Dwie ostatnie dekady są okresem kryzysowych przeobrażeń w tych obszarach nauk społecznych, w których dokonuje się jakościowych, interpretatywnych analiz kultur. W ramach rozpowszechnionej tendencji do nieskrępowanego łączenia paradygmatów z czasem pojawił się także, częściowo opozycyjny wobec niego, nurt zmierzający do łączenia elementów humanistyki i nauk przyrodniczych, w szczególności rozumienia i wyjaśniania. Nie reprezentuje on jednak znanej z historii tendencji do podporządkowania humanitas wymogom scientia, lecz szuka nowej równowagi pomiędzy nimi i teoretycznych podstaw do integracji pozwalającej na wytwarzanie bardziej ugruntowanej wiedzy, a także umożliwiającej lepsze przewidywanie i refleksyjną kontrolę życia społecznego. Jest to zadanie szczególnie istotne w sytuacji późnonowoczesnego dynamicznego rozrostu coraz bardziej złożonych systemów społeczno-technologiczno-ekologicznych generujących nowe ryzyka i możliwości. W eseju, za pomocą narzędzi z obszaru analizy dyskursu i socjologii oraz filozofii wiedzy, zostaje podjęta analiza kilku kluczowych teoretycznych założeń, na których może być ufundowana integracja. Przedstawiono również propozycję połączenia procedury interpretacji i wyjaśniania w koncepcji „maksymalnej interpretacji”, a także próbę wyjaśnienia tendencji, która ją zrodziła i jej interpretacji w kategoriach teorii kulturowej Mary Douglas.
EN
For the two last decades cultural social sciences have been facing critical methodological transformation. The widespread tendency in qualitative research to mingling and synthesizing differing interpretive paradigms has been recently confronted with a venture to integration of science and the humanities. This current is not a plain revitalization of historical tendency to submit interpretive methods to scientific explanation of social life, but is seeking a new theoretical base to establish a balance between hermeneutic and causal analysis. This essay discusses different theoretical concepts of the relationship between hermeneutic interpretation and causal explanation. It introduces a concept of “maximal interpretation” devised inside the strong program of cultural sociology as a procedure of unified interpretive-causal analysis of historical events, and analyzes this innovation with theoretical lenses of grid-group theory.
The postmodernist turn is connected with criticism of the positivist paradigm of sociology that has prevailed until now. Proposing the thesis that a fundamental social change has occurred, its supporters say that in such a situation the modernist notions used up till now in sociology have become inadequate. They postulate their radical transformation, so as to enable them to describe the emergent and dynamic reality of the postmodernist period. After rejecting the scientist standards of precision and the technical language sociology is to be included in a broad social discourse in order to support pluralism and tolerance with the help of literary means. Daniel Bell's sociology, forming an alternative for the two competing paradigms, allows one to look at them as realisation of two opposite methodological options: presenting a full range and complexity of the phenomenon – an exact description and reductive explanation. Rejecting the limitations of the scientistic methodology Bell presents a sociology that is engaged in social change, critical of both the modernist and postmodernist postulates. The perspective of a “great come-back” to the sacred sources of culture that he outlines is a neo-conservative alternative for the postmodernist perspective of diffusion and deconstruction.
The Focolari movement – one of the largest, dynamically developed, international, Catholic movements of revitalization – was in the period of years (1995-2000) the subject matter of research. The research made use of a number of qualitative methods. Thus the process of creating a collective identity was reconstructed. Moreover, the organizational actions were shown as regards the presentation and promotion of the specific appeal to convert, and its related patterns of involvement and social identities. The Focolari movement was established as a result of individual quest after an alternative form of religious commitment within the Catholic Church. This individual quest was then transformed into a collective quest. The process of initial conversion of a fellowship had brought about foundations for the collective identity and a common mission of the movement. Under the leadership of a charismatic leader it was developed and referred to the post-conciliar reforms of Catholicism and the problems of modern societies. By virtue of an effective organization, with the use of modern means of communication, the movement extends its appeal for a multicultural, interfaith, world-view dialogue, and cooperation in the private and public spheres. It disseminates also alternative patterns of religious and lay social identities, which supplement of the offer of conventional religious and lay institutions.