Structure, Interaction and Social Theory (RLE Social Theory)

Derek Layder

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138782600
• eBook ISBN: 9781317650669
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

A central problem in contemporary social theory is that of providing an account of social interaction that does justice both to the self-monitoring capacities of the individuals involved and to the society that 'frames' the interaction. This book attempts to resolve this problem, arguing for an objectivist or 'structuralist' account which does not undervalue the importance of the indexical and negotiated aspects of interaction, and which takes seriously the Marxist-rationalist critique of empiricism and humanism and the associated idea that society should be treated as a supra-individual, preconstituted and constraining object of scientific analysis.

First, Dr Layder pinpoints certain of the strengths and weaknesses of various schools of thought: social psychology (scrutinized in both its sociological and psychological forms), sociology, the Marxist-rationalist approach. Whilst rejecting the mechanistic or naively deterministic theories which are often associated with an objectivist stance, he argues that the productive activities of situated actors must be understood as existing in an articulated relationship with, and within, sets of preconstituted contextual constraints. This thesis is illustrated conceptually by the development of a framework which distinguishes two types and levels of social structure, with different modes of production and reproduction, and empirically by an analysis of aspects of interaction in the occupation of acting.

1 EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND THEORETICAL ISSUES

SOCIOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGY

This is not a book about the philosophy of the social sciences. However, this is a book which, in a more than peripheral way, concerns itself with philosophical issues in the social sciences, particularly in sociology. It is a curious feature of the present state of sociology that on the one hand there is, in certain quarters, a growing concern with philosophical questions (particularly epistemological), either as an adjunct to, or a central feature of, sociological analysis, whilst on the other hand there is, in yet other quarters, a consistent refusal (usually implicit) to recognize that philosophical questions have any relevance for the business of sociology. This latter view is usually based on the assumption that even if one ‘philosophizes’ about sociological questions, the results of such endeavours are essentially vacuous and worthless since they do not affect what sociologists actually do, or the kind of knowledge they produce as a result of their ‘doings’. This assumption, in turn, is typically grounded in a further set of assumptions about philosophy and sociology.

The first of these imagines that the role of philosophy vis-à-vis sociology is that of underlabourer in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Winch (1958) has already noted this in relation to social science in general, whereby philosophy is assigned the role of ‘preparing the ground’ (for example, eliminating linguistic confusions) for the real business of uncovering knowledge via scientific means. Winch claims that the underlabourer conception derives from a reaction against the idea that philosophy is ‘in direct competition with science and aims at constructing or refuting scientific theories by purely a priori reasoning’ (1958, p. 7). Winch points out that this is a misconception of the philosophical enterprise, and that any philosophy which did attempt to compete with experimental science on its own ground would be mistaken and justly criticized. Winch, however, makes a distinction between the investigation of the ‘nature, causes and effects of particular real things and processes’ (1958, p. 8), that is, empirical questions, with which the scientist is concerned and conceptual questions, that is, questions ‘concerned with the nature of reality as such and in general’, which are the province of philosophy. Therefore, in arguing against the underlabourer conception of philosophy, Winch would point out that it is just as mistaken to think that a (conceptual) question such as ‘What is real?’ which requires a further answer to the question of whether the mind of man can have any contact with reality at all, could be settled by experimental methods, as it is to think of philosophy being in direct competition with experimental science on its own ground.

Now, whilst I do not agree with his ideas about the role of philosophy (nor do I agree with the argument he brings to bear on the question of whether or not a social science modelled on the natural sciences is a viable project), Winch does raise, as I have indicated above, some important issues relevant to the question of the relationship between philosophy and sociology. One can understand Winch’s concern as a philosopher to banish the spectre of philosophy as underlabourer, but in endeavouring to do this (correctly in my opinion) he argues for an elitist, rather than egalitarian, conception of the function and role of philosophy. By suggesting that there is a sharply demarcated area of competence germane to philosophy, that is, ‘conceptual’ questions such as ‘giving an account of the nature of social phenomena’ (1958, p. 43), Winch is claiming an exaggerated importance for philosophy. I disavow and contest both the idea that philosophy merely prepares the ground for the real business of sociological inquiry and the claim that some so-called sociological questions (such as accounting for the nature of social phenomena) are really and exclusively philosophical questions beyond the ken of observation or empirical investigation. (This is not to imply in any way that the former are reducible to the latter.)

