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Through a reconstruction of aspects of Theodor Adorno's social theory, this paper aims to analyze his interpretation of the mechanics of fascist seduction in democracies. If Dialectics of Enlightenment had drawn attention to elements of continuity between the Nazi-fascism the immediate post-war period at the core countries of capitalism, Adorno shed light on the objective conditions and subjective assumptions that maintain the fascism as an immanent tendency of the so-called golden age. Rather than a traditional historiography of ideas, my objective is also to highlight contributions that the Frankfurt scholar could bring to the current debate on the rise of contemporary far right leaders and movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes a concept of embodied subjectivity in the framework of an existential sociology. Starting from Maurice Merleau-Ponty's existentialist-phenomenological philosophy, I present some questions concerning the subject and the body in the social world. These questions are then discussed with reference to Erving Goffman's sociological theory and the work of Michel Foucault. Through the works of these three authors, a notion of embodied subjectivity is constructed, that is, a concept of subject that takes into consideration the body as a fundamental nexus of social relations. Finally, two directions of a possible existential sociology are explored from the notion of embodied subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a theoretical-methodological proposal to research movements and the state based on the associations they establish. It is grounded in three investigations: the first one about the transformations of the Landless People's Movement (LPM) of South Africa, the second about interactions between Brazilian rural movements and the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra); the third focuses on the transnational ties of the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (Contag). The main effect of the article is an ontological definition of movements and the state as collectives whose existence is defined by continuous assemblages of heterogeneous and unstable elements. Since it is not possible to take them as enclosed analytical units, it is up to the research to observe continuous constructions of groups and collectives which are contingent and contextual. Researchers will often follow these processes before their public expression. The proposal is to understand which elements allow things to take the courses we normally observe and analyze. It is also suggested the methodological use of controversies as analytical categories and the observation of the processes in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In several of his analyses, Talcott Parsons describes the establishment of modern societies as a differentiation process across spheres of mutual recognition. In this paper, I use Parsons' social theory of recognition to examine features of recent social conflicts. I begin with Parsons' description of the struggles for recognition that took place during his lifetime in the highly industrialized societies of the west (1). I then use Parsons' view of normatively ordered recognition conflicts to point out societal trends that led, in the final third of the twentieth century, to a gradual undermining of the pacification structures postulated by Parsons (2). An initial outcome of this apparent disintegration I describe as a "barbarization" of social conflict. By this I mean a state of society where struggles for social recognition escalate and become anomic because resolution can no longer be found in the existing systemic spheres of negotiation (3). This paper shows the importance of the term recognition to social theory by following Parsons' theory in analyzing structural transformations that are currently emerging in response to social conflicts. Editors abstract. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is the clarification of some key concepts of the methodology of biographical narratives. Despite of the fact that this methodology is widely used, its theoretical underpinnings not yet appear to have been systematically compiled. Accordingly, the objectives of this paper are as follows: [i] develop the method of narrative interview and the method of analysis of biographical narratives created by Fritz Schütze; [ii] clarify some of the theoretical points that this author assumes (as the task of sociology and its object of study) through the concepts of self, society and language; and [iii] explore the influences of the theoretical framework of the phenomenological sociology of Alfred Schutz and compare both authors. Its conclusion is the statement that the phenomenological sociology cannot be considered the only theoretical framework that underlies Schütze's methodology, which points out to new questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jürgen Habermas seminally criticized Alfred Schutz. This paper traces the disagreement back to a different role of idealization. Schutz's social theory is based on "types" as idealizations with an inherent dynamics, while Habermas's social theory is based on ideally stable "rules". First, a rule model of linguistic communication is assessed against analyses from linguistics and the philosophy and sociology of language. A rule model, it is found, fails to meet its theoretical goal of explaining linguistic communication. Hypothetical rules of language would not explain our intuitive understanding of the minimal propositional contents expressed by utterances. The rules would be both insufficient and unreliable in every single instance of language use. Against this background, the relation between language and "lifeworld" is then re-evaluated. A lifeworld cannot build on a rule model of language as its foundation. Nor can it supplement such a model in order to save it. Unlike a rule model, Schutz's claim that language and lifeworld are interconnected and structured by "types" that can accommodate the flexibility and precision of linguistic communication. While further research is needed, this conclusion indicates that phenomenology has been unduly neglected in social philosophy and should receive as much attention as it has in sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the recent literature in the field of social sciences in which the term "South" is regarded as a theoretical, methodological or epistemological alternative to the colonial effects of our disciplines. Analysing the books of Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Reawyn Connell and Jean and John Comaroff it seeks to point out some of their fragilities and possible alternative paths for a sociology beyond the Euro-American tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to expose and reflect on the debate between remarkable social scientists of our time: Ulrich Beck and Bruno Latour. However, I still suggest that this debate goes beyond the level of their convergences and divergences in providing indicative of some trends in the humanities. One aspect that I intend to discuss refers to what I see as an "anthropological openness" of the human sciences, which in no way corresponds to his anthropologization. I argue that due the proliferation of crises sociologists and political scientists tend to open their macro-explanatory schemes of social scrutiny and the combination of anthropological methodologies as a mean of finding bases for new parameters that can delimit normative political projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for an interdisciplinary interlocution between social theory and social philosophy in order to recast the problem of normativity in social practices, especially within Brazil's democratic ethos. By resorting to insights from critical theory and social epistemology, the essay proposes to reexamine Bourdieu's conception of habitus so as to contribute to a moderate social constructionism that cannot be reduced to a postmodernist discourse or to a variant of relativism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]