ABSTRACT
In recent years social theorists have been much occupied in controversy about power. Social theories in turn are not dissociable from the moral and political commitments of their exponents. Often, critics of positivism maintain that the theory-dependency of social facts along with the value-dependency of social theories introduces a dimension of relativity or contestability into social thought. The writings of Lukes and Connolly retain great heuristic interest in disclosing two radically divergent paths of development for social thought. At the meta-theoretical level, the central thesis advanced by Lukes and Connolly is that, in virtue of the essential contestability of its constitutive concepts, any kind of social theory is a form of moral and political practice. The current of writings on power and related concepts in which theses about essential contestability or conceptual relativism are deployed has had the virtue of strengthening the sceptical spirit in social thought and of undermining dogmatic and absolutist claims.
