(THE4a) Open Social Theory I

This session invites a range of research which addresses issues in sociological and wider social theory, broadly defined. We encourage potential submitters to check the range of other social theory sessions to see if there are other sessions better suited to the theme(s) of their work. If you don't find something, then this is the place for you! Join in a diverse dialogue across a range of social theory. Tags: Knowledge, Theory

Organizer: Reiss Kruger, York University; Chair: Reiss Kruger, York University; Discussant: Athena Elafros, University of Lethbridge

Presentations

Valerie Haines, University of Calgary

Social capital theorizing and the holism-individualism debate in the study of health in social context

Social capital theorizing offers a powerful tool for moving away from individualist approaches that treat individuals as the single important level of analysis and their attributes as the only explanatory variables. It is no surprise, then, that it has made significant inroads into the study of health in social context, despite an ongoing controversy about the proper referent of social capital centered on the question of whether social capital inheres at the individual level, is a property of collectives or resides at both levels. The persistence of this controversy and widespread agreement that resolving it is key to realizing the promise of social capital theorizing in health research suggest that now is an opportune time to explore two questions. Why have participants in the controversy yet to reach a satisfactory resolution? What might such a resolution look like? I approach these questions by shifting to the metatheoretical level, using the relationship between individual and society, agency and structure to problematize the terms in which the controversy about the proper referent of social capital is it set. I begin by returning to the holismindividualism debate in the philosophy of social science: first, to identify reductionist/atomistic individualism as the “individualism” targeted by participants in the controversy and second, to outline key elements of three competing metatheories that challenge this way of understanding social life—nonreductionist/nonatomistic individualism, holism and relational thinking. Because the focus of the controversy about the proper referent of social capital is the causal significance of social structures, I deploy Giddens’ strategy of methodological bracketing and hold agency in suspension. Next, I offer outline accounts of appropriated social capital theories, grouped by the metatheories they instantiate. These accounts prepare the way for the main part of my paper where I reconstruct the controversy as a succession of resolutions reached by working within terms set in a false individualism-holism dichotomy. The first resolution theorizes social capital solely as properties of collectivities understood as entities sui generis that have emergent properties and causal influence that cannot (in principle) be explained by individuals and their social relations. The second resolution expands the reach of the concept to the very thing appropriated social capital theories agree that social capital is not: an attribute of individuals. The third and now dominant resolution further expands the reach of the concept to properties of personal networks to recognize two distinct schools of social capital. The social cohesion school integrates the first two resolutions by studying social capital that inheres in collectivities and attributes of individuals that reference social cohesion. The network school studies social capital that inheres in personal networks. But because the individualism-holism dichotomy is in play, social capital that is not a property of collectivities must inhere at the individual level and this includes social capital that inheres in personal networks. Like earlier resolutions, the two distinct schools resolution does not align with appropriated social capital theorizing on what social capital is and what social capital is not. As a result, it too is an unsatisfactory resolution of the controversy about the proper referent of social capital. To suggest what a satisfactory resolution might look like I take the false dichotomy out of play by bringing in the relationist alternative to both reductionist/atomistic individualism and holism. I distinguish “property of personal social network” from “attribute of individual” and “weak/relational emergence” from “strong emergence” to theorize properties of personal networks as always constraining and enabling but never autonomous or determining. The result is a way of reconfiguring the terms of the controversy about the proper referent of social capital that narrows the referent of the concept of social capital to properties of collectivities and properties of personal networks. I use my conclusion to suggest that at the same time returning to the holism-individualism debate helps resolve the controversy that motivated this paper, it raises issues of microfoundations and what addressing microfoundations may mean for when to take agency out of suspension in the search for mechanisms explaining health effects of social capital that inheres in collectivities and personal networks.

