Structural idealism

Abstract

My thesis presents a model for social theory and for historiography that amalgamates structuralism (i.e. the notion that ideas and cultural values are the product of social structures) with historical idealism and sociological interactionism (i.e. the notion that ideas and values guide and create social structures). One of the core theoretical ideas in my doctoral thesis is the "structural ideal", which is a modification of Max Weber's ideal type: a structural ideal is a rule or norm that produces "structured" action in people's everyday lives, and thus produces (and reproduces) social structures.

My two chief theoretical sources here are Anthony Giddens's structuration theory and R.G. Collingwood's historical idealism, although I discuss many other theorists, including Kenneth Burke and Pierre Bourdieu's views of language as they relate to social consciousness, contemporary continental thought from Nietzche to Baudrillard as a form of intellectual production, and cultural theory from Lasch to Saul as potential "models" for a structural idealist theory of culture. My overall goal to present, at least in the form of what is admittedly in a rough sketch, a unified theory of social and historical explanation.