Recent developments in social theory, and especially in movement research, have deepened our understanding of the self-instituting and self-transformative capabilities of society. However, as the case of Alain Touraine's notion of historicity shows, there is a real danger that social praxis is being reduced to the function of self-thematization and self-programming, enshrining society in a self-referential circle. Ideas of self-transcendence and the non-identity of society with itself cannot be adequately accounted for as long as full scope is not given to (...) the interpretive dimension of human articulation. Moreover, the human ability of self-reflexivity and critique and the recognition of self-transformative faculties are often and principally denied to those societies which do not fit into the framework of modernity, thus subverting claims of universality. Against this Johann Arnason has suggested a return to an anthropology of the social subject which, over and above the constituting faculties, foregrounds the hermeneutical ability of (self-)distantiation and broadens the reference of human action and interpretation, or, rather, transcends the idea of a specific referent: constitutive of the human condition is the opening towards other possibilities, the opening towards the world. What seems required is an interactional approach towards society and culture which takes difference as constitutional, for society as well as social theory, and not as something which can be relegated to a secondary level of complicating conditions. (shrink)

While universalistic assumptions have been undermined by experiences of cultural difference, the notion of culture has been universalized. But it seems that the notion of culture, the way it has prevailed in public discourse as well as in social and cultural studies, has to be seen as the main stumbling block to intercultural dialogue. The article argues for an interactional concept of culture, or interpretation, as also of research and representation. Emphasis has to be put on modes of linkage between (...) social action and discourses and on social reflexivity. While attempting to avoid the logic of identity, epistemologically, identity has to be understood as a social project. Thus universalism, which `as such' is underdetermined and shows only contextually, has to be seen not as something achieved and secured, but as an objective. Universalism has to prove itself within difference, it cannot be imposed by one side. (shrink)