Archives par étiquette : pragmatism/structuralism

Discourses, Conventions, and Critique – Perspectives of the Institutionalist Approach of the Economics of Convention

Rainer Diaz-Bone (2017)

Historical Social Research 42(3), pp. 79-96

Abstract. The institutionalist approach of economics of conventions (EC) was developed in France in the last decades and recombines pragmatist and structuralist concepts. In EC, conventions are not regarded as institutions, but are conceived as interpretative frames how to interpret the meaning of institutions and situations, and how to handle institutions in situations of coordination. The difference between institutions and conventions offers space for “critical movements” and can implement a tension as well as an infrastructure for critique. The article introduces main concepts of EC, which could be applied to the analysis of social critique. In fact, the pragmatist analysis of critical moments and practices of justification was one of the birth moments of EC and EC has developed strategies to analyze and explain social change. The article presents some newer reflections of EC on power and dispositive. Furthermore, the article relates the Foucaultian notions of discourse and power to EC’s analysis of critique and social change. Finally, a current strand of EC research is discussed, which is the study and critique of neoliberalism and the role of the state.

Link to the review

Link to the full text via Researchgate

Theoretische und methodologische Perspektiven auf Agency und relationale Soziologie im Spannungsfeld zwischen Strukturalismus und Pragmatismus

Rainer Diaz-Bone (2017)

In: Löwenstein, Heiko/Emirbayer, Mustafa (eds.), Netzwerke, Kultur und Agency. Problemlösungen in relationaler Methodologie und Sozialtheorie. Weinheim: Beltz Juventa, pp. 336-354.

Abstract. The German article discusses relational sociology (White, Emirbayer, Mische et al.) as one form to combine structuralism and pragmatism. Also the problem of relational sociology, to lose its structuralist impact. Convention theory is presented as an alternative to relational sociology (or as a European form of relational sociology), which offers a way to reintegrate pragmatism but keeping also structuralist elements (as the concept of convention itself). At the end methodological perspectives for a conventionalist/relationist approach are discussed.

Link to the book