinction between lived and official culture, the question posed is, ‘how do we theorize the relations between these two levels for an entire society? Based principally on Bahktin's concept of ‘dialogism’ with references to Dumont and Rioux, a sociological poetics is advanced as a theoretical device for unravelling ‘the Canada’. It is argued that cultural studies defined as a sociological poetics must negate any definition of the one Canadian culture or representations of the one Canadian society. Lines of inquiry are suggested with respect to the CBC and Canadian studies as cultural industries.     

Recent rural community studies

This article examines recent rural community studies by considering, in turn: comparisons, methods, theories and community studies as vehicles for developing social scientific arguments. ‘Recent’ is defined as from 1980 onwards. ‘Rural’ is taken to include research conducted in country towns. And ‘community studies’ is understood as an inclusive term embracing various research methodologies. Because this field cannot be covered exhaustively, attention is focused on research that has a special bearing on the future of community studies. Particular reference is made to the work of Colin Bell, which helped to shape recent research agendas.     

Improving community health through evaluations

There has been an increasing emphasis on sustainable communitydevelopment in recent years, which is linked to community healththrough quality of life and intergenerational considerations.Evaluations are one of the basic tools to improving communityhealth with the most effective evaluations being those thatare meaningful to the community itself, and which provide tangiblefeedback and incentives for improved performance. Drawing onwell-known methods, this paper illustrates four important componentsof community evaluations. Although each method incorporatessome or all of these components, their achievements to datehave been limited. The reasons for this, as well as how evaluationscan play a more effective role in improving community health,are discussed.     

Developing community leadership through the arts in Southside Virginia: Social networks, civic identity and civic change

This paper describes a strategy designed to catalyse a processof civic dialogue and social learning in an economically distressedsection of Virginia typically referred to as Southside or theDan River Region. The model underpinning this initiative employsthe arts and a grassroots leadership programme simultaneouslyto encourage a broad-scale civic conversation concerning thepast and potential future of the principal communities locatedin the Southside region. The combination of broad participationand development of an effective leadership cadre at the grassrootslevel should encourage the creation of robust community problemsolving coalitions across the region. The initiative aims toengender specific forms of locally driven community-based problem-solvingcoalitions: those that emphasize inclusiveness and value thefull participation of historically disenfranchised individuals.The project also employs non-traditional forums to promote creativedialogue and to encourage reflection among the broader citizenryon the significance and possible character of a new and regionalidentity.     

Responsibility and sociological discourse

This article reads Chaim Perelman's theory of argumentation in order to formulate the task of social theorizing as responsible discourse. Taking rationality as sound argument which proceeds in terms of a link between speaker's intentions (the audience) and the public, the first part examines Perelman's notions about the relativity of facts to particular traditions of communication which link speakers, argumentation, and publics. Accepting that this view, shared by many sociologists, allows for no general criterion of rationality to be used as a principle for responsible speaking, the second part discusses how a choice for one or another tradition of reasoning in sociology might responsibly be made. This criterion for choosing is presented in terms of the relative generality and breadth of intended audiences and the relative openness to criticism of traditions of discourse.Preparation of this paper was assisted by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Leave Fellowship No. 451-801455, and the kind hospitality of lain Mangham and the Centre for the Study of Organizational Change and Development, University of Bath. Lloyd Bitzer, Joan Budge, Bob Hollinger, Valerie Sloane, Steve Turner and an anonymous, supportive referee have all helped me shape this essay. My gratitude for their assistance does not imply responsibility for the remaining faults and infelicities; that is mine.     

