ABSTRACT

This chapter consists of two main sections. In the first, we seek to characterise the current intellectual climate and its significance for the directions being taken by social theory, and the potential to influence these. For, unlike the excesses of formalism and mathematisation currently witnessed in economics, the situation in other social sciences is very different. The latter, currently abandoning the excesses of neoliberalism and postmodernism, find themselves at a crossroads, with concepts like globalisation and social capital coming to the fore. Both are characteristic for their conceptual looseness and all-embracing character as evidenced in their overwhelming presence and general applicability across the social sciences.