Sociologists very often distinguish two realities that are not actually different. They oppose the 'objective' to the 'subjective; referring on the one hand to everything that can be grasped outside of the actors' subjectivity (but not the sociologists') and on the other hand to the 'meaning that actors give to their practices', their 'point of view on the world', their 'representations of the world', etc. Yet we are not dealing here with radical differences, simply with differences of degree in the objectification of realities. The domain of reality denoted by the term 'mental structures' is just as objective as that denoted by that of 'material structures'. These 'mental structures' are constantly objectified in the words of the actors' language and their modes of behaviour'. There are thus no objective realities distinct from subjective realities, but rather realities objectified in objects, spaces, machines, words, ways of acting and saying, and so on. “Those realities marked by a high level of social objectification are often described as ‘objective’: economic capital, a house, a car, a plot of land, etc., whereas an opinion, an idea, a point of view or a representation are called ‘subjective’, even though in concrete terms these subjective realities are every bit as objective: they are materialized in the sounds of an oral discourse, in the traces of a written or printed manuscript, in the strokes of brushes or chisels that create paintings and sculptures, etc. The ‘psychology’ of an author or the ‘mentality’ of an age are equally visible in the objects, spaces, tools and machines they produce: we know just as well the ‘mentality’ of the Athenians of the fifth century BC, in particular the dissociation they made between what pertained to economics and what to religion or morality, from considering the appearance and spread of coinage as by studying the philosophical texts of the time (Vernanr, 1982 I 983). “It is readily apparent, then, that sociologists are far more idealist when they speak of ‘subjective’, ‘psychic’, ‘mental’ or ‘symbolic’ realities' than when they deal with so-called material realities, whilse the language and ways of acting by which these realities make themselves visible’ are the most material and objectifiable of realities (even if oral language and ways of acting have a more ephemeral existence, which lasts only for the time of their implementation).
Lahire B (2011) The Plural Actor. Polity. 202-3
One of my largest pet hates with Anglo-American sociological theory is the common assumption that reaffirming both sides of a conceptual binary as important - or by introducing a third concept (reflexivity, structuration, inter-subjectivity) to mediate between the two - somehow solves the problem of the dualism. The quoted section above on the contrary is a fantastic three paragraph dissolution of subjectivism / objectivism, shifting focus from neatly partitioning the world into two discrete categories towards the various ways in which phenomena become objectified making them amenable to empirical research.
