Abstract
The twentieth anniversary of the EJST offers an opportunity to reflect on the current position of social theory in light of the past two decades but with a view to the future. The journal emerged at a time of increased interest in social theory in 1996. The 1990s saw the consolidation of theoretical currents that began in the late 1970s when the classical traditions in most disciplines were questioned, leading to what, in part, was a post-disciplinary development. This was to a very significant degree fuelled by the pioneering work of, above all, Foucault and other major thinkers, such as Habermas. The period saw the rise of new questions relating to the very idea of society, the prospect of post-national political citizenship, new thinking on the nature of identity and the individual, and modernity and culture. Much of this was a response to globalization, which was one of the main contexts for theoretical thinking in the 1990s. There was also a second context, namely, the end of the Cold War and the reinvention of the idea of Europe after 1990. It was a period of optimism of future possibilities, especially for European societies emerging out of the twentieth century. The old political movements and ideas that had dominated the twentieth century appeared to be giving way to new and more progressive ones around so-called post-material values. Those were also years when social theory was still digesting the postmodern moment and everything that went with it.
It was against that background of a world that was going through tremendous political and intellectual transformation that the EJST began. The aim of the journal was to provide a forum for research on these topics. It was never intended to be European in a narrow sense. The designation European was more a response to the apparent limits of national traditions of scholarship and the desire to embrace a wider one. In the late 1990s, the prospect of a new European community of scholarship was an appealing one and was seen as enabling a cross-fertilization of national traditions and the advancement of a new one that was often lost in national legacies of scholarship. This was also a time when there were no other journals that catered for social theory as such. The experience of the past twenty years has been that this space was worth creating and has now considerably expanded.
The question, of course, must be asked, what is social theory or whether, in fact, such a thing exists. I have never been entirely sure what it is or that it is possible to define it. I see it as largely defined by its use rather than having a specific domain. Views on its scope and core territory will differ and much has been written on this. I will confine my reflections to where this definitional problem has editorial implications. There are some who see social theory as a specific area of expertise in much the same way that political theory is a fairly well-defined domain. However, this is not so easily settled in the case of social theory, which is much more diffuse. There is, first, the tendency to see it as another term for sociological theory and thus a domain that is largely within sociology. This is somewhat problematical, in my view, in that most of the major theorists who have defined its scope did not come from within sociology, for example, Foucault, and many were primarily philosophers, such as Habermas and the post-structuralists, or in the case of Bourdieu, with a background in anthropology. However, there can be no doubt that sociology has figured centrally in the shaping of social theory and that sociology is itself highly interdisciplinary. It may also be said that while it is larger than sociological theory, it certainly does cover much of sociological theory. This leaves open the question whether it is a separate transdisciplinary domain or one that has its home within sociology. The answer is that it is probably both disciplinary – more or less sociological theory – and also a product of theoretical thinking in other interdisciplinary areas. This can be clearly seen in the articles published in the journal over the past twenty years. While a large number are by theoretically inclined sociologists, the wider human and social sciences are very well represented. The fact that the journal is unavoidably included in the sociology list of the Social Science Citation Index partly reinforces the proximity to sociology. However, many articles that have been published in the journal are not specifically sociological papers.
The intellectual tradition of the journal, in so far as it was concerned with broad interpretations of society, was in part rooted in a tradition of European social philosophy and classical sociological theory. This was a legacy that was strongly European, in particular, in the German tradition, and by no means foreign to British thinking on society, as reflected in the work of Bauman, Giddens, the late John Urry and Bryan Turner, for example, and of course was also central to the tradition of French sociological theory. Although much of this was influenced by philosophy, it was the tradition of social philosophy, which today has a rather uncertain status, that gave to social theory a particular critical slant that made it distinct from political philosophy and professional analytical philosophy more generally. In so far as sociology was concerned, social theory concerned above all macro-level theorizing but was informed by normative questions as to the future direction of society. In this context, historical topics were quite important. EJST has been highly influential in keeping alive and giving voice to the historical approach to the social sciences, with especially contributions by historical sociologists, including S. E. Eisenstadt, Johann Arnason, Peter Wagner, and historians such as Bo Stråth.
