Towards a Sociology of Loss: Disposals and dead-ends in Lineages of Social Innovation and Change

ongoing

This study aims to provide a new understanding of how losses, disposals and dead-ends shape the direction of social change at moments of rupture, and to develop a formal theory of social loss. Sociologists have shown that people respond to crises by reconfiguring cultural understandings, narratives of self and social relationships. However, we have not paid sufficient attention to how what is disposed of shapes future pathways. LINLOSS will address this gap in the sociological imagination. It will develop new explanations of how loss generates change at multiple, intersecting societal scales: in the transformation of cultural and institutional patterns across generations; within changing configurations of relationships across genealogies and social networks; and in the reconstruction of pasts and futures within biographies. The research will be a comparative, cross-national community study of two ‘exurban’ districts in Ireland and Poland. The main form of data collection will be mixed biographical interviews, combining unstructured and formal elements, connected within genealogical support networks. The analysis will take place across two iterations: a comparative analysis to trace the effects of breaks and losses within and between social lineages at multiple scales; and a thematic analysis to identify how instances of loss are tied together by a common social pattern. We live in ‘unsettled times,’ when it is essential that sociologists provide insights on how pathways of social loss and renewal lead to variations and resilience to new challenges, for individuals, families and communities. If successful, the study will make a significant contribution towards this goal. It will deliver a methodological breakthrough in pioneering methods for the analysis of dynamic, multi-scalar social processes and will make a major theoretical contribution to scholarship on social change.