Making Social Theory Work: How Bridging the Gap Between SSH and Social Theory Can Increase the Reflexive Capacity of Society

Global challenges linked to living in the Anthropocene and to the digital disruptions of the knowledge society call for the development of new and comprehensive theoretical frameworks to make sense of the abundantly available data, and to increase the reflexive capacity of societies through the social sciences and humanities (SSH). As recently observed by Hetan Shah (2020), “Blind faith in data science […] can lead to policy failure.”

William Outhwaite (2016) rightly notes that “The main challenge […] to social theory more broadly remains that of bridging the gap between what Mills (1959) […] called ‘grand theory’ and ‘abstracted empiricism.’” Bridging that gap requires upgrading social theories through demonstrations of success, new ideas on the role of social theories in SSH research, and innovations in the processes of social theory building. (Both Outhwaite and the editors of this Research Topic understand social theory as an interdisciplinary endeavor that has a broader reach than discipline-oriented sociological theory, and that embraces political theory, economic theory, and social psychology.)

Today, social theory is, to a large extent, detached from empirical SSH research, societal debates, and policy advice. This Research Topic aims to investigate how social theory can contribute to raising the reflexive capacity of society and facilitate the much-needed dialogue between science and science policy through the integration of SSH research results, the maximization of social theory's power to understand the current global challenges and unprecedented transformations that societies are undergoing, and the increase of the generative power of SSH.

To this end, we need (i) the tools required to compare the content and the explanatory and generative power of different social theories, and (ii) new pathways to stimulate the development of new theoretical insights. One such pathway may involve the formalization of social theories in axiomatic form - with few exceptions, such as Jan Smedslund's psycho-logic theory, the methodological rigor and conceptual precision of social theories is seldom a match for those of empirical research. What we also need is (iii) the development of accompanying measures that can facilitate the use of social theory to integrate research data into policy advice, with the goal of enabling individuals to cope with societal transformations and the accelerated pace of change.

The editors invite contributions that focus on one or more of the following issues or topics:

- the process of writing and developing social theory
- the systematic presentation of social theory
- applications of social theory in policy advising, sense-making, or integrating
- demonstrations of how social theory can serve as a tool to enhance the generative power of SSH results
- ideas or best practices concerning the use of collaborative tools in social theory development
- assessments of how the building of a social theory can be systematized by using skills and methods such as formalizations, using argumentation schemes, exploring metaphors and so on.

Case studies that focus on one social theory or societal issue are also welcome, and contributions situated at the intersection of a linguistic analysis of social reality, sociology, and psychology are strongly encouraged. Finally, the editors especially welcome contributions from the humanities (e.g., philosophy, language studies, and history) that stress the role of linguistics in both the process of theory building and in the content of social theories.

Keywords: Social theory, social sciences, humanities, reflexive capacity, society

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.