The Prospects for Social Theory Today

Abstract

In this concluding paper, I shall try to place some of the issues discussed earlier in the book in the context of an overall analysis of the current prospects for social theory. The logical starting-point for such an analysis is the state of disarray that characterises social theory today — a matter of common awareness to anyone working within the social sciences. The past decade or so has seen the revival of traditionally established forms of theory (such as hermeneutics), the emergence of seemingly novel perspectives (including especially ethnomethodology), and the attempted incorporation within social theory of various approaches claimed to be drawn from formerly separate philosophical endeavours (the philosophy of the later Wittgenstein, ordinary language philosophy and phenomenology). To these we can add the important resurgence of Marxist theory. The latter however cannot always be clearly distinguished from trends in non-Marxist social science, since most of the same divisions appear, even if in rather different form, within Marxism: the contrasts between the various sorts of ‘phenomenological Marxism’, ‘critical theory’, ‘Marxist structuralism’, etc. are often as pronounced as those outside Marxism.