The Making of Meaning and the Making of Society: DE - Hardcover

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Christian Morgner is Professor of Sociology at the University of Portsmouth, UK. His research focuses on social theory and cultural processes in modern societies. He previously held positions at the University of Sheffield, UK and the University of Leicester, UK and has been a visiting scholar at Cambridge, Yale, Keio, Hitotsubashi University, and the EHESS in Paris.

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At the junctions in any complex social network – whether in industry, health care, diplomacy, or art – people interact with what Morgner calls “relational meaning-making.” In building a case for recentering sociological theory around meaning in interaction, Morgner provides a lucid analysis of the concept in the works of theorists from Weber, Durkheim, and George Herbert Mead to Parsons, Bourdieu, and recent system theorists.

—Michael P. Farrell, Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, University at Buffalo, SUNY, USA

In The Making of Meaning and the Making of Society, Christian Morgner undertakes the task of rescuing meaning from psychologistic and structurally reductionistic approaches, reconstructing it as a relational, generative process through which society constitutes—and resists—its own self-understanding. By reactivating Weber’s problem of Sinn, Morgner advances a framework that situates meaning-making at the heart of modernity’s contradictions.

—Harry Dahms, Professor of Sociology and co-chair of the Committee on Social Theory, University of Tennessee, USA.

This book develops a sociological framework for understanding how societies produce and transform meaning. Rather than treating meaning as a fixed property of individuals or texts, it introduces relational meaning-making, in which meanings stabilise in particular situations while remaining open to alternatives. Revisiting Max Weber’s concept of Sinn and Alfred Schutz’s phenomenology, the book rethinks identity, agency and social structures. Drawing on Weber, Mead and Parsons, it explores why sociological theory has struggled to grasp the dynamics of meaning, and examines the contemporary crisis of meaning, self-referential individuals, and the implications of digital communication and generative AI. This book argues that relational meaning-making is a fundamental process through which society interprets and reshapes itself.

Christian Morgner is Professor of Sociology at the University of Portsmouth, UK. His research focuses on social theory and cultural processes in modern societies. He previously held positions at the University of Sheffield, UK and the University of Leicester, UK and has been a visiting scholar at Cambridge, Yale, Keio, Hitotsubashi University, and the EHESS in Paris.