Theodore Schatzki

This article argues that two significant implications of Wittgenstein’s writings for social thought are (1) that people are constitutively social beings and (2) that the social context of an individual life is nexuses of practice. Part one concretizes these ideas by examining the constitution of action within practices. It begins by criticizing three arguments of Winch’s that suggest that action is inherently social. It then spells out two arguments for the practice constitution of action that are extractable from Wittgenstein’s remarks. Part two contrasts the conception of the social context of individual life as practices with three historically significant conceptions of such a context: totality; sui generis reality; and abstract structure. It also circumscribes that contemporary movement - practice theory - that develops the Wittgensteinian position and represents, perhaps, his most significant legacy for social thought

In this paper, a Wittgensteinian account of the human sciences is constructed around the notions of the surface of human life and of surface phenomena as expressions. I begin by explaining Wittgenstein's idea that the goal of interpretive social science is to make actions and practices seem natural. I then explicate his notions of the surface of life and of surface phenomena as expressions by reviewing his analysis of mental state language. Finally, I critically examine three ideas: (a) that the goal of interpretive inquiry is realized through a descriptive, context-constructing method that enables investigators to grasp the instincts, mental states, and experiences (Geist) expressed in surface phenomena; (b) that uncovering rules plays a minor role in this enterprise; and (c) that surface phenomena not only can be made natural but also have causes and are subject to causal explanation.

This paper combines a phenomenological account of the types of causal transaction found in social reality with a critique of two theories, one structuralist and one Marxist, that contravene it. Part I argues that there are three types of causal transaction in social life in addition to physical causal transactions: people bringing about states of affairs by acting, states of affairs bringing about actions by inducing responses, and entities and states of affairs bringing about what makes sense to people to do by making certain factors determine this. It is also contended that social formations and structures cause actions and other social formations/structures only by way of participating in these types of transaction. The conditions under which this occurs are discussed. Part II criticizes Peter Blau's account of structural effects and Jean?Paul Sartre's version of a materialist theory of history, two theories that either advocate or require causal transactions between social structures/ formations which do not reduce to transactions of the types described in Part I. The paper concludes by suggesting that social entities that make actions possible do not thereby cause them

The essay criticizes an alleged new paradigm for explaining sociocultural change: selectionism. Part one describes the general selectionist explanatory schema, which selectionists claim applies to realms beyond the biological, in particular, the sociocultural. Part two focuses on the way most selectionists, in focusing on cultural change alone, wrongly separate culture from society. Particular atten-tion is paid to the accounts these selectionists offer of human action. Part three fills out a conception of the sociocultural, the need for which is indicated by the arguments of the previous section. Part four then criticizes existing social selectionist accounts of sociocultural change, again focusing on the role of human action. The conclusion is that selectionism does not offer a new explanatory paradigm, but is only a label for a class of accounts that highlight the role of contextualized agency in explaining social change

Among the theses promulgated by the Frankfort School theorists during the forties and fifties was the decline of the individual under contemporary capitalism. The chief agent of this decline was identified as the culture industry, which served the reigning system by integrating people into its particular regime of production, reproduction, and consumption. By dominating minds, homogenizing behaviors, and normalizing tastes, this industry prepared people for capitalist toil. In so doing, it also obstructed the flowering of individuality. Individuality, if it were possible any longer, could henceforth be found only among the “captains” of capitalism in charge of the system. In fact, however, these captains were equally captive. The future of the individual thus seemed sealed

This essay analyzes the time of human activity. It begins by discussing how most accounts of action treat the time of action as succession, using Donald Davidson's account of action as illustration. It then argues that an adequate account of action and its determinants, one able to elucidate the ``indeterminacy of action,'' requires an alternative conception of action time. The remainder of the essay constructs a propitious account of the time and determination of action. It does so by critically drawing on Henri Bergson's notion of duration and Martin Heidegger's notion of the teleological dimensionality (past, present, and future) of existence. Whereas Bergson provides valuable insights into the continuity of activity, Heidegger illuminates the determination of action. Combining their insights yields an account of the time of activity that supplements succession with a nonsuccessive temporality: the time of activity is an overlapping continuum of action performances each of which is structured as coming towards an end starting from a motivating state of affairs. The essay concludes with brief thoughts on what justifies calling the nonsuccessive dimensionality of existence a kind of time.

This article delineates a new type of social ontology—site ontology—and defends a particular version of that type. The first section establishes the distinctiveness of site ontologies over both individualist ontologies and previous societist ones. The second section then shows how site ontologies elude two pervasive criticisms, that of incompleteness directed at individualism and that of reification leveled at societism. The third section defends a particular site ontology, one that depicts the social as a mesh of human practices and material arrangements. The article concludes by outlining what is involved in giving site-ontological analyses of social things. Key Words: social ontology • sociality • individualism • wholism • social facts • Heidegger • social practices.

