How Social Forms Come Alive: The Enactive Workings of Discursive Positioning

Resumen

By focusing on the structural-enactive aspect of discursive positioning, I explore the capacity of the positioning theory to contribute to a higher-level theoretical conciliation of the ‘agency vs. structure’ dichotomy in social sciences. Connecting the theory of Rom Harré and Luk Van Langenhove with Austin’s pragmalinguistics, Searle’s social ontology and Luhmann’s theory of social systems, I argue that the discursive positioning is precisely the social act which creates and sustains social forms.