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Philosophy of social science (PoS) typologies can help practitioners in the social sciences to reflect upon the often‐tacit assumptions embedded in research. Existing PoS typologies however suffer from various shortcomings, one of them being a tendency to present extreme versions of the assumptions underpinning research. Having considered this and other shortcomings, the present paper advances a flexible PoS typology. Operating with strong and moderated versions of three PoS perspectives – positivism, constructionism and (critical) realism – the typology captures key assumptions underpinning a broad range of contemporary social research. Moreover, it opens up the possibility of contemplating the assumptions embedded in research in a more fruitful way. To render tangible how the typology constitutes an improvement over existing typologies, it is used in reflections on sustainability research on climate negotiations, green growth and housing development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic of subjectivity has been treated peripherally by philosophy. It has appeared in philosophy not as a specific human phenomenon, but attached to other concepts without specifying its ontological definition, such as intersubjectivity, the place of the Other in the emergence of the self, consciousness and so forth. This paper reconstructs some of the overlooked moments and ideas of several classical philosophers, such as Marx, Dewey, Merleau Ponty, Cassirer and Foucault, in order to identify in their works important antecedents to advance a different concept of subjectivity. The concepts and questions which are raised by those philosophers and which are revived in this paper have remained overlooked both by philosophy and psychology because of the lack of any representation of subjectivity capable of making them more visible. The ontological monopoly of language and discourse in explaining all human phenomena, taken together with the critique of theoretical systems and of epistemology, has found in social constructionism its strongest expression in psychology. The value of theoretical systems in generating intelligibility about complex and configurational phenomena is recovered, along with the need to develop new epistemologies capable of generating intelligibility on such systems. Finally, I argue that a new theoretical and epistemological avenue is opened up for the development of psychological thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientific work on argumentation is yet to address the perennial tension between social cognition and social constructionism. Moreover, argumentation‐based qualitative analysis protocols are needed for interview and textual data. Nonetheless, argumentation models remain too complex to reflect everyday argumentation and are not necessarily reflective of underlying cognitive processes. This presents the need for further theorising social behaviour, with a view to formulating a model of argumentation that (a) is parsimonious, and (b) aligns with the literature on joint projects, due to the fact that in social cognition terms, argumentation is for doing. In this paper, we draw upon interdisciplinary literature on argumentation, noting convergences among different approaches. We then proceed to consider the socio‐cognitive bedding provided by Lay Epistemic Theory, to present our Minimal Model of Argumentation (MMA). In MMA, interlocutors are held to make claims concerning an issue of concern, and defend them using warrants, evidence and qualifiers. We end by providing empirical examples supporting the utility of our model in qualitative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This theoretical paper explores the role of social representations in the construction of social reality. Even though this question has been the subject of many debates, the actual processes and mechanisms through which social representations contribute to the construction of social reality have rarely been explored. Citing key works on the topic, the paper explores the role of the genesis of social representations in this process. Each stage of the objectification of social representations (selective construction, structuring schematization, and naturalization) is examined in detail. A more in‐depth analysis of the naturalization process is provided by dividing it into four phases: (1) recognition; (2) elimination of contradictions; (3) instrumental use; and (4) validation through experience. These phases are illustrated using the example of the construction of the social object of drugs in our contemporary society. The present examination of the naturalization process in relation to drugs reveals the mechanisms through which the reality of drugs as a social problem has been constructed and reproduced in our society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Searle has mistakenly claimed that emergence is the central concept in the account of social ontology defended by Tony Lawson, the central figure in the project now regularly referred to as Cambridge Social Ontology. This is not the case. Rather, if any concept can be considered central for Lawson, it is organisation. In this paper, I explain how Searle could misunderstand Lawson and, in doing so, I bring out the importance of organisation for understanding how phenomena, both social and non‐social, are constituted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phenomenological sociology is one of the most recognized approaches for explaining the constitution of social behaviour and the construction of social reality. To this day, phenomenological sociology usually belongs to the tradition of Edmund Husserl's transcendental phenomenology and to Alfred Schütz's mundane phenomenology, thus generally presenting itself as sociology of lifeworld, sociology of everyday life, and sociology of knowledge. In contrast to this, this paper intends to outline an alternative kind of phenomenological sociology that finds its philosophical foundation in Hermann Schmitz's "New Phenomenology". With regards especially to Schmitz's theory of the felt body ("Leib") and his theory of situation, the basic principles of Neophenomenological Sociology (NPS) will be introduced. Their main components are (1) felt body and affective involvement as the pre‐personal apriori of sociality, (2) felt‐bodily communication as the basic unit of sociality, and (3) joint situations as the socio‐ontological foundation and empirical manifestation of sociality. With these specific key concepts, NPS proves itself to be a socio‐theoretical approach whose foremost strength is that it can identify and properly analyse the pathic dimensions of social behaviour and social situations that social sciences tend to overlook. