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Social configurations in the moment of post-foundationalism
Modern social sciences arose during a period of classical modernity in which discovering universal rules between distinct phenomena was the most prominent criterion of scientific knowledge. Social phenomena were considered in the form of isolated, determined, standardized, and regulated objects whos...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2023
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9909338/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36779169 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2022.1078011 |
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author | Jong, Abbas |
author_facet | Jong, Abbas |
author_sort | Jong, Abbas |
collection | PubMed |
description | Modern social sciences arose during a period of classical modernity in which discovering universal rules between distinct phenomena was the most prominent criterion of scientific knowledge. Social phenomena were considered in the form of isolated, determined, standardized, and regulated objects whose knowledge, like that of the natural sciences, depended on the understanding of universal laws. The accidental and the contingent were eliminated in favor of universal laws. With the intensifying of modernity and the transition to late and liquid modernity, and by suspending many dominant cognitive categories, this kind of essentialist foundationalism was attacked by a variety of anti/non-foundationalist criticism that subscribed to either plural grounds or groundlessness, a bottomless ground in which scientific knowledge at a high level lost its significance. This predicament has given rise to several biases and antinomies in modern social theory. By addressing some of these predicaments and antinomies, including foundationalism/non(anti-)foundationalism, agency/structure, the individual/society, essentialism/relativism, and universalism/singularism, the present article strives to propose the idea of social configurations as a solution to overcome them, and through this endeavor, it is indicated that considering these configurations can effectively explain emerging and interrelated global phenomena. By prioritizing the conditions of possibility for social phenomena, and taking into account their contingency, as well as the incompleteness and partiality of their foundations, social configurations are considered as units at the level of the particular whose relationality, indeterminacy, interdependence, and fluidity constitute their central features. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9909338 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-99093382023-02-10 Social configurations in the moment of post-foundationalism Jong, Abbas Front Sociol Sociology Modern social sciences arose during a period of classical modernity in which discovering universal rules between distinct phenomena was the most prominent criterion of scientific knowledge. Social phenomena were considered in the form of isolated, determined, standardized, and regulated objects whose knowledge, like that of the natural sciences, depended on the understanding of universal laws. The accidental and the contingent were eliminated in favor of universal laws. With the intensifying of modernity and the transition to late and liquid modernity, and by suspending many dominant cognitive categories, this kind of essentialist foundationalism was attacked by a variety of anti/non-foundationalist criticism that subscribed to either plural grounds or groundlessness, a bottomless ground in which scientific knowledge at a high level lost its significance. This predicament has given rise to several biases and antinomies in modern social theory. By addressing some of these predicaments and antinomies, including foundationalism/non(anti-)foundationalism, agency/structure, the individual/society, essentialism/relativism, and universalism/singularism, the present article strives to propose the idea of social configurations as a solution to overcome them, and through this endeavor, it is indicated that considering these configurations can effectively explain emerging and interrelated global phenomena. By prioritizing the conditions of possibility for social phenomena, and taking into account their contingency, as well as the incompleteness and partiality of their foundations, social configurations are considered as units at the level of the particular whose relationality, indeterminacy, interdependence, and fluidity constitute their central features. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-01-26 /pmc/articles/PMC9909338/ /pubmed/36779169 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2022.1078011 Text en Copyright © 2023 Jong. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Sociology Jong, Abbas Social configurations in the moment of post-foundationalism |
title | Social configurations in the moment of post-foundationalism |
title_full | Social configurations in the moment of post-foundationalism |
title_fullStr | Social configurations in the moment of post-foundationalism |
title_full_unstemmed | Social configurations in the moment of post-foundationalism |
title_short | Social configurations in the moment of post-foundationalism |
title_sort | social configurations in the moment of post-foundationalism |
topic | Sociology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9909338/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36779169 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2022.1078011 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT jongabbas socialconfigurationsinthemomentofpostfoundationalism |