Research output
Complete citation
Poljarevic, Emin. “Ventures into a ‘New’ Paradigm of Social Reality.” Review essay. Social Movement Studies 10, no. 2 (2011): 199–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2011.562366.
Status
Published (2011)
Publication type
Scholarly review essay
Overview
This review essay assesses Alain Touraine’s proposal that sociology requires a new paradigm adequate to societies no longer organised primarily through industrial conflict and conventional class categories. Touraine argues that cultural claims, subjectivity, identity, and struggles over meaning have become central to contemporary social life. The essay examines the explanatory promise of this shift while asking whether a broad paradigmatic diagnosis can be translated into empirically testable social analysis. It considers the relationship between structural transformation, collective action, and the capacity of social actors to constitute themselves as subjects. The essay’s contribution is to clarify both the ambition and the limits of Touraine’s project: a renewed sociology must respond to rapid global change without abandoning careful explanation of institutions, power, inequality, and the concrete mechanisms through which actors mobilise.
Research question or central concern
Can Touraine’s proposed paradigm explain contemporary social change and collective action more effectively than established sociological approaches?
Main argument, approach, and contribution
The essay evaluates Touraine’s theoretical reconstruction of sociology and tests its usefulness for analysing mobilisation. It values the emphasis on culture and subject formation while insisting that paradigmatic claims require clearer empirical mechanisms.
Keywords
social theory; Alain Touraine; social movements; paradigm; subjectivity; mobilisation; modernity; collective action
Emin Poljarević 