Towards the Spoken World Theory: The contribution of Rom Harré to advancing social theory

Abstract

Rom Harré was a philosopher of science who is especially known for his contributions to psychology. But a lot of his writings can also be regarded as exercises in social theorizing and in tackling issues of the social ontology. This paper will argue that he introduced three innovations in the thinking about social ontology: (i) the primacy of conversations and speech acts as the ‘substance’ of the social world; (ii) the distinction between different epistemological realms when dealing with the social ontology and (iii) the introduction of a new way to think about the levels of the social reality. Moreover, it will be argued that throughout the many concepts and models Harré used to explain and understand the social reality, lays a remarkable unity and consistency in how he pictures and theorizes the society and social phenomena. Using the conceptual scheme developed by Maddi, a Harré inspired general social theory is presented that can also be read as an attempt to provide a synthesis/summary of his social theory, complemented with some insights developed by other scholars. It is proposed to label this theory as the Spoken World Theory. One of the distinct features of that theory is that it demonstrates that social and psychological phenomena are so entangled that it makes no sense to separate them and study them from a single social science’s disciplinary perspective.