ABSTRACT
The normative utopia of modernity sought for an organised social structure constructed by man’s co-operative efforts. Modernity (re)constructed social order out of a reflexive (non)understanding of the void underlying human existence: to structure means to counter-balance randomness, to ensure predictability. The tools were knowledge and power. A strong society needed to control those who betrayed it: punishment was just in that it was not a defence of the illusions of metaphysics, or arbitrary political judgment, but part of the body of knowledge of society and man’s place within it. The well adjusted citizen – the socialised individual – was to be one who understood what the society stood for, understood the necessity for rules for the social game, and played by the rules. The desire for individual advancement resulted in an increase in performability and skills in the practices which the rules delineated – the desire of the individual to better him or herself enriched the society. Social theory kept randomness, kept contingency, under control by claiming to uncover structure, rather than engage in practices of destruction and construction. And to a large extent this ideology has worked, but we now realise, with Unger (1976), that social theory is in a sense both metaphysical and political. It takes stands on issues of human nature and human knowledge for which no ‘scientific’ elucidation is, or may ever be, available. We can no longer deny that the development and fate of social theory is inseparable from the fate of society.
