Abstract
Relational sociology is not a paradigm, but a thematic cluster of theories that take the relation as their central category. Within the cluster there are, basically, two approaches, a relational-structural one and a processual-interactionist one, that fly under the same flag, but are in tension with each other. The task of general relational theory is to unify these two approaches, though nothing indicates that such a unified theory is at hand. In this chapter, I do some initial mapping of the field. I propose Karl Marx, Georg Simmel, Gabriel Tarde and Marcel Mauss as prime relational theorists and suggest that, together, they form a system. Similarly, I distinguish four relational constellations and argue that a relational social theory needs to systematically interweave structuralism, processualism, interactionism and symbolism in a general theory that articulates structure, culture and practices.
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Notes
- 1.
The “linguistic turn” in philosophy is a multiple one. Depending on the tradition one comes from (Anglo-analytical philosophy, German idealism, French structuralism or American pragmatism), one can take it via Frege, Wittgenstein and Austin (UK), Humboldt, Heidegger and Habermas (Germany), Saussure, Levi-Strauss and Derrida (France) or Peirce , Mead and Dewey (USA). In Rorty, there are two linguistic turns: the first one is properly analytic and corresponds to an almost positivist attempt to introduce semantic analysis into philosophy and transform it into a science. The second one amalgamates Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Dewey into an anti-foundationalist critique of epistemology and a nominalist critique of ontology . Retrospectively, we can see that the linguistic turn launched a format—a programmatic essay announcing with great fanfare a breakthrough, followed by a spate of articles that represent and perform the turn.
- 2.
For a good overview of some of the turns in the human sciences, see Bachmann-Medick (2016) and Sussen (2015). By now, I reckon some 50 turns have occurred. Bachmann-Medick also missed a few, but the translation of her book from German to English has allowed her to significantly update the bibliography.
- 3.
The metatheoretical synthesis between structure, culture and practices is only the scaffolding for a theoretical articulation of the concepts of fields, networks and interactions. Due to space constraints, I have not been able to move beyond metatheory.
- 4.
We already have relational psychology (including object-relations psychoanalysis), relational archeology , relational anthropology and now also relational history. With the rise of “interconnected histories” and the cascade of related relational terms—“‘exchange’ and ‘intercourse’, ‘links’ and ‘entanglements’, ‘networks’ and ‘flows’” (Conrad 2016, 64)—global historians are pushing back: “Everything is not linked and connected to everything else” (ibid., 15). The question of interrelations is not just a theoretical one, but an empirical one, interconnectedness being variable.
- 5.
At the limit, relationalism courts two risks. The first is logical and concerns the transformation of the relation into a subject and a substance . The reification of the relation collapses into its personification. The second is cosmological. When everything is related to everything else and everybody is connected to everyone else, sociology and anthropology shade off into a cosmology. “Relation is the ideal compromise, the word of the diplomat. The relation is between society, the individual, action. We see relations at every moment. It’s true. When I write those lines, I am in relation with a reader about whom I am thinking in the hope the he will follow my argument. I use a computer, a pen and paper. I see objects and trees around me. There are only relations!” (Piette 2014, 5–6). Inevitably, the question arises: What is not relational? What remains if one subtracts the relations? To get out of the fold, Albert Piette proposes an existential anthropology that would investigate not the relation, but an individual in his or her singularity, as s/he appears outside of the system, the structure or the network, separated from the others.
- 6.
As a coordinator of the network of relational sociologists, François Dépelteau is inclusive and ecumenical. Whoever identifies with the relational project and wants to contribute to its expansion is in. But as an author (Dépelteau 2015, 2008), he is rather more divisive and develops his transactional sociology as a radical pragmatist-processual sociology without any concession to the more structuralist pole of relational sociology.
- 7.
With its strong anti-categorical stand, Wellman’s (1988) reconstruction of the premises of structural sociology still offers the best introduction to the relational approach of network analysis.
- 8.
For a concise summary statement of the ontological principles of processual sociology, see Abbott (2016, 1–2).
- 9.