Kevin Naimi, Université Laval

Creativity as intra-action: theorizing creativity as relational becoming

The purpose of this paper is to theorize creativity as a relational process of becoming. Using Barad’s concept of intra-action (Barad, 2007), I will ague for an understanding of creativity as an affective intra-active relation. The concept of intra-action was coined by Barad to highlight the ways in which entangled agencies co-construct one another in the process of becoming. In this paper, I will adapt Barad’s concept to argue for a relational understanding of creativity highlighting the mutual constitution between human and nonhuman actants in processes of creation. An intra-active view understands creativity as central to everyday life and everyday process of becoming. In advancing this argument, my goal is to challenge an individualized and individualistic understanding of creativity that views creativity principally as an elite property or gift of individual minds. This individualized view of creativity serves to generate a theoretical inattention to the constitutive and cumulative processes that are central to creation but that often remain veiled under the labels of talent and giftedness. From a relational approach to creativity the focus is displaced from the individual and their internal processes, to focus instead on the ways in which creativity emerges from the affective intra-active constitution of human and nonhuman actants. This transition from an internalist to a relational theorizing of creativity can be understood as part of the shift from a psychological to a sociological theorizing of creativity. By focusing more overtly on the mutual constitution of the person and the material/discursive mediums within which creative action takes place we are given the ability to more fully understand how creativity emerges through ongoing and sustained affective relations that are not necessarily driven by human intention alone. To make this argument, this paper will start by outlining key elements of new materialism and posthumanism and their important implications for reconceptualizing creativity. Working from an animate ontology (Ingold 2006, Sheets-Johnstone, 2009), I will argue for a reconceptualization of materiality as active and forceful, a reconceptualization which seeks to restore the nonhuman as a forceful and central actant in processes of creation and becoming. This reconceptualization of materiality entails an equally significant repositioning of the human and a reimagining of the nature of the relationship between human and nonhuman. Building on these theoretical preliminaries, I will develop, using Barad’s concept of intra-action, a thoroughly relational understanding of creativity. I will argue that from an intra-active perspective, creativity takes place as a process of affective attunement between a person and a structured medium (or materiality). Significantly, this process of attunement works both ways in the creative intra-action meaning that both the person and the material medium actively and forcefully fashion one another. This relational and intra-active approach to creativity therefore entails a radical reconceptualization of the affective force of materiality in the creative process as well as a displacement of the individual as the as the sole ‘agent’ of creation. Ultimately, by foregrounding processes of attunement and accommodation, this relational approach to creativity sheds a clarifying and correcting light on the conventional black box theories that otherwise explain creativity in terms of some inborn and ineffable gift or talent. Creativity, I argue is not principally a gift or an ability localized in individualities, but rather an intra-actional relation of attention, attunement, and becoming that implicates human and nonhuman in a constitutive relation. This view cast creation in a very different light that that prominent in the modernist view which situates creativity as an elite ability.

Yanki Doruk Doganay, York University

4 Lacanian Discourses: Feminist Contentions within the Dichotomy between Theoretical and Empirical Agents

The contemporary debates within the left academia and politics revolve around the debates of identity, emancipation, universality, and contingency. One of the roots of this debate can be found in the book Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange [1], which includes discussions between Butler, Benhabib, Cornell, and Fraser. Although many reviews and interpretations of this book exist, I approach it not as a philosophical text but as a social phenomenon. By adopting a Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective, I aim to show common governing principles and shared themes in the authors’ seemingly antagonistic texts. All of the four authors present a meticulous critique of the contemporary patriarchal and capitalist structures. However, I argue that these authors also reproduce certain dichotomies anchored in these structures. I argue they reproduce the Cartesian dichotomy in the guise of the dichotomy between the theoretical or political agent and the empirical agent. The dichotomy is based on the one between the theorizing subject, namely the feminist theory, and the theorized object, the oppressed subjects waiting to be included by the feminist theory. The main motor behind the debate is based on the question of which theory is more inclusionary for the subjects who wait out there. In other words, I argue that, in the text, the struggle of women is assumed to be simply there, and the only aim of the feminist theory is to include this struggle. To demonstrate my argument, I employ Lacanian understanding of four discourses and show the coexistence of the discourse of the university and the discourse of the hysteric in all of the texts. Both the discourse of the hysteric and the discourse of the university cofunction in the debate between Butler, Benhabib, Fraser, and Cornell. Within the discourse of the hysteric, I argue that feminist theory constitutes the agent of hysteric (the barred subject) either in the form of universality (Behabib and Fraser) or contingency (Butler and Cornell). The feminist theory defines women as the agents of theory and political struggle either by identifying them with contingency or with universalist attributes like autonomy. The position of truth within the hysteric’s discourse (object a), on the other hand, is occupied by feminist theories reformation of the existing structure by way of the inclusion of empirical women as such, which is supposed to exist in empirical reality. Within the discourse of the university, I assert that the agent (knowledge or signifying chain) of feminist theory is the dichotomy between the entities and their attributes. In the case of Butler and Cornell, these entities refer to subjects with different identities. In the case of Benhabib and Fraser, the entities refer to women as political subjects and their various political attributes like autonomy, agency, and emancipatory potential. The truth of the discourse is that this dichotomy is based on the one between the theorizing subject, namely the feminist theory, and the theorized object, the oppressed subjects waiting to be included by the feminist theory. I conceptualize this dichotomy as the one between women as a theoretical or political category and the empirical existence of women as such. The debate revolves around the correspondence between the former and the latter. To summarize, I argue that this debate between the four theorists aims not to revolutionize the system but instead calls for the reformation of it from the perspective of the hysteric. This reformation necessitates a correspondence between the political category of women and empirical women. This urge to reform does not overthrow the system. Instead, it contributes to the Master signifier in the manner of solidification of Cartesian cogito toward strengthening the dichotomy between the empirical women as such and the theoretical conceptualization of women as political agents.

