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Toward an Analytic Sociology: Reconciling Structural and Individualistic Explanations of Social Phenomena Via a Theory of Embodied Practice

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Toward an Analytic Sociology: Reconciling Structural and Individualistic Explanations of Social Phenomena via a Theory of Embodied Practice By Michael Polyakov A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Mark Bevir, Chair Professor Christopher Ansell Associate Professor Kinch Hoekstra Professor Neil Fligstein Fall 2014 Abstract Toward an Analytic Sociology: Reconciling Structural and Individualistic Explanations of Social Phenomena via a Theory of Embodied Practice by Michael Polyakov Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science University of California, Berkeley Professor Mark Bevir, Chair Social theory explanations commonly take one of two forms. Accounts couched in terms of macroscopic entities such as institutions, culture, class, structure and tradition tend to privilege stability and regularity. Individualistic explanations, on the other hand, take these entities to be ultimately reducible to free actions of individuals and are most adept at explaining transformation and volatility in the social realm. These two forms of explanation are rooted in radically different ontological and normative assumptions, and no attempt to connect them has garnered wide acceptance to date. This dissertation once re-examines the tension between them, which has become known as the “structure vs. agency” debate, by drawing on and extending the insights of “theories of practice”, a literature that locates the junction of structure and agency in the routines of ordinary daily activities. The dissertation begins by critically examining two extant theories of practice. One originates in Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, and William Sewell’s responses to structuralism; the other is articulated by Theodore Schatzki, who draws on Ludwig Wittgenstein to characterize practice as a semantic lens through which social actors make sense of the world. An alternative theory of practice is then developed, inspired by Charles Taylor’s Heideggerian conception of embodied agency. This theory of “embodied practice” advances a novel formulation of the structure-agent relationship. Through a fine-grained analysis of the cognitive and informational processes by which practices project a semantic dimension onto the world, embodied practice theory renders robust forms of personal agency compatible with certain forms of semantic macrostructures. The dissertation goes on to describe how embodied practices can account for both change and stability in society and how the concept of an embodied practice may be profitably employed in applied social analysis and political theory. 1 Table of Contents Chapter 1. Introduction I. The Two Dilemmas of Social Theory ......................................................................................... 1 II. “Practice Theory” ..................................................................................................................... 12 III . The Logic of the Dissertation ................................................................................................. 16 Chapter 2. Neostructuralist Beginnings I. A Neostructuralist Practice Theory ........................................................................................... 21 II. The Subject within Neostructuralist Practice ........................................................................... 30 A. Irrelevant Conceptions of Agency ........................................................................................31 B. Agency as Purposeful Action ...............................................................................................33 C. Agency as Self-construction .................................................................................................38 D. Agency as Natality ...............................................................................................................40 III. Transformation and Change .................................................................................................... 42 IV. Social Practices or Individual Habits: Turner’s Challenge ..................................................... 46 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 51 Chapter 3. Interpretivist Practice Theory I. Situated Agency ......................................................................................................................... 53 A. Situated in Tradition .............................................................................................................54 B. Situated and Limited .............................................................................................................58 II. Intelligibility as Articulation .................................................................................................... 62 III. Intelligibility through Practice: Schatzki’s Social Practices ................................................... 66 A. A Wittgensteinian Theory of Practice ..................................................................................66 B. Schatzki’s Account of Mind .................................................................................................77 C. Critique 1: A Purely Social Phenomenology .......................................................................81 D. Critique 2: Practice is a Medium ..........................................................................................85 IV. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 89 Chapter 4. Toward an Embodied Theory of Meaning and Practice I. Intelligibility as Embodied Knowledge ..................................................................................... 91 A. Embodied Agents ..................................................................................................................91 B. The Embodied Cognition Program: History and Methods....................................................95 C. Chapter Outline ...................................................................................................................100 II. Cognitive Building Blocks of Meaning ..................................................................................101 i A. Understanding as Embodied Simulation .............................................................................104 B. Elements of Meaning ..........................................................................................................111 C. Abstract Concepts ...............................................................................................................119 III. Elements of a Representational Account of the Mind ...........................................................122 IV. Active Perception...................................................................................................................130 A. Complex Perception ............................................................................................................130 B. Affordances, Signification, Intelligibility ...........................................................................139 V. Situated Agency ......................................................................................................................143 A. Absorbed Coping ................................................................................................................143 B. Deliberate Activity as Coping: Situated Agency ................................................................149 C. On the Causal Powers of Mental States ..............................................................................158 VI. The Social Conditions of Embodied Agency ........................................................................161 VII. The Ontology of an Embodied Practice (Turner’s Challenge).............................................169 VIII. Embodied Practice Theory and Diachronic Analysis .........................................................178 IX. Conclusion: Implications for Political Theory ......................................................................183 A. Applications for Political Theory – Culture and Multiculturalism .....................................184 B. Applications for Political Theory – Deliberative Democracy .............................................189 Chapter 5. Embodied Theory Practice Applied I. EPT, Explanations, and Other Analytic Frameworks...............................................................195 II. Methodological Implications.................................................................................................. 201 III. Implications for field work ................................................................................................... 204 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 208 ii Chapter 1: Introduction “In historic events the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels, they have but the smallest connection with the event itself. Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense involuntary, and is related to the whole course of history and predestined from eternity.” – Leo Tolstoy, War and
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