Abstract

BIALAKOWSKY, Alejandro. Temporality and contingency in the “meaning turn” proposed by the theoretical perspectives of Giddens, Bourdieu, Habermas and Luhmann. Sociológica (Méx.) [online]. 2017, vol.32, n.91, pp.9-44. ISSN 2007-8358.

This article analyzes the “meaning turn” proposed by the perspectives of Giddens, Bourdieu, Habermas and Luhmann, from its central dimensions: contingency and temporality. Thus, it studies how these authors postulate “meaning” as the emergent and processual condition of possibility of the social marked by contingency. Also, it tracks their proposals about temporality which argue that the social is not defined as mere contingency: through the same temporality the social becomes “recursive” or “probable”. Therefore, with a theorizing of time, this meaning turn joints the unpredictability of the social and its actual befall.

Keywords : Contemporary sociological theory; time; contingency; meaning; recursivity; Giddens; Bourdieu; Habermas; Luhmann.