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Human Transaction Mechanisms in Evolutionary Niches—a Methodological Relationalist Standpoint

  • Chapter
Applying Relational Sociology

Abstract

There is a great variety of relationalisms on offer for social scientists these days (see, e.g., Archer, 1995; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992; Dépelteau, 2008; Emirbayer, 1997; Fuchs, 2001; Kivinen and Piiroinen, 2006; Powell, 2007; Tilly, 2001). Some of the most interesting ones of them share an anti-dualistic vein of thought that can be traced back to John Dewey (e.g., [1920] 1988a, pp. 187–198; [1925–1927] 1988c, pp. 355–356) and Norbert Elias (e.g., 1978, pp. 14–16, pp. 113 ff., 2000, pp. 468 ff.), where society and individuals are not juxtaposed as fixed, separate sui generis entities, but are rather conceived as parts or aspects of one and the same relational process of social life.1 Ontological or metaphysical relationalisms claim that reality is ultimately relational no matter how we might find it best to describe it, whereas non-metaphysical versions of relationalism stick to methodological or instrumentalist tools.

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Authors
  1. Osmo Kivinen
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  2. Tero Piiroinen
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François Dépelteau Christopher Powell

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© 2013 François Dépelteau and Christopher Powell

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Kivinen, O., Piiroinen, T. (2013). Human Transaction Mechanisms in Evolutionary Niches—a Methodological Relationalist Standpoint. In: Dépelteau, F., Powell, C. (eds) Applying Relational Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137407009_4

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