The social and the cultural
where do they meet?
pp. 273-287
in: Toshio Sugiman, Kenneth J. Gergen, Wolfgang Wagner, Yoko Yamada (eds), Meaning in action, Berlin, Springer, 2008Abstract
Meetings of ideas are not scripted events like handshakes of politicians at diplomatic summits. Rather, ideas meet as if they were clandestine lovers — at first secretly, passionately, and later — if discovered — as parts of a scenario of a public scandal or a reconstituted legally accepted relationship. Meta-theoretical discourse in the social sciences is part of that latter social legitimation.