Essays in Social Theory (Modern Revivals in Sociology Series)

Notes and References ## Preface and Acknowledgements These essays, written over the last fourteen years, doubtless have more in common than their author realises. Their general approach Polonius might have described as critical-analytical-conceptual-philosophical. Their subject-matter falls under no obvious label -which will annoy those with a taste for labels. I see no great point in, for instance, drawing a sharp line between the 'social' and the 'political', consigning the former to sociology and the latter to political science or political theory. Some of these essays are more sociological, others more political. Certain perennial, evergreen issues recur -the distinction between empirical and normative theorising and the relations between them, and the bearing of theory on evidence and evidence on theory (themes dominant in Part I); the alleged relativity of standards of rationality and of criteria of truth and validity (see Part 2); and the relation between 'individual' and 'social' factors, and the wide-ranging implications of different ways of conceptualising that relation (see Part 3). For some, such issues are best uprooted and weeded out; others tend them with loving care as prize exhibits in the academic flower garden. In my view, they form the roots of the tree of social-scientific knowledge. Those roots certainly need care and attention, but the tree's only fruit is explanatory theory, based on and vulnerable to evidence. All the essays have previously appeared in journals or books, except the first, 'Power and Structure'. An earlier version of that essay was delivered at the British Sociological Association's Annual Conference in 1975, the present version at the American Political Science Association's Annual Meeting in 1976. Chapter 2, written with Graeme Duncan (whom I thank both for the pleasures of that collaboration and for his permission to reprint here), first appeared in In his new book of poems, A Matins Flywheel , John Lent brings a life-long fascination with literary forms to the hybrid prose/poetry of a new long poem called Matins for St. Agnes of The 62nd Avenue and 109th Street, Edmonton, and to the new, loose, genre-mixing poems and prose sketches about growing up in Edmonton, Lents love of jazz, his travel to Prague, and his remembering the writing legacy of Robert Kroetsch. Because these meditations and poems are rooted in the visceral struggles to find the necessary love and honesty required to live through some harrowing health mysteries, these meditations surface close to the bones of our contemporary lives and celebrate an almost unearthly delight of skin and texture and breath and light and love. This writing is not fooling around; it wants a lot. And like the work of Lents self-declared models Robert Kroetsch, Sheila Watson, Eileen Myles, John Berger, W.G. Sebald, Per Petterson, Pierre Michon, Jake Kennedy and Marilyn Robinson he sings the reader right smack dab back into the density of these times and some of its luminous joys and sorrows. I feel I have been writing towards this book all my life, Lent says, explaining what he was trying to do in A Matins Flywheel . [The book] tries to run with everything I have learned about forms of consciousness in literature into a kind of baffling wonder at the truth of those shattering, fragmented forms themselves, the human exhilaration in them as subject and object. A Matins Flywheel is an exciting, new book by an accomplished, innovative writer. Front Matter....Pages i-x Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Power and Structure....Pages 3-29 The New Democracy....Pages 30-51 Political Ritual and Social Integration....Pages 52-73 Alienation and Anomie....Pages 74-95 Socialism and Equality....Pages 96-117 Front Matter....Pages 119-119 Some Problems about Rationality....Pages 121-137 On the Social Determination of Truth....Pages 138-153 Relativism: Cognitive and Moral....Pages 154-174 Front Matter....Pages 175-175 Methodological Individualism Reconsidered....Pages 177-186 No Archimedean Point....Pages 187-190 State of Nature....Pages 191-195 Back Matter....Pages 197-227 Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. Steven Lukes. x, 227 p. Very light edge wear.Sunned spine and left side of front cover nearest the spine sunned to yellow-orange. Spine faded to yellow.There is a name inscribed in blue ink inside the front cover. Pages slightly creased/grubby/turned upwards.Contents clean and unmarked. "A poetry collection about forms of consciousness in literature and the kind of baffling wonder we arrive at when we reach truth about how we are."-- Provided by publisher