With regard to the first point, I would argue that in relation to the object of this study, which is to explore some of the theoretical and substantive relationships between social interactions and its social context, sociology must meet on equal terms with a central branch of philosophy: namely, epistemology. Epistemology is concerned with the status of knowledge, that is, how knowledge is acquired and built up and what forms of proof and criteria of validity are brought to bear on that knowledge. Clearly, epistemology bears on any knowledge claim be it sociological, psychological, or theoretical or substantive, and therefore what we know is always referrable back to an epistemological base, that is, to the question, ‘by what means have we come to know this?’ It is obvious, if we accept this line of reasoning, that in adopting specific epistemological premises, vis-à-vis some particular problem, we may (though not necessarily) be led to a certain way of conceiving of that problem and hence to a certain kind of solution (if any) as a result of our epistemological starting point. Other epistemological premises would provide us with other conceptions and hence other solutions. The adoption of a specific epistemological position may also in a significant way help to define as problems the very problems we choose to tackle in the first place. Later in this chapter I will briefly describe some approaches to knowledge prevalent within social science which have had, and continue to have, a bearing on the object of this study, that is, the relationships between social interaction and social structure. It is important to stress that I am not attempting to set forth a typology which describes the basic dimensions of sociological (or social) thought; rather, I merely wish to indicate the way in which some approaches to knowledge have ramifications for the specific theoretical and substantive problem of accounting for interaction.

There are two particular reasons for sketching in these approaches to knowledge which derive from the general aim of developing critiques of the various ways in which certain schools of thought have sought to account for social interaction. First, there is the question of the clarification and elucidation of particular terms (associated with different epistemological premises) which I shall be using during my discussion of various accounts of interaction. Second, both my critique of extant theories of interaction and my own arguments proffered later in the book are informed by a particular approach to knowledge which needs to be specified and in some sense defended (although a proper defence can only be viewed in the context of my overall arguments).

Meanwhile, I would like to return to the issue posed by Winch’s contention that there is a realm of purely philosophical discourse wherein questions can only be answered by further philosophical analysis. In so far as I take the view that sociology must meet on equal terms with epistemology, it follows that there can be no unconditional autonomy granted to philosophy (epistemology). The investigation of reality demands confrontation with substantive referrents in such a way as to foreclose the possibility of examining the one without the other; that is, it is impossible in the final analysis to separate out philosophical or theoretical¹ statements from statements about the concrete (facts).² In saying this, however, I would not want to undervalue the extreme importance of abstract forms of discourse. In particular I shall be concerned with the notion of the relative autonomy of theory and its importance vis-à-vis the problems central to the concerns of this book.

A further problem about the relationships between theory, epistemology and sociology concerns the idea, often associated with the underlabourer conception, that sociology is a fully autonomous discipline and that it possesses its own irreducible objects of study. Such a conception can only be to the good in so far as it alerts us to the problem of reductionism (that is, inappropriate levels of explanation, for example, explanation of social phenomena in terms of individual psychology). However, if it is associated with an implicit faith in the ‘givenness’ of social phenomena, that is, to their concreteness and amenability to sensory apprehension, then such a view would lead to a conception which denegated the role of theoretical knowledge, and would thus be a brake on the development of knowledge in general. Such a conception of social phenomena is present in Durkheim’s ‘Rules of the Sociological Method’,³ which has had a widespread influence on sociology. This idea is built into the epistemology of the positivist tradition in sociology which I shall duly describe, and which I shall have reason to criticize in more detail during the elucidation of my overall argument.

