ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces a (metaphorical) map of relational thinking in social research. ‘Relational’ methods oriented to social description have proliferated in recent years. Three are discussed: Dowling’s Social Activity Method, those drawing on the New Materialisms of Barad, Braidotti and Bennett, and the Relational Realism of Donati and Archer. The chapter uses the technology of relational diagramming to order what can be seen to be happening in these developments. First, a distinction is made between the ‘aboutness’ of a social research programme and its ‘reference’ to objects beyond itself. Second, attention is given to how the semiotic constitution of anyspecialised social activity, including that of social research, might be diagrammed. This allows a critique of the New Materialisms in terms of a visible collapse of the principle of recontextualisation. Ultimately, it is argued, this collapse permits repressed essentialism to return as politics rather than as research. The critique of Relational Realism is different: in this case, in moving from a properly relational ‘aboutness,’ essentialism can be seen to be reintroduced through a too casual reliance on quotidian categories. The chapter’s conclusion is that attempts to configure social research in terms of ontologies or epistemologies of realism are then at best redundant.
