Dewey's pragmatism as a critical sociology [Deweys pragmatismus als kritische soziologie]

The article shows that Dewey's pragmatism can be the basis of a critical sociology, which offers epistemological, metatheoretical and methodological concepts to analyze micro-sociological situations, and to "unmask" phenomena of power and hidden mechanisms of the social. Drawing on the insight that thinking, however abstract, remains constitutively linked to action problems, historical analysis identifies the specific context and problems that led to their articulation. The insight into the narrative structure of the everyday as well as of sociological theories suggests a problematization of routinely used narrative patterns. The description of an ideal interplay between acting, thinking and external conditions, between doing and undergoing in the aesthetic experience offers criteria for critically analyzing social structures in different social fields. © 2013 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.