The social and the cultural: Where do they meet?

Abstract

Meetings of ideas are not scripted events like handshakes of politicians at diplomatic summits. Rather, ideas meet as if they were clandestine lovers - at first secretly, passionately, and later - if discovered - as parts of a scenario of a public scandal or a reconstituted legally accepted relationship. Meta-theoretical discourse in the social sciences is part of that latter social legitimation. © 2008 Springer.