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social constructionist form of bracketing Peter Berger labeled "methodological atheism" is now a taken for granted presupposition in the sociological study of religion. This paper argues that in application to religious experience, methodological atheism is both untenable and injurious to sociology's aims. Even worse, consistently applied, methodological atheism ultimately dissolves the very category of experience. More truly neutral than methodological atheism, this paper argues, and actually more in line with what Berger seeks to protect, is a form of bracketing that might be labeled methodological agnosticism. Methodological agnosticism is the form of bracketing that tends to be employed by the psychology of religion. This paper argues that sociology should follow suit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social constructionism is a broad position that emphasizes the importance of human social processes in psychology. These processes are generally associated with language and the ability to construct stories that conform to the emergent rules of "language games". This view allows one to espouse a variety of critical postures with regard to realist commitments within the social and behavioural sciences, ranging from outright relativism (language constructs all of our concepts) to a more moderate respect for the "barrier" that linguistic descriptions can place between us and reality. This paper first outlines some possible social construction-ist viewpoints and then goes on to show how each of them conforms to the basic principles of information theory. After establishing this relation the paper then argues that this leads to a great deal of commonality between social construction-ist positions and the baseline aims of cognitive science. Finally, the paper argues that, if information theory is held in common, this both suggests future research collaborations and helps to "mop up" some of the arguments surrounding realist commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses some widespread but often not fully articulated views concerning the possible roles of biology and evolution in the social sciences. Such views cluster around a set of intuitions that suggest that evolution's role is 'ballistic': it constitutes a starting point for mind that has been, and is, superseded by the role of culture and social construction. An implication is that evolved and the socially constructed aspects of mind are separable and independent, with the latter being the primary driver of mind. I outline four variants of the ballistic view. I then show how current findings and arguments in evolutionary thinking as related to mind contradict those ballistic views. The contrary view-that evolutionary and social factors are interdependent in the generation of social psychological capacities-is proposed as a consequence. This view is able to respect some insights of theories that make ballistic assumptions, whilst avoiding those assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents abstracts of several articles related to social behavior. "The Taking of a Position: A Reinterpretation of the Elaboration Likelihood Model," by Andrew J. Cook, Kevin Moore and Gary D. Steel; "Social Constructionism as Cognitive Science," by Thomas E. Dickins; "The Elements of Rationality and Chance in the Choice of Human Action," by Ernest Krausz.

Micro-interaction dynamics of affective sanctioning have been widely acknowledged but rarely related to the emergence of social phenomena. This paper aims to highlight the constitutive force of interaction activity by critically analysing two sociological models, Bourdieu's theory of practice and Barnes's Performative Theory of Social Institutions ( PTSI). Such a comparison allows me to reveal two differing models of social phenomena currently operating in sociological debates: an extrinsic structuralist model which tacitly conveys macro-structural phenomena as prior and determinant of individuals and their micro-interactions, and an intrinsic structuralism model which prioritizes individuals' interactions and conceives them as constituting both the individual and the structural. I argue that the latter's emphasis on the dynamics of mutual susceptibility to affective sanctioning as underpinning consensus among inherently heterogeneous individuals provides a platform to further support the tenets of Interactionism and helps to expose Bourdieu's over-deterministic methodological individualism prevalent in most sociological theory. I conclude that by conceiving emotions as causal, rather than the effect of social forces, sociological theory can provide an explanation of both individual practices and systemic phenomena which resolves macro-structural tensions. In doing so, I suggest an ontological understanding of the 'social' which supports the Interactionist central tenet that the local takes priority over wider structural phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Akrasia is a philosophical concept meaning the possibility to perform actions against one's best judgement. This contribution aims to clarify this phenomenon in terms of a social construction, stating it as a narrative configuration generated by an observer. The latter finds himself engaged in justifying a “problematic” line of action with regard to specific cultural beliefs referring to the self, the others and the behaviour. This paper intends to make explicit the assumptions underlying the traditional definitions of akrasia when, paradoxically, an agent performs an action not in accordance with his/her best judgement. In the transition from modern to post-modern psychology, we here propose an interpretation of the phenomenon in psychological terms, envisaging akrasia as a narrative form functional to the identity processes and to the social dynamics of the structures of contemporary societies. Implications in the psychological practice will be taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the sociological study of emotion, contrasting constructionist and psychoanalytic accounts of envy as an emotion. Relationship between sociology, biology and emotion; Discussion on social action, agency, gender and the embodiment of the emotions; Explanation on the tension between biology and social constructionism in relation to the study of emotion.

