The Field of Relational Sociology

Article Sidebar

PDF ePUB

Main Article Content

Jan A. Fuhse
University of Bremen

I offer a qualitative sketch and a brief empirical analysis of relational sociology as a scientific field. The field consists of scholarly communication that adheres to the label “relational sociology”, articulating and elaborating the idea that the social world is structured in relations. Within this general orientation, very different versions of relational sociology exist. These rest on diverging conceptions of the key term “social relations” and on different epistemological approaches (pragmatism, critical realism, constructive empiricism). These patterns are reconstructed by way of correspondence analyses of co-citation patterns of authors in the chapters of The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology. Contemporary self-proclaimed relational sociologists (Crossley, Dépelteau, Donati, Emirbayer) here co-feature with sociological classics rebranded under the label as key references in the field. The major division reflects a separation between authors working on the theoretical reflection of network research, on the one hand, and those focusing on the theoretical formulation of a social world made of relations, on the other hand. This second tendency then bifurcates into pragmatism-inspired authors and critical realists.

Keywords
Author, relational sociology, scientific communication, scientific field

Article Details

How to Cite
Fuhse, Jan A. “The Field of Relational Sociology”. Digithum, no. 26, doi:10.7238/d.v0i26.374145.
Rights
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

(c) Jan A. Fuhse, 2020


Copyright

For all articles published in Digithum that are subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence, the copyright is retained by the author(s); the full text of the license can be consulted on http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0. Thus, copying, distribution, public communication, derivative works and commercial use of content are permitted as of the aforementioned issue provided that the source (Digithum), the author of the text and the institution that publishes them (UOC, UdeA) are cited.

Authors are responsible for obtaining the necessary permission to use copyrighted images.

 

Assignment of intellectual property rights

The author non exclusively transfers the rights to use (reproduce, distribute, publicly broadcast or transform) and market the work, in full or part, to the journal’s editors in all present and future formats and modalities, in all languages, for the lifetime of the work and worldwide.

I hereby declare that I am the original author of the work. The editors shall thus not be held responsible for any obligation or legal action that may derive from the work submitted in terms of violation of third parties’ rights, whether intellectual property, trade secret or any other right.

Author Biography

Jan A. Fuhse, University of Bremen

Jan A. Fuhse is an interim professor of sociology at the University of Bremen, Germany. After his PhD in sociology from Universität Stuttgart (Germany) in 2007 he completed a post-doc (funded by the Alexander von Humboldt foundation) at Columbia University 2007-2008. There he worked with Harrison White and Charles Tilly on the theory of social networks. From 2009 to 2013 he was an assistant professor of political sociology at the University of Bielefeld, completing his habilitation in 2011. From 2013 to 2018, Fuhse worked as a Heisenberg Fellow (funded by the German Research Association) at Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. His research focuses on communication and meaning in social networks, on social networks in inequality and interethnic relations, on constellations in political discourse, and on the theory of computational social science.

Recent publications: “Theorizing Social Networks: Relational Sociology of and around Harrison White” (International Review of Sociology, 2015), “Networks from Communication” (European Journal of Social Theory, 2015), “New Media and Socio-Cultural Formations” (Cybernetics & Human Knowing, 2018), “Relating Social and Symbolic Relations in Quantitative Text Analysis. A Study of Parliamentary Discourse in the Weimar Republic” (Poetics, 2020, with Oscar Stuhler, Jan Riebling, and John Levi Martin), and “Theories of Social Networks” in: Ryan Light / James Moody (eds.): Oxford Handbook of Social Networks (2020, OUP).

 

References

ABBOTT, Andrew. Things of Boundaries. In: Social Research. 1995. Vol. 62, No. 4, pages 857-882. ISSN 0037-783X.

BOURDIEU, Pierre. The Specificity of the Scientific Field and the Social Conditions of the Progress of Reason. In: Social Science Information. 1975. Vol. 14, Issue 6, pages 19-47. ISSN 0539-0184. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177%2F053901847501400602

BOURDIEU, Pierre. Distinction. Cambridge / Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, [1979] 1984. ISBN-10: 0674212770 ISBN-13: 978-0674212770.

BOURDIEU, Pierre. Les usages sociaux de la science; Pour une sociologie clinique du champ scientifique. Paris: Éditions Quæ, 1997. ISBN-10: 2738007937 ISBN-13: 978-2738007933.

BREIGER, Ronald. A Tool Kit for Practice Theory. In: Poetics. 2000. Vol. 27, Issues 2-3, pages 91-115. ISSN 0304-422X. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-422X(99)00026-1

CRANE, Diane. Invisible Colleges. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1972. ISBN-10: 0226118576 ISBN-13: 978-0226118574.

CROSSLEY, Nick. Towards Relational Sociology, Abingdon: Routledge, 2011. ISBN-10: 0415534275 ISBN-13: 978-0415534277.

CROSSLEY, Nick. Relational Sociology and Culture: A Preliminary Framework. In: International Review of Sociology. 2015a. Vol. 25, Issue 1, pages 65-85. ISSN 0390-6701. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2014.997965

CROSSLEY, Nick. Networks of Sound, Style and Subversion; The Punk and Post-Punk Worlds of Manchester, London, Liverpool and Sheffield, 1975-80. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015b. ISBN-10: 0719088658 ISBN-13: 978-0719088650.