For a sociological philosophy

Conclusion Sociology, then, should prove to be relevant to a host of issues within the traditional purview of philosophy: Epistemology and philosophy of science, of course; the issue of solipsism and other minds (as Habermas has already seen, invoking Mead); ontological issues of the mind/body relation, of person/self/identity (on which there is a wealth of untapped materials, from Goffman, Mead, and in the lineage of Durkheim and Mauss now being rediscovered); and more deeply the questions of materialism/idealism, realism and anti-realism. All questions in the philosophy of ethics, ranging from conceptual analysis to critical and constructive ethics, make sense realistically only if handled with a sociological understanding of where moral ideals and feelings emerge from. The extent of possible success of sociological explanations is a crucial point for any discussion of determinism and indeterminism, and relatedly for the notion of will, free or otherwise. (Obviously the sociology of the self is implicated in the free-will issue as well.) The micro/ macro issue is a wonderful ground on which to consider questions of universals and particulars, of the different orders of causality, of reification and reductionism.Though it may seem presumptious to say so, sociology has implications right across the board in philosophy, even in its stronghold of metaphysics: space and time, existence and non-existence, the Ideal and the immediacy of lived experience are all parts of our current sociological controversies. As yet we have not been very bold in bringing such implications of sociology to attention. But there is recent work such as that of Preston on the sociology of Zen practice, which is relevant to a philosophy of ontology at its deepest levels. Furthermore, I feel optimistic about sociology's capacity to contribute to these issues philosophically, that is to say within the problem-space of philosophy itself.Tools like Goffmanian frame analysis, with a nested and grounded relation among levels, should cast light even on tricky issues such as infinities and logical indeterminacies, ontological foundations and unfoundedness. After all, if reality is socially constructed, why shouldn't our professional understanding of society reveal something central about the universe? As of now, these implications remain only potential. But to buttress my claim for the relevance of sociology in just one area, epistemology and the reflexive issues that arise within it, let me close with a brief reflection on what the sociology of science implies about the nature of philosophy itself. We can hardly expect that sociology will give a final and definitive answer to philosophy's problems. I say that, not because of any pessimism about our intellectual tools, but because of the very nature of intellectual communities. Intellectuals make careers by gaining fame for their original contributions; there must be problems to solve if there is to be something to contribute. This of course is true of all areas of science and scholarship. But whereas the empirical disciplines can go on to create new specialties and research areas, philosophers do not have the same way out of the professional problem posed by a field's own past success.Philosophy has handled this problem in a deeper way. For philosophers have taken as their turf precisely those problems that are themselves inherently deep and, in some sense, intractable. Philosophers have traditionally been concerned with the understanding of knowledge itself, with the most fundamental categories of existence and experience, with the bases of value. These are the boundary problems of all the other fields of intellectual inquiry, and of human life itself. They are intractable, not because significant things cannot be said about them, but because they are located at the open edges of everything; they reveal themselves full of reflexivities, which constantly reemerge at a new level whenever a conceptual solution is proposed, much as in Gödel's incompleteness theorem - and in the most highly transformed level of Goffmanian frames.It is for this reason that the history of philosophy is full of complaints that previous philosophers have come to no agreement, along with new beginnings that attempt to finish its business at last. There is a striking repetitiveness to these claims: we hear them from Descartes, and again from Kant, from the Logical Positivists, from Wittgenstein, in their different ways; there is more than an echo of this intellectual strategy in today's extremists, such as Rorty and Derrida, who again are abolishing philosophy. But philosophy has not been abolished; each previous claim to bring the uselessly warring sects of the past into a final resolution has failed to stifle philosophy's perennial inquiries. Just as strikingly, each such effort at ending philosophy has given rise to a period of renewed philosophical creativity.I think this is not an accident. It is because the structure of the intellectual field in general (across the disciplines, not only philosophy) is being restructured at a particular historical time that figures like Descartes, Kant, and others appear; the crisis of intellectual restructuring is what gives them the intellectual capital (and the creative energy) to reconceptualize the fundamental boundary problems in a new way. In this sense, philosophy is indeed foundational; it concerns itself with the ultimate questions, the borderlines of all inquiry and all of life. But there is another sense of foundational, the claim that philosophy is the discipline necessary for putting all other knowledge upon a secure foundation. This is certainly not true in a practical and historical sense; the other disciplines have gone ahead quite well without guidance from philosophy. Kant's claim to provide a secure foundation for the physical sciences against Hume's scepticism was really a rhetorical ploy, a way of building up the importance of what philosophy is doing; it really made no difference to the growth of science in Hume's day, or in Kant's, just what the philosophers said about the foundations of their knowledge. The same is true for all such claims about the significance of foundational issues.But this is not to dismiss the importance of what philosophers are doing. Theirs is the great intellectual adventure into the edges of things. The rest of the disciplines, the rest of what we consider to be knowledge, nestled in a pragmatic acceptance of whatever seems to work for us as intellectual practitioners, do not rest upon philosophy. The structural relation among intellectual fields is more the other way around, as far as the dynamics of intellectual change are concerned. But philosophy has nevertheless positioned itself in the intellectual space where the deepest explorations are launched. This will continue to be so, even as sociology adds its own impetus to the philosophical project.

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Making environmental sociology sociological

Three basic sociological distinctions—viewing the environment as home or place of sustenance, separation of home and workplace, and “thing” work versus “people” work—are used to illuminate such sociological concerns as environmental degradation as a social problem, social specialization and pollution, and the demographic profiles of environmentally concerned people.     

Watergate and sociological theory

Theory and Society -