Piotr Sztompka
Title:”Moral Turn in Contemporary Sociological Theory”
Abstract: In sociology, we still live in the ‘Long 19th Century’, and our founding fathers are still fully relevant. We stand firmly, to use Newton’s metaphor, on the shoulders of giants. Sociological theory in the 21st century is returning to its classical roots after the Golden Age in the 20th century, dominated on the one pole by the quest of objectivity and value-freedom, and on the other by the break with the past and futile search for a radically new paradigm, as illustrated by the excesses of various post-theories. Current theory revives its classical, critical mission and again embraces the moral visions of a good society. But it articulates them in a new way: not as the philosophical, ethical ideals imposed, so-to-say, from above by sheer philosophical deliberations focusing on the immanent imperatives of reason, but resulting from the unravelling of fundamental mechanisms of social life, so-to-say, from below, based on the rich legacy of empirical research and sophisticated theorizing. These mechanisms, often distorted by current economic or political pathologies, are considered as a guideline for rational social reform. Three examples will be discussed: Jeffrey C. Alexander’s theory of civic solidarity (on the shoulders of Emile Durkheim and Alexis de Tocqueville). Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition (on the shoulders of Charles H. Cooley and George H. Mead), and Alain Caille’s theory of reciprocity (on the shoulders of Bronislaw Malinowski and Marcel Mauss).
Bio: Piotr Sztompka is a professor of theoretical sociology (emeritus) at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. He is a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Academia Europaea (London) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Cambridge, Mass.). Between 2002 and 2006, he served as an elected President of the International Sociological Association (ISA). He is a honorary doctor of five universities in Poland and abroad. His most important books in English include System and Function (1974), Sociological Dilemmas (1979), Robert Merton: An Intellectual Profile (1986), Society in Action: The Theory of Social Becoming. (1991), The Sociology of Social Change (1993), translated into 8 languages, Trust: A Sociological Theory (1999) and Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (co-authored 2005). The textbook Sociology: Analysis of Society (2002,2012,2022), an academic bestseller in Poland, has recently come out in Polish in its third extended edition. Currently, his new book Critical Introduction to Contemporary Sociological Theories is in print at Routledge Publishers (N.Y).
Affiliation: Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland
