His experimental text, “Theoretical Parables” (2004), is both a critique of post-modernism and a celebration of language and narrative. His main argument is that to construct a sociology of "civic virtue" one has to theorise "with", rather than "about", people and, therefore, the use of parables that are embedded in popular cultures is presented as a way into co-theorizing. It has its devoted supporters and detractors. What has received attention is his notion that there is always an asymmetry between institutions and their subjects and an ever-present recoiling and refracting agency in people: a source of creativity, dissonance and resistance. As a president-elect of the South African Sociological Association and a past executive of the International Sociological Association, he has penned a number of innovative essays on the tasks and role of sociology in South Africa and the South.