DÉPELTEAU, François. Relational Thinking: A Critique of CoDeterministic Theories of Structure and Agency. In: Sociological Theory. 2008. Vol. 26, Issue 1, pages 51-73. ISSN 0735-2751. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66005-9_1

DÉPELTEAU, François. Relational Sociology, Pragmatism, Transactions and Social Fields. In: International Review of Sociology. 2015. Vol. 25, Issue 1, pages 45-64. ISSN 0390-6701. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2014.997966

DÉPELTEAU, François (ed.) Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018a. ISBN-10:3319881507 ISBN-13: 978-3319881508.

DÉPELTEAU, François. Relational Thinking in Sociology: Relevance, Concurrence and Dissonance. In: DÉPELTEAU, François. Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018a. Pages 3-33. ISBN-10:3319881507 ISBN-13: 978-3319881508. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66005-9_1

DÉPELTEAU, François and POWELL, Christopher (eds.). Applying Relational Sociology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. ISBN-10: 113737991X ISBN-13: 978-1137379917.

DONATI, Pierpaolo. Introduzione alla sociologia relazionale. Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1983. ISBN-10: 8820428172 ISBN-13: 978-8820428174.

DONATI, Pierpaolo. Relational Sociology; A New Paradigm for the Social Sciences, New York: Routledge, 2011. ISBN-10:0415524067 ISBN-13: 978-0415524063.

DONATI, Pierpaolo. Manifesto for a critical realist relational sociology. In: International Review of Sociology. 2015. Vol. 25, Issue 1, pages 86-109. ISSN 0390-6701. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2014.997967

DONATI, Pierpaolo and ARCHER, Margaret. The Relational Subject. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. ISBN10: 1107106117 ISBN-13: 978-1107106116.

EMIRBAYER, Mustafa. Manifesto for a Relational Sociology. In: American Journal of Sociology. 1997. Vol. 103, No. 2, pages 281-317. ISSN 0002-9602. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/231209

EMIRBAYER, Mustafa. Relational Sociology as Fighting Words. In: POWELL, Christopher and DÉPELTEAU, François. Conceptualizing Relational Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pages 209-211. ISBN-10:1137379901 ISBN-13: 978-1137379900. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137342652_12

EMIRBAYER, Mustafa and GOODWIN, Jeff. Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problem of Agency. In: American Journal of Sociology. 1994. Vol. 99, No. 6, pages 1411-1154. ISSN 0002-9602. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/230450

ERIKSON, Emily. Formalist and Relationalist Theory in Social Network Analysis. In: Sociological Theory. 2013. Vol. 31, Issue 3, pages 219-242. ISSN 0735-2751. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0735275113501998

FLECK, Ludwik. Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact.Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, [1935] 1979. ISBN10: 0226253252 ISBN-13: 978-0226253251.

FOUCAULT, Michel. What Is an Author? In: FOUCAULT, Michel. Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology. New York: The New Press, [1969] 1998. Pages 205-222. ISBN-10: 1565845587 ISBN-13: 978-1565845589.

FUHSE, Jan. Theorizing Social Networks: Relational Sociology of and around Harrison White. In: International Review of Sociology. 2015. Vol. 25, Issue 1, pages 15-44. ISSN 0390-6701. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2014.997968

FUHSE, Jan. “Relational Sociology of the Scientific Field: Communication, Identities, and Field Relations”. In:

Digithum. 2020. No. 26. ISSN 1575-2275. DOI: http://doi.org/10.7238/d.v0i26.3199

MISCHE, Ann. Relational Sociology, Culture, and Agency. In: SCOTT, John and CARRINGTON, Peter (eds.). Sage Handbook of Social Network Analysis. London: Sage, 2011. Pages 80-97. ISBN-10: 1847873952 ISBN-13: 978-1847873958. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446294413.n7

PACHUKI, Mark and BREIGER, Ronald. Cultural Holes: Beyond Relationality in Social Networks and Culture. In: Annual Review of Sociology. 2010. Vol. 36, pages 205-24. ISSN 1545-2115. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102615

PRANDINI, Riccardo. Relational Sociology: A Well-Defined Sociological Paradigm or a Challenging ‘Relational Turn’ in Sociology? In: International Review of Sociology. 2015. Vol. 25, Issue 1, pages 1-14. ISSN 0390-6701. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2014.997969

POWELL, Christopher and DÉPELTEAU, François (eds.). Conceptualizing Relational Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. ISBN-10: 1137379901 ISBN-13: 978-1137379900.

SELG, Peeter. Power and Relational Sociology. In: DÉPELTEAU, François. Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Pages 539-557. ISBN-10:3319881507 ISBN-13: 978-3319881508.

TONKONOFF, Sergio. Sociology of Infinitesimal Difference. Gabriel Tarde’s Heritage. In: DÉPELTEAU, François. Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Pages 63-83. ISBN-10: 3319881507 ISBN-13:978-3319881508. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66005-9_3