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Michael E. Brown's book, The Concept of the Social in Uniting the Humanities and Social Sciences, demonstrates that prominent attempts to account for the social dimension of human affairs rely on an unstated notion of a “course of activity,” that is diametrically opposed to the conceptualization of sociality that is presumably intended to realize it. I want to focus on the idea of a “course of activity” in order to locate his work in and clarify its importance to the development of dialectical reason from Heraclitus through Hegel and beyond. Of special importance is the bearing of his research on the critique of contemporary theories of agency and sociality, and, since considerable attention has been paid, in this regard, to the arts and humanities, some of what I will say about this refers to art and its avant-garde moments—-particularly in my work on Dada and Brown's account of two avant-garde theatrical performances. 

This chapter examines what is entailed by separating agency from individuality and what it means for the idea of a “course of activity,” (going on) and its relation to the concept of sociality. This also bears on questions of ontology, as Brown's course of activity is generative and nonrepeatable. The course of activity and nonrepeatability are linked to both avant-garde practice and theoretical notions that reframe our temporal understandings. These include the avant-garde of dada and surrealism, and the reformulations of bourgeois time of Jean Duvignaud, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, and Jean-Paul Sartre. The question raised here is that of a teleological understanding—how we link the present course of activity with future events.

This essay summarizes the formation of the concept of “sociality” as it was developed in The Concept of the Social in Uniting the Humanities and Social Sciences. Its thesis is that if the human sciences are to have a representative discipline – in contrast with a field of largely topical studies – that defines human reality in the course of its work, then that discipline must have a concept of its distinctive reality, and the basic fact that the concept describes must be indisputable: that is, it must be irreducible and irrepressible as well as distinctively human. These qualities are satisfied by the formula “each-dependent-on-All,” where each shows itself as “intra-dependence” and, therefore, as “being-in-the-middle” of a “course of activity without immanent beginning and end.” This concept is then applied to theoretical positions presented or hinted at by the other chapters of this volume in order (1) to see how a given theory might differ from what is conventionally taught as sociological theory when the basic fact is systematically taken into account, and (2) to find among the implications of the concept a dialectic of social progress and societal change that is incompatible with received positive ideas of society, e.g., as an entity, system, or totality and compatible with the idea of such an apparent formation as a project in which the manifold (internal) relations of each-dependent-on-All present social progress as the ongoing reality of human reality.

This chapter looks at the Bakhtinian account of language that Michael Brown presents in his The Concept of the Social in Uniting the Humanities and Social Sciences and suggests that it is in tension with his Rousseauean description of human sociality. Like Rousseau, Brown claims that human sociality derives from a recognition of mutual dependence that cements the disparate wills of individuals into a general will which enforces social equality and protects the rights of all. Brown argues that this fundamental human sociality is instantiated in language itself which he describes not as communication but as “an anti-telic moment of collective enunciation,” and he identifies this collective enunciation with Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia. In doing so, however, he downplays the drama of individual and social struggle that is at the center of Bakhtin's work and thus underestimates its power as a force for social change.

Theorists and theory have lost their way, and Brown offers some guidelines for reviewing and finding new ways of writing. Brown seeks the social that which is left out and is implicit. My concern here is with the role of the tantalizing “actor” in theorizing: perhaps a puppet on a structural string, a bundle of emotions, a strategic actor employing tactics of assertion or a rational chooser. Brown correctly argues in my view that the actor is a momentary social creation. Thus, what is said about the actor implies what is not said and the dubious value of “words.” Although the body, first captured by Mauss (1968), remains a shadow figure in current thinking and not cited by Brown, I argue it acts without words. I cite studies of Manning and Fabrega summarized in Psathas (1973) to display the crosscultural relevance of the self-body connection as evidence of the situated nature of the actor and the meaning of the body in time and space.

What do we mean by “the social” exactly, and above all, are we attempting to define it as a static issue or a dynamic one? Consequently, as a theoretical concept or as a grounded empirical concept? Furthermore, should this concept be uniting two orders of knowledge such as the social sciences and the humanities in a broad sense? Or should this knowledge be considered within a reciprocal relationship, creating a tension that can have some kind of consequence uniting in some cases, but also differentiating and conflicting in others? The book of Brown is extraordinarily detailed and consequent in this sense. There is a continuous attempt to develop a terminology which can move from static concepts of the social in favor of dynamic ones.

Purpose – This chapter focuses on the status of Emile Durkheim's work in the United States, and on the prospects of its rehabilitation in light of the crisis of theory engendered by the critique of the theory of the sign and the paradox presented by the application of terms that invoke an inertial view of culture to everyday discourse.

