{"title":"Multisituationality and Social Sensibility. Insights From Neophenomenological Sociology","authors":"Michele Granzotto","doi":"10.1111/jtsb.70035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.70035","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Sometimes, we do not act in accordance with what we know. For example, we may purchase products that we know are the result of production chains with questionable ethics. This contribution investigates the paradox between social action and rational knowledge, starting from the ambivalence between emotion and reason. The analysis integrates Schmitz's Neue Phänomenologie and Neophenomenological Sociology (NPS) and is divided into three parts: (1) clarifying affective involvement as a social a priori and the <i>patheur</i>'s felt-bodily communication, (2) focusing on the concepts of the semi-thing, the situation, and the atmosphere as pre-reflective motivators of action and multisituationality, and (3) interpreting Hochschild's concept of <i>feeling rules</i> as programme components of the situation, thereby highlighting the emotional friction that can arise when one is emotionally involved in two or more conflicting situations. Building on this, the concept of social sensibility is introduced as a trans-subjective dynamic, shaped atmospherically in a sensitisation process, which guides social action. This concept offers a tool for understanding action and inaction in contemporary crises.</p>","PeriodicalId":47646,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jtsb.70035","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147563256","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Differentiating Regulative and Constitutive Normativity: Talcott Parsons, Harold Garfinkel and the Sticky Problem of Meaning","authors":"Andrew Chalfoun","doi":"10.1111/jtsb.70033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.70033","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>In everyday life, individuals regularly confront novel situations which demand their attention and response. In such situations, they routinely deploy portable norms to select between appropriate and inappropriate next actions. Yet, these norms do not seem to determine the conditions of their own application. How then are we able to act in an orderly and mutually intelligible manner? This paper examines two attempts to answer this question, neither of which is entirely satisfactory. Talcott Parsons solves this ‘problem of meaning’ by postulating the existence of a cultural system that governs the applicability of shared norms. By contrast, Harold Garfinkel's ethnomethodology prioritises actors' own methods of in situ sense-making, drawing attention to contextually specific practices for securing intersubjectivity. Although Garfinkel's approach resolves some problems with the Parsonian account, I argue that his break with Parsons introduces a conceptual slippage between <i>regulative</i> and <i>constitutive</i> normativity. In view of this, the final section argues that contemporary social theory would benefit from renewed attention to the mutual autonomy of these two phenomena.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47646,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147568012","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Composition Theory: A Pragmatist Specification of the Mesosocial","authors":"David D. Brown","doi":"10.1111/jtsb.70031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.70031","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article develops composition theory as a pragmatist specification of the mesosocial. Existing theories describe situated social life without adequately explaining the mechanisms that produce it. Recent pragmatist scholarship has established important foundations: Gross on mechanisms, Lizardo on habit, and Hallett on inhabited institutionalism. Yet the mechanisms themselves remain underspecified. Composition theory fills this gap through four sets of mechanisms: composition, engagement, sedimentation, and circulation. Together, these explain how problem responsive actors assemble formations, how formations become consequential as affordances meet capacities, how residues accumulate over time and how patterns extend across settings through movement and echoing. The article reinterprets Dewey's concept of situation as the flow of actors' transactions with and within their present place (relational, symbolic and material environment) while remaining cognizant of their direct and indirect experiences with other places. Place is the somewhere somewhen locatable environment that necessarily grounds each situation and social reality as such. The framework reconceptualizes microsocial, mesosocial, and macrosocial as a continuum of compositional complexity anchored in the mesosocial. It expands the range of theory-driven research questions by directing attention to processes within and across places of action rather than to the forces of abstract structural properties.</p>","PeriodicalId":47646,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jtsb.70031","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146162476","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Symbolic Interaction as a Sociology of Concern: Revisiting the Theory of Reflexivity Methodologically","authors":"Liudmila Zaichenko","doi":"10.1111/jtsb.70032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.70032","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This paper attempts to revisit the critical realist theory of reflexivity, derived from the pragmatist tradition of symbolic interactionism (SI). It discusses how interactionist sociology, with its emphasis on investigating microstructures through meaning-making, has formed a critical realist theory of reflexivity that serves as a theoretical bridge between the micro and macro levels—specifically, between ‘subjective concerns’ and cultural and structural stability and change. The paper focuses on Margaret Archer's theory of reflexivity and internal conversation as a critical realist response to social constructionism, connecting it to SI, particularly through Herbert Blumer's framework. It proposes a holistic approach to studying reflexivity through human concerns. By underscoring the interconnection between SI methodology and the critical realist theory of reflexivity, the paper offers a triangulation of several qualitative methodological strategies to study reflexivity in a more rigorous manner while also providing a connection between the purely interpretive and the positivistic traditions.