As I have pointed out, the objective of this chapter is to indicate, albeit in a (necessarily) superficial manner the sort of epistemological position which informs both the critiques of extant social theories of interaction advanced in the earlier part of this book and the subsequent theoretical arguments that I develop vis-à-vis the interaction/structure problem. My own position derives from what have come to be seen as alternative ways of conceiving of the methods and procedures of the natural sciences to those proposed by the positivist tradition (Benton, 1978). Thus, whereas formerly, positivism and naturalism were taken to imply each other, the lines of categorization can be redrawn to accommodate the possibility of a non-positivist naturalism (Keat, 1971). The importance of this is to free natural science from the misrepresentations imposed upon it by positivism, and therefore to open up the possibility of social science borrowing certain methodological resources from natural or physical science without the attendant limitations of positivism (Benton, 1978).

The other approach to knowledge that I discuss here derives not from a conception of the natural sciences, but rather from a conception of the social sciences as posing a distinct set of problems which are not resolvable in terms of the natural science paradigm. This I shall term the ‘phenomenological’ or ‘interpretive’ alternative. These anti-naturalist conceptions derive their force from the conviction that social science, and sociology in particular, is concerned with the explanation of social action by human subjects who are endowed with the capacity to interpret and thus formulate or redefine their own actions, and that these capacities cannot be imputed to the objects of study of the natural sciences. Accordingly, anti-naturalists claim that such action has to be interpreted and/or ‘understood’ and therefore remains refractory to the ‘deterministic’ assumptions and nomological explanations of positivistic (natural) science.

Clearly, what I term the phenomenological or interpretive alternative covers a host of fairly disparate traditions of thought ranging from the existential phenomenology of Schutz and his ‘pure’ phenomenological forebears, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, to post-Wittgensteinian philosophers such as Winch. I do not propose to give any account of the diversity of thought within this tradition, since such a project lies outside the scope and interests of this present work.⁴ Instead, I shall concentrate upon a school of thought which has made the greatest inroads into academic sociology whilst claiming a phenomenological genealogy, that is, ethnomethodology.

Whilst the foregoing remarks are intended to aid the explication of the approaches to knowledge which I set out below, two further caveats are required to forestall possible misunderstandings. First is the way in which I characterize an approach, or a set of epistemological premises, as generative of specific kinds of concept and specific kinds of solution to problems needs qualification. As it stands, this formulation could imply some essential principle of necessity in the generative sequence of the production of knowledge, to the effect that the holding of specific epistemological premises necessarily ensures the production of certain kinds of theoretical or substantive work. This is not true because although there may be a logical priority for epistemology in the production of knowledge, there is no necessary temporal priority.⁵ This is also linked to the fact that one finds authors vacillating between epistemological positions both in terms of the whole span of their life’s work and even within the context of a single work.⁶ This is to be expected since authors (excepting those philosophers explicitly concerned with such matters) do not generally start from the wish to solve some epistemological question, but rather begin with the effort to solve some practical, substantive or theoretical problem.⁷ The usefulness of an epistemological analysis, therefore, does not consist in the charting of an author’s consistencies or inconsistencies for its own sake. Rather, the ultimate aim of an epistemological analysis is an evaluaative one, to generate claims about the validity and usefulness of one form of knowledge as against another vis-à-vis specific theoretical or substantive problems. This latter qualification is important, for without some specific focus epistemological disputes tend to be unremittingly abstract and sterile and in the end lead nowhere.⁸

The other prefatory caveat to the discussion of epistemological approaches concerns the nature of the typological enterprise itself. But its very nature, the construction of ‘approaches’ (or types) necessitates the simplification or exaggeration of certain characteristics of the phenomena that they seek to reflect (Weber, 1969), thus it would be unfeasible to expect to try to pin down any particular author to one of these categories. Such an attempt would, anyway, be missing the point from the start. In a significant sense epistemological frameworks exist quite independently of the work of specific authors, whilst at the same time representing tendencies to be found in the work of those authors. It is possible for different tendencies to be complexly juxtaposed in the work of one author, whilst in another the tendency of thought may be unimodal and unidirectional. That is, there are a whole number of possible permutations depending on the specificity of a particular author’s work. I do not intend to go into this when I invoke the work of specific authors to illustrate the typological categories since such a project would move too far away from my central purposes. Therefore, the mentioning of specific authors to facilitate the exemplification of the epistemological premises should not be read as indicating judgment about their ‘true’ or ‘essential’ place.