The latest issue of the Revue du Mauss (2016, 1), consecrated to relational sociology, comes with a catchy title: “In the beginning was the relation”—and a punching question: “But what comes afterwards?”
- 10.
For a brilliant analysis of causal multi-determination, in which each of the variables works simultaneously through all the others, see Panica Pontes (2015).
- 11.
For more philosophical introductions that foreground relational themes in the quartet, see Ollman (1993) on Marx, Vandenberghe (2002) on Simmel, Lazzarato (2002) on Tarde and Karsenti (1997) on Mauss. To please the Americans, I could have transformed the quartet into a quintet by adding Georg Herbert Mead. I have not done so because I think that the processualism , the interactionism and the symbolism that characterizes his pragmatism can be obtained through a fusion of Simmel and Mauss.
- 12.
“Es ist nur das bestimmte gesellschaftliche Verhältnis der Menschen selbst, welches hier für sie die phantasmagorische Form eines Verhältnisses von Dingen annimmt.”
- 13.
Via Deleuze, one can also return to Spinoza and take the affective turn to theorize and analyze the coordination of action at the pre-subjective and transindividual levels of existence (cf. Seigworth and Gregg 2010).
- 14.
Melvin Pollner’s ethnomethodological take on Durkheim deserves special mention: Treat social facts not as things, but as acts—or, as he phrases it, as “-ings” (Pollner, quoted in Desmond 2014, 566), i.e. as concerted doings in concrete situations of action.
- 15.
- 16.
On Peirce’s synechism, the pragmatic doctrine that all that exists is continuous, cf. Haack (2013) (“Not Cynicism, but Synechism”).
- 17.
“Im Anfang ist die Beziehung” (Buber 1962, 25). As the philosopher of dialogue, Buber was thinking above all of interpersonal relations, between I and Thou, the subject and the other/Other. He conceives of the relation in phenomenological terms, as an intentional relation of consciousness between I and You (in opposition to the depersonalizing I–It relation).
- 18.
Just like George Herbert Mead, Norbert Elias is a classic of relational sociology. Depending on what one reads, his work can indeed be adduced to systematically defend structuralism (The Established and the Outsiders); processualism (What is Sociology?); emergentism (the 1968 postscript to the Civilizing Process); and symbolism (The Symbol Theory). What is needed, however, and what Elias does not offer, is a single relational theory in which all the elements are fully integrated.
- 19.
In their discussion of the trope of the network in social theory and philosophy, Boltanski and Chiapello (1999, 208–230) distinguish two major strands: one that is more objective and structural, represented by structuralism , network analysis and actor-network theory, and another that is more intersubjective and communicative, ideally represented by Habermas. The two strands come together to constitute the cité par projets of contemporary capitalism. Here I want to integrate the objective and the intersubjective approaches into a relational social theory, and like Emirbayer, Mische, Goodwin, Fuhse and others, I think the trick is to do so via culture.
- 20.
The debate between realists (Bhaskar, Archer, Mouzelis) and structurationists (Giddens, King, Plesants) has been going on for 30 years. It has spawned an academic cottage industry (see the four-volume boxed set edited by O’Donnell 2010), but I am not convinced that the positions have shifted very much. The resurgence of pragmatism and the introduction of processual ontologies into the debate (Kivinen and Piroinen 2006; Dépelteau 2015) has not led to a breakthrough. It has only reinforced the existing positions and led to a stalemate.
- 21.
The shift from the sociology of science (STS) to an anthropology of worldviews has suddenly shifted the game—from culture to ontology and, from there, back to culture (see the debate in Venkatesan et al. 2010). This dislocation has reconfigured the debate as one that opposed the old-fashioned critical realism to a new-fashioned, media-savvy speculative realism that owes more to Badiou, Zizek, Deleuze and Latour than to Roy Bhaskar.
- 22.
For a powerful demonstration of circularity that transposes Foucault’s critique of the “transcendental-empirical double” to sociology, cf. Lacerda (2015).
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Vandenberghe, F. (2018). The Relation as Magical Operator: Overcoming the Divide Between Relational and Processual Sociology. In: Dépelteau, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66005-9_2
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