The article presents abstracts of studies discussed within the issue including "Not Thinking Ethnicity: A Critique of the Ethnicity Paradigm in an Over-Ethnicised Sociology," by Bob Carter and Steve Fenton, "Intersubjectivity: Towards a Dialogical Analysis," by Alex Gillespie and Flora Cornish and "Points of View, Social Positioning and Intercultural Relations," by Gordon Sammut and George Gaskell.

The sociology of knowledge is a heterogeneous set of theories which generally focuses on the social origins of meaning. Strong arguments, epitomized by Durkheim's late work, have hypothesized that the very concepts our minds use to structure experience are constructed through social processes. This view has come under attack from theorists influenced by recent work in developmental psychology that has demonstrated some awareness of these categories in pre-socialized infants. However, further studies have shown that the innate abilities infants display differ in systematic and theoretically significant ways from adults' explicit knowledge. This paper moves beyond the constructionist/nativist dichotomy by outlining the complex relationships between innate intelligence and explicit knowledge. I end by suggesting that there are four, distinct ways the social world influences thought- facilitation, division, specification, and construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phenomenological sociology was founded at the beginning of 1930s by Alfred Schutz. His mundane phenomenology sought to combine impulses drawn from Husserl's transcendental phenomenology and Weber's action theory. It was made famous at the turn of 1960s and 1970s by Garfinkel's ethnomethodology and Berger & Luckmann's social constructionism. This paper deals with the notable accomplishments of Schutz and his followers and then proceeds to a shared shortcoming, which is that the phenomenological approach is unable to understand meaning in any other way but as actors's knowledge. Therefore, phenomenological sociologists are forced to describe the actor's interpretations of meaning as transparent to the actor him/herself, even if they sometimes make heroic attempts to escape the limitations of the phenomenological conception. The limitation is apparent in Husserl's and Schutz's definition of meaning as a 'reflective intentional act', Garfinkel's use of the term 'accounting' to refer to a signifying effect, and the way Berger and Luckmann describe their social theory as 'sociology of knowledge'. Today, similar confusions are present in Michael Polanyi's 'tacit knowledge'and in Giddens' structuration theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social science requires a dual ontology: one for the physical realm, and one for the symbolic realm of meaning. Much research produced in social science remains based in an old paradigm, which entirely neglects the symbolic realm. While social scientists attempting to forge a new paradigm have embraced a discursive approach, this approach lacks a coherent framework that can be systematically applied in the analysis of meaning. This paper presents the positioning diamond as a framework that can be employed in discourse analysis across social science disciplines. The four facets of the diamond—storylines, identities, rights and duties, and the social force of acts—can be analyzed at three levels of discourse: the content, narrator-interlocutor, and ideological levels. The framework can be employed to provide explanations of most types of human thought and action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on social behavior including measuring self-respect, the social construction of the human biological self, and the importance of philosophical anthropology in helping scientists learn from empirical tests.

In the contemporary epistemological debate on social reality, characterized by the crisis of post-modern theories and the emergence of new forms of realism, are there any approaches not acknowledging some specific ontological character to the construction of social objects? The question is apparently rhetorical, but the implication of this problem are not obvious. In the sociological literature the opposition between reality and construction is not clearly defined. Sometimes it is considered a dichotomy, in other situations the synthesis of alternative theses in a dialectical horizon. The more systematic attempt considers reality and construction as analytical macro-dimensions where the relation between social ontology and epistemology operates. From this stance, the acknowledgement of the role of social construction in a wider realist horizon is the true overtaking of postmodern philosophy. If it is true that facts exist beyond representations, it is also true that representations themselves have a specific effect on reality, who continually re-structures itself around specific relations of emergent power. Stating that reality is socially constructed is an evident limit of postmodern theories. On the other hand, stating that only facts exist constitute an impoverishment of realism and its replacement in neo-positivism. Social phenomena are real because they are based on specific properties of the inter-subjective construction of social reality. This thesis represents the revitalization of an advanced, anti-positivistic realism and the definition of the specificity of social objects. The aim of this essay is to search for a specific place of construction within the development of realist social ontology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various scholars argue that sexual desire is socially constructed. There is, however, little agreement surrounding the nature of social constructionism. Vance contrasts social constructionism here with a cultural influence model and distinguishes between degrees of social constructionism. There are, however, problems with this classification. These problems can similarly be found with Foucault whose arguments fail to support his claim that sexual desire is a social construction. Difficulties also appear in Simon and Gagnon's scripting theory of sexual desire, a theory that is commonly applauded as establishing a social constructionist account. This is because scripting theory depends entirely on theatrical metaphors. But there is much inconsistency involved in applying such metaphors to everyday life. This does not, however, imply a biological essentialist view of sexual desire must be true. For there is the further alternative that sexual desire has its origin in existential features of human awareness. Sexual desire arises simply because we are aware of both our own gender and the genders of others, and that gender phenomenologically presents itself to us as something in need of completion. This awareness is something that is fundamental to the human condition and thus has little to do with social construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]