By Nicos Mouzelis
Social thought is open to many passing currents. Claims to originality are inclined to thrive and previous achievements are frequently missed. In Sociologiocal idea: What Went unsuitable? Mouzelis claims that "problems" presently being remoted will not be rather difficulties, and that "achievements" claimed are little greater than pretensions. He argues that we have got been untimely to push aside thinkers from the overdue Nineteen Fifties and early Sixties and that we will be able to construct on their rules to supply a more desirable, extra suitable social concept. Written with precision and with readability, Sociological concept: What Went fallacious? is a compelling research of the principal difficulties of sociological concept this day and of the potential to unravel them.
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Extra info for Sociological Theory: What Went Wrong?: Diagnosis and Remedies
Example text
Unlike interpretative sociologists, rational-choice theorists tend to adopt a logicodeductive, ‘armchair’ orientation in their attempts to explain social phenomena and to establish linkages between micro and macro levels of analysis. Rational-choice theory has been gaining considerable ground during the last decade among both Marxist1 and non-Marxist2 social theorists. Evidently both sides wish to put an end to teleological analysis as exemplified by Parsonian and Althusserian functionalism; both are attempting to build up a body of generalizations solidly based on actors pursuing strategies of maximum utility.
14 While this is all very well, it does not seem to me to be of much use for overcoming reductionism. If the existence of a lot of frustrated individuals is not enough to bring about a revolution, neither is the existence of a lot of purposive actors willing to participate in the revolutionary movement or to divest authority. Whether or not these decisions (to participate or to divest) will lead to a revolutionary outbreak depends on how they are related to such macro phenomena as the organizational structure of the revolutionary movement and its broad strategies vis-à-vis the government and the populace, the hold that governmental elites have over the means of coercion, the internal divisions within the armed forces, and more generally the complex power games that political, cultural and economic elites or macro actors are playing at the time on local, regional, national and even international levels.
This means that the fruitless search for transhistorical propositions about ‘revolution in general’ must give way to context-bound generalizations. 15 In these seminal and highly illuminating works, rationality and interests are taken very seriously. But, unlike Coleman’s thesis, they are not studied in a contextless, transhistorical manner; they are firmly located within historically specific institutional contexts. Therefore, the greater rigour and universality of Coleman’s theory has been won at the price of not telling us anything really interesting.