<![CDATA[AbstractUnderstanding the existential relation between human being and socialentity has been a major theme in human sciences. Such an intellectualenquiry is not only important for theoretical purposes, but also of highlyrelevant for practical life. Within the Western contemporary social sciences,two distinct approaches have recently been attracting wide attention, namelythe critical realism and the actor-network theory. The critical realism seeksto explore the interaction mechanism between human subjective individualand its surrounding objective social structure by ascribing independentexistential status to each of them, i.e., the subjective existence and theobjective existence. In opposite to this, the actor-network theory denies theindependent existence of the subject and the object altogether. For actornetworktheory, the question of existence should be answer by tracing therelations that are performed, or enacted, by human individual agents. Inother words, existence is relational and performative. Within the Islamictraditions, the works of Ibn Khaldun have been highly respected as a majorcontribution in the understanding of human being and social behavior andstructure. In his Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun asserts that human being isinherently political, and human individuals cooperation is fundamental totheir collective existence. The aim of the paper is to present a conceptualframework in which the above-described theoretical works could be putside-by-side in such a way as to gain a theoretical synthesis. In this way,we hope that the paper could contribute to the theme of Islamic humansciences by way of dialog between Western and Islamic traditions.]]>
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