From participation to doing society via new social pragmatism

Building on pragmatic, pragmatist, and cultural sociological literature, this article presents a case for refocusing and broadening the research on participation by shifting the focus from specific ways of participating to how actors are doing society. We argue for focusing on action in participation and on how this action draws, connects, and feeds into broader cultural tools and repertoires (derived from cultural sociology). Paying attention to how these tools operate interactionally in situations and solidify as habits (derived from pragmatist and interactionist sociology) and how they connect to broader moral evaluations, conflicts, and the construction of commonality (pragmatic sociology) promises an interconnected, theoretically grounded research agenda: new social pragmatism.