Micro-sociological theory has traditionally stressed interactional pressures towards alignment: actors’ attempts to co-construct a shared definition of the situation. We argue that this model provides an insufficient account of the coordination of action and of the emergence of intersubjectivity among actors. To complement the focus on alignment, we develop a theory of disruption—a perceived misalignment of the dramaturgical structure of interaction in coordinating expected lines of action. We develop a theory of the interaction order that takes the interplay between interactional (...) alignment and disruption as a foundational challenge both for sociology and for actors in their everyday lives. We focus on the practical ways in which actors negotiate both interactional breaches and wider relational ruptures, and how they differentiate between disruptions-of relations and disruptions-for them. By doing so, we connect the interaction order to a wider relational order, providing a bridge between micro-level interactionism and the sociology of culture. (shrink)

Widespread reliance on representationalist understandings commit social scientists to either partially or totally decouple belief from reality, limiting the domain of phenomena that can be treated by belief as an analytic concept. Developing the contrastive notion of practical belief, we introduce the hysteresis effect as a situational phenomenon involving the systematic production of agent-environment mismatches and argue for its placement as a central problem for the theory of action. Revealing the dynamic, embodied conservation of belief in the temporality of practice, (...) hysteresis appears when environmental contexts change in a way that leaves actors without an ontologically complicit relationship to institutions as scaffolds of action. Under these circumstances, a past-inflected reflexiveness replaces a forward-inflecting practical belief in the actor's temporal relation to the world. Drawing from a variety of historical case studies, we locate hysteresis in routine disjunctures between the temporality of practice and the temporality of environments. Our analysis reveals four distinct types of reflexiveness produced the hysteresis effect, each with a unique dispositional impact on actors and extensions to group-level phenomena. We conclude the article by emphasizing the non-eliminativist relationship between belief as disposition and belief as representation. (shrink)

The image of Max Weber as an “interpretivist” cultural theorist of webs of significance that people use to cope with a meaningless world reigns largely unquestioned today. This article presents a different image of Weber’s sociology, where meaning does not transport actors over an abyss of meaninglessness but rather helps them navigate a world of Chance. Retrieving this concept from Weber’s late writings, we argue that the fundamental basis of the orders sociologists seek to understand is not chaos. Action is (...) rendered interpretable, rather, to the extent persons orient themselves to possibilities and probabilities, which remain real but unknowable. In this framework, interpretation and probability are allies, not antagonists. Weber’s systematic use of the probabilistic notion of Chance as a central resource for concept formation and sociological explanation seriously challenges current understandings of probability as a purely statistical, atheoretical concern. We outline the conceptual difference it makes when basic categories of sociology are understood as rooted in Chance, and we point to the larger implications of Weber’s probabilism for contemporary debates around issues of prediction, action, and interpretation. (shrink)

The theoretical tools bequeathed to us by classical and revival pragmatism offer the potential for informing robust empirical work in sociology. But this potential has yet to be adequately demonstrated. There are a number of strands of pragmatism; this article draws primarily upon Dewey’s theory of action to examine Hull-House in its early years. Of particular interest are the practices of Jane Addams and other Hull-House residents. What were they doing to help people and why? An attempt to answer these (...) questions in non-teleological terms forms the empirical basis of the article. This article should provide some support to those historical sociologists who might consider (or already are) taking a pragmatist turn in their work. And, it should strengthen the empirical foundations of pragmatism as an alternative (non-teleological) way to understand social action. (shrink)

The recent literature on genocide shows signs of taking what might be called a “processual turn,” with genocide increasingly understood as a contingent process rather than a singular event. But while this second generation's turn may be clear to those within the literature, the theory guiding the change is insufficiently specified. The theory regarding process and contingency is implicit, and, as such, genocide theory does not realize its full generative potential. The primary goal of this article is to provide a (...) more robust theoretical framework for making sense of the continually evolving dimensions of genocide. It builds on the literature's existing foundations, most notably Mann's (2005) notion of “contingent escalations.” In the spirit of the recent revival of American Pragmatism in sociology, it draws on the work of Dewey, Mills, Follett, and Addams (among others) as part of a theoretical reconstruction using pragmatist concepts such as rupture, perplexity, vocabularies of motive, and experimentation to consider examples from the Rwandan genocide and show how we might explore the potential for non-teleological intentionality on the part of genocidal actors. The result is an enhanced theoretical framework that offers “fresh eyes” for considering one of the worst (and most under-theorized) social problems. (shrink)

