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New Materialism? A View from Sociology of Knowledge

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Discussing New Materialism

Abstract

New materialism and related turns confront social research with serious criticisms for neglecting the role of things and materiality in its research. It proposes a new ontology and epistemology for such research linked to the promise of a better understanding of the worldly given and its processes. This paper acknowledges the need for some correction or complexification of social analysis and sociological research, but it rejects the harshness of the critique as well as its basic arguments. Against this it recalls the conception of objects and materiality established in interpretative sociology of knowledge and argues for a material sensitive sociological research in such a perspective, with a particular attention to discourse studies. Therefore it first presents core critical arguments against new materialism and related turns in sociology. In a second step it argues how questions of materiality can (and have been) dealt with in the sociology of knowledge. A third step will consider how materiality comes into play in sociology of knowledge-based discourse studies.

Foucault évite avec génie toute thèse métaphysique alors que Deleuze produit une métaphysique neuve. (David-Ménard 2008, p. 43)

If we desire a record of uninterpreted experience, we must ask a stone to record its autobiography. (Whitehead 1978, p. 15)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I would like to thank the editors and Adele E. Clarke for very helpful comments.

  2. 2.

    The translation produces a different connotation and a different relation to other concepts in Deleuzian philosophy as well as a different symbolic horizon for empirical research (see Wetherell 2012, p. 15; Philipps 2006, p. 108–109).

  3. 3.

    The origin of Susan Leigh Star’s concept of “boundary objects” can be discerned in this quote.

  4. 4.

    We can add Schütz’s reading of Whitehead, Mead, James and many more here. The arguments presented in the following are certainly in need of elaboration. For a close argument against new materialism see Lynch (2014).

  5. 5.

    I choose this quote because Deleuze refers to it several times (see, for example, Deleuze 2000).

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  1. Universität Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany

    Reiner Keller

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  1. Reiner Keller
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  1. Institut für Sozialwesen, Universität Kassel, Kassel, Hessen, Germany

    Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann

  2. Fachbereich Soziologie, KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Eichstätt, Bayern, Germany

    Joost van Loon

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Keller, R. (2019). New Materialism? A View from Sociology of Knowledge. In: Kissmann, U., van Loon, J. (eds) Discussing New Materialism. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-22300-7_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-22300-7_8

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