Cinta de Moebio: Revista de Epistemología de Ciencias Sociales

Bialakowsky, A. (2017) El abordaje problemático como metodología para la investigación en teoría sociológica y el análisis de las clasificaciones sociales. Cinta moebio 59: 116-128. doi: 10.4067/S0717-554X2017000200116

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The problematic approach as a methodology for research in sociological theory and the analysis of social classifications

Alejandro Bialakowsky (alejbialakowsk@gmail.com) Universidad de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires, Argentina) ORCID: 0000-0001-8076-7671

Abstract

This essay proposes the “problematic approach” as a methodology to sociological theory. It is based on a critic of Alexander’s multidimensionality and Ritzer’s multiparadigm. The problematic approach allows to account for a diversity of problems, presuppositions and analyses that have been changing sociological theory, which cannot be reduced to concepts. Such is the result of an emergent analysis, limited from the perspectives themselves, as opposed to an “internal” study around an author, and to an “external” one which interprets them from a supposed “superior” perspective. Also, this approach and its emergent analysis are tested through the problem of social classifications, in which two dimensions (typological-historical and hierarchical) are crossed by two levels (representational and epistemological-political). The concept of sociological reclassifications, as the process that reclassifies general social classifications, allows a reflexive outlook on theory and its dichotomies.

Key words: sociological theory, problematic approach, emergent analysis, social classifications, dichotomies.