In an essay published in 1918, Walter Benjamin sets forth a task that will concern him for the rest of his life: The task of a future epistemology is to find for knowledge the sphere of total neutrality in regards to concepts of both subject and object; in other words, it is to discover the autonomous, innate sphere of knowledge in which this concept in no way continues to designate the relation between two metaphysical entities. (‘‘The Coming Philosophy’’ 104) Benjamin (...) seeks an ‘‘autonomous, innate sphere of knowledge’’ that bypasses the Kantian dualism of subject and object to ‘‘form a pure and systematic continuum of experience’’ (105). He wants to break down the relation between subject and object that has led to the ossification of experience in fixed modes of life, in order to develop a theoretical thinking that ‘‘grasps the world as such as an undivided whole’’. (shrink)

Postmodernist thinkers have often claimed that there is something like a `modernist' model of theory and metatheory in the social sciences which is objectivistic, dogmatic, and generally over-ambitious, aiming to dominate the theoretical landscape like a modernist skyscraper. This paper suggests that there is little to support such a view, and that most sociologists and social anthropologists, and many other social scientists, have been much more cautious and tentative in their claims than postmodernists have claimed. The alleged distinctiveness of postmodern (...) social science is therefore itself open to question. The paper includes a discussion of reflection and reflexivity in realist philosophy of science and in the social theory of Habermas and Bourdieu. (shrink)

This paper is a personal and theoretic commemoration of Peter McHugh’s life and commitment through the prism of the writer’s discovery of, and involvement in, the effort from the late 1960s to diagnose and respond to the failure of positivism in sociology. Peter’s work (with that of Alan Blum) formed a central component of that effort. I trace the genealogy of Peter’s teaching and conversational practice, to his roots in ethnomethodology and his involvement with Harold Garfinkel. This is followed by (...) an account of how Peter developed and transformed the ethnomethodological impulse, from the uninterestingly enforceable towards the invitation to share in the discovery and reconstruction of interest. The paper concludes by situating the time that is its focus, acknowledging the depth of Peter’s impact, and opening for future engagement the subsequent development of his work, in the context of various debates and questions (briefly alluded to) that form a part of the life of theorizing in the early twenty-first century. (shrink)

This paper addresses the problem of reflexivity in modern social inquiry in general and in sociology in particular. This problem is inherited from Weber''s very conception of sociology, is transformed by phenomenology and ethnomethodology, deepened by the linguistic turn of hermeneutics and Wittgenstein''s later philosophy, and has been the central concern of the work of Alan Blum and Peter McHugh. The issues and spectres raised by reflexivity are methodological arbitrariness, the need to take responsibility for one''s own talk (and the (...) cultural assumptions embedded in talk) and, finally, the deep fear of nihilism – the sense that with regard to inquiry (along with everything else in the world) nothing matters. As such, reflexivity raises the most fundamental issue that can be raised for modern social inquiry. Through an oriented interpretation of the work of Blum and McHugh and other contemporary social theorists (particularly Gadamer and Arendt), this paper works through what a dialectical engagement with these issues look like. (shrink)

In this thesis I have set out to perform two interlocking, although separable, tasks. The first is to provide some insight into the philosophical and theoretical roots of ethnomethodology by investigating the work of Garfinkel and others who have in some way assimilated, borrowed from, or been influenced by his work, in a context provided by a discussion of the work of Husserl and Schutz on the one hand and that of Wittgenstein on the other. I will show the ways (...) in which Schutz has adapted Husserlian phenomenological insights to further his own fundamentally sociological ends and how Garfinkel, borrowing only selectively from Schutz and allowing many other influences to play upon his work, transforms ideas generated in the phenomenological tradition to an extent which suggests that his writings should be seen in a context set by Wittgenstein's writings, rather than encumbering it with too uuch phenomenological baggage I will move on from there to investigate the writings of other ethnomethodologists, showing how some - for example Cicourel - remain more firmly within the phenomenological tradition, whilst others have taken various of Garfinkel's ideas and investigated, in their various ways, their implications for the study of -social order and society. In the process of this arm of the discussion I will point out some of the weaknesses and strengths of various ethnomethodological positions, suggesting in conclusion that there is important work being done and waiting to be done in the areas currently being investigated. The second task of the thesis is less historically oriented. Here the focus will be upon theoretical issues surrounding the problem of social order and the problem of meaning, problems which will be seen to be interrelated. The chief concern here will be to show the ways in which Wittgenstein and Garfinkel struggle to present and make coherent a sense of 'meaning' which is fundamentally different from that which is espoused by phenomenologists like Schutz and by many other contemporary sociologists, and how this difference rests side by side, in Garfinkel's work, with a radically different approach to the problem of social order from that which characterises the work of Parsons and others. The thrust of this difference lies in an attempt to reconceptualise 'meaning' in a way that does not posit as fundamental the distinction between 'subjectivity' on the one hand and an 'objective' world on the other, but which instead, by emphasising the omniprevalence of 'language games' and the 'indexicality' of expressions, focuses attention on some notion of 'form of life' or of the 'formal structures of practical actions'. The effect of this shift of emphasis, I will suggest, is that 'meaning' becomes transformed from seeming to be a 'thing' of some kind contained within a 'structure' of meanings to become instead an 'embedded' phenomenon, bound up with what we do in the social world, where the things we do generate and exhibit those orderly features which make meaning possible. (shrink)