1. THE LOGOCENTRISM OF THE CLASSICS.
- Author
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Gottdiener, M.
- Subjects
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SOCIOLOGY , *ESSAYS , *SOCIAL theory , *SOCIAL action , *SOCIAL structure - Abstract
This article comments on Sociology: Proscience or Antiscience, a position paper written by Randall Collins. Randall Collins' (1989) recent position paper seeks to defend sociology proper from disparate attacks questioning its status as a science. Interestingly, Collins's citations supporting the premise of external attack on sociology are actually quite limited. His single extensive example involves more the quest of sociobiologists to legitimate themselves through a general critique of all social science rather than a focused assault on sociology itself. Singled out specifically by Collins are approaches that deviate from his version of sociological theory, rather than from the scientific project of sociology per se. In Collins's discussion, Michael Foucault's complex ideas are homogenized and described by a nominalist label that has no basis in his work. Collins characterizes Foucault as a discourse theorist who reduces society to a text and social action to the field of discourse. Collins simply has displaced by Foucault's emphasis on the field of power. Collins reduces the complex work of important theorists to misleading and nominalist labels that compartmentalize and trivialize serious thought. Discourse analysis cannot replace the investigation of, and theorizing about, social action and societal structures. If the above comments are instructive, however, then there is a place for textual analysis when confronted by the obfuscating metatheoretical discussions and the biblical exegesis of the classics that passes for much of sociological theory today.
- Published
- 1990
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