Engaged theory is a methodological framework for understanding

social complexity In sociology, social complexity is a conceptual framework used in the analysis of society. In the sciences, contemporary definitions of complexity are found in systems theory, wherein the phenomenon being studied has many parts and many possible ...

. It takes social life or

social relations A social relation or also described as a social interaction or social experience is the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences, and describes any voluntary or involuntary interpersonal relationship between two or more individuals ...

as its base category, with 'the social' always understood as grounded in 'the natural', including humans as embodied beings. Engaged theory provides a framework that moves from detailed empirical analysis about things, people and processes in the world to abstract theory about the constitution and social framing of those things, people and processes. Engaged theory is one approach within the broader tradition of

critical theory A critical theory is any approach to social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to reveal, critique and challenge power structures. With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from soci ...

. Engaged theory crosses the fields of

sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of Empirical ...

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...

political studies Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

, and

global studies Global studies (GS) is the interdisciplinary study of global macro-processes. Predominant subjects are global politics, economics, and law, as well as ecology, geography, culture, anthropology and ethnography. It distinguishes itself from the rela ...

. At its most general, the term ''engaged theory'' is used to describe theories that provide a tool box for engaging with the world while seeking to change it. One lineage of engaged theory is called the 'constitutive abstraction' approach associated with a group of writers publishing in ''Arena Journal'' such as John Hinkson, Geoff Sharp (1926–2015), and Simon Cooper. A related lineage of engaged theory has been developed by researchers who began their association through the Centre for Global Research at

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology RMIT University, officially the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology,, section 4(b) is a public research university in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1887 by Francis Ormond, RMIT began as a night school offering classes in art, scienc ...

in Australia – scholars such as

Manfred Steger Manfred D. Steger (born 1961) is a professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He was also Professor of Global Studies and Director of the Globalism Research Centre at RMIT University in Australia until 2013. Background Steger was born in Aus ...

, Paul James and Damian Grenfell – drawing upon a range of writers from

Pierre Bourdieu Pierre Bourdieu (; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influence i ...

Benedict Anderson Benedict Richard O'Gorman Anderson (August 26, 1936 – December 13, 2015) was an Anglo-Irish political scientist and historian who lived and taught in the United States. Anderson is best known for his 1983 book '' Imagined Communities'', which e ...

and Charles Taylor. A group of researchers at Western Sydney University describe their work as 'Engaged Research'.

The politics of engagement

For all of its concern for epistemological grounding (see below), Engaged theory is an approach that is 'in the world'. All theory in some way affects what happens in the world, but it does not always theorize its own place in the constitution of ideas and practices.

Anthony Giddens Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens (born 18 January 1938) is an English sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern sociologists and is t ...

calls this movement a

double hermeneutic The double hermeneutic is the theory, expounded by sociologist Anthony Giddens, that everyday "lay" concepts and those from the social sciences have a two-way relationship. A common example is the idea of social class, a social-scientific category t ...

. Engaged theory is more explicit than most about its political standpoint.

Carol J. Adams Carol J. Adams (born 1951) is an American writer, feminist, and animal rights advocate. She is the author of several books, including '' The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory'' (1990) and ''The Pornography of Meat'' ...

expresses one dimension of this when she writes: However, the other important dimension is that any theory needs to be aware of its own tendencies to be ideologically driven by dominant concerns of its day.

Liberalism Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality and equality before the law."political rationalism, hostility to autocracy, cultural distaste for c ...

, for example, with its reductive advocacy of the ideology of 'freedom', fails to be reflexive about this dimension. Similarly, critical theory sometimes fails to be reflexive of what it means to be critical or advocate social change.

The grounding of analysis

All social theories are dependent upon a process of

abstraction Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or "concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abstr ...

. This is what philosophers call

epistemological Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Episte ...

abstraction. However, they do not characteristically theorize their own bases for establishing their standpoint. Engaged theory does. By comparison,

Grounded theory Grounded theory is a systematic methodology that has been largely applied to qualitative research conducted by social science, social scientists. The methodology involves the construction of hypotheses and theories through the collecting and anal ...

, a very different approach, suggests that empirical data collection is a neutral process that gives rise to theoretical claims out of that data. Engaged theory, to the contrary, treats such a claim to ''value neutrality'' as naively unsustainable. Engaged theory is thus reflexive in a number of ways: * Firstly, it recognises that doing something as basic as collecting data already entails making theoretical presuppositions. * Secondly, it names the levels of analysis from which theoretical claims are made. Engaged theory works across four levels of theoretical abstraction. (See below: ''Modes of Analysis''.) * Thirdly, it makes a clear distinction between theory and method, suggesting that a social theory is an argument about a social phenomenon, while an analytical method or set of methods is defined a means of substantiating that theory. Engaged theory in these terms works as a 'Grand method', but not a '

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'. It provides an integrated set of methodological tools for developing different theories of things and processes in the world. * Fourthly, it seeks to understand both its own epistemological basis, while treating knowledge formation as one of the basic

ontological In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality. Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exis ...

categories of human practice. * Fifthly, it treats ''history'' as a ''modern'' way of understanding temporal change; and therefore different ontologically from a tribal

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or cosmological

narrative A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travel literature, travelogue, etc.) or fictional (fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller (ge ...