SOCIOLOGY AND POSITIVISM

Keat and Urry (1975) have succinctly summarized the positivist philosophy of science as follows.

For the positivist, science is an attempt to gain predictive and explanatory knowledge of the external world. To do this, one must construct theories, which consist of highly general statements, expressing the regular relationships that are found to exist in that world. These general statements, or laws, enable us both to predict and explain the phenomena that we discover by means of systematic observation and experiment. To explain something is to show that it is an instance of these regularities; and we can make predictions only on the same basis. Statements expressing these regularities, if true are only contingently so; their truth is not a matter of logical necessity, and cannot be known by a priori means. Instead such statements must be objectively tested by means of experiment and observation, which are the only source of sure and certain empirical knowledge. It is not the purpose of science to get ‘behind’ or ‘beyond’ the phenomena revealed to us by sensory experience, to give us knowledge of unobservable natures, essences or mechanisms that somehow necessitate these phenomena. For the positivist there are no necessary connections in nature; there are only regularities, successions of phenomena which can be systematically represented in the universal laws of scientific theory.

Examples of work in sociology and psychology that have been influenced by this positivist conception of science are numerous and I shall have occasion to discuss some of these in more detail in the chapters that follow. However, here I shall merely try to indicate some of the general lines of influence that positivism has had within sociology.⁹ Perhaps the most positive influence has stemmed from the USA during the post-war period, when American sociology was characterized by a concern to develop general laws of social life from which consequences could be devised and, most importantly, which were empirically testable. Durkheim’s ‘Suicide’ was lauded by the American sociological fraternity, particularly Merton (1949), as exemplifying the proper scientific method. For example, from Durkheim’s basic proposition that ‘Suicide varies inversely with the degree of integration of the social groups that the individual forms a part’ (Durkheim, 1952, p. 209), lower-level laws can be described, such as: suicide varies inversely with the degree of integration of religious society, domestic society and political society. From these lower-level laws one can deduce, given a statement of antecedent conditions, empirically testable hypotheses.

As Keat and Urry (1975) point out, this positivist interpretation of Durkheim¹⁰ re-affirmed and vindicated the American social scientists’ concern with careful description, the comparative analysis of concrete patterns of social behaviour, and inductive empirical study. Through the accumulation of statistical findings and well-corroborated observations, one could build up, inductively, general laws of social life from which one could then deduce empirically testable hypotheses. However, the status of theoretical terms which are sometimes embedded in such laws becomes problematic for the positivist, since very often theoretical terms (such as electric or magnetic fields in physical science and type of social integration in sociology – for example Durkheim) refer to entities, events, etc. which cannot be perceived or directly observed. Such terms become problematic because for the positivist, a statement cannot be scientific unless it is possible to decide upon its truth or falsity by means of direct empirical observation. Typically, positivists have circumvented this problem by utilizing a distinction between two sets of terms or ‘languages’: theoretical (or non-observational) and observational (or non-theoretical). Often the link between these two languages is forged by ‘correspondence rules’, whereby the definitions of theoretical terms can be given to them by means of statements containing only observational terms.¹¹

Keat and Urry (1975) have suggested that for the positivist, the observation language is regarded as both epistemologically and ontologically privileged. By ‘epistemologically privileged’ they mean the following:

First, that the truth or falsity of statements containing only observational terms can be known either with total certainty, or at least with a far greater degree of certainty than those contain...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Epistemological and Theoretical Issues
• 2 Social Psychology
• 3 Sociological Theories of Interaction
• 4 The Critique of Humanism, Empiricism and Reductionism
• 5 Structure and Interaction: Theoretical relations
• 6 Work and Interaction: An empirical illustration of the theory
• 7 Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index