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47646,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146154634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Dustin S. Stoltz, Marshall A. Taylor, Omar Lizardo
{"title":"Functionaries: A Distributional Approach to Institutional Analysis","authors":"Dustin S. Stoltz, Marshall A. Taylor, Omar Lizardo","doi":"10.1111/jtsb.70030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.70030","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper outlines a distributional approach to institutional analysis, reconceptualising institutions as distributions of knowledge and activity across people. We argue that institutionalisation and institutional change are best understood by focussing on actors with the requisite knowledge and motivation to keep institutional patterns going, fix them when they go awry, or transform them when required, here called functionaries. The distributional approach allows us to distinguish between two main types of institutional change often conflated in the literature: Content-based and formal change. Content-based change, the one most often discussed, involves the importation, recombination, or expansion of specific patterns of activity. In contrast, formal change, often neglected in the literature, refers to shifts in the distribution of knowledge and activity, leading to dynamics of centralisation and decentralisation of institutional patterns. In this way, the distributional approach highlights the role of functionaries in both institutional stability and change, providing a micro-level perspective on institutional dynamics.</p>","PeriodicalId":47646,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jtsb.70030","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146155292","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Practice Theory, Leadership-as-Practice, and Social Action","authors":"Joseph A. Raelin","doi":"10.1111/jtsb.70029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.70029","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Although practice theory has significantly contributed to our understanding of the mechanisms underlying social change, it does not take a position or advocate for particular meso-macro changes, such as responsible management, because it is a theory wedded to ontological understanding. How people choose to ‘get along’ in life and manage their goods is all part of the practices, which fall under the theorist's microscope. On other hand, the applied field of leadership-as-practice is tied to change as its definitive property; in fact, leadership is defined by turning points occurring in the spaces between people, which, in turn, can lead to changes in the trajectory of the flow of practice. After narrowing the definition of social change in this paper as social action and—institutionally—as responsible management, the paper turns to a comparison between how practice theory contributes to our understanding of the evolution of social action and how leadership-as-practice, relying on the former's erstwhile elucidation, attempts to initiate and facilitate such action. The latter discussion of leadership-as-practice includes an accounting of the impetus for change initiation, its diffusion and prefigured processes, and the post-institutional applications afforded through its link with practice theory. The essay concludes by pointing out the principal contribution of the paper that social change need not rely on exclusive individual direction but on the collective capacity of the agents affiliated with the practice deriving the means to produce more just and sustainable lives.</p>","PeriodicalId":47646,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-01-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jtsb.70029","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146057994","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Four Pillars of Morality: On the Evolutionary Safe Bets of Right and Wrong","authors":"Erik Forsberg","doi":"10.1111/jtsb.70028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.70028","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In moral psychology, many suggestions have been given regarding the nature of morality as a personality trait and as a biological phenomenon. Discussing both historical and contemporary theories, a bottom-up genetically influenced theoretical synthesis for morality is proposed. At the centre are the four pillars of morality: the dual moral emotion systems found in empathetic distress and the rage and fear systems and the two modulators found in executive control and openness. These are evolutionary <i>safe bets</i>, that is, genetically influenced adaptations that enable moral development and that help shape and push the learning process forward. More specifically, while the emotion systems serve as the moral domain, the modulators affect moral learning by directing attention, controlling thought and making us crave exploration of the internal and external moral universe. The result is a mature disposition, that is, passionate yet controlled and curious, while firmly rooted in the moral emotions.