Conceptual Resources for a Theory of Social Events

• In Event: 209 - Theory Section Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 06. Cognitive Sociology

Abstract

What do we observe when we observe social life? This is an abstract theoretical question of practical relevance. Not only structures and systems, institutions and groups, but also actions, processes and practices are often taken for granted as visible elements of observation. However, none of these can be said unmistakably given as hard facts. Every observation – and this is one of the common places of the contemporary philosophies of science – is not only loaded but also overloaded with theoretical decisions. Theoretical work today is not so much a kind of another theory building but rather attempts to clarify these decisions for applied researches or, to say the same more accurately, it is a necessary part of any sophisticated applied research per se.
In this paper, I suggest to conceive events as the basic units of observation for the Social and, in a sense, as the basic units of the Social itself.
According to this view, sociological theory is always empirical, even being abstract and seemingly empty. A theory is to direct, first of all, our attention towards some kind of occurrences. Those occurrences I refer to as events. Events that matter are the facts of theory. i.e. also of any theory-guided observation. It is our initial decision in favor of events as the basic unit of observation. In a theoretically grounded perspective of observation, sociality consists of events and can be analyzed, i.e. split into – to say it metaphorically -- tiniest particles, temporarily shortest and spatially mostly restricted.

Author

• Alexander Filippov, National Research University