The paper addresses the recent turn to pragmatism within sociological theory, arguing that, in crucial respects, the ‘new’ pragmatism is at odds with the animating thrust of the ‘old’ pragmatism associated with James, Dewey and Mead. Two tendencies in the new pragmatism are discussed, namely ‘the universal pragmatics’ associated with general theory (Habermas) and the displacement of explanation in favour of edification (Rorty). Each position fails to recognize the unifying role played by ‘problem-solving’ in the original pragmatist approach, and this, in turn, is argued to provide a more satisfactory way of resolving some dilemmas of contemporary sociological theory.
Alexander JC ( 1985) Introduction. In: Alexander JC (ed.) Neofunctionalism. Beverley Hills, CA: Sage, 7-18.
2.
Alexander JC ( 1988) The ‘individualist dilemma’ in phenomenology and interactionism. In: Action and Its Environments: Toward a New Synthesis. New York: Columbia University Press, 222-256 .
3.
Alexander JC ( 1995) Modern, anti, post, and neo: How intellectuals have coded, narrated, and explained the ‘new world of our time’. In: Fin de Siècle Social Theory: Relativism, Reduction, and the Problem of Reason. London : Verso Books , 6-64.
4.
Apel K.-O (1980) Towards a Transformation of Philosophy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
5.
Baert P. ( 2005) Philosophy of the Social Sciences: Towards Pragmatism . Cambridge: Polity.
6.
Barbalet J. ( 2009) Pragmatism and symbolic interactionism. In: Turner BS (ed.) The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell , 199-217.
7.
Bernstein RJ ( 1986) Philosophical Profiles: Essays in a Pragmatic Mode. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
8.
Bhaskar R. ( 1978) A Realist Theory of Science, 2nd edn. Brighton: Harvester.
9.
Burawoy M. ( 2005) For public sociology. American Sociological Review70: 2-28.
10.
Dewey J. ( 1916) Democracy and Education. New York: Macmillan.
11.
Dewey J. ( 1984 [1929]) John Dewey, The Later Works. Volume 4: 1929. The Quest for Certainty, ed. Boydston JA.Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois Press.
12.
Diggins JP ( 1995) The Promise of Pragmatism: Modernism and the Crisis of Knowledge and Authority. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
13.
Durkheim É. ( 1983 [1955]) Pragmatism and Sociology, trans. Whitehouse JC, ed. Allcock JB.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
14.
Feffer A. ( 1993) The Chicago Pragmatists and Americal Progressivism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
15.
Flyvbjerg B. ( 2001) Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed Again. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
16.
Foucault M. ( 1967[1961]) Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Howard R. London: Tavistock
17.
Foucault M. ( 1970[1966]) The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Pantheon.
18.
Foucault M. ( 1977 [1971]) Revolutionary action: ‘Until now’. in Michel Foucault: Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Bouchard DF.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 218-233.
19.
Foucault M. ( 1978[1975]) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Sheridan A. New York: Pantheon .
20.
Foucault M. ( 1991) What is enlightenment? In: Rabinow P (ed.) The Foucault Reader. London: Penguin, 32-50.
21.
Fraser N. ( 1998) Another pragmatism: Alain Locke, critical ‘race’ theory and the politics of culture. In: Dickstein M (ed.) The Revival of Pragmatism: New Essays on Social Thought, Law and Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 157-175.
22.
Gadamer H-G. ( 1976) On the scope and function of hermeneutic reflection. In: Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. Linge DE. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 18-43.
23.
Giddens A. ( 1976) New Rules of Sociological Method. London: Hutchinson.
24.
Glaude ES, Jr ( 2007) In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
25.
Gouldner AW ( 1970) The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. London: Heinemann.
26.
Gross N. ( 1997) Durkheim’s pragmatism lectures: A contextual interpretation . Sociological Theory15: 126-149.
27.
Habermas J. ( 1970) On systematically distorted communication. Inquiry13: 205-218.
28.
Habermas J. ( 1976[1973]) Legitimation Crisis, trans. McCarthy T. London: Heinemann.
29.
Habermas J. ( 1979 [1976]) What is universal pragmatics? In: Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans. McCarthy T. London: Heinemann, 1-68.
30.
Habermas J. ( 1984 [1981]) The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume I: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, trans. McCarthy T. London: Heinemann.
