Contenu du sommaire : Mission et démission des sciences sociales

René Gallissot, Variations on Man and Society : The Social Sciences between National Integration and Social Criticism Founded in 1966, L'Homme et la Société announced the final breaking-up of the discipline of sociology in May 1968 under the influence of structuralism, which led to the preeminence of anthropology within the social sciences. From this moment, micro- positivism and methodological individualism turned attention away from consideration of social relations. This process was completed by inter-disciplinary rivalries. Professionalization and the continuing process of specialization are related to the development of increasing governmental direction of social and cultural affairs. The social sciences are now called upon to reinforce national and social integration, and this role is relatively incompatible with social criticism. Should social scientists fear compromising themselves as they study the very relations which tie them to social institutions ? Have the social sciences become dependent upon or extensions of the State and the business community ?

Gérard Althabe, The Ethnologist and His/Her Discipline The discipline of ethnology contributes to knowledge within the context of an industrialized and urbanized society, but there exists a significant difference between the practice of ethnology in France and elsewhere. In order to maintain their legitimacy, the majority of ethnologists reproduce an epistemology elaborated elsewhere and construct their subjects as something alien, thus freeing themselves of any form of identification. However, in a society which increasingly uses exclusion as an operating principle, such an approach risks reinforcing the singularity of the subjects, thus justifying their exclusion. It is in attempting to provide information resources for the production of collective identities that ethnology can make a positive contribution. The field or urban studies is particularly central in this regard. Within the social sciences, ethnologists claim to be specialists in regard to symbolic forms. In doing this they assure the unity of their discipline regardless of the particular field chosen. It is necessary to break with any trend towards the reification of the symbolic, and to focus upon the production of symbolism within the context of social relations.

Louis Moreau de Bellaing, Empiricism in Sociology : A Critique If sociological empiricism has proved to be necessary and fruitful, it has been diverted from its most important objectives by many investigators who ignore the fact their task should be to furnish qualitative and quantitative data and make a preliminary interpretation of it. Confused with sociology, with which it partially shares its essential premises, all-too-frequently empiricism represents obstructs the search for scientific truth.

Larry Portis, Criticism and Consensus in French Sociology : Past and Present Oscillating between social criticism and support for social cohesion, the historical evolution of academic sociology reveals how the flux of political and social conjunctures can influence perceptions of society. At the turn of the century, sociology emerged as an academic discipline partially in response to the social disintegration symbolized by working-class and socialist movements ; it therefore attempted to discredit a vision of society premissed on the notion of social class divisions. More recently, Alain Touraine has stressed the importance of this consideration, and he too has attempted to combat any image of society tending to promote criticism of it. He and other university sociologists have indeed contributed greatly to the discrediting of critical or subversive images of society in favor of the idea that French society is essentially homogeneous, free of fundamental clivages.

Pierre-Noël Denieuil, The Scientist and the Manager in the Firm Sociological research on French businesses in the 1980s indicates that the field of anthropology is representing a variety of approaches : cultural regulation by informal knowledge ; sociability abd the dynamics of belonging ; situation of the business in a social and regional context ; industrial symbolism and the expropriation of training and knowledge by machines ; social stratification and daily life ; the construction of the enterprise as a culture and as a source of social identifications. Beyond the diversity of approaches, there is a difference of perspective between the reflections of the socio-anthropological investigator and the manager. Describing the firm as a community does not imply that it functions as a group or a culture.

Quynh Delaunay, Towards a Critical Theory of Conventions The theory of conventions is a theoretical attempt to provide a scientific foundation for currents of thought related to methodological individualism. Individuals make decisions in relation to the qualities attached to their condition as beings living in a liberal and democratic society. These qualities are evoked in an axiomatic and paradigmatic form recognizable as corresponding to the neo-classical model. But the individuals find themselves in situations requiring the establishment of mutual accommodation. Such an accommodation is possible because people living together share a set of values (or conventions) in which each recognizes his or her interest. In the multiple positions occupied by an individual, action corresponds to a logical type. The positions of an individual can be called into question at any time. Society functions, thusly, as a constant shifting of existing equilibriums towards new equilibriums. The theory of conventions is designed to be applied to a vast domain marked-out by the social sciences. It is a theory of social order that emphasizes the symbolic at the expense of what is concrete and contradictory.

