Challenges in Sociological Theory

The main challenge, I think, to sociological theory or to social theory more broadly remains that of bridging the gap between what Mills (1959), nearly 60 years ago, called " grand theory " and " abstracted empiricism. " Over 200 years ago, Kant (1781) formulated a similar conception, that " thoughts without content are empty and perceptions without concepts are blind " (Gedanken ohne Inhalt sind leer, Anschauungen ohne Begriffe sind blind). Sociology was transformed in the 1970s by a turn to social theory conceived not, or not mainly, in scientific terms but as a broader conceptual project with a long history. My colleague and friend Gillian Rose (1947–1995) opened her Masters course on sociological theory with Hobbes and Rousseau. Rather than seeing such thinkers as part of a prehistory of properly scientific sociology, on the other side of what Giddens (1972) criticized as a mythical " great divide, " they could more usefully be seen as part of a continuous history of social and political theory. Sociological theory, then, was transformed in what I would see as something like another " 30 glorious years " following on from the 30-year postwar boom of western capitalism. In turn, it transformed the rest of sociology. Sociologists of deviance read and absorbed Foucault; sociologists of politics or sport read Gramsci, Althusser, or Norbert Elias. What Elias (1987) had himself criticized as the " withdrawal of sociologists into the present " since the end of the Second World War seemed possibly to be reversible. This was also the time when the relation between philosophy and social theory was reconceived in terms of collaboration on an equal basis – for example, in Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, in Habermas's image of philosophy's role as a " place-holder and interpreter " for the sciences (Habermas, 1981), or in Roy Bhaskar's revival of Locke's image of the philosopher as an " under-laborer, " clearing the ground for scientific work (Bhaskar, 1975, p. 10). Seen from the UK, all this appeared as sociology becoming more " continental " (always a slightly suspect term) or, seen from North America, as more " European. " The process was, however, a wider one; the reception of Gramsci or Althusser was actually slower in, say, West Germany, than in the English-speaking world, where New Left Review and its associated book series had an important role in making it available. Moving to the …