Since the 1970s, due to the impact of French philosophers on the social sciences, the scope of social theory has changed in that a new impetus has come from thinkers who were primarily philosophers, such as Deleuze, Derrida, and Lyotard. Foucault, of course, was not a philosopher but has been situated as a part of this wider movement of so-called French theory, as appropriated in the English-speaking world. Social theory as such does not exist in France, which paradoxically has provided some of the main influences. The result was a curious mixture of contemporary French philosophy and sociologically oriented theorists.
In North America, social theory generally encompasses wider and more cultural topics than sociological theory, for example, it is generally seen as about theories of race and gender. The first ten years of EJST did not attract many submissions from North Americans. However, since about 2002 that has changed. In that year Jeff Alexander published a landmark article in EJST on the Holocaust. Another welcome trend also since about 2008 has been a reversal of an earlier pattern of predominantly male authors. The journal in recent years has attracted an increased presence of female authors in a field that has tended to be male-dominated.
It would appear to be the case that there are essentially three main understandings of social theory. All of these are reflected in the articles published in the EJST. The first is a narrow conception of social theory as the theoretical concerns of sociology and is primarily about formal conceptual analysis. This is more properly the domain of a journal such as Sociological Theory. However, it is by no means outside the sphere of the EJST. The second is social theory, in the sense mentioned above as a reflection on the big questions of the present day. In this understanding, theory is not divorced from empirical research, but also not reducible to it. Empirical research is necessarily theory-led, but does not itself advance theory and generally does not seek to answer big questions, since such questions cannot be answered by empirical data. Social theory as a reflection on the current age seeks precisely to ask and answer big questions. The EJST has striven to give a strong representation to this conception of social theory. This has been reflected in a large number of articles and several special issues on interpretations of European society and modernity in the aftermath of the 1989/90 events in the subsequent enlargement of the European Union. The issue in 2009 on ‘1989 and Social Theory’, edited by Paul Blokker, was based on an EJST conference at Sussex University to mark ten years of the journal. Another example is an issue edited by the late Chris Rumford – to whom this issue is dedicated – in 2006 on borders, an issue that has been influential in subsequent research on theorizing borders.
The third conception of social theory is where theory as such is the object of analysis. Sometimes this is primarily about theorists. This understanding of social theory has tended to be heavily philosophical in style and substance, with articles more likely to be authored by philosophers, although rarely disciplinary-based philosophers. However, it is by no means the case that the field has been dominated by philosophers. Articles on innovative theoretical developments in sociology have been published in the journal, for example, an issue on the empirical in 2009 and an early article by Boltanski on the sociology of critical capacity in 1999 in an issue that also included a contribution by Bourdieu. Examples of these different conceptions of social theory can be found in articles that have been published in the EJST, for which the commitment to social theory remains a broad one. The journal has also featured interviews with prominent theorists, including Alexander, Arnason, Baudrillard, Eisenstadt, and Honneth. Social theory is also closely linked with the field of the history and philosophy of the social sciences. Although this is a traditionally separate area, it inevitably and increasingly overlaps in that many social theorists also work in the philosophy of social science. The close links are undoubtedly also due to the new developments in ontology and epistemology around evolution, cognition, technology, and the body.
