Η «θετική ευρετική» της συγκρουσιακής πολιτικής και κάποιες καταβολές της : πώς διαβάζουμε τη θεωρία;

Abstract

This article is meta-theoretical: its goal is not theoretical generalisation per se, but debate about theories of collective action and social movements. It both revisits a number of diffuse, yet problematic, readings and enquires on the ways we understand theory in general. In this context stock is first taken of key turning points in the cognitive evolution of the field: the ‘resource mobilisation’ and ‘political process’ approaches, which came to replace mob psychology and ‘collective behaviour’. As far as epistemology is concerned, the article enquires (rhetorically) on alternative ways of appraising theory: Do we approach it statically (as phobic consumers) of dynamically (as creative producers)? Of key importance here are Lakatos’s notions of a progressive research programme’ and its related ‘positive heuristics’ which, as the article maintains, characterise contemporary Contentious Politics -a field currently leading the way in both theory-building and research. In contrast to other trends in the social sciences, Contentious Politics not only dislikes shielding against criticism, indeed, it provokes and metabolises it. In this way, and stating off form a basically structuralist foundation it has managed, first, to creatively appropriate in its theoretical core valuable insights from rationalist and culturalist approaches (concerned, respectively, with the motives of mobilization and the cognitive and emotional prerequisites of collective action) and, second, to evolve as a whole in the context of a new relational epistemology, where the task is not an essentialist pairing of cause and effect, but conceptualising causal mechanisms with contingent influences depending on historical circumstance and the dynamic interaction of structure and agency. The exercise is critical, as the manner in which the pertinent discussion is undertaken (not to mention its outcomes) greatly influences both the questions research is posing as well as how we appraise its results.