Mann and Relational Sociology

Abstract

Although Mann never considered himself a relational sociologist, other scholars have seen seeds of relationalism in his works. Nevertheless, there have not been any systematic treatments of Mann’s work from the viewpoint of relational sociology. This is exactly the gap we set out to fill in this chapter. Given our space limitations, we have to restrict our task to Mann’s work on power as it unfolds in his four-volume The Sources of Social Power, since this is probably the most lasting of his achievements. We take our lead from a metalanguage of Dewey and Bentley for conceptualizing “relational sociology” by distinguishing between self-action, inter-action , and trans-action as alternative forms of conceptualizing social action, of which it is the last (i.e. trans-action) that has been considered to be characteristic of “deep” relational thinking. The major argument of the chapter is that if one reads Mann’s approach to power from a synchronic perspective it does not correspond very much to the canons of “deep” relational sociology and his depiction of power relations is clearly self-actionalist and inter-actionalist. But if one assumes a diachronic perspective, Mann appears to be engaged in a more trans-actionalist sociology.

Writing this chapter was supported by the Estonian Research Council with the personal research funding granted to the project PUT1485 A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems.