ABSTRACT While Latour criticises the tautologies of the ‘sociologists of the social’ as an intellectual shortcut, here sociology in the broadest sense is reconsidered as informed by unrecognised theological ideas, inter alia. Durkheim’s classic account of religion, wherein ‘society is God’ is taken as a starting point to explore the intersection of sociology and theology. Thereafter the article examines three social theorists, Elias, Giddens and Boltanski, each of whom attempt a re-casting of sociology, yet rearticulate theological models. In particular, this includes an ontological conception of society, structure or system in terms of over-arching and invisible forces which is derived – inter alia – from religious models of divine will and providential order, which incorporates human choice – or agency in contemporary parlance. Accompanying this ontology is an epistemology of deciphering ‘deeper’ or ‘structural’ or ‘transcendent’ aspects of society by observing trends, cases or culture, akin to divining the providential will by observing its manifestations, which can be conducted in a more critical or forgiving manner. By examining these theological strands which persist in sociology, this aim is not to critically repudiate them, but to recognise the productive contribution of these models of thinking to imagining the ‘social’.

中文翻译：

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整个社会还是神圣社会？：认识到社会学中的神学张力

摘要尽管拉图尔批评“社会的社会学家”的重言式是一种知识捷径，但在这里，从最广泛的意义上讲，社会学是重新认识到的，其中包括未得到认可的神学思想。涂尔干（Durkheim）对宗教的经典解释，即“社会就是上帝”，被视为探索社会学与神学交叉的起点。此后，本文考察了三位社会理论家，埃里亚斯，吉登斯和波尔坦斯基，他们各自尝试重新建构社会学，但重新确立了神学模型。特别是，这包括从总体力量和无形力量的角度看社会，结构或系统的本体论概念，其中包括从神圣的意志和天赋秩序的宗教模型中衍生出来的，其中包括了人类的选择或代理人的当代称呼。 。伴随这种本体论的是一种认识论，即通过观察趋势，案例或文化来解读社会的“更深层”，“结构”或“超然”方面，类似于通过观察其表现来划分天意，这可以以更关键或更重要的方式进行。宽容的态度。通过研究在社会学中仍然存在的这些神学分支，这个目的不是批判地否定它们，而是要认识到这些思维模式对想象“社会”的生产性贡献。