Mariana Pinzon-Caicedo, Simon Fraser University

Realignment, Calibration and Exclusion Following Familial Crises

Nearly every household and individual encounter family crises at some point in life, yet the study of the social implications of these events has been lacking. We know from extensive research in social sciences and economics that familial crises (e.g. death of a parent, divorce/separation of parents, severe life-threatening illness/accident, job/income loss) can have long-lasting effects on households’ economic prospects and subjective well-being. We know from extensive research in social sciences and economics that familial crises (e.g. death of a parent, divorce/separation of parents, severe life-threatening illness/accident, job/income loss) can have long-lasting effects on households’ economic prospects and subjective well-being. On one hand, public policy and poverty scholars agree that the strategies used to mitigate the economic hardships derived from these shocks may deplete assets, worsen health and nutritional conditions, and increase rates of school drop-outs (Dercon 2002; Brown and Churchill 1999; Fiszbein, Giovagnoli, and Aduriz 2010; Kochar 1995; Pradhan and Mukherjee 2018), many times leading households to chronic poverty (Hallegatte et al. 2020). Additionally, social scientists have shown that these types of crises increase stress, reduce happiness, and affect overall subjective well-being (Harriss-White et al. 2013; Leopold and Lechner 2015; Ronen et al. 2016; Kuhn et al. 2021), leading to a downward trajectory that is difficult to recover from (Amato 2000). Within this research, some scholars have come to recognize that access to strong social support can cushion the negative effects of these crises on people’s lives (Reeskens and Vandecasteele 2017; Ronen et al. 2016). Previous research, however, assumes that group participation and social relations remain unchanged in the event of familial crises. Conceptualizing familial crises as disruptions to social interactions, I propose that these unforeseen events cause interaction disruptions affecting small-group dynamics, starting a relational reaction chain that culminates in group exclusion. Familial crises alter the resources available to the person/ household for engagement in collective activities (e.g. church events, sports teams, local political groups). In small groups, participants are expected to contribute economic, physical and human resources (Wynn 2016) in order to organize and carry-on the activities that maintain the bond between members (Lawler 2002; Collins 2004; Lawler, Thye, and Yoon 2008; Fine 2010). Sudden events, thus, force changes in the ways those affected interact with the group. Shortly after the occurrence of the event, affected group members will attempt to maintain social relationships employing three techniques of realignment: withdrawal, concealment, and rearrangement. Realigning group participation in the face of disruptions, however, does not solely depend on the actions performed by the individual affected by the crisis. The stabilization of the new relationship requires, not only that the affected person reacts appropriately given group dynamics, but also that other group members deem the proposed error-correction satisfactory. Realignment in the social relations requires a calibration process in which the reaction to the disruption is appraised by others, granting them the opportunity to demand modifications when appropriate. Failures in these realignment processes will lead to member exclusion, either as a sanctioning tool for group survival or as a self-sanctioning mechanism to avoid shame and embarrassment. The shock-to-reaction-to-exclusion chain exposed helps to conceptualize the impact of external shocks on the maintenance of social ties. This paper highlights that unforeseen events not only deplete economic resources and affect emotional well-being but also have an impact on social relationships within small-groups.