Sociologins kärna – i förändring?

• The article focuses on the three key concepts of modern social science, state, market, and society, and the three paradigmatic disciplines that these concepts have generated: political science, economics, and sociology. By relating to some recent discussions it is argued that there is a distinct logic to each one of these paradigmatic concepts. But in the course of its actual development, not the least in the Scandinavian welfare states, society is prone to merge with the state, and sociology, accordingly, tends to develop as social administration. Such a disciplinary melange leads to a distinct empiricist methodology and to a fatal break with the classical concern of sociology with the development of social theory. Modern social administration — disguised as sociology — has cut the link with normative (state theory) discourse, and prides itself on being naturalistic and realistic in its study of social facts. Oblivious of the power sources that render neutrality to its discourse, administrative sociology risks developing into unreflected morality. The article turns, finally, to the recent 'communitarian' trend in social and moral philosophy and suggests that communitarianism, in one form or the other, will affect the purportedly neutral discourse of social administration. 

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