Critique et pragmatique en sociologie. Quelques principes de lecture

Reading sociology: critical and pragmatic paradigms. T. Bénatouïl. This paper draws a systematic comparison between two rival approaches to sociology in France today. The first, "critical sociology ", has been practiced and theorized by Pierre Bourdieu since the sixties; the second, "pragmatic sociology", has emerged for the last ten years as a coherent approach through the work of Bruno Latour, Michel Gallon (in the sociology of science), Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot (in the sociology of action and justification). Each is considered in terms of its conception of the aims of sociology and its relationship to philosophy, as well as in terms of the principles and strategies of its sociological method and its political implications and uses. The paper then proposes several epistemological ways of interpreting the differences between these two conceptions of sociology. These interpretations help us to assess the potential benefits of an intellectual collaboration between the two approaches.Bénatouïl Thomas. Critique et pragmatique en sociologie. Quelques principes de lecture. In: Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales. 54ᵉ année, N. 2, 1999. pp. 281-317