‘Public moods’ are often referred to in laymen’s accounts of public reactions to social events, yet the concept has rarely been invoked by social scientists. Taking public moods seriously as an analytical concept, this article relies on recent work on the moods of individuals as a means of exploring the moods of the public. To be in a certain mood is to attune oneself to the situation in which one finds oneself. Our mood is the report we give on the (...) state of our attunement. A public mood can either be understood as the mood of a certain age, the mood of an audience which jointly attends to a public performance, or the bonding which takes places between bodies which are in close physical proximity to each other. It is in the public mood that emotions, thoughts and plans for action arise. (shrink)

In a series of famous experiments, Benjamin Libet claimed to have shown that there is no scientific basis for our commonsensical understanding of freedom of the will. The actions we are about to undertake register in our brains before they register in our conscious minds. And yet, all that Libet may have shown is that long-invoked notions such as “the will” and “freedom” are poor explanations of how actions are initiated. Actions take place as we respond to the call of (...) the mood of the situation in which we find ourselves. Action is a way of attuning ourselves. Simple actions happen as long established habits kick in, and complex actions happen as the mood of a situation comes to correspond to the mood of a story we have been telling ourselves. When it feels right, we just act. (shrink)

This article seeks to understand a puzzling aspect of Georg Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money, namely, the many religious analogies Simmel uses to characterize money. We argue that with these analogies Simmel indicates how what he would later term ‘the transcendent character of life’ permeates mundane monetary interactions. Specifically, we articulate how key religious forms of experience – faith, unity, and individuality – exist in monetary exchange and point toward a distinctively Simmelian way to understand the interplay between religion and (...) economics. (shrink)

Mobility has become a central topic of contemporary social research with the mobility turn initiated in the 2000s. In order to grasp the complexity of the global order, its authors have attempted to decenter the importance of human subjectivity and to envisage a “sociology beyond societies”. The present paper considers this interpretive context to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Alfred Schutz’s theory of action, and to propose a notion of mobility intrinsically linked to the performance of subjectivity. By revisiting the (...) distinction between action as a thing produced and as an ongoing process, the notion of mobility is detailed in relation to movement in space and to the subjective flow of time. The specific type of action Schutz calls “locomotion” in his later work enables us to understand how action involves bodily operations in configuring a common space of sociality and communication. I conclude by going beyond the explanation of action in terms of its starting point and end point, and by assessing how action unfolds through the experiential life of the subject, with its new meanings and unexpected changes. (shrink)

Scholars have recognized that contentious political action typically draws on relatively stable scripts for the enactment of claims making. But if such repertoires of political practice are generally reproduced over time, why and how do new modes of practice emerge? Employing a pragmatist perspective on social action, this article argues that change in political repertoires can be usefully understood as a result of situated political innovation—i.e., of the creative recombination of existing practices, through experimentation over time, by interacting political agents (...) for whom old repertoires were proving inadequate to the changing context of action. The utility of this approach is demonstrated by applying it to explain the historical emergence of a new set of populist mobilizing practices in early twentieth-century Peru. The results have implications for the study of political action and historical change. (shrink)

The paper deals with the theory of gesture from the point of view of relational sociology. On the one hand, the thesis of the ‘complete gesture’ developed by Giovanni Maddalena is appreciated as a significant step forward from classical pragmatism. On the other hand, since theories based essentially on phenomenology and semiotics are at risk of nominalism and constructivism, if we want to understand the gesture from a critical realistic perspective, we need to complement the theory of gesture with a (...) relational social ontology. This means that the theory of the gesture as action (unit act) must be placed within an ontological and epistemological framework, in which Peirce’s triangle is related to the latent value of the real as indicated by the sign. A relational alternative to Peirce's semiotic triangle is presented here with the aim of connecting the sign of the gesture to the underlying reality. (shrink)