Imagery of Social Structure and Social Change

Abstract

Given that most social scientists and cultural analysts study society and social change in one way or another, how conscious are we of the conceptual metaphors that inform the foundations of our work? This chapter directs the analytical gaze to the conceptual metaphors that social scientists and cultural analysts apply—in a largely unconscious manner—when discussing social and cultural phenomena in terms of social structure and social change. The methodological exploration begins from a conceptual-historical perspective, with Skinner’s work as a historian of political science. He found the meaning of a concept to reside in its usage. I compare the Skinnerian method of contextual analysis, which factors in the history of concepts, with the metaphorical method employed by historians of sociological thought such as Richard Harvey Brown. The discussion below addresses the fundamental shift in the imagery of social structure and social change in analysis that brings out the political aspect of conceptual metaphors with reference to how they form and take shape in academic debate, in both theory and practice. Such contextual understanding furnishes tools for a critical examination of the conceptual metaphors in their intellectual, political, and material contexts.