Design/methodology/approach – How is it possible to reconcile the most general aspect of the internal life of the sociality that Durkheim places under the name of “solidarity,” with the theoretically expansive idea of social movements and with an idea of a generative culture radically different from the inertial institutional concept attributed to Durkheim? Our argument depends on conceiving of society as a course of activity, therefore, according to internal relations among subjectivities and objectivities. The main ontological assumptions of the human sciences are that humans and human affairs are essentially social and that sociality is irreducible and irrepressible. That difference lies at the heart of every attempt to identify something as unitary, complete, and stable.

Findings – Culture is tied to social movements, where the latter are thought of as expressions of the “becoming” of society. An understanding of the dynamics of culture requires revisiting dialectics and “internal relations.” The challenge to the idea of meaning based on the exchange of signs requires a reformulation of basic categories of human science. When the social is thought of as historical, it is necessary to think of history as immanent rather than as a condition or temporal course. Therefore, one is driven back to Marx by way of Hegel, where “history” refers to the contradictory character of whatever can be said about the social. It follows that every instance of unity is merely ostensible and cannot be relied on as a primary referent of a social science.

Research limitations/implications – “Culture” can no longer stand for something inert; rather, it appears as radically generative and reflexive. Further, it is not independent of economic reality, though it has the sort of weight that makes economism impossible.

Originality value – This chapter will stimulate more insightful appreciations of the work of Emile Durkheim, relative to his typical reception in U.S. social science. For instance, to reappropriate Durkheim for theoretical purposes, it is necessary to work through the problems raised by poststructuralism and the literature of ethnomethodology and its adjacent areas of research, with attention to the ontological presuppositions of theories of human affairs and the epistemological requirement of all the human sciences, that theory find itself in its object and its object in itself.

Michael Brown's remarkable book is a bold attempt to reunite the social sciences and humanities on the basis of a unitary concept, that of the social, which allows him to integrate the different dimensions of sociality and to question our research practices, in which we too often take for granted our ways of thinking about the collective. The book also helps to combat the increasing fragmentation of our knowledge, which the hypertrophy of the critical posture and the multiplication of specialized studies have fostered over the last half-century. Brown proposes a real refoundation of our knowledge in a time of great confusion about the legitimacy of discourses on the social and the drifts of “situated epistemologies” that tend to reduce our knowledge to a simple point of view. Certainly, the dream of a unified social science emerged long ago and has never been realized. Brown's essay escapes the criticisms that always threaten systemic thinking and conceptual generalization, for he consistently incorporates the critical perspective inherited from the Marxist foundation into his enterprise.

This chapter is an attempt to rethink the social from the point of view of intellectual history. In the first part, the question of the unity of the social sciences is reexamined in the light of the proliferation of specialized studies. We then move to the sociological analysis of concepts as they emerge in diverse social contexts. A special attention is paid to Bourdieu's grand theory endeavor in the third part. It can be compared to Bruno Latour's strategy to flatten the social, which is the object of a critical analysis in part four. Thus, it becomes possible to offer a renovated analytical frame to account to the sociality of intellectual contents, based on the “density of practices” (parts five and six).

Concepts such as “the social,” “sociality,” and even “society,” must be viewed “in time and space,” simultaneously as malleable, as representing national and regional differences, and as reflective of concrete sociohistorical conditions. Importantly, particular societal and historical circumstances exert specific kinds of gravity on efforts to clarify the meaning of the above concepts in general and for specific contexts, and to deploy them for purposes of both illuminating and examining the social phenomena they refer to, and their concrete content and form. It is also necessary to establish how and to what extent such efforts themselves are bound to be symptomatic and expressive of the distinctive features (social, political, cultural, economic, geographic, climatic, etc.) they are intended to illuminate and examine. In the United States, related challenges are especially pronounced, for a range of reasons, including the fact that as a comparably “young” nation that was created under very unique conditions, the character of “the social” and the historical foundations of sociality are discernibly different from other societies on Earth. For this reason, as far as social theory is concerned, before it is possible to assess the status and character of “the social,” of “sociality,” and of “society,” in general and abstract terms, it is important to circumscribe what is unique or “exceptional” about a particular society in whose context the status and nature of “social” is being assessed and characterized. Against the neoliberal trend of pitting the social sciences and humanities against each other, and the natural and engineering sciences against both, the former must learn to collaborate and complement each other in ways that secure the independence and autonomy of the social dimension of increasingly complex and contradictory, yet seemingly cohesive societal reference frames.