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Meeting ID: 969 8041 0248
Passcode: 500274

Confronting social reality: resistance, construction, and conflict

The historical roots of the social sciences in ancient philosophical disputes, and in the political events and movements in 19th century, is familiar to every student. Equally, though, the 19th century saw the growth of the idea that the political and philosophical commitments of those inquiring into the nature of the social could be made less relevant to the answers they offered through the adoption of a "scientific approach”. Perhaps the most prominent defenders of that idea was Emile Durkheim, notwithstanding his political activism and his familiarity with philosophy: the “facticity” and autonomy of the social provides the basis for a genuine social science capable of uncovering the causal circuits that enfold all human beings. On his view, we cannot avoid confronting social reality: it not only stands before us in ways we cannot ignore, but its powers are the cause of what makes us who we are. Of course, such a perspective could not compel agreement among social theorists, which is why the holist-individualist debate ran so intensely for so long and why questions of “values and objectivity” were so prominent in social theory. 
Things look rather different now, after the political and intellectual changes of the second half of the 20th century. In particular, the widespread stress on “social construction” in the social sciences—including in the social studies of science and technology—has provoked a variety of responses. In this presentation I will consider some of these, especially those formulated by philosophers interested in “social ontology”, with the aim of placing them in relation to those older concerns and perspectives.