Luk. Van Langenhove

Rom Harré’s seminal work in the Social sciences is both of an epistemological and an ontological nature. At the epistemological level, Harré has advocated a new theoretical and research approach to Social psychology for which he coined in the seventies the neologism ‘Ethogenics’ (Harré1977). In Ethogenics a new research approach was proposed, based upon a critique of conventional-positivist dominated-research approaches (Harré and Secord 1972) that has been further developed throughout his many writings on psychology and Social sciences. At the ontological level, Harré has developed both a realist and social constructionist perspective on the study of social and natural phenomena. This chapter aims to bring together some of the basic elements of how Harré looks at the social universe (his ontological claims) and add some new elements to it as developed by Van Langenhove (2006, 2011, 2017, 2019a, b) (Across these publications the reader will find more details about the social Ontology which can here only be presented in a very schematic way). This outline of a coherent Harré-inspired Ontology of the social realm aims to sharpen our look on the social world and contribute to the rationale for why it is crucial to put discourse analysis and narratological research at the heart of any attempt to understand social phenomena.

This paper addresses the application of positioning theory, a new emerging theoretical scheme on the issue of cultural stereotyping. First, a critical conceptual analysis of the words‘cultural stereotype’is presented. Secondly, the basic tenets of positioning theory are outlined. Finally, it will be demonstrated how the framework of positioning theory can be used to analytically refine the concept of cultural stereotype. The main upshot of the article is that within social psychology, the concept of cultural stereotype is used in a conceptually vague and blurred way and that, with the necessary conceptual refinements, other research-agendas on stereotypes will have to be tackled if social psychologists want to contribute anything to the societal efforts of changing stereotypes

Rom Harré has pushed the boundaries of our thinking about people and societies and has challenged the orthodox philosophy of science and social psychology. His countless books and articles have inspired generations of scholars in philosophy, psychology, linguistics, cognitive science and social theory. The diversity of his work makes that some see him as a leading figure in the critical realist school of philosophy of science, other as a key player in developing a social constructionist approach to psychology. The present volume brings together a careful selection of his key writings and presents them in a framework that stresses the evolution of his thinking as well as the place of his thinking in ongoing debates in different disciplines. The overall theme is the study of people and their ways of life. This is the first book that gives readers a systematic introduction in the conceptual universe of this towering figure.

This paper presents the outline of an ontology of the social realm that aims to provide a new perspective to the study of social phenomena. It will be argued that in order to raise the impact of the social sciences, research should start from a new ontological discursive perspective. This implies that rather than dividing the social and psychological realm into different “disciplines”, the social and the psychological realm need to be imagined as two sides of the same coin. And also, that space and time should not be regarded as the primary referential grid for the social sciences but conversations and people. Within this perspective the “substance” of the social realm can be imagined as a species-wide and history-long web of conversations between people in which speech-acts are the basic forces that create agents and structures. The power of speech-acts is in essence non-local: it does not matter much where and when they occur, but rather by whom and in which conversational contexts they are uttered. This can be captured by the metaphor of social entanglement where social events have particular bonds that transcend space and time. All of this resonates more with the probabilistic realm of quantum physics than with the Newtonian world were causality reigns.

The articles collected in this volume point out that society as a whole is changing. Social change is due not only to changes in technology and economy, but also to the changing strategies and discourses of social scientists. To what exactly will this change lead in the 21st century? What kind of society lies ahead? In this book the reader will find many arguments and hints pertaining to these questions. She/he will be confronted by a plethora of enriching conceptions of the relationships between social sciences and social changes.