Turner, Bryan

Bryan Turner's (b. 1945) work is best understood as an attempt to revive action sociology from the perspective of embodiment. Together with “emplacement” (the relation of humans to the environment), embodiment is understood to be a universal category of human experience. Turner's work is a critique of both social constructionism and cultural relativism. The body is theorized as the material basis for social solidarity with the potential to transcend cultural difference and social variation. In the application of this [Page 849]theory, embodiment and emplacement are explored as the basis for a universal theory of citizenship and human rights. In particular, the need for companionship and the material facts of bodily frailty and vulnerability are articulated as the incentive for the formal recognition of sympathy and practice of empathy at the level of civil society. Aspects of Heidegger's ontology, especially the emphasis on being and choice, are enlisted to develop a sociological approach centered on the phenomenology of the body.

Turner's recent work introduces the concept of cosmopolitan virtue to elaborate the argument. As a contribution to the theory of social action, the concept introduces six dimensions: (1) irony—the recognition of the contingency and partiality of perspective; (2) reflexivity—the location of values and action in the context of biography, history, and structure; (3) skepticism—the distrust of grand narratives and totalitarian politics; (4) care for others—the recognition of sympathy, mutuality, and reciprocity; (5) social inclusiveness—the cohesion of the body politic and civil society around principles of sympathy, mutuality, and reciprocity; (6) nomadism—a version of flanerie, attributing travel and displacement as sources of sympathy, mutuality, and reciprocity in civil society.

Turner's sociology is firmly located in the classical tradition, especially the writings of Max Weber. It is committed to the investigation of the subjective meaning of social actions. Unlike some other versions of action sociology, notably symbolic interactionism, exchange theory and ethnomethodology, it emphasizes the situated character of the social actor in both the historical and comparative dimensions. Although Turner sees the state as both the enabler and abuser of human rights, it highlights processes of globalization and the porosity of national boundaries. Following Foucault, embodiment and emplacement are understood as shaped by a network of social institutions of normative coercion. The state is a significant agent, but so are the corporation, the media, education, medicine and the professionalknowledge class. To some extent, Turner's work elaborates Thomas Hobbes in regarding human life as “nasty, brutish and short.” Human beings are considered to be ontologically frail and to inhabit natural environments that are precarious. A variety of social consequences follow from this, which are explored historically and comparatively in terms of the means and ends of social action. The theory of citizenship and human rights aims to invest social institutions of normative coercion with a binding system of moral conscience and accountability and to acknowledge a global dimension in civil society.

This concern with the question of social integration reflects Turner's reading of Parsons, in as much as it holds that all human societies face economic dilemmas of resource allocation and political issues of goal definition. This reinforces the emphasis placed on embodiment and emplacement as universal categories in human society that constitute a common basis for government. It also identifies scarcity as fundamental in investigating social cohesion and change. However, unlike Parsons, Turner's approach assigns greater analytic weight to social conflict deriving from inequality and the clash of human values. For example, his discussion of vulnerability and rights holds that the increasingfragmentation and hybridity of culture threaten social solidarity.

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