Social Science, Philosophy and Theology in Dialogue
This volume explores the potential of employing a relational paradigm for the purposes of interdisciplinary exchange. Bringing together scholars from the social sciences, philosophy and theology, it seeks to bridge the gap between subject areas by focusing on real phenomena. Although these phenomena are studied by different disciplines, the editors demonstrate that it is also possible to study them from a common relational perspective that connects the different languages, theories and perspectives that characterize each discipline by going beyond their differences to the core of reality itself. As an experimental collection that highlights the potential that exists for cross-disciplinary work, this volume will appeal to scholars across a range of fields concerned with critical realist approaches to research, collaborative work across subjects and the manner in which disciplines can offer one another new insights.
Pierpaolo Donati is Alma Mater Professor (PAM) of Sociology at the University of Bologna. He is the author of Relational Sociology: A New Paradigm for the Social Sciences and co-author of The Relational Subject .
Antonio Malo is Professor of Philosophy of Mind at the Santa Croce Pontifical University. He is the author of Gift, Guilt and Forgiveness (Elements for a Phenomenology of Forgiveness) and The Limits of Marions and Derridas Philosophy of the Gift .
Giulio Maspero is Professor of Theology at the Santa Croce Pontifical University. He is the author of Trinity and Man and the co-editor of Rethinking Trinitarian Theology and The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa .
Social Science, Philosophy and Theology in Dialogue
A Relational Perspective
Edited by
Pierpaolo Donati, Antonio Malo
and Giulio Maspero
First published 2019
by Routledge
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Donati, Pierpaolo, 1946- author. | Malo, Antonio, author. | Maspero, Giulio, author.
Title: Social science, philosophy and theology in dialogue: a relational perspective / Pierpaolo Donati, Antonio Malo & Giulio Maspero.
Description: 1 Edition. | New York : Routledge, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018058670 (print) | LCCN 2019002124 (ebook) | ISBN 9780429467738 (Ebook) | ISBN 9781138606326 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429467738 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Social sciencesPhilosophy.
Classification: LCC H61.15 (ebook) | LCC H61.15 .D66 2019 (print) | DDC 300.1dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018058670
ISBN: 978-1-138-60632-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-46773-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Salvatore Abbruzzese is Professor of Sociology of Cultural Processes at the Faculty of Sociology of the University of Trento. He is the author of Monastic Asceticism and Everyday Life; Tocqueville and the Analysis of Religious Beliefs ; Religion and the Post-War Generation in Italy ; and French Sociology .
Margaret Archer is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Social Ontology at the University of Warwick, UK. Her books include Social Origins of Educational Systems ; Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory ; Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach ; Being Human: The Problem of Agency ; Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation ; Making our Way Through the World ; The Reflexive Imperative. She has edited five books on Social Morphogenesis .
Sergio Belardinelli is Professor of Sociology of Cultural Processes at the Department of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Bologna. He is the author of Enhancement Medicine: Questions of Public Ethics and Charity and Philanthropy . He is the co-author of Church and Education in Europe .
Ivo Colozzi is Alma Mater Professor (PAM) of Sociology at the University of Bologna. He is the author of Religion and Modernity and The New Social Policies.
Giovanna Rossi is Professor of Sociology of the Family at the Faculty of Psychology of the Catholic University of Milan. She is the editor of Reconciling Family and Work: New Challenges for Social Policies in Europe ; The Social Generative Action of the Third Sector: Comparing International Experiences ; and Balancing Work and Family Care: European Experiences.
Paolo Terenzi is Associate Professor of Sociology of Cultural Processes at the Department of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Bologna. He is editor of Paths of Relational Sociology and Lexicon of Relational Sociology .
Introduction
A few years ago, I gave a presentation at the London School of Economics about the politics of austerity in Europe. When we came to the questions and answers, the first postgraduate to speak began by saying, As a relational sociologist I stopped her there and asked her to clarify of which kind. Her response was, Well, of course, I base my work on Emirbayers Manifesto. The book Pierpaolo Donati and I published in 2015, The Relational Subject , was intended to eliminate this cavalier of course, along with the much more sophisticated contribution of the analytical philosophers, usually known as the Plural Subject. Both of these opposing approaches will be examined here and constitute the reply that the postgraduate should have been given.
We believe but who are we?
In everyday life, as individual persons we often speak in the plural, referring to a we. People say: We had lunch together, We went on holiday together, We wrote a book together, We had the same opinion about that, and so forth. This we is a term whose referent remains unspecified but its reality is taken for granted. If one asks subjects to say what constitutes this we, the subject of the above everyday statements, they usually indicate a number of individuals (or give a list of names) that includes themselves. Thus, in ordinary language, use of the we appears to refer to an aggregate of people, seemingly wanting, doing or thinking the same thing. However, quotidian use also implies more than that; when a couple says we want they mean something more than our personal wants happen to coincide.
