In this collaborative presentation, Dr. Simone

Pulver provides a summary of contemporary

sociological theory organizing theorists and schools

of thought based on their historical Genesis

and the levels of analysis at which they operate.

Several sociologists then present the key

ideas of specific contemporary theorists.

Dr. Dana Fisher discusses Giddens idea of structuration

which combines structure and agency and then to

Habermas' notions of deliberative democracy.

Dr. Lori Peek summarizes symbolic interactionism

highlighting the focus on symbols and their

interpretations based on individual and social experience.

Dr. Andrew Jorgenson presents world systems

theory from the Chase-Dunn perspective and focuses

on trends and interstate relationships and structures.

Finally, myself, Dr. Kristal Jones discusses

Polanyi and Bourdieu's theories about the

institution and maintenance of economic

structures embedded in social systems.

My name is Simone Pulver, I'm an associate

professor of environmental studies at UC

Santa Barbara, and it is my pleasure to preface

and provide an introductory overview to this

panel, so this is going to be a panel format.

Contemporary social theory is considered to include

the work of social theorists from around 1935ish to

the present; it's essentially defined in opposition to

classical social theory, I think a metaphor to describe

the relationship between the two bodies of thought

that I find useful is the idea of roots classical theory

and branches contemporary theory and while there

is mostly agreement about the canon included in

classical theory, who is considered a key contemporary

theorist and sociology is much more debated.

From that perspective, contemporary sociology

is best described as multi-paradigmatic unlike

economics with the majority of economists working

within a single shared paradigm, contemporary

social theory is a collection of multiple paradigms.

There are scholars whose work is in the direction

of synthesis, so I'm going to, Habermas I think

fits into this, Giddens, Bourdieu, but there is

no quest for one grand unifying contemporary

social theory, right, no one's trying to do that.

When deciding the best way to provide an overview

of contemporary social theory, I opted for

the overly crowded, text heavy slide advised

against by all PowerPoint instruction manuals.

This slide is intended to give you a visual

depiction of key approaches and individuals

that fall within the category of contemporary

sociological and/or social theory.

As soon as I put this together, I was arguing with

myself about these categorizations, so recognize

that the boundaries are fluid, some of these

individuals would self-identify as sociologists,

but others are political scientists, anthropologists,

philosophers, or more broadly public intellectuals

who don't affiliate with a particular discipline.

Nevertheless, the goal of this diagram or

schematic is to create some order out of chaos.

There are both time and levels of analysis

dimensions to this schematic, broadly we go from

earlier to later and then also macro to micro and

then those folks essentially work or those areas

are more integrative across the macro micro divide.

Most textbooks on contemporary sociology will

start with the structural functionalism of Talcott

Parsons, an economist turned sociologist at

Harvard, and his most prominent student Robert

Merton, who spent his career at Columbia.

Parsons, who is described as a towering figure

of American sociology, was interested in

discovering the fundamental social laws that

govern society, so harking back to the biophysical

sciences in the search for fundamental laws.

In particular, he developed a grand theory

of society and social stability centered

on how different subsystems in society

function together to maintain social order.

Parson's body of work was grounded in Durkheim and

Weber and essentially ignored Marx completely.

So as a result, several critiques emerged grounded

in or mirroring Marx's theories of conflict challenging

Parson's work and its emphasis on stability and order.

The first of these perspectives, coming out

of Europe, is the critical theory approach

associated with the Frankfurt School.

Key names associated with this school are

Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and Habermas, who's,

and the last of which his work has received most

attention I think of that list of critical theorists.

Second, there were conflict and power theories

developed by Dahrendorf, Mills respectively; those

are both U.S. based scholars, sort of they didn't

really know about Marx when they were developing

their theories, but they're in line with sort of

Marx's traditions or Marx's conflict approaches.

And then, finally, a robust critique of Parson's idea

of linear modernization and stability was led by a

group of Latin American scholars under the umbrella

of dependency theory, so we had Parsons and

then these critiques to Parson that emerged.

Despite their differences, all these strands of theorizing

share a focus on macro level structures, be it the

economic trajectories of nations or the function

of critical reason and political debate in regulating

society, alright, they all focus at the macro-level.

Concurrently, there were also significant theoretical

developments on the micro side where theorists were

interested in explaining the behavior of individuals

and here three strands are worth mentioning.

The theoretical perspective of symbolic interactionism

that you heard about a little bit this morning which

focuses of the interpretive work of the self in social

interaction; the core idea being that the self is

not given, but emerges out of social interaction.

Symbolic interactionism builds on the work of

George Herbert Mead as we heard that the

actual name was coined by Herbert Blumer.

