Anna Helena Engstam

Open sociology (Sozialforschung)

Construction, reconstruction, deconstruction.

Integration of theoretical perspectives.

Intersubjectivity and communicativeness.

Intradisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity.

Openness to literature.

Openness to new influences.

Inquiry into the past, present, and future.

Responsiveness to a changing present.

Readiness to reinvigorate old perspectives.

Disclosure of other possibilities.

No fixed eternal standard.[1]

Two core ideas of mine: open sociology and theorizing

A core idea of my theorizing endeavors is open sociology, as indicated in the keywords above. This kind of openness may be justified in many different ways; one reason for making open sociology a horizon is that ideas of what makes us human, ideas of human action and social [des]integration, ideas of societies as factual social realities, and ideas of possibilities and how social realities might be transformed for the better, are interconnected, even though we far from always address all these aspects of human life when we try to describe and explain social conditions and processes. Beautifully expressed, …

every social or political theory presupposes or rests upon a certain image of man, just as it might be argued that every image of man provides the frame and sets limits for connecting theories of society and politics. In other words, one can ask for the anthropological presuppositions of political statements just as much as for the political consequences of anthropological theses; and one can ask for the anthropological premises of social theories, just as much as for the sociological determination of anthropological conceptions.

(Carl-Göran Heidegren, 2002: 433, “Anthropology, Social Theory, and Politics: Axel Honneth’s Theory of Recognition”, Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 45 (4): 433–446.

As far as our premises and presuppositions are extradisciplinary, interdisciplinary exchange of thoughts and ideas may help identify implicit assumptions and aims and hence facilitate clarification and contextualisation of our theorizing endeavours. Furthermore, we can potentially construct and reconstruct more complex and encompassing theories, if we creatively and reflectively draw on a series of disciplines and traditions. Thus, if we conceive theory of society, social theory, philosophical anthropology, and political theory as four intrinsically interconnected theorizing endeavours, we have good reasons to engage in interdisciplinary as well as intradisciplinary exchange of thoughts and ideas. As compared to Carl-Göran Heidegren´s perspective on social philosophy and Sozialforschung as an interplay between anthropology, social theory, and politics, I just now introduced an analytical distinction between social theories and theories of society. Think of the difference between theories on elementary forms of social life, on the one hand, and Zeitdiagnozen, on the other![2]

Another core idea of mine is theorizing, that is, the conception of theories as fallible results of ongoing, veritably uncompletable, relational, and historical production processes, driven by human problems, astonishment, consternation, and sometimes nothing less than despair. The world is rather messy, and not a very well-lighted place. And theorizers are situated and embodied, of course. As human beings of flesh and blood, we think and write for, with and against others; striving towards better answers to questions that are important to us; against the backdrop of enduring human conditions, attended patterns of continuity and change, and remarkable exceptions to what we had expected; drawing on a subset of what has already been said and written by members of the same thought collective; drawing on imagination and experience, as well; making use of creative and analytical thinking skills, sometimes under circumstances far from optimal; to produce another piece, mostly convergent or mostly divergent, and hopefully adequate-enough. Theorizers is meant to indicate that not only so-called theorists theorize; likewise, we theorize when we do qualitative or quantitative research.[3]

Arguably, this holds not only for theorizing, but for philosophizing and criticizing as well.[4] This social-theoretical idea of theorizing can be further pictured by reusing a thriving definition of sociology of philosophy, taken from Carl-Göran Heidegren´s and Henrik Lundberg´s introduction in the book Sverige och filosoferna: svensk 1900-talsfilosofi i sociologisk belysning (Lund, Studentlitteratur, 2018: 10);[5] in this paraphrase, “sociology of philosophy” is substituted for a social-theoretical perspective on theorizing, and so on:

The vantage-point from which to consider theorizing is not a bloodless knowledge-making subject, but rather human beings, richly equipped with “the abilities of a creature who wants, feels, and think” (Dilthey 1833, xvii). Against this background, a social-theoretical perspective on theorizing may be formulated as follows: From a social-theoretical perspective, scholarly thinking-and-writing is conceived as a socially organized activity, anchored in different historical, social contexts; an activity that comprises the production of theories, that is propositions and arguments communicated with claims for validity.

[1] Among my inspirations for evocating open sociology in this way, Sven-Olov Wallenstein’s and Anders Bartonek’s reappraisal of Frankfurter Sozialforschung is especially worth mentioning; see their excellent introduction to the anthology Critical Theory: Past, Present, Future (Huddinge, Södertörns högskola, 2021).

As for openness to literature, read the splendid anthology Sociologi genom litteratur: Skönlitteraturens möjligheter och samhällsvetenskapens begränsningar, edited by Christofer Edling and Jens Rydgren (Lund, Arkiv förlag, 2015)!

[2] Recently, Andreas Reckwitz has introduced a similar distinction, I have been told; see Andreas Reckwitz in his and Hartmut Rosa's new book Spätmoderne in der Krise: Was leistet die Gesellschaftstheorie? (Suhrkamp Verlag, 2021).  

[3] With great joy I exchange thoughts and ideas on theorizing with my friend Richard Swedberg, from time to time; always encouraging, inspiring, responsive, and dynamic. His ideas speak to me, and I acknowledge his academic work on theorizing and creativity as a vital intellectual trigger; Theorizing in Social Science: The Context of Discovery (Stanford University Press, 2014) is one of my dearest books – ground-breaking!!

[4] Apropos of theorizing and criticizing, Mikael Carleheden’s academic work on this subject reflectively highlights methodological aspects of construction, reconstruction, and genealogy by discussing two crucial questions, “How to theorize?” and “How to criticize?”. Under these headlines he has discussed the changing role and meaning of theory in the social sciences (see his chapter in the anthology Contemporary Philosophy and Social Science: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, edited by Michiru Nagatsu and Attilia Ruzzene, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), as well as normative reasoning (see his article on Honneth’s method in Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory: Volume 22, Issue 3, 2021 [2020]).

[5] The Swedish title can be translated as Sweden and the philosophers: sociological perspectives on Swedish philosophy of the twentieth century.