I characterized above the first phase in the journal’s history as one that was shaped by the post-classical turn from the late 1970s and which consolidated in the 1990s around new directions. This was a period in which a new generation of thinkers – Foucault, Bourdieu, Habermas, for example – shaped social theory. However, it is also a time that sees a new interest in the classical thinkers, a development that presumably led to the foundation of the Journal of Classical Sociology. The post-2001 political context marks a new turn in social theory. The millennium brought with it new questions for social theory on war, security and borders and a growing awareness of the limits of globalization, trauma, and violence. From circa 2004 or so it is possible to detect a shift away from the kind of questions that typically characterized social theory in the 1990s, questions that were very centrally about culture and politics in the context of post-national trends. The 2008 crisis of capitalism continues this trend, but now with a new interest in economy and society. Capitalism had more or less disappeared from the horizons of social theory in the 1990s when it was eclipsed by culture. But after a lengthy lapse, it is now back on the agenda. This is surely to be welcomed. There have been several recent articles on capitalism, including a special section on capitalism, edited by Johann Arnason. One of the abiding themes in classical sociology was precisely how to understand major shifts in economy and society. The so-called cultural turn eclipsed those questions. Now that the cultural turn has re-embraced the material world, it may be possible to sustain those kinds of broad theorizations of the social world.
Recent developments in social theory include a very wide interest in Actor-Network Theory and the work of Latour and the sociological pragmatism of Boltanski and Thévenot, both of which have been the focus of special issues. Other developments that have attracted wide interest include Honneth’s recognition theory, and cosmopolitanism, the subject of a special issue in 2007, and cognitive sociology. This is also a special issue in 2007 edited by Piet Strydom.
Until recently, social theory has been very much a product of the Western historical experience. The early years of the EJST reflected this tendency towards what some will call Eurocentrism. While I do not think this quite correct – see McLellan’s incisive critique of such claims in an article in 2003 and the articles by Therborn and Dirlik in another issue that year – there can be little doubt that the presuppositions of mainstream social theory have been heavily influenced by the concerns of European and, more generally, Western modernity. Articles published in the journal in the past decade or so have attempted to correct this bias, which was the subject of a symposium in 2001 on the work of de Sousa Santos. A recent issue in 2016 provides a range of global perspectives on capitalism and modernity, and there have been issues on climate change and social theory. The current issue of the journal is a special issue on the implications of the Anthropocene for social theory. In proposing this topic for the twentieth anniversary issue I am mindful of one of the major developments in science in recent years that compels new thinking on the relationship between nature and the human world. This is a topic that for the first time brings the natural sciences and the human and social sciences closer together.
A backward glance at the past twenty years also reveals the changing material conditions in the life of a journal. New digital technologies have fundamentally transformed the nature of publishing. The first few years of the EJST came at the end of the era of the paper copy as the main outlet. Like many journals, it made the transition to electronic formats and also has had to cope with the tyranny of the search engine, which drives the citation indexes, which in turn bring readers and future authors to the journal. The reader will now encounter an article through an electronic library and may have been directed to it through a search engine. The paper copy, which still exists, has something of a phantom existence in the new digital age of electronic libraries, consortium sales and downloading. Electronic submission, on-line first publication, open access, impact factors, and the growing influence of search engines have transformed the experience of publishing and the nature of research in just over a decade.
The success of a peer-reviewed international journal must be attributed to many individuals. The journal has benefited from contributions from outstanding scholars who have published in the journal, and it has been very well served by dedicated associate editors and members of the international advisory board, many of whom have been peer reviewers. One of the challenges for any journal is to secure the commitment of peer reviewers. EJST as a peer-reviewed journal operates a policy of double-blind review to ensure that high standards are met. Peer review is a method of selection and no such one is perfect, but it is probably the best alternative to ensure fairness and quality. That EJST is now a well-established and reputable journal is due in no small part to the commitment of countless peer reviewers for whom the only reward is the satisfaction that comes from ensuring adherence to high standards for scholarship.
As an Editor, I am of the view that there is another justification for selecting an article for publication beyond the question of the merit or intrinsic value of the article: it must also be of interest to other readers. But this is not something that can be known in advance. Quantitative information on downloading and citations over a five-year period gives a good idea of the interest that an article attracts. It is a sign of a well-performing journal to see that many articles over the past twenty years have been highly cited and compare very favourably to some of the other leading journals. Topics that would be welcome for future submissions would include capitalism, global inequalities, evolution, post-carbon futures, global history and social theory, theory and empirical research, crisis, and comparative analysis.