Khazeh, You wrote: >>Please can you give working definitions of each of these: in your post below .... >>Plus whether you agree with each of these four.<<
I am primarily using these terms in their **sociological**, not theological, senses. 1. Social nominalism is the view that groups and societies are merely names that we use for collections of individuals. From a nominalist standpoint, individuals are real. Groups and societies are not real. By extension, the Word of God might be regarded as a convenient fiction to nominate texts written in different times and places by specific persons. I agree with social nominalism to a point, but it depends on how one defines "reality." Whereas individuals have an ontological reality, groups and societies have a socially constructed, not an ontological, reality. However, since, like most sociologists, I regard the group, not the individual, as the basic unit of theory and research, I would not call myself a social nominalist. In fact, there are only a few social nominalists in sociology, and most of them (Burgess, Bushell, Homans, etc.) can be found in what is called the "social behaviorist" school (based on behavioral psychology). 2. Social constructionism is a complex perspective which reduces, or deconstructs, reality into acts of subjective social construction. The radical perspective in gender studies, which includes psychological androgyny (the position that children of both sexes should be socialized identically), is basically constructionist. Gender is regarded as a subjective human creation. The texts of the Bible were social constructions and can be reconstructed by each new generation and society. I see some merit in social constructionism and use the perspective a bit. However, I reject its extreme ontological relativism. Although some sociologists *claim* to be social constructionists, the subjectivist (even solipsistic) assumptions of constructionism, a bit like Dilthey's hermeneutic circle, make it untenable, in my view, for a sociologist to be a complete constructionist. 3. Postmodernism is a somewhat vague term which can refer to any number of different subjectivist perspectives, including constructionism and deconstructionism. Postmodernists tend to be suspicious of the scientific method. However, if each scientist, including each social scientist, is bound to see empirical phenomena differently from her or his colleagues, what is the point of science? The so-called "Enlightenment project" is largely abandoned. I find a moderate social deconstruction to be useful in deconstructing various social and cultural traits. However, I do not find the generalizing assumptions of postmodernism to be particularly useful in sociology. 4. Critical realism in sociology refers to the work of philosopher, Roy Bhaskar. It is a highly complex framework and much to complex to do justice to in a paragraph summary. That said, critical realism thoroughly rejects the essentialism of the Platonists and neo-Platonists. All essences are individual, not universal. What is universal, or creates an identity of type, is the **real**. To Bhaskar, at least prior to 1998, that universal (or reality), social structure, is not a constant, but is a dialectical product of history (hence the "critical" element). Society and its groups are constantly being restructured as people react to their own histories. Critical realism comes closest to the approach I use (restructurational realism) in sociology. Mark A. Foster * http://MarkFoster.net http://CompuServe.m.foster.name ---------- You are subscribed to Baha'i Studies as: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Baha'i Studies is available through the following: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://list.jccc.net/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=bahai-st news://list.jccc.net/bahai-st http://www.escribe.com/religion/bahaist (public) http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] (public)