The paper outlines how Wittgenstein and Heidegger's views can be combined to form a general account of mind and action. It accomplishes this by interpreting Heidegger of the "Being and Time" era and Wittgenstein of the "Philosophical Investigations" onwards asdescendents of the School of Thought called life philosophy. Heidegger is construed as analyzing the occurrence of The Stream of Life, while Wittgenstein is understood as examining (a) The appearances of The Stream in The World and (b) The linguistic articulation tracking their appearances

This paper combines views of Wittgenstein and Heidegger into an account of mind/ action. It does this by suggesting that these two philosophers be viewed in part as descendants of Life‐philosophy (Lebensphilosophie). Part I describes the conception of life that informs and emerges from these thinkers. Parts Two and Three detail particular aspects of this conception: Wittgenstein on the constitution of states of life and Heidegger on the flow‐structure of the stream of life. The Conclusion offers reasons for believing their combined viewpoint.

Beginning with the provocative premise that the body is the anchor of the social order, this unique book delves into the multidimensional relationship between sociopolitical bodies and human bodies. Celebrated authors, including Judith Butler and Emily Martin, explore the ways that prevailing economic and political institutions affect our physical selves and how we experience them, and, in turn, the ways that our bodily senses, energies, activities, and desires reinforce or challenge the societal status quo. Timely and theoretically sophisticated, this book makes a significant contribution to some of the most vital debates of cultural studies and political theory today.

This book addresses key topics in social theory such as the basic structures of social life, the character of human activity, and the nature of individuality. Drawing on the work of Wittgenstein, the author develops an account of social existence that argues that social practices are the fundamental phenomenon in social life. This approach offers insight into the social formation of individuals, surpassing and critiquing the existing practice theories of Bourdieu, Giddens, Lyotard and Oakeshott. In bringing Wittgenstein's work to bear on issues of social theory the book shows the relevance of his work to a body of thought to which it has never been applied. The book will be of particular interest to philosophers of the social sciences, a wide range of social theorists in political science and sociology, as well as some literary theorists.

This critical review of Aviezer Tucker's Our Knowledge of the Past: A Philosophy of Historiography examines the character, scope, and limits of scientific historiography, the overall topic of Tucker's book. The review begins by arguing that the book both unwittingly juggles two criteria for scientific, as opposed to nonscientific, historiography - the production of knowledge and Kuhnian disciplinary matrices - and wrongly construes the subject matter of such historiography to be present evidence for the past as opposed to this evidence in addition to the past itself. There ensues a lengthy discussion of the role of theories in scientific historiography that (1) contests Tucker's thesis that theories of information transmission and grand social theories are central to the enterprise, (2) criticizes his failure to distinguish technical from theoretical terms, and (3) claims that scholarly historiography is more of an art than a science. The review concludes by arguing that scientific historiography as Tucker conceives of it cannot meet the many needs society has vis- -vis the past.

This chapter argues that landscapes are not only spatial phenomena but spatial-temporal entities in that they both occur in time and occupy space. It further argues that aside from being spatial-temporal entities, they are “temporalspatial” phenomena as well, by virtue of the fact that they are anchored and drawn into the timespace of human activity. This phenomenon of “activity timespace” is an overlooked aspect in social theory, although it is arguably an important aspect of social life. Timespace is the dimensionality of humans proceeding in place; in anchoring and being drawn into timespaces, landscapes provide a solid basis for and figure in human existence in place. This chapter first explores the works of Heidegger and Gosden, and proceeds to examine the character of landscapes as temporalspatial phenomena.

Explaining Heidegger's ideas on spatial phenomena simply and succinctly, this book will be provocative and invaluable to anyone interested in space and spatial theory. The author gives incisive, informative, and compelling analyses of Heidegger's overall philosophy and of his changing ideas about space, spatiality, the clearing, places, sites, and dwelling. This study also charts the legacy of these ideas in philosophy, geography, architecture, and anthropology and includes a bibliography of select works that examine or are influenced by Heidegger's ideas on space.

This essay examines how nature pertains to social life. Part I describes the social ontology the essay employs to address this issue. This ontology is of the site variety and is opposed to ontologies of both the individualist and socialist sorts. Part II describes where nature appears in this ontology. Artifacts are differentiated from nature, and much of ?nature? is shown to be second nature, a type of artifact that looks and feels like nature. Part II concludes by disputing the idea that nature forms a backdrop against which society develops semi-autonomously. Part III examines the idea of human history as a natural history. Opposing construals of natural history that treat human-social existence as a piece of nature, it defends the necessity of maintaining distinctions between social life and nature and between social history and natural change. None the less, it continues, human history is a natural history. These claims are held together via a neo-Marxian conception of human natural history as the development of humankind through its entanglement with nature. Elements of the ?metabolism of humankind with nature are described.