</p>","PeriodicalId":47646,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-01-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jtsb.70028","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145969861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Naturalistic Theory of (In)justice: How Neurophysiology and Metabolic Energy Ground the Perception of Injustice","authors":"Shervin MirzaeiGhazi, Trond A. Tjøstheim","doi":"10.1111/jtsb.70027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.70027","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Across different domains, justice is considered either from a perspective concerning mind-independent features of a situation or from a perspective related to mind-dependent motives, traits or emotions. Although these approaches have generated valuable insights, they remain largely disconnected from each other. What is missing is an integrative framework that can explain how the objective features of situations are translated into subjective experiences and, ultimately, into defensible moral judgements. In this paper, we propose a physiological account of justice perception that explains how the ontologically objective features of a situation are translated into epistemically objective moral judgements. We argue here that the brain's predictive processing and interoceptive systems register unwarranted energy costs imposed by others as a salient, ontologically subjective state of negative affect through prediction errors elicited in specifically social contexts. This affective signal, in turn, provides the motivational and phenomenological basis for the cognitive judgement—mediated by Theory of Mind—that constitutes a specific moral emotion, such as indignation or outrage. Our naturalistic framework thus illuminates the embodied foundations of justice without reducing moral judgement to a mere physiological response. Although we are proposing a neurophysiological mechanism for justice perception, the content of the cognitive judgement (what counts as ‘unjustified’ or a norm of ‘fairness’) is also shaped by cultural, sociological and anthropological context. Thus, rather than replacing existing philosophical, legal or psychological theories, this naturalistic framework complements them by revealing the embodied cognitive processes that underlie our justice judgements across diverse contexts and cultures.</p>","PeriodicalId":47646,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jtsb.70027","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145963930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Laughter as a Part of Speech","authors":"Angus James McLachlan","doi":"10.1111/jtsb.70024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.70024","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>In reviewing the considerable amount of empirical research devoted to the factors influencing the frequency and acoustic properties of laughter, it is suggested that traditional accounts of laughter are not easily extended to explain a person laughing when not otherwise evincing a positive emotional state. An alternative account, grounded in conversational and discourse analyses of everyday interaction, will be offered in which laughter is taken as a part of speech, specifically, an expletive, akin to swearing. Participants in interaction, by interpolating laughter within or adding laughter to the end of utterances, are able to perform laughter imbued speech acts that lack practical consequences. Interlocutors use these acts to index non-serious speech events that can be examined in terms of Austin's analytical scheme of speech acts, as well as Harré’s ideas on positioning and social selves. Positions and selves are themselves grounded in the narrative content and illocutionary acts evident in any speech event and can be exploited to explain the modulation of solidarity during non-serious talk. Support for this form of account will be identified in research on laughter in early infancy and from an examination of three types of non-serious speech event involving adults: two forms of playful events and an example of a semi-serious event. It will be concluded that by concentrating on laughter, speech acts, non-serious speech events and selves, it is possible to explain the vast array of apparent uses of laughter without relying on the concepts of humour or emotional states more broadly.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47646,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145969774","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Primacy of Processes and the Causes of the Russo-Ukrainian War: A Rejoinder to ‘Patrimonial Imperialism’","authors":"Heikki Patomäki","doi":"10.1111/jtsb.70025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.70025","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Pierzynski and Joseph explain the Russo-Ukrainian war through systemic and individual-level accounts but argue these are incomplete without addressing Russia's internal structure, which they term ‘patrimonial imperialism’. While their taxonomy mirrors the traditional IR ‘levels of analysis’, I suggest it obscures relational and historical dynamics. In this rejoinder, I also critique their rigid distinction between the actual and the real and between process and structure. Causal complexes are historically grounded relational processes. Alongside metatheoretical argumentation, I outline a process-ontological and holistic critical realist explanation of the Russo-Ukrainian war—one that situates it within global political-economic dynamics, while also invoking concepts such as world time. This perspective allows for a nuanced attribution of responsibility and broadens the scope of normative considerations.</p>","PeriodicalId":47646,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2025-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jtsb.70025","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145891569","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}