François Dosse, Clio en exil At the present time, the notion of historicity is in crisis. The idea of progress, of the articulation of a Utopia seen as a manifestation of a social past has been transformed into an a-historical view of a dilated present. In the wash of a generalized skepticism, the broad synthesis has given way to multiple yet restricted points of view and semantic games. From the post-modern perspective, the eclipse of humanism has resulted in a structuralist deconstruction of historicity which came to dominant the social sciences in the 1960s. In spite of their differences, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida promoted closed systems abstracted from subjective considerations. The social logic they unmasked was limited to a description of automatic reflexes. Social history, under the influence of the third generation of the Annales, has abandoned its founders desire for synthesis and globality in favor of an eclectic, fragmented kind of historiography. Will the appropriation of structuralism by the present avant-garde of historians lead to their victory or to the dilution of their identity ? Has Claude Lévi-Strauss' L'Homme Nu slipped into the historian's territory in order to unclothe him ?

Jean-Franklin Narot, In the Name of the Law : The Social in the Grip of Lacanism Lacan's psychoanalytic structuralism has provided an interpretative framework which can be, illegitimately, substituted for the social sciences. Founded upon a notion of the symbolic derived from the work of Lévy-Strauss, the theoretical key to this perspective is the equivocal notion of « Law ». In the terms of the Lacanian doctrine, « Law » functions as the necessary precondition for the existence and intelligibility of effective social rules and regulations which are inevitably perceived in terms of a metonymy. The normative consequences and deformations occasioned by this conceptual strategy mystify the historical processes productive of social forms. Overall, in producing an interminable psittacism, the Master's voice has become the object of a certain fetichism The author is a psychoanalyst.

Christian Grataloup, The Explorer and the Missionary The present age requires that we constantly revise our perceptions of the physical and social world. One of the consequences of this fact is that the description of the world, the primordial mission of the discipline of geography, is an increasing focus of attention which corresponds to a keen demand for maps which reflect the reality of a world influx. At the same time, geography is itself characterized by scientific debates over the conceptual modalities of accurately delimiting social space. Such debates, over what for some is an effort to obtain greater precision, and for others amounts to reductionism, have given geography a new prominence within the social sciences.

Bernard Hours, Saïd Tamba, Islam and Culturalism The image of Islam in western societies evolves slowly, but at times seems to go through a revolution. Presently, under the influence of a certain culturalism, Islam is reduced to a sum of cultural practices ; it is « Islamic culture » that is discussed and not the religion of the muslims. From another perspective, orientalism has always straddled science and politics, thus provoking interrogation about its methods. The objects that it constructs are not independant of power relations, and discussion of them in the West must be analyzed in terms of their historical and ideological contexts. From « colonial romanticism » to contemporary culturalism, Islam is still isolated and reified. From the reduction of foreign practices to exoticism, to the rationalization of « cultural differences », the West seems, with the help of journalistic simplifications, to be incapable of truly communicating with Islam.

Domenico Losurdo, The Decline and Transfiguration of the West. Heidegger and German Philosophy between the Wars Even after 1918 and the collapse of the Third Reich, the main themes of pro war sentiment continued to circulate in German culture. Germany continued to be considered the only country capable of successfully combatting the materialist massification coming from the East and the democratic and socialist nihilisme which posed a fatal menace in the West. In this context, in 1936 Nietzsche appeared to Heidegger as the champion of the struggle against nihilism (and he recognized Mussolini and Hitler as having the merit of being influenced by the great philosopher). From 1939 until the defeat of Germany, each phase of the Second World War corresponded to a new stage in Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche. In the thought of Heidegger, as in that of Junger and Schmitt, the final condamnation of the Third Reich was absorbed in a broaders historical assessment that holds the revolutionary tradition responsible for its evolution and continues to call for the salvation of the West while transfiguring its authentic heritage.