HOLMER, MAJIA; PHD

                         PURDUE UNIVERSITY, 1993
 
                         SOCIOLOGY, THEORY AND METHODS (0344); SOCIOLOGY, GENERAL (0626); PHILOSOPHY
 

                         This dissertation deconstructs social systems using post-modern conceptions of temporality. It argues
                         that the social sciences have inadvertently reified their analytic concepts of system, structure, culture,
                         communication, and agency by eliminating time from social analysis. Atemporal accounts of sociality
                         remain locked within an ontology of being whereby social constructs are regarded as existentially
                         self-sufficient and self-identical. Such accounts tend to collapse the distinction being the representation
                         and what is being represented. In response, this dissertation suggests how post-modern accounts of
                         time and space can be used to develop an ontology of social becoming. Instead of seeing being as
                         existing in time, being and time are understood as mutually constitutive. In consequence, all identity is
                         seen as precarious and contingent. What is more, by affording temporality primacy in social analysis, the
                         researcher is forced to reconsider the relationship between her/his representations and what is
                         represented. This dissertation argues against the real or ideal transparency or objects and concepts. The
                         ideas developed in this dissertation are exemplified in critique of organizational communication research.
                         Chapter Six points to how organizational communication might be reconceived when framed from the
                         perspective of an ontology of becoming.

Social Systems Simulation Group P.O. Box 6904 San Diego, CA  92166-0904 Roland Werner, Principal Phone/FAX  (619) 660-1603