Early 20th-century social theorists, including Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, Mead, and others, revolutionized the way social reality was perceived. Rather than explaining social realities in terms of contracts between individuals, they viewed social reality as a historically evolved reality that structures present-day interactions. The implications of this perspective for our understanding of reality have been closely examined by late 20th-century social theorists, including Goffman, Foucault, Bourdieu, Habermas, Alexander, Bhaskar, Harré, Searle, and others.
Sociologically oriented thinkers have contributed to the field by combining classic soci…
Early 20th-century social theorists, including Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, Mead, and others, revolutionized the way social reality was perceived. Rather than explaining social realities in terms of contracts between individuals, they viewed social reality as a historically evolved reality that structures present-day interactions. The implications of this perspective for our understanding of reality have been closely examined by late 20th-century social theorists, including Goffman, Foucault, Bourdieu, Habermas, Alexander, Bhaskar, Harré, Searle, and others.
Sociologically oriented thinkers have contributed to the field by combining classic sociological insights and generating new empirical approaches. Conversely, language and discourse-oriented thinkers have established competing approaches that suggest social reality can be known through the study of language and that language is constitutive of social reality.
The questions posed by these thinkers focus on understanding how symbolic aspects of social interaction emerge, how they shape our perception of reality, and how realities such as the self and society, gender categories, and notions of identity and nation emerge and are reproduced by new generations.
In my published articles, I explore the relationship between classical sociology and modern social thought to understand how theoretical progress is achieved and to critically evaluate established attempts. My aim is to develop a theory of the development of social theory in the 20th century.