Latter-Day Morphology and Social Praxis: A Critique

Abstract

Although critiques of alternative theoretical traditions appear as backdrops elsewhere in this book, this is the only chapter devoted entirely to an exposition and critique of views that fall outside the ambit of structuration theory. The chapter is designed to fill a prominent gap in Giddens’s writings with regard to the development of his thought on the articulation and patterning of social systems in time and space, a topic which will be covered in detail in Chapter 3. As will be evident in that chapter, I stress the conceptualisation and analysis of systemic patterns to a somewhat greater extent than is the case in Giddens’s writings. But the gap to be filled in the present chapter occurs because of the relatively limited extent to which Giddens has developed his concepts in this thematic domain through critical encounters with previous scholarship devoted to the analysis of patterns of conduct in social life. With the exception of a commentary on the works of Peter Blau (CS, pp. 207–13), virtually all of Giddens’s criticisms of established views in this regard have been directed against the Mertonian variant of functional analysis (SSPT, pp. 112–14; CPST, pp. 59–63; ‘AI’, pp. 168–9). These passages are brief relative to the scope of Giddens’s writings in their entirety, but that is not the main problem.