University of Turku, Finland In this article, relationalist approaches to social sciences are analyzed in terms of a conceptual distinction between "philosophizing sociology" and "sociologizing philosophy." These mark two different attitudes toward philosophical metaphysics and ontological commitments. The authors’ own pragmatist methodological relationalism of Deweyan origin is compared with ontologically committed realist approaches, as well as with Bourdieuan methodological relationalism. It is argued that pragmatist philosophy of social sciences is an appropriate tool for assisting social scientists in their methodological work, (...) especially as regards problem-driven case studies. Key Words: metaphysics • pragmatism • realism • relationalism. (shrink)

There are realist philosophers and social scientists who believe in the indispensability of social ontology. However, we argue that certain pragmatist outlines for inquiry open more fruitful roads to empirical research than such ontologizing perspectives. The pragmatist conceptual tools in a Darwinian vein—concepts like action, habit, coping and community—are in a particularly stark contrast with, for instance, the Searlean and Chomskian metaphysics of human being. In particular, we bring Searle's realist philosophy of society and mind under critical survey in this (...) paper and contrast it with a pragmatist, sociologizing approach. Drawing from Dewey, James, and recent antirepresentationalism, we propose for research work a methodological relationalism of its own kind, altogether detached from the ontologies of society and mind. (shrink)

This article argues against ontology as an intelligible project for social theory. Ontological questions have proliferated in social thought in the past decades mainly as a way of recasting traditional sociological questions about individuals/society and structure/agency. Far from being an advance in our understanding, however, this form of reasoning has frequently brought confusion. This is demonstrated with detailed reference to a contribution from an ongoing debate, centred on the issue whether social structures are causally efficacious. I argue that the ontological (...) project is mainly fuelled by a misconception of language and that, once this picture is exposed as incoherent, ontology loses its intelligibility. (shrink)

This article scrutinizes some theoretical procedures prevalent in the philosophy of social science. These procedures are exemplified in Elder-Vass’s critical realism, which promises to place the social sciences on a sound ontological footing. The article focuses on the way that Elder-Vass’s general emergentist ontology is constituted and on the methods through which it is applied to society. It is contended that the ontology is not and could not be grounded in science and that its philosophical use distorts what it is (...) applied to. The incoherent methods that social ontological projects constitutionally rely on entail that they cannot ground social scientific explanation. (shrink)

Drawing from the example of critical psychology, this paper examines how dissatisfaction with an existing scientific paradigm can stimulate interest in philosophy and social theory. The emergence of a social constructionist understanding of scientific knowledge in prominent dialects of critical psychology is related to a combination of scientific and political concerns, and briefly set in the context of three important strands of twentieth century philosophy: existential hermeneutics, ordinary language philosophy and poststructuralism. These strands agree on at least two issues: the (...) rejection of metaphysics and the ontological foregrounding of the notion of discourse or language-in-use. These philosophies have influenced the development of discursive methods and constructionist epistemologies in special sciences such as psychology and sociology. It is suggested, however, that both the commitment against metaphysics and the prioritising of discourse are problematic, and that a process metaphysics based on the three pillars of possibility, mediation and actuality (or pattern, matrix and activity) might be articulated in order to overcome the bifurcation of nature tacitly accepted by the commitment to a discursive ontology. (shrink)