Sociological routes and political roots - Michaela Benson

The central theme of this monograph is the interplay between ideas of the political and the way sociologists look at the range of phenomena we study. The political and its relation to the social has of course long been a source of profound debate within political sociology as well as more generally. What we want to mark in this volume are some key ways in which the ever–burgeoning lines of inquiry and analysis within sociology alter conceptions of the political, with mutually profound implications for understandings of the social across the discipline of sociology.

Notions of how power operates open up our understandings of the social as these unfold from earlier holistic and overly–humanistic images of society. Consequently fieldwork now embraces relations and affects that are not directly observable, but can be traced, and reported, through the circulation of artefacts, discourses, practices, and technologies. So too political inquiry becomes more nuanced and grounded in what Durkheim called
social facts
. Charting our everyday institutions and unseen forms of organising not only helps to show how (and when) lifeworlds are made stable and tractable, it permits closer examination and questioning as to who benefits from the feelings of security and belonging so granted.

Parts 1 and 2 explore the complex interrelations between the social and the political, through their traditional focus on the entangled themes of borders and belonging. The examination of discourse, Part 4, and social movements, Part 5, provide analytical routes through which the boundaries between theoretical and empirical research are also called into question. For all this, as the papers in Part 3 demonstrate, theoretical contributions –if taking a less central, legislating role– remain as important as ever. Taken together, the articles in this volume provide key insights into the many, many ways with which a commitment to the political affects understandings of the social in contemporary sociology.