. In other words, it provides meta-standpoint on its own capacity to historicize.

The modes of analysis

In the version of Engaged theory developed by an Australian-based group of writers, analysis moves from the most concrete form of analysis – empirical generalization – to more abstract modes of analysis. Each subsequent mode of analysis is more abstract than the previous one moving across the following themes: 1. doing, 2. acting, 3. relating, 4. being. This leads to the 'levels' approach as set out below:

1. Empirical analysis (ways of doing)

The method begins by emphasizing the importance of a first-order abstraction, here called ''empirical analysis''. It entails drawing out and generalizing from on-the-ground detailed descriptions of history and place. This first level involves generating empirical description based on observation, experience, recording or experiment—in other words, abstracting evidence from that which exists or occurs in the world—or it involves drawing upon the empirical research of others. The first level of analytical abstraction is an ordering of ‘things in the world’, in a way that does not depend upon any kind of further analysis being applied to those ‘things’. For example, the

Circles of Sustainability Circles of Sustainability is a method for understanding and assessing sustainability, and for project management directed towards socially sustainable outcomes. It is intended to handle 'seemingly intractable problems' such as outlined in ...

approach is a form of engaged theory distinguishing (at the level of empirical generalization) between different domains of social life. It can be used for understanding and assessing

quality of life Quality of life (QOL) is defined by the World Health Organization as "an individual's perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards ...

. Although that approach is also analytically defended through more abstract theory, the claim that economics, ecology, politics and culture can be distinguished as central domains of

social practice Social practice is a theory within psychology that seeks to determine the link between practice and context within social situations. Emphasized as a commitment to change, social practice occurs in two forms: activity and inquiry. Most often a ...

has to be defensible at an empirical level. It needs to be useful in analysing situations on the ground. The success or otherwise of the method can be assessed by examining how it is used. One example of use of the method was a project on Papua New Guinea called
Sustainable Communities, Sustainable Development
'.

2. Conjunctural analysis (ways of acting)

This second level of analysis, conjunctural analysis, involves identifying and, more importantly, examining the intersection (the conjunctures) of various patterns of action (practice and meaning). Here the method draws upon established sociological, anthropological and political categories of analysis such as production, exchange, communication, organization and inquiry.

3. Integrational analysis (ways of relating)

This third level of entry into discussing the complexity of social relations examines the intersecting modes of social integration and differentiation. These different modes of integration are expressed here in terms of different ways of relating to and distinguishing oneself from others—from the face-to-face to the disembodied. Here we see a break with the dominant emphases of classical social theory and a movement towards a post-classical sensibility. In relation to the nation-state, for example, we can ask how it is possible to explain a phenomenon that, at least in its modern variant, subjectively explains itself by reference to face-to-face metaphors of blood and place—ties of genealogy, kinship and ethnicity—when the objective ‘reality’ of all nation-states is that they are disembodied communities of abstracted strangers who will never meet. This accords with

's conception of 'imagined communities', but recognizes the contradictory formation of that kind of community.

4. Categorical analysis (ways of being)

This level of enquiry is based upon an exploration of the ontological categories (categories of being such as time and space). If the previous form of analysis emphasizes the different modes through which people live their commonalities with or differences from others, those same themes are examined through more abstract analytical lenses of different grounding forms of life: respectively, embodiment, spatiality, temporality, performativity and

epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Episte ...

. At this level, generalizations can be made about the dominant modes of categorization in a social formation or in its fields of practice and discourse. It is only at this level that it makes sense to generalize across modes of being and to talk of ontological formations, societies as formed in the uneven dominance of formations of

tribalism Tribalism is the state of being organized by, or advocating for, tribes or tribal lifestyles. Human evolution has primarily occurred in small hunter-gatherer groups, as opposed to in larger and more recently settled agricultural societies or civ ...

, traditionalism,

modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

postmodernism Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or Rhetorical modes, mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by philosophical skepticism, skepticis ...

.One of the earliest formulations of the notion of a postmodern level of the economy was John Hinkson, ‘Postmodern Economy: Value, Self-Formation and Intellectual Practice’, ''Arena Journal'', New Series, no. 1, 1993, pp. 23–44.