31.
Habermas, J. ( 1987a [1981]) The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume II: Lifeworld and System, trans. McCarthy T. Cambridge : Polity.
32.
Habermas J. ( 1987b [1985]) The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Lawrence FG. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
33.
Hamner MG ( 2003) American Pragmatism: A Religious Genealogy. New York: Oxford University Press
34.
Hindess B. ( 1996) Discourses of Power: From Hobbes to Foucault, Oxford: Blackwell.
35.
Holmwood J. ( 1996) Founding Sociology? Talcott Parsons and the Idea of General Theory. London: Longman.
36.
Holmwood J. ( 2009) From 1968 to 1951: How Habermas transformed Marx into Parsons. In: Bhambra GK and Demir I (eds) 1968 in Retrospect: History, Theory, Alterity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 59-72.
37.
Holmwood J. ( 2006) Economics, sociology and the ‘professional complex’: Talcott Parsons and the critique of orthodox economics. American Journal of Economics and Sociology651: 127-160.
38.
Hook S. ( 1939) John Dewey: An Intellectual Portrait. New York: John Day.
39.
Horkheimer M. ( 1947) Eclipse of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.
40.
Hypatia (1996) Special Issue: Feminism and Pragmatism82.
41.
Isaac JC ( 2003) The Poverty of Progressivism: The Future of American Politics in a Time of Liberal Decline. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
42.
James W. ( 1904) The pragmatic method. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods1: 673-687.
43.
Joas H. ( 1993) Pragmatism and Social Theory. Chicago : University of Chicago Press.
44.
Joas H. ( 1996[1992]) The Creativity of Action, trans. Gaines J and Keast P. Cambridge: Polity.
45.
Kemp S. and Holmwood J. ( 2003) Realism, regularity and social explanation. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour23: 165-189.
46.
Kloppenberg JT ( 1986) Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European and American Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
47.
Kloppenberg JT ( 1996) Pragmatism: An old name for some new ways of thinking ? The Journal of American History83: 100-138.
48.
Levine DN ( 1995) Visions of the Sociological Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
49.
Lewis JD and Smith RL ( 1980) American Sociology and Pragmatism: Mead, Chicago Sociology and Symbolic Interaction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
50.
Mills CW ( 1959) The Sociological Imagination. New York : Oxford University Press.
51.
Mills CW ( 1964) Sociology and Pragmatism: The Higher Learning in America . New York: Oxford University Press .
52.
Parsons T. ( 1935) Sociological elements in economic thought. Quarterly Journal of Economics49: 415-453.
53.
Parsons T. ( 1951) The Social System. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
54.
Parsons T. ( 1954 [1950]) The prospects of sociological theory . In: Essays in Sociological Theory. New York: Free Press, 348-369.
55.
Parsons T. ( 1959) Some problems confronting sociology as a profession. American Sociological Review24: 547-558.
56.
Peirce CS ( 1934a) Lectures on pragmatism. In: Hartshorne C and Weiss P (eds) Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce: Volume V. Pragmatism and Pragmaticism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
57.
Peirce CS ( 1934b) Some consequences of four incapacities, In: Hartshorne C and Weiss P (eds) Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce: Volume V. Pragmatism and Pragmaticism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
58.
Posnock R. ( 1998) Going astray, going forward: Du Boisian pragmatism and its lineage. In: Dickstein M (ed.) The Revival of Pragmatism: New Essays on Social Thought, Law and Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 176-189.
59.
Psillos S. ( 1999) Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth. London: Routledge.
60.
Rockmore T. ( 1989) Habermas on Historical Materialism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press
61.
Rorty R. ( 1981) Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
62.
Rorty R. ( 1992) Consequences of Pragmatism. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press.
63.
Rorty R. ( 1998) Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
64.
Scheffler I. ( 1974) Four Pragmatists: A Critical Introduction to Peirce, James, Mead and Dewey. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
65.
Shalin DN ( 1992) Critical theory and the pragmatist challenge. American Journal of Sociology98: 237-279.
66.
Seigfried CH ( 1996) Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social FabricChicago: University of Chicago Press.
67.
Smith JE ( 1965) The Spirit of American Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.
68.
Taylor C. ( 1984) Foucault on freedom and truth. Political Theory122: 152-183.
69.
West C. ( 1989) The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism . Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
