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Logic and Dialectics in Social Science, Part I: Dialectics, Social Phenomena and Non-Equilibrium

University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, g.carchedi{at}uva.nl

This article develops a new dialectical method of social research. Contrary to the Hegelian tradition, it extracts this method from Marx's own work by taking a class—determined perspective of social phenomena. Contrary to formal logic it stresses social reality's dynamism by focusing on social phenomena's contradictory nature. It starts by setting out the three principles upon which dialectical logic rests. It then examines individual phenomena as potential social phenomena. On this basis, it identifies the building block of society, the relation that ensures the reproduction of society while accounting for the recurrent attempts at its supersession. Both reproduction and supersession require both an objective and a subjective element. The article examines them in the light of this new approach and argues that society's movement towards its own supersession is the tendential one.

Key Words: dialectical method • individual and social phenomena • non-equilibrium • objectivity • subjectivity

Critical Sociology, Vol. 34, No. 4, 495-523 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0896920508090306


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