Abstract

My thesis presents a model for social theory and for historiography that amalgamates structuralism with historical idealism and sociological interactionism . One of the core theoretical ideas in my doctoral thesis is the "structural ideal", which is a modification of Max Weber's ideal type: a structural ideal is a rule or norm that produces "structured" action in people's everyday lives, and thus produces social structures. ;My two chief theoretical sources here are Anthony Giddens's structuration theory and R. G. Collingwood's historical idealism, although I discuss many other theorists, including Kenneth Burke and Pierre Bourdieu's views of language as they relate to social consciousness, contemporary continental thought from Nietzsche to Baudrillard as a form of intellectual production, and cultural theory from Lasch to Saul as potential "models" for a structural idealist theory of culture. My overall goal is to present, at least in the form of what is admittedly a rough sketch, a unified theory of social and historical explanation