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This edited volume contains contributions from scholars from all over the world that outline their version of relational sociology, situate it within the relational landscape and indicate how it might contribute to the development of a relational paradigm. This book aims to open a variety of perspectives on relational sociology and to bring them into a fruitful, frictional dialogue. These chapters draw on the canonical authors of the relational turn, present relational perspectives in the neighbouring disciplines, integrate divergent approaches, solve important conceptual problems, articulate the relations between the core concepts of relational sociology, and apply the relational perspective to subfields of sociology. The first part of the book considers structuralism, post-structuralism and the new institutionalism. The second part is concerned with the hard core of relational sociology and takes the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Harrison White in another direction. The third part is the most innovative one and contains texts that add another turn to the relational turn. The final part lifts the veil on non-human relations and brings the Anthopocene to the fore.
List of contents
Chapter 1. The Limits of Relational Sociology.- Chapter 2. Rethinking Relationalism in (Global) Field Theory: Four Critical Directions Beyond Methodological Nationalism.- Chapter 3. Rethinking Social Space: Positions, Dispositions and Networks.- Chapter 4. A Theory of Relation in circulation: Basic Concepts and Prospect.- Chapter 5. Poststructuralism as a Precursor to Relational Sociology.- Chapter 6. Interpassive Relational Sociology.- Chapter 7. Which Sort of Relation is a Reaction? Relational Sociology and Reaction Research.- Chapter 8. Theorizing Agency Relations: On the origins and development of Rector-Actor-Other theory in sociology.- Chapter 9.(Social) Life is Relational.- Chapter 10. A Biotic Perspective.- Chapter 11. Relationality in Posthuman Feminism.- Chapter 12. A Relational Approach to Moral Standing: Reframing Ethical Boundaries in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.- Chapter 13. Diagrammatic Social Thought.
About the author
Frederic Vandenberghe is Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Philosophy and Social Sciences at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Distinguished Max Weber Fellow at the University of Erfurt, Germany.
Christian Papilloud is Professor of Sociology, responsible for sociological theory and cultural sociology at the Martin Luther University Halle Wittenberg and head of the research network Society and Culture in Motion, Germany.
