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Symposium of Social Theory Preface

State University of New York at Stony Brook

In one sense, the classics in the human sciences remain permanently relevant and Aristotle is as relevant to present theorizing as Max Weber. But this is not a common view. The curious way sociological theory typically privileges the classics is by treating the accounts of modern society mainly by Comte, Marx, Durkheim and Weber as timeless theory. This has left sociological theory open to the charge that its concepts are zombies in the global age (Beck, 2000). Donald Levine (1995) has sought to transcend this self-restriction by examining ‘national traditions’ of social theory and their dialogue in a pluralistic perspective (Camic and Joas, 2004). In this symposium, while welcoming the disciplinary approach to the historical development of the social sciences (Wallerstein et al., 1996), Hans Joas wishes to go further by displacing another cornerstone in the conceptual edifice that confines social theory to the classical era. He argues that we should replace the notion of nomothetic social science, including impersonal laws of social development, with an ‘action-theoretical perspective’ and ‘a more contingencyoriented understanding of social change’. In his response, Immanuel Wallerstein makes a plea for the recovery of the idea of ‘substantive rationality’ as the focus of unified thinking and action in face of the deep trouble of the existing world-system. My own article can be considered an affirmative action on behalf of the conceptual views of the changing world since 1918 that are usually excluded from social theory. It discards the possibility of an abstracted and allegedly timeless social theory, and further claims that the period since 1918 (and not just the global era) is one of tremendous social change that is as significant as that of the long 19th century. Following Peter Wagner’s (2001) example but with a less institutional and more global perspective, I attempt to historicize social theory by grounding it in the changing world of the last hundred years and its shifting value-ideas.

Key Words: action-theoretical perspective • social change • theory • world-system

International Sociology, Vol. 19, No. 3, 299-300 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/0268580904045341


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