The ‘linguistic turn’ and continental sociology

The question of ‘social constitution’ and thus the relationship between social agency and social structure is certainly the problematic around which the entire history of sociology is written. This history, as it is well known, embraces two major antithetical paradigms, both questioning the very possibility of human agency in its constant tension with the more fixed and enduring aspects of social life. The Durkheimean paradigm, on the one hand, explains the social as an external constraint to individual or group agency, setting ‘relational structures’ (networks of social relations characterized by mutual dependence within divisions of labor) and ‘institutional structures’ (systems of values, symbols and cultural patterns that construe individuals’ beliefs) to produce general and structured ways of thinking and acting.¹ The Weberian paradigm, on the other hand, rejects any conceptualization of the social as a reality other than the sum of its individuals and their relations, focusing instead on the dynamic ability of human agency to both produce and transform the structural aspects of social life.²