Construction of Social Bonds

Göran Ahrne, Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, Stockholm University, Sweden

• Contents: Preface 1. Why relational sociology? 2. Social bonds 3. Social relationships 4. Organizations 5. Bonded actions 6. A striped world of relationships References Index

‘Göran Ahrne starts his deep-reaching argument for a relational sociology with what most social scientists would seldom admit, that we really do not know how to define society, or structure, or system, or lifeworld or even individual. Ahrne goes back to the forefathers and to a plethora of more recent others to advocate for a sociology that can describe and analyze today’s world with (apparently simple) concepts like social bond, social relationship, and organization. He shows that we do not need to divide the world into micro and macro levels, and even less into different societies that follow the boundaries of nation-states. Looking at how different kinds of new bonds are formed and organized into ordered systems of rules, governed by authority, he succeeds in bringing back in organizations of different kinds and scope, from families to the meta-organizations of world soccer and the world-wide-web. We should thank him for proposing a much better and simpler access to this new multi-tiered world.’