Journal article

Publication year: 2020

Pages: 32-45

Journal: MedienJournal

Volume number: 44

Issue number: 4

DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.24989/medienjournal.v44i4.1913

Publisher: Facultas Verlags- und Buchhandels AG

Abstract: 

Current sociology displays a strong propensity to employ concepts developed in object- oriented sociologies, new materialisms and the material and practice turns. We address the implications of that tendency from a perspective of theory of society, as opposed to social theory. The new materialisms, being mostly based on approaches in social theory, tend to neglect the historical entanglements of materiality and societal relationships addressed already in classical contributions to sociological theory, for instance, by Marx and Durkheim. In comparison to these older foundations of thinking about materiality from the perspective of society, not of the social, most contemporary suggestions, in narrowing their conceptual focus on social-theoretical approaches, are unable to conceptualize the nexus of theory of society, materiality and societal history.
The article discusses three analytical levels that are paramount for duly accounting for an analytical insertion of materiality into societal history: the historical constitution of things; the reification of the social; and the materiality of social practices. We discuss Jürgen Habermas’s elaborations on the medium of language within processes of societal differentiation in order to demonstrate that directions in media sociology and media theory can profit from a notion of materiality that analyzes the (historical) constitution of things from both the perspectives of social theory and theory of society.

Harvard Citation style: Langenohl, A. and Schweitzer, D. (2020) Materialität und Gesellschaftstheorie, MedienJournal, 44(4), pp. 32-45. https://doi.org/10.24989/medienjournal.v44i4.1913

APA Citation style: Langenohl, A., & Schweitzer, D. (2020). Materialität und Gesellschaftstheorie. MedienJournal. 44(4), 32-45. https://doi.org/10.24989/medienjournal.v44i4.1913