RELATIONAL SOCIOLOGY MODELS' POSSIBLE EXPANSIONS IN SOCIOLOGY PRACTICE AND REFLEXIVITY IN TURKEY FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF SUBSTANTIALISM AND RELATIONALITY DICHOTOMY

Discussions on dichotomic notion couples which demostrate various ontological, epistemological and methodological positionings like agency - structure, subject - object, induction - deduction, causality-reflexivity, micro - macro or explanation - interpretation have been witnessed for a long time in sociology literature. Among these discussions, various approaches, which are more often-heard nowadays, under the title of relational sociology which questions if the social world consists of the substances or processes - therefore relations - and suggests that everything is relational have started to gain more importance. Within the scope of this research which focuses on the ideas of social scientists on the ideal type models relating to ontological and epistemological differentiations, it has seen that the main problematic about differentiations in relational sociology centres upon whether the individuals - as living creatures-get in contact with social structures, institutions and cultures and whether some relation types - relational perspectives-can be built as explanatory mechanisms between the individuals and the reified patterns of social life empirically and logically. It has been thought that in todays Turkey, a polity based sociology which historically articulated to normative politics and failed to develop its own autonomous capital types because of the political interferences has been giving its place to a much more relational and freedom based sociological perspective. Thus, a sociology of sociology which leads sociological reason questioning itself with reflexivity rather than functioning instrumentally has started to be mentioned. Hovewer, it seems that the possibility of an autonomous social science which goes beyond the polity based (rather than Socious based) social science practice and social-economic-cultural-political meaning frameworks which maintain this practice continues its existence as a structure problem about allowing social scientists' reflexivity and being able to put this reflexivity into practice.