The Promise: A Breakthrough for Social Science

Bruno Sérgio Dias Oliveira

No 9euq3, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: This article orbits the promise of Sociology and presents the sociology of promises—or, more precisely, the science of promises, aimed at addressing all sociological curiosities and encompassing all that is sociological. In introducing the General Social Theory of Compromises (G-STOC), a framework designed to overcome the fragmentation of traditional social theories and address their limitations in explaining social behavior, a breakthrough is presented in eight main takeaways that are simultaneously ontological, epistemological and theoretical: (1) social coercive powers derive from actual or virtual agency; (2) virtual agency derives from promises; (3) all anger and disappointment derive from broken promises; (4) promises are always in dynamic reciprocal sets called compromises; (5) compromises are heuristic devices underlying all social relationships; (6) all social phenomena involve compromises; (7) to explain is to describe relationships and (8) sociological explanation, therefore, derives from the description of compromises and their history. The above tenets begin to outline a powerful and coherent framework and their proper appreciation is bound to have a profound impact in Social Science. Emphasizing theoretical novelty and superior heuristic power while avoiding convoluted syntheses of competing theories, the author advocates for clear conceptual and theoretical grounds to enable a complete and integrated explanation of social phenomena. With this innovative approach, the paper invites scholars to engage critically with G-STOC and explore its potential to unify and enhance the study of the social world, offering new insights about its complexities.

Date: 2024-10-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pke
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/6705cb8a5f26d072bffcadad/

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:9euq3

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/9euq3

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SocArXiv from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().