The Promise: A Breakthrough for Social Science

This article orbits the promise of Sociology and presents the sociology of promises—or, more precisely, the science of promises, aimed at addressing all sociological curiosities and encompassing all that is sociological. In introducing the General Social Theory of Compromises (G-STOC), a framework designed to overcome the fragmentation of traditional social theories and address their limitations in explaining social behavior, a breakthrough is presented in eight main takeaways that are simultaneously ontological, epistemological and theoretical: (1) social coercive powers derive from actual or virtual agency; (2) virtual agency derives from promises; (3) all anger and disappointment derive from broken promises; (4) promises are always in dynamic reciprocal sets called compromises; (5) compromises are heuristic devices underlying all social relationships; (6) all social phenomena involve compromises; (7) to explain is to describe relationships and (8) sociological explanation, therefore, derives from the description of compromises and their history. The above tenets begin to outline a powerful and coherent framework and their proper appreciation is bound to have a profound impact in Social Science. Emphasizing theoretical novelty and superior heuristic power while avoiding convoluted syntheses of competing theories, the author advocates for clear conceptual and theoretical grounds to enable a complete and integrated explanation of social phenomena. With this innovative approach, the paper invites scholars to engage critically with G-STOC and explore its potential to unify and enhance the study of the social world, offering new insights about its complexities.