Also in this direction is Erving Goffman's work on

dramaturgy, which emphasizes how much of social

life is a performance and then there's the work in

phenomenology and ethnomethodology which both

focus on the everyday realities and actual practices

by individuals and how those practices work to

create an ordered and organized social reality.

And then finally, taking micro theorizing in a totally

different direct- or, no, in a different direction,

exchange in rational choice theory were developed,

drawing on economics and psychological behaviorism,

focusing on the costs and benefits of choices and

for each of these theoretical traditions I've listed

some key names if you're interested in following up.

Okay, so, so far I've covered the macro and micro

levels, now I just want to introduce you to a set of

theories or approaches or even topics that span these

levels, so for example, theories of feminism and gender

inequality and race ethnicity and nationalism focus

simultaneously at the macro and micro levels, right,

scholars are concerned both with the lived experience

of individuals and the larger social structures that

perpetuate gender inequality or racism and it's not

that every single theorist who's a feminist theorist

works at the micro macro level, the feminist theory

is a body of work spans that micro macro divide.

It is also worth noting that theorizing on both of these

topics also spans the classical contemporary divide.

Questions of race and gender inequality have

animated sociologists since the classical period and

sociology has discovered early feminist and race

theorists like Harriet Martineau and Charlotte Perkins

Gilman, who are contemporaries of Marx, Weber, and

Durkheim, so the discipline has sort of gone through

an evolution about who's included in that classical

canon, not just white men, European white men;

however, the heyday of gender and race theory has

been in the contemporary period in part to responses

and changes in political and social worlds and that's

why they are sort of lumped under contemporary

social theory; other more recent developments also

showcase that theory in sociology is a response to

changes in society, for example, post-structuralists

and post-modernists are both reacting to new

developments in social life such as the end of trust

in the key institutions of modernity or the incursion

of media into society, likewise theorizing about the

drivers in effects of globalization arose alongside a

sense of increase in conductivity across the globe.

Now the final part of this schematic are theorists

who have been explicitly doing some integration

of macro and micro approaches; some of the most

important theorizing in sociology has been done

by individuals working in this vein, in this list, I

would include Jürgen Habermas, Pierre Bourdieu,

Anthony Giddens, Manuel Castells and I'm sure

others could be put into, on that list.

Okay.

Having set up this schematic I can now

orient you to the presentations of

the other panelists for this session.

Dana is going to get us started, she's going to talk

about Habermas, sort of a lead scholar in the critical

theory Frankfurt School, as well as Anthony Giddens,

one of the sort of more integrative thinkers.

She's going to be followed by Lori talking about

symbolic interactionism, followed by Andrew

who's going to talk about Christopher Chase-Dunn,

who I've put into the sort of globalization school,

he works in the, at the sort of global level in the

world systems theory tradition, and then finally

Kristal is going to close out our panel talking about

Polanyi, who I did not really know where to put,

but I put him in globalization cause arguably

Polanyi is used to sort of think about globalization,

one of the earliest globalization theorists and

then Pierree Bourdieu who's a real integrative

theorist spanning the macro and micro worlds.

The final thing I wanted to close out on today

is I wanted to finish by identifying that, what

I think are the cutting edge of, or what I think

is the cutting edge of contemporary social

theory and the Ritzer reading, which was

assigned for this particular session points to

developments in queer theory and critical race

and racism theory as being at the cutting edge.

I think there's really interesting work in actor-network

theory and practice theory, both of which focus on

the interface between the human and social and the

physical and technological worlds; I think there's

some really interesting work being done there.

Sociologists have long been interested in inequality,

but there's been a real resurgence of theorizing on

this topic in part once again because changes in

the sort of, you know, I, inequality in society.

And finally, and I'm a little biased here, but I would

argue that climate change has pushed theorizing

about society and the environment to the forefront,

beyond the bounds of environmental sociology to

sociology in general, so to me these are the sort of

cutting edge of contemporary social theory.

Thank you very much and

with that I hand it off to Dana.

I thought I would take you through some, kind

of an overview of the works of Giddens and

Habermas and then I'm going to dig down into

my favorite work of Habermas, The Structural

Transformation of the Public Sphere to get a

sense of the ways that it is conceptualized and

the ways that it might be useful and cause

originally I started out kind of throwing up very

texty slides and I wasn't sure how the utility of

that, so I went this route, it's we'll call it a third

way in honor of Giddens' somewhat recent book.

So Anthony Giddens is alive today, he was the head

of the London School of Economics, until recently; he

is, actually I should call him Sir Anthony Giddens and he

has, like these other theorists who've come before him,

well he's a white male as well, but I don't believe he has

a beard right now, but he has written many, many works

with many, many big ideas in them, so I just thought I

would talk about some of the works that are well known,

